Colin and his guardian went on their way in a direction opposite to that in which the Mistress travelled sadly alone. They made all the haste possible out of the cold and boisterous weather, to get to sea; which was at once, according to all their hopes, to bring health to the invalid. Lauderdale, who carried his little fortune about him, had been at great pains in dispersing it over his person; so that, in case of falling among thieves—which, to a man venturing into foreign parts for the first time, seemed but too probable—he might, at least, have a chance of saving some portion of his store. But he was not prepared for the dire and dreadful malady which seized him unawares, and made him equally incapable of taking care of his money and of taking care of Colin. He could not even make out how many days he had lain helpless and useless in what was called the second cabin of the steamer—where the arrangements and the provisions were less luxurious than in the more expensive quarters. But Lauderdale, under the circumstances, did not believe in comfort; he gave it up as a thing impossible. He fell into a state of utter scepticism as he lay in agonies of sea-sickness on the shelf which represented a bed. “Say nothing to me about getting there,” he said, with as much indignation as he was capable of. “What do you mean by there, callant? As for land, I’m far from sure that there’s such a thing in existence. If there is, we’ll never{204} get to it. It’s an awful thing for a man in his senses to deliver himself up to this idiot of a sea, to be played with like a bairn’s ball. It’s very easy to laugh; if you had been standing on your head, like me, for twenty days in succession—”
“Only four days,” said Colin, laughing, “and the gale is over. You’ll be better to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” said Lauderdale, with a contemptuous groan; “I’ve no faith in to-morrow. I’m no equal to reckoning time according to ordinary methods, and I’m no conscious of ever having existed in a more agreeable position. As for the chances of ever coming head uppermost again, I would not give sixpence for them. It’s all very well for the like of you. Let me alone, callant; if this infernal machine of a ship would but go down without more ado, and leave a man in peace—that’s the pleasantest thing I can think of. Don’t speak to me about Italy. It’s all a snare and delusion to get honest folk off firm ground. Let me get to the bottom in peace and quiet. Life’s no worth having at such a price,” sighed the sufferer; to whom his undutiful charge answered only by laughter and jibes, which, under the circumstances, were hard to bear.
“You are better now,” said the heartless youth, “or you could not go into the philosophy of the subject. To-morrow morning you’ll eat a good breakfast, and—”
“Dinna insult my understanding,” said Colin’s victim. “Go away, and look out for your Italy, or whatever you call it. A callant like you believes in everything. Go away and enjoy yourself. If you don’t go peaceably, I’ll put you out,” cried the miserable man, lifting himself up from his pillow, and seizing a book which Colin had laid there, to throw at his tormentor. A sudden lurch, however, made an end of the discomfited philosopher. He fell back, groaning, as Colin escaped out of the little cabin. “It’s quite intolerable, and I’ll no put up with it any longer,” said Lauderdale to himself. And he recalled, with a sense of injury, Colin’s freedom from the overpowering malady under which he was himself suffering. “It’s me that’s ill, and no him,” he thought, with surprise, and the thought prevailed even over sea-sickness. By-and-by it warmed with a delicious glow of hope and consolation the heart of the sufferer. “If it sets the callant right, I’m no heeding for myself,” he said in his own mind, with renewed heroism. Perhaps it was because, as Colin said, Lauderdale was already beginning to be better that he was capable of such generosity. Certainly the ship lurched less and less as the {205}evening went on, and the moonlight stole in at the port-hole and caressed the sufferer, widening his horizon a little before he was aware. He had begun to wonder whether Colin had his great coat on before long, and fell asleep in that thought, and worked out his remaining spell of misery in gigantic efforts—continued all through the night—to get into Colin’s coat, or to get Colin into his coat, he was not quite sure which. Meanwhile, the object of Lauderdale’s cares was on deck, enjoying the moonlight, and the sense of improving health, and all the excitement and novelty of his new life.
They had been four days at sea, and Colin, who had not been ill, had become acquainted with the aspect of all his fellow passengers who were as good sailors as himself. They were going to Leghorn, as the easiest way of reaching Italy; and there were several invalids on board, though none whose means made necessary a passage in the second cabin, of which Colin himself and Lauderdale were the sole occupants. Of the few groups on the quarter-deck who were able to face the gale, Colin had already distinguished one, a young man, a little older than himself, exceedingly pale and worn with illness, accompanied by a girl a year or two younger. The two were so like each other as to leave no doubt that they must be brother and sister, and so unlike as to call forth the compassionate observation of everybody who looked at them. The young lady’s blooming face, delicately round and full, with the perfect outline of health and youth, had been paled at first by the struggle between incipient sea-sickness and the determination not to leave her brother; but by this time—at the cost of whatever private agonies—she had apparently surmounted the common weakness, and was throwing into fuller and fuller certainty, without knowing it, by the contrast of her own bloom, the sentence of death written on his face. When they were on deck, which was the only time that they were visible to Colin, she never left him; holding fast by his arm with an anxious tenacity, not receiving, but giving support; and watching him with incessant, breathless anxiety, as if afraid that he might suddenly drop away from her side. The brother, for his part, had those hollow eyes, set in wide pathetic niches, which are never to be mistaken by those who have once watched beloved eyes widening out into that terrible breadth and calm. He was as pale as if the warm blood of life had already been wrung out of him drop by drop; but, notwithstanding this aspect of death, he was still possessed by a kind of feverish activity, the remains of strength, and seemed less disturbed by the gale than any other passenger. He was on deck at all hours,{206} holding conversations with such of the sailors as he could get at—talking to the captain, who seemed to eschew his society, and to such of his fellow-travellers as were visible there.
What the subject of this sick traveller’s talk might be, Colin from his point of observation could not tell; but there was no mistaking the evidences of natural eloquence and the eagerness of the speaker. “He ought to be a preacher by his looks,” Colin said to himself, as he stood within the limits to which, as a second-class passenger, he was confined, and saw at a little distance from him, the worn figure of the sick man, upon whose face the moonlight was shining. As usual, the sister was clinging to his arm and listening to him with a rapt countenance; not so much concerned about what he said, it seemed, as absorbed in anxious investigation of his looks. It was one of the sailors this time who formed the audience which the invalid addressed—a man whom he had stopped in the midst of something he was doing, and who was listening with great evident embarrassment, anxious to escape, but more anxious still, like a good-hearted fellow as he was, not to disturb or irritate the suffering man. Colin drew a step nearer, feeling that the matter under discussion could be no private one, and the sound of the little advance he made caught the invalid’s nervous ear. He turned round upon Colin before he could go back, and suddenly fixed him with those wonderful dying eyes. “I shall see you again another time, my friend,” he said to the released seaman, who hastened off with an evident sense of having escaped. When the stranger turned round he had to move back his companion, so that in the change of position she came to be exactly in front of Colin, so near that the two could not help seeing, could not help observing each other. The girl withdrew her eyes a moment from her brother to look at the new face thus presented to her. She did not look at Colin as a young woman usually looks at a young man. She was neither indifferent, nor did she attempt to seem so. She looked at him eagerly, with a question in her eyes. The question was a strange one to be addressed, even from the eyes, by one stranger to another. It said as plain as words, “Are you a man to whom I can appeal—are you a man who will understand him? Shall I be able to trust you, and ask your help?” That and nothing else was in the wistful anxious look. If Colin’s face had not been one which said “Yes” to all such questions, she would have turned away, and thought of him no more; as it was, she looked a second time with a touch of interest, a gleam of hope. The brother took no more apparent{207} notice of her than if she had been a cloak on his arm, except that from time to time he put out his thin white hand to make sure that she was still there. He fixed his eyes on Colin with a kind of solemn steadfastness, which had a wonderful effect upon the young man, and said something hasty and brief, a most summary preface, about the beautiful night. “Are you ill?” he added, in the same hasty, breathless way, as if impatient of wasting time on such preliminaries. “Are you going abroad for your health?”
Colin, who was surprised by the question, felt almost disinclined to answer it—for in spite of himself it vexed him to think that anybody could read that necessity in his face. He said, “I think so,” with a smile which was not quite spontaneous; “my friends at least have that meaning,” he added more naturally a moment afterwards, with the intention of returning the question; but that possibility was taken rapidly out of his hands.
“Have you ever thought of death?” said the stranger. “Don’t start—I am dying, or I would not ask you. When a man is dying he has privileges. Do you know that you are standing on the brink of a precipice? Have you ever thought of death?”
“Yes, a great deal,” said Colin. It would be wrong to say that the question did not startle him; but, after the first strange shock of such an address, an impulse of response and sympathy filled his mind. It might have been difficult to get into acquaintance by means of the chit-chat of society, which requires a certain initiation; but such a grand subject was common ground. He answered as very few of the people interrogated by the sick man did answer. He did not show either alarm or horror—he started slightly, it is true, but he answered without much hesitation:
“Yes, I have thought often of death,” said Colin. Though he was only a second-class passenger, this was a question which put all on an equality; and now it was not difficult to understand why the captain eschewed his troublesome questioner, and how the people looked embarrassed to whom he spoke.
“Ah, I am glad to hear such an answer,” said the stranger; “so few people can say so. You have found out, then, the true aim of life. Let us walk about, for it is cold, and I must not shorten my working-days by any devices of my own. My friend, give me a little hope that, at last, I have found a brother in Christ.”
“I hope so,” said Colin, gravely. He was still more startled{208} by the strain in which his new companion proceeded; but a dying man had privileges. “I hope so,” Colin repeated; “one of many here.”
“Ah, no, not of many,” said the invalid; “if you can feel certain of being a child of God, it is what but few are permitted to do. My dear friend, it is not a subject to deceive ourselves upon. It is terribly important for you and me. Are you sure that you are fleeing from the wrath to come? Are you sure that you are prepared to meet your God?”
They had turned into the full moonlight, which streamed upon their faces. The ship was rushing along through a sea still agitated by the heavings of the past storm, and there was nothing moving on deck except some scattered seamen busy in their mysterious occupations. Colin was slow to answer the new question thus addressed to him. He was still very young; delicate, and reticent about all the secrets of his soul; not wearing his heart upon his sleeve even in particulars less intimate and momentous than this. “I am not afraid of my God,” he said, after a minute’s pause; “pardon me, I am not used to speak much on such subjects. I cannot imagine that to meet God can be less than the greatest joy of which the soul is capable. He is our Father. I am not afraid.”
“Oh, my friend!” said the eager stranger; his voice sounded in Colin’s ear like the voice of a desperate man in a lifeboat, calling to somebody who was drowning in a storm,—“don’t deceive yourself; don’t take up a sentimental view of such an important matter. There is no escape except through one way. The great object of our lives is to know how to die—and to die is despair, without Christ.”
“What is it to live without Him?” said Colin. “I think the great object of our lives is to live.............