The fatigue of sight-seeing, wound up by a frantic rush to the railway to be in time for the train, which after all was a train quite at leisure, as most passengers are in Italy, was too much for the early budding of Colin’s strength, and laid him up for a day or two, as was only natural; an occurrence which had a curious effect upon the little household. To Lauderdale it was a temporary return into those mists of despair which, partly produced by the philosopher’s own sad experience, had made him at first come to so abrupt a conclusion touching Colin’s chances of life. When he saw him once more prostrated, Lauderdale’s patience and courage alike gave way. He became like a man in a sinking ship, who has not composure to await the end which is naturally at hand, but flings himself into the{251} sea to meet it. He talked wildly of going home, and bitterly of the utter privation of comfort to which his invalid was exposed; and his heart was closed for the moment even to the approaches of Alice. “If it hadna been for you!” he said within his clenched teeth, turning away from her; and was not safe to speak to for the moment. But, oddly enough, the effect of Colin’s illness upon the others was of an entirely different character. Instead of distressing Meredith and his sister, it produced, by some wonderful subtle action which we do not pretend to explain, an exhilarating effect upon them. It seemed to prove somehow, to Alice especially, that illness was a general evil distributed over all the world; that it was a usual thing for young men to be reduced to weakness and obliged to be careful of themselves. “Mr. Campbell, you see, is just the same as Arthur. It is a great deal commoner than one thinks,” the poor little girl said to Sora Antonia, who had charge of the house; and though her feelings towards Colin were of the most benevolent and even affectionate description, this thought was a sensible consolation to her. Meredith regarded the matter from a different point of view. “I have always hoped that he was one of the chosen,” the invalid said when he heard of Colin’s illness; “but I feared that God was leaving him alone. We always judge His ways prematurely even when we least intend it. We ought to thank God that our dear friend is feeling His hand, and is subject to chastisements which may lead him to Christ.”
“Callant,” said Lauderdale fiercely, “speak of things ye understand; it’s not for you to interfere between a man and his Maker. A soul more like Him of whom you dare to speak never came out of the Almighty’s hands. Do you think God is like a restless woman and never can be done meddling?” said Colin’s guardian, betrayed out of his usual self-restraint; but his own heart was trembling for his charge, and he had not composure enough to watch over his words. As for the sick man, whose own malady went steadily on without any great pauses or sudden increase, he lifted his dying eyes and addressed himself eagerly, as he was wont, to his usual argument.
“If any man can understand it, I should,” said Meredith. “Cannot I trace the way by which He has led me?—a hard way to flesh and blood. Cannot I see how He has driven me from one stronghold after another, leaving me no refuge but in Christ? And, such being the case, can you wonder that I should wish the same discipline for my friend? The only{252} thing I should fear for myself is restoration to health; and are you surprised that I should fear it for him?”
“I am not surprised at anything but my ain idiocy in having my hand in the matter,” said Lauderdale; and he went away abruptly to Colin’s room with a horrible sense of calamity and helplessness. There was something in Meredith’s confident explanation of God’s dealings which drove him half frantic, and filled him with an unreasonable panic. Perhaps it was true; perhaps those lightnings in the clouds had been but momentary—a false hope. When, however, with his agitation so painfully compressed and kept under that it produced a morose expression upon his grave face, he went into Colin’s room, he found his patient sitting up in bed, with his great-coat over his shoulders, writing with a pencil on the fly-leaf of the book which his faithful attendant had given him to “keep him quiet.”
“Never mind,” said the disorderly invalid. “I am all right, Lauderdale. Give us pen and ink, like a kind soul. You don’t imagine I am ill, surely, because I am lazy after last night?”
“I’ve given up imagining anything on the subject,” said Colin’s grim guardian. “When a man in his senses sets up house with a parcel of lunatics it’s easy to divine what will come of it, lie down in your bed and keep quiet, and get well again; or else get up,” said Lauderdale, giving vent to a sharp acrid sound as if he had gnashed his teeth, “and let us be done with it all, and go home.”
At this Colin opened his great brown eyes, which were as far from being anxious or depressed as could well be conceived, and laughed softly in his companion’s face.
“This comes of Meredith’s talk, I suppose,” he said; “and of course it has been about me, or it would not have riled you. How often have you told me that you understood the state of mind which produced all that? He is very good at the bottom, Lauderdale,” said Colin. “There’s a good fellow, give me my little writing-case. I want to write it out.”
“You want to write what out?” asked Lauderdale. “Some of your nonsense verses? I’ll give you no writing-case. Lie down in your bed and keep yourself warm.” “You’re awfu’ fond of looking at your ain productions. I’ve no doubt its terrible rubbish if a man could read it. Let’s see the thing. Do you think a parcel of verses in that halting In Memoriam metre—I’m no saying anything against In Memoriam—but if I set up for a poet, I would make a measure for mysel’—are worth an{253} illness? and the cold of this wretched place is enough to kill ony rational man. Eetaly! I wouldna send a dog here, to be perished with cold and hunger. Do what I tell you, callant, and lie down. It shows an awfu’ poverty of invention, that desire to copy everything out.”
“Stuff!” said Colin; “you don’t suppose it is for myself. I want to give it to somebody,” said the young man with a conscious smile. And to look at him with his countenance all a-glow, pleasure and fun and affection brightening his eyes, and his face lighted up with the gentle commotion of thought which had ended in that writing of verses, it was hard to think of him as a man whom God for a solemn purpose had weighted with affliction—as he had appeared in Meredith’s eyes. Rather he looked, what he was, one of God’s most joyful and gifted creatures; glad without knowing why; glad because the sweet imaginations of youth had possession of him, and filled heaven and earth with brave apparitions. Love and anxiety had introduced into the heart of Lauderdale, so far as Colin was concerned, a certain feminine element—and he laughed unsteadily out of a poignant thrill of relief and consolation, as he took the book from his patient’s hands.
“He’s no a callant that can do without an audience,” said Lauderdale; “and, seeing it’s poetry that’s in question, no doubt it’s a female audience that’s contemplated. You may spare yourself the trouble, Colin. She’s bonnie, and she’s good; and I’m no free to say that I don’t like her all the better for caring for none of these things; but I see no token that she’ll ever get beyond Watts’s hymns all her days. You needna trouble your head about writing out things for her.”
Upon which Colin reddened a little, and said “Stuff!” and made a long grasp at the writing-case—which exertion cost him a fit of coughing. Lauderdale sat by his side gloomily enough all day, asking himself whether the colour was hectic that brightened Colin’s cheeks, and listening to the sound of his breathing and the ring of his voice with indescribable pangs of anxiety. When evening came the watcher had considerably more fever than the patient, and turned his eyes abroad over the Campagna, with a gaze which saw nothing glorious in the scene. At that moment, the sun going down in grandeur over the misty distance, which was Rome—the wonderful belts and zones of colour in the vault of sky which covered in that melancholy waste with its specks of ruin—were nothing in Lauderdale’s eyes in comparison with the vision that haunted him of a cosy{254} homely room in a Scotch farmhouse, full of warm glimmers of fire light and humble comforts. “He would mend if he were but at home,” he said to himself almost with bitterness, turning his eyes from the landscape without, to which he was indifferent, to the bare white stony walls within. He was so cold sitting there, he who was well and strong, that he had put on his great-coat. And it was for this he had brought the youth whom he loved so far away from those “who belonged to him!” Lauderdale thought with a pang of the Mistress, and what she would say if she could see the comfortless place to which she had sent her boy. Meanwhile the patient who caused so much anxiety, was, for his own part, very comfortable, and copied out his verses with a care that made it very apparent he had no intention of coming to a speedy end, either of life or its enjoyments. He had not written anything for a long time, and the exercise was pleasant to him—and when it was done he lay back on his pillows, and took the trouble to remark to Lauderdale upon the decorations of the poor bare stony chamber which the philosopher was cursing in his heart.—“We are before them in some things,” said Colin, reflectively, “but they beat us in a great many. See how simply that effect is obtained—just a line or two of colour, and yet nothing could be more perfect in its way.” To which observation Lauderdale responded only by an indescribable growl, which provoked the laughter of his unruly patient. The next remark Colin made was, however, received with greater favour, for he asked plaintively if it was not time for dinner—a question more soothing to Lauderdale’s feelings than volumes of remonstrances. He carried Colin’s portion into the room when that meal arrived from the Trattoria, scorning female assistance, and arranging everything with that exquisite uncouth tenderness which, perhaps, only a woman could do full justice to; for the fact is, that Colin, though ravenously hungry, and fully disposed to approve of the repast, had a momentary thought that it would have been ever so much pleasanter to have been served by the little housekeeper herself.
When the darkness had hushed and covered up the Campagna, and stilled all the village sounds, Lauderdale himself, a little flushed from an address he had just been delivering to Meredith, went in and looked at the sleeping face which was so precious to him, and tortured himself once more with questions whether it might be fever which gave colour to the young man’s cheek. But Colin, notwithstanding his cold,............