Mrs. Oliphant

In the meantime at least a fortnight must pass before they could expect an answer to Lauderdale’s letter. During that time they returned to all their old habits, with the strange and melancholy difference, that Arthur, once the centre of all, was no longer there. Every day of this time increased the development of Colin’s new thoughts, until the unknown father of Alice had grown, in his eyes, into a cruel and profligate tyrant, ready to drag his daughter home and plunge her into depraved society without any regard for either her happiness or her honour. Colin had, indeed, in his own mind, in strictest privacy and seclusion of thought, indited an imaginary letter, eloquent with youthful indignation, to inform this unworthy parent that his deserted daughter had found a better protector; but he was very silent about these cogitations of his, and did not share them even with Lauderdale. And there were moments when Colin felt the seriousness of the position, and thought it very hard that such a necessity should meet him in the face at the beginning of his career. Sometimes in the sudden darkening, out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the impossible woman, the ideal creature—she who could have divined the thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. That ineffable mate and companion was never to be his, the young man thought. True, he had never met her, nor come upon any trace of her footsteps, for Matty Frankland at her best never could have been she. But yet, as long as he was unbound by other tie or affection, this vision was the “not impossible She” to Colin as to all men; and this he had to give up—for Alice, dutiful and sweet Alice, forsaken by all friends and yet so steadfast in her gentle self-possession, whom it was not in the heart of man to be otherwise than tender of; she who had need of him, and whom his very nature bound him to protect and cherish—was not that woman. At other moments he thought of his own life, for which still so much training was necessary, and which he should have entered in the full freedom of his youth; and was profoundly aware of the incumbered and helpless trim in which he must go into the battle, obliged to take thought not of his work only, and the best means of doing it, but of those cares of living which lie so lightly on a young man alone.

There may be some of Colin’s friends who will think the less of him for this struggle in his mind; and there may be many who will think with justice that, unless he could have offered love to Alice, he had no right to offer her himself and his life—an opinion in which his historian fully agrees. But then this gift though less than the best, was a long way superior to anything else which, at the present moment, was likely to be offered to the friendless girl. If he could have laid at her feet the full heart, which is the only true offering under such circumstances, the chances are that Alice, in her simplicity and gentleness, would have been sadly puzzled what to do with that passionate and ungovernable thing. What he really could offer her—affection, tenderness, protection—was clearly comprehensible to her. She had no other idea of love than was included in those attributes and phases of it. These considerations justified Colin in the step which he contemplated—or rather in the step which he did not contemplate, but felt to be necessary and incumbent upon him. It sometimes occurred to him how—if he had been prudent and taken Lauderdale’s advice, and eschewed at the beginning that close connexion with Meredith and his sister, which he had entered into with his eyes open, and with a consciousness even that it might affect his life—this embarrassing situation might never have come into being; and then he smiled to himself, with youthful superiority, contemplating what seemed so plainly the meaning of Providence, and asking himself how he, by a momentary exercise of his own will, could have overthrown that distinct celestial intention? On the whole, it was comforting to think that everything had been arranged beforehand by agencies so very clear and traceable; and with this conclusion of the argument he left off, as near contented as possible, and not indisposed to enjoy the advantages which were palpably before him; for, though they were not the eyes he had dreamed of, there was a sweetness very well worthy of close study in Alice Meredith’s eyes.

The days passed very quietly in this time of suspense. The society of the two strangers, who were more to her in her sorrow than all her kindred, supported the lonely girl more than she was aware of—more than any one could have believed. They were absent during the greater part of the day, and left her unmolested to the tears that would come, notwithstanding all her patience; and they returned to her in the evening with attention and cares to which she had never been accustomed, devoting two original and powerful minds, of an order at once higher and more homely than any which she had ever encountered, to her amusement and consolation. Alice had never known before what it was to have ordinary life and daily occurrences brightened by the thick-coming fancies, the tender play of word and thought, which now surrounded her. She had heard clever talk afar off, “in society,” and been awe-stricken by the sound of it; and she had heard Arthur and his friends uttering much fine-sounding language upon subjects not generally in her way; but she was utterly unused to that action of uncommon minds upon common things which gives so much charm to the ordinary intercourse of life. All they could think of to lighten the atmosphere of the house in which she sat in her deep mourning, absorbed for hours together in those thoughts of the dead to which her needlework afforded little relief, they did with devotion, suspending their own talk and occupations to occupy themselves with her. Colin read In Memoriam to her till her heart melted and relieved itself in sweet abundant tears; and Lauderdale talked and told her many a homely history of that common course of humanity, full of sorrows sorer than her own, which fills young minds with awe. Between them they roused Alice to a higher platform, a different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring than joy.

While this was going on, unconsciously to any one concerned, Sora Antonia, in her white kerchief and apron, sometimes knitting, sometimes with her distaff like a buxom Fate, sat and twisted her thread and turned her spindle a little behind yet not out of reach, keeping a wary eye upon her charge. She too interposed, sometimes with her own comments upon life and things in general, and took part in the conversation; and, whether it was that Sora Antonia’s mind was really of a superior order, or that the stately Roman speech threw a refining colour upon her narratives, it is certain that the interpellations of the Italian peasant fell without any sensible derogation into the strain of lofty yet familiar talk which was meant to wean Alice from her special grief. Sora Antonia told them of the other Forestieri who had lived like themselves in the Savelli palace; who had come for health and yet had died, leaving the saddest mourners—helpless widows and little children, heart-broken fathers and mothers, perhaps the least consolable of all. Life was such, she said solemnly, bowing her stately head. She herself, of a hardy race, and strong, as the Signori saw, had not she buried her children, for whom she would have gladly died? But the good God had not permitted her to die. Alice cried silently as she heard all this; she kissed Sora Antonia, who, for her part, had outlived her tears, and with a natural impulse turned to Colin, who was young, and in whose heart, as in her own, there must live a natural protest against this awful necessity of separation and misery; and thus it came to be Colin’s turn to interpose, and he came on the field once more with In memoriam, and with other poems which were sweet to hear, and soothed her even when she only partially entered into their meaning. A woman has an advantage under such circumstances. By means of her sympathy and gratitude, and the still deeper feeling which grew unconsciously in her heart towards him who read, she came to believe that she too understood and appreciated what was to him so clear and so touching. A kind of spiritual magnetism worked upon Alice, and, to all visible appearance, expanded and enlarged her mind. It was not that her intellect itself grew, or that she understood all the beautiful imaginations, all the tender philosophies thus unfolded to her; but she was united in a singular union of affectionate companionship with those who did understand, and even to herself she appeared able to see, if not with her own eyes, at least with theirs, the new beauties and solemnities of which she had not dreamt before.

This strange process went on day by day without any one being aware of it; and even Lauderdale had almost forgotten that their guardianship of Alice was only for the moment, and that the state of affairs altogether was provisionary and could not possibly continue, when an answer reached him to his letter. He was alone when he received it, and all that evening said nothing on the subject until Alice had retired with her watchful attendant; then, without a word of comment, he put it into Colin’s hand. It was written in a stilted hand, like that of one unaccustomed to writing, and was not quite irreproachable even in its spelling. This was what Lauderdale’s correspondent said:—

“Sir,—Your letter has had such a bad effect upon the health of my dear husband, that I beg you won’t trouble him with any more such communications. If it’s meant to get money, that’s vain—for neither him nor me knows anything about the friends Arthur may have picked up. If he had stayed at home he would have received every attention. As for his ungrateful sister, I won’t have anything to say to her. Mr. Meredith is very ill, and, for anything I know, may never rise from a bed of sickness, where he has been thrown by hearing this news so sudden; but I take upon me to let her know as he will have nothing to say to one that could behave so badly as she has done. I am always for making friends, but she knows she cannot expect much kindness from me after all that has happened. She has money enough to live on, and she can do as she pleases. Considering what her ingratitude has brought her dear father to, and that I may be left alone to manage everything before many days are past, you will please to consider that here is an end of it, and not write any more begging letters to me.

“Julia Meredith.”

This communication Colin read with a beating heart. It was so different from what he expected, and left him so free to carry out the dawning resolution which he had imagined himself executing in the face of tyrannical resistance, that he felt at first like a man who has been straining hard at a rope and is suddenly thrown down by the instantaneous stoppage of the pressure on the other side. When he had picked himself up, the facts of the case rushed on him distinct and unmistakeable. The time had now come when the lost and friendless maiden stood in the path of the true knight. Was he to leave her there to fight her way in the hard world by herself, without defence or protection, because, sweet and fair and pure as she was, she was not the lady of his dreams? He made up his mind at once with a thrill of generous warmth; but at the same time felt himself saying for ever and ever farewell to that ideal lady who henceforward, in earth or heaven, could never be his. All this passed through his mind while he was looking at the letter which already his rapid eye had read and his mind comprehended. “So there is an end of your hopes,” said Colin. “Now we are the only friends she has in the world—as I have always thought.”

“Softly,” said Lauderdale. “Callants like you aye run away with the half of an idea. This is an ignorant woman’s letter, that is glad to get rid of her. The father will mend, and then he’ll take her out of our hands.”

“He shall do nothing of the kind,” said Colin, hotly. “You speak as if she was a piece of furniture; I look upon her as a sacred charge. We are responsible to Meredith for his sister’s comfort and—happiness,” said the young man, who during this conversation preferred not to meet his companion’s eye.

“Ay!” said Lauderdale drily, “that’s an awfu’ charge for the like of you and me. It’s more that I ever calculated on, Colin. To see her safe home, and in the hands of her friends——”

“Lauderdale, do not be so heartless; cannot you see that she has no friends?” cried Colin; “not a protector in the world except——”

“Callant, dinna deceive yourself,” said Lauderdale; “it’s no a matter for hasty judgment; we have nae right to pass sentence on a man’s character. He’s her father, and it’s her duty to obey him. I’m no heeding about that silly woman’s letter. Mr. Meredith will mend. I’m here to take care of you,” said Colin’s guardian. “Colin, hold your peace. You’re no to do for a moment’s excitement, for pity and ruth and your own tender heart, what you may regret all your life. Sit down and keep still. You are only a callant, too young to take burdens on yourself; there is but one way that the like of you can protect the like of her—and that is no to be thought of, as you consented with your own mouth.”

“I am aware of that,” said Colin, who had risen up in his excitement. “There is but one way. Matters have changed since we spoke of it first.”

“I would like to know how far they have changed,” said Lauderdale. “Colin, take heed to what I say; if it’s love I’ll no speak a word; I may disapprove a’ the circumstances, and find fault with every step ye take; but if it’s love——”

“Hush!” said Colin, standing upright, and meeting his friend’s eye; “if it should happen to be my future wife we are speaking of, my feelings towards her are not to be discussed with any man in the world.”

They looked at each other thus for a moment, the one anxious and scrutinizing, the other facing him with blank brightness, and a smile which afforded no information. Perhaps Lauderdale understood all that was implied in that blank; at all events, his own delicate sense of honour could not refuse to admit Colin’s plea. He turned away, shaking his head, and groaning privately under his breath; while Colin, struck with compunction, having shut himself up for an instant, unfolded again, that crisis being over, with all the happy grace of apology natural to his disposition. “You are not ‘any man in the world,’” he said with a short laugh, which implied emotion. “Forgive me, Lauderdale; and now you know very well what I am going to do.”

“Oh ay, I ken what you are going to do; I kent three months ago, for that matter,” said the philosopher. “A man acts no from circumstances, as is generally supposed, but from his ain nature.” When he had given forth this oracular utterance, Lauderdale went straight off to his room without exchanging another word with Colin. He was satisfied to a certain extent with such a mate for his friend, and belonged to too lowly a level of society to give profound importance to the inexpediency of early marriages—and he was fond of Alice, and admired her sweet looks and sweet ways, and respected her self-command and patience; nevertheless, he too sighed, and recognised the departure of the ideal woman, who to him as little as to Colin resembled Alice;—and thus it was understood between them how it was to be.

All this, it may be imagined, was little compatible with that reverential regard for womankind in general which both the friends entertained, and evidenced a security in respect to Alice’s inclinations which was not altogether complimentary to her. And yet it was highly complimentary in a sense; for their security arose from their appreciation of the spotless unawakened heart with which they had to do. If Colin entertained little doubt of being accepted when he made his proposal, it was not because he had an overweening idea of himself, or imagined Alice “in love” with him according to the vulgar expression. A certain chivalrous, primitive sense of righteous and natural necessity was in his confidence. The forlorn maiden, knowing the knight to be honest and true, would accept his protection loyally and simply, without bewildering herself with dreams of choice where no choice was; and having accepted would love and cleave as was her nature. To be sure there were types of woman less acquiescent; and we have already said that Alice did not bear the features of that ideal of which Colin had dreamed; but such was the explanation of his confidence. Alice showed little distress when she saw her stepmother’s letter except on account of her father’s illness; though even that seemed rather consolatory to her than otherwise, as a proof of his love for Arthur. As for Mrs. Meredith’s refusal to interfere on her behalf, she was clearly relieved by the intimation; and things went on as before for another week or two, until Sora Antonia, who had now other tenants arriving and many occupations in hand, began to murmur a little over the watch which she would not relinquish. “Is it thus young ladies are left in England?” she asked, with a little indignation, “without any one to take care of them except the Signori, who, though amiable and excellent, are only men? or when may the lady be expected from England who is to take charge of the Signorina?” It was after this question, had been put to him with some force one evening, that Colin proposed to Alice, who was beginning to lift her head again like a flower after a storm, and to show symptoms of awaking from the first heaviness of grief, to go out with him and visit those ilex avenues, which had now so many associations for the strangers. She went with a faint sense of pleasure in her heart through the slanting sunshine, looking wistfully through her black veil at the many cheerful groups on the way, and clinging to Colin’s arm when a kind neighbour spoke to her in pity and condolence. She put up her veil when they came to the favourite avenue, where Lauderdale and Colin walked so often. Nothing could be more silent, more cool and secluded than this verdant cloister, where, with the sunshine still blazing everywhere around, the shade and quiet were profound and unbroken. They walked once or twice up and down, remarking now and then upon the curious network of branches, which, out of reach of the sun, were all bare and stripped of their foliage—and upon the blue blaze of daylight at either opening, where the low arch of dark verdure framed in a span of brilliant Italian sky. Then they both became silent, and grew conscious of it; and it was at that moment, just as Alice for the first time began to remember the privileges and penalties of her womanhood, that Colin spoke,—

“I brought you here to speak to you,” he said. “I have a great deal to say. That letter that Lauderdale showed you did not grieve you, did it? You must tell me frankly. Arthur made me one of your guardians, and, whatever you may decide upon, that is a sacred bond.”

“Yes, oh yes,” said Alice, with tears, “I know how kind you both are. No, it did not grieve me, except about papa. I was rather glad, if I may say so, that she did not send for me home. It is not—a—home—like what it used to be,” said Alice; and then, perhaps because something in Colin’s looks had advertised her of what was coming; perhaps because of the awakening sense of her position sprang up in a moment, after long torpor—a sudden change came upon her face. “I have given you a great deal of trouble,” she said; “I am like somebody who has had a terrible fall—as soon as I come to myself I will go away. It is very wrong of me to detain you here.”

“You are not detaining us,” said Colin, who, notwithstanding, was a little startled and alarmed; “and you must not talk of going away. Where would you go? Are not we your friends—the friends you know best in Italy? You must not think of going away.”

But even these very words thus repeated acted like an awakening spell upon Alice. “I cannot tell what I have been thinking of,” she said. “I suppose it is staying indoors and forgetting everything. I do not seem to know even how long it is. Oh yes, you are my kindest friends. Nobody ever was so good to me; but, then, you are only—gentlemen!” said Alice, suddenly withdrawing her hand from Colin’s arm, and blushing over all her pallid face. “Ah! I see now how stupid I have been to put off so long. And I am sure I must have detained you here.”

“No,” said Colin, “do not say so; but I have something more to say to you. You are too young and too delicate to face the world alone, and your people at home are not going to claim you. I am a poor man now, and I never can be rich, but I would protect you and support you if you would have me. Will you trust me to take care of you, Alice, not for this moment, but always? I think it would be the best thing for us both.”

“Mr. Campbell, I don’t understand you,” said Alice, trembling and casting a glance up at him of wistful surprise and uncertainty. There was an eager, timid inquiry in her eyes beside the bewilderment. She seemed to say, “What is it you mean? Is that what you mean?” and Colin answered by taking her hand again and drawing it through his arm.

“Whether you will have me or not,” he said, “there is always the bond between us which Arthur has made sacred, and you must lean on me all the same. I think you will see what I mean if you consider it. There is only one way that I can be your true protector and guardian, and that is if you will consent to marry me, Alice. Will you? You know I have nothing to offer you; but I can work for you, and take care of you, and with me you would not be alone.”

It was a strange way of putting it, certainly—very different from what Colin had intended to say, strangely different from the love-tale that had glided through his imagination by times since he became a man; but he was very earnest and sincere in what he said, and the innocent girl beside him was no critic in such matters. She trembled more and more, but she leaned upon him and heard him out with anxious attention. When he had ended, there was a pause, during which Colin, who had not hitherto been doubtful, began himself to feel anxious; and then Alice once more gave a wistful, inquiring look at his face.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she said; “it is so hard to know what to answer. If you would tell me one thing quite truly and frankly—Would it not do you a great deal of harm if this was to happen as you say?——”

“No,” said Colin. When he said the word he could not help remembering, in spite of himself, the change it would make in his young prospects, but the result was only that he repeated his negative with more warmth. “It can do me only good,” said Colin, yielding to the natural temptations of the moment, “and I think I might do something for your happiness too. It is for you to decide—do not decide against me, Alice,” said the young man; “I cannot part with you now.”

“Ah!—” said Alice with a long breath. “If it only would not do you any harm,” she added a moment after, once more with that inquiring look. The inquiry was one which could be answered but in one way, and Colin was not a man to remain unmoved by the wistful, sweet eyes thus raised to him, and by the tender dependence of the clinging arm. He set her doubts at rest almost as eloquently, and quite as warmly, as if she had indeed been that woman who had disappeared among the clouds for ever; and led her home to Sora Antonia with a fond care, which was very sweet to the forlorn little maiden, and not irksome by any means to the magnanimous knight. Thus the decisive step was taken in obedience to the necessities of the position, and the arrangements (as Colin had decided upon them) of Providence. When he met Lauderdale and informed him of the new event, the young man looked flushed and happy, as was natural in the circumstances, and disposed of all the objections of prudence with great facility and satisfaction to himself. It was a moonlight night, and Colin and his friend went out to the loggia on the roof of the house, and plunged into a sea of discussion, through which the young lover steered triumphantly the frailest bark of argument that ever held water. But, when the talk was over, and Colin, before he followed Lauderdale downstairs, turned round to take a parting look at the Campagna, which lay under them like a great map in the moonlight, the old apparition looked out once more from the clouds, pale and distant, and again seemed to wave to him a shadowy farewell. “Farewell! farewell! not in heaven nor in earth shall you ever find me,” sighed the woman of Colin’s imagination, dispersing into thin white mists and specks of clouds; and the young man went to rest with a vague sense of loss in his heart. The sleep of Alice was sweeter than that of Colin on this first night of their betrothal; but at that one period of existence, it often happens that the woman, for once in her life, has the advantage. And thus it was that the event, foreseen by Lauderdale on board the steamer at the beginning of their acquaintance, actually came to pass.