“Ay, ay,” said Lauderdale, calmly, “that’s aye the way with you callants. If a man sees a difficulty in anything concerning you, off you fling, and will have no more to do with him. I’m no one to be dismissed in that fashion--no to say that it would be more becoming to consider the difficulty, like reasonable creatures, and make up our minds how it is to be met.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Colin, repentant; “only, to be sure, the imprudence, if there was any imprudence, was mine. But it is hard to be talking in this manner, as if all was over, while Meredith lives, poor fellow. Such invalids live for ever, sometimes. There he is, for a miracle, riding! When summer comes he may be all right.”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, “I make no doubt of that; but no in your way. He’ll be better off when summer comes.” Meredith turned a corner close upon them as he spoke. He was riding, it is true, but only on a mule, jogging along at a funeral pace, with Alice walking by his side. He smiled when he met them; but the smile was accompanied by a momentary flush, as of shame or pain.
“The last step but one,” he said. “I have given up walking for ever. I did not think I should ever have come to this; but my spirit is proud, and needs to be mortified. Campbell, come here. It is long since we have had any conversation. I thought God was dealing with your soul when I last talked to you. Tell me, if you were as far gone as I am--if you were reduced to _this_”--and the sick man laid his thin white hand upon the neck of the animal he was riding--“what consolation would you have to keep you from sinking? It may come sooner than you think.”
“It is not easy to imagine how one would conduct oneself under such circumstances,” said Colin; “let us talk of something else. If it were coming--and it may be, for anything I can tell--I think I should prefer not to give it too much importance. Look at that low blaze of sunshine, how it catches St. Peter’s. These sunsets are like dramas--but nobody plans the grouping beforehand,” said the young man, with an involuntary allusion which he was sorry for the next moment, but could not recall.
“That is an unkind speech,” said Meredith; “but I forgive you. If I could plan the grouping, as you say, I should like to collect all the world to see me die. Heathens, papists, Mahometans, Christians of every description--I would call them to see with what confidence a Christian could traverse the dark valley, knowing Him who can sustain, and who has preceded him there.”