A parting scene between Colin and Fanny, with the promises they made to each other. Colin sets out for his new destination.

SOMETHING closely akin to grief was visible in the little cottage at Bramleigh, even at daybreak, on that gloomy morning which had been fixed upon for Colin's departure. It was yet some hours before the time at which he should go; for his mother and Fanny had risen with the first dawn of light, in order to have everything for him in a state of preparation. Few words were exchanged between them as they went mechanically about their household work; but each looked serious, as though the day was bringing sorrow at its close: and now and then the lifting of Fanny's clean white apron to her eyes, or the sudden and unconscious fall of big tears upon her hands, as she kneeled to whiten the little hearthstone of the house, betrayed the presence of feelings in her bosom which put a seal upon the tongue, and demanded the observance of silence to keep them pent within their trembling prison-place. The mother, whose heart was more strongly fortified with the hope of her boy's well-doing, felt not so deeply; though the uppermost thoughts in her mind were yet of him, and of this change. To-morrow he would be gone. How she should miss his open heart and voluble tongue, which were wont to make her forget all the miseries she had endured on his account! She would no longer have need to lay the nightly pillow for him; nor to call him in the morning again to another day of life and action. The house would seem desolate without him; and she and Fanny would have to learn how to be alone.

His little box of clothes was now carefully packed up; and amongst them Fanny laid a few trifling articles, all she could, which had been bought, unknown to any one, with the few shillings which had been hoarded up through a long season. These, she thought, might surprise him at some unexpected moment with the memory of home, and of those he had left there; when, perhaps, the treatment he might receive from others would render the memory of that home a welcome thing. A small phial of ink, three penny ready-made pens, and half a quire of letter-paper, formed part of Fanny's freightage: as she intended that, in case he could not return often enough on a visit to them of some few hours, he should at least write to tell them how he fared.

When she was about completing these arrangements Colin entered the room, in high spirits at the anticipated pleasures of his new mode of existence.

“Is it all ready, Fanny?” he asked; at the same time picking up one end of the cord by which the box was to be bound.

“Yes,” she briefly replied; accompanying that single monosyllable with a sudden and convulsive catching of the breath, which told of an overladen bosom better than any language.

“Then I shall go very soon,” coolly observed Colin,—“there is no good in stopping if everything is ready.”

“Nay, not yet,” murmured Fanny, as she bowed down her head under the pretence of arranging something in the box, though, in reality, only to hide that grief which in any other manner she could no longer conceal. “We can't tell when we shall see you again. Do not go sooner than you can help, for the latest will be soon enough.”

“What, are you crying?” asked Colin. “I did not mean to make you cry;” and he himself began to look unusually serious. “It is a good place, you know; and, if I get on well, perhaps when I am grown up I shall be able to keep a little house of my own; and then you, and my mother, and I, will live there, and be as comfortable as possible together. You shall be dairy-maid, while I ride about to see that the men do their work; and, as for my mother, she shall do as she likes.”

Though not much consoled by this pleasing vision of future happiness, Fanny could not but smile at the earnestness with which Colin had depicted it. Indeed, he could not have offered this balm to her wounded spirit with greater sincerity had such a result as that alluded to been an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of his present engagement at Snitterton Lodge. But Fanny had still less faith in the prognostications of the little seer, in consequence of the opinion which she had secretly formed of the character of his mistress; notwithstanding the plausibility of her conversation. The natural expression of her countenance appeared to be that of clouded moroseness and grasping avarice; while a sort of equivocal crossing of the eyes, though only occasional, seemed to evince to those who could deeply read the human face divine, the existence of two distinct and opposite sentiments in her mind, to either of which she could, with equal show of truth, give utterance, as occasion might render necessary. Over all this, however, and, as it were, upon the surface, her life of traffic with the world seemed to have rendered it needful for her to assume a character which too often enabled her to impose upon the really honest and innocent; though it never left, even upon the most unsuspecting, any very deep feeling of confidence in her integrity. Such, at least, were the impressions which Miss Sowersoft's appearance produced upon the mind of Fanny; though the latter made no other use of them than that of taking some little precautions in order to be informed truly in what manner she and Colin might agree, which otherwise she would not have deemed at all needful.

“You will come over to see us every Sunday?” she asked.

“Yes, if they will let me,” replied Colin.

“Let you!” But she suddenly checked herself. “And, if not, when they will not let you, you will be sure to write, Colin? Now promise me that. Or, if anything should be amiss,—if you should not like the place, for there is no telling till you have tried it; if it should so happen that they do not use you so well as they ought to do, send, if you cannot come, directly; and, if there is nobody else to help you that is better able,”—Fanny stood up, and clasped both his hands with deep energy between her own,—“I will stand by you as long as I live. I am not able to do much, but I can earn my living; and, if I work like a slave, you shall never want a farthing as long as I have one left for myself in the world! I have nursed you, Colin, when I was almost as little as yourself; and I feel the same to you as though your mother was mine too.”

While Colin, with tears in his eyes, promised implicit compliance with all that had been requested of him, he yet, with the candour and warm-hearted generosity peculiar to his character, declared that Fanny ought to despise him if ever he trusted to the labour of her hands for a single meal, No: he would save all his yearly wages, and bring them home for her and his mother; and in time he should be able to maintain them both by his own labour, without their having any need to struggle for themselves. As for the rest, if anybody ill-used him, he was strong enough to stand his own ground: or, if not, he knew of another way to save himself, which would do quite as well, or better.

“What other way? What do you mean?” asked Fanny very anxiously.

“Oh, nothing,” said Colin; “only, if people do not treat us properly, we are not obliged to stay with them.”

“But you must never think of running away,” she replied, “and going you do not know where. Come back home if they ill-treat you, and you will always be safe with us.”

Their morning meal being now prepared, the three sat down to it with an undefined feeling of sadness which no effort could shake off. Some little extra luxury was placed upon the table for Colin; and many times was he made to feel that—however unconsciously to themselves—both his mother and Fanny anticipated all his slightest wants with unusual quickness; and waited upon him, and pressed him to his last ill-relished meal, with a degree of assiduity which rendered the sense of his parting with them doubly painful.

The hour for going at length arrived. At ten o'clock the village-carrier called for his little box; and at twelve Colin himself was to set out. The last half-hour was spent by his mother in giving him that impressive counsel which under such circumstances a mother best knows how to give; while Fanny stood by, weeping as she listened to it, and frequently sobbing aloud when some more striking observation, some more pointed moral truth, or apposite quotation from the sacred volume, escaped the mother's lips. Twelve o'clock struck. At a quarter past our hero was crossing the fields on the foot-road to Whinmoor; and at about three in the afternoon he arrived at the place of his future abode.