Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

GOOD-FRIDAY EVENING, April 5, 1844.

No entry in my journal since the twenty-eighth of March. Yet these seven silent days have a richer history than any that have arrived, with their exactions or their gifts, since those liberal ones of two springs ago came to endow me with your friendship.

Easy to tread and pleasant to look back upon is the level plain of our life, uniform, yet diversified, familiar, yet always new; but, from time to time, we find ourselves on little sunny heights from which the way we have traversed shows yet fairer than we knew it, and that which we are to take invites with more cheerful promise.

I did not know last Friday morning that anything was wanting to me. And had I not enough? My farm-duties, which restrict my study-time just enough to leave it always the zest of privilege; my books, possessed or on the way; my mother's dear affection; your faithful letters, true to the hour; Selden's, that come at last;--these, and then the casual claims, the little countless pleasures infinitely varied, special portion of each human day! always something to do, something to enjoy, something to expect. And yet I would not now go back and be where I was last Friday morning. Beautiful miracle! Our cup is always full, yet its capacity is never reached!

Since the day I stood at my gate, listening for the fading sounds of your horse's feet, many guests have crossed my threshold and recrossed it,--all received with good-will, dismissed with good wishes. Last Friday brought one whom I took to my heart and hold there. The first clasp of his firm hand, the first look of his sweet, frank eyes, bound me to him forever. Keith, I have more to love than I had a week ago, and the world is more beautiful for me, life better worth living.

We had had gray weather for a week before he came; the blue sky appeared with him, and smiled on us every day while he was here. I cannot now separate the thought of him from that of sunshine, nor can I tell how much of the glow and freshness of those days was of the atmosphere, how much from his happy nature.

I had just come in from work, and was sitting near the window, watching the slowly clearing sky, when I heard a step coming down the road. You know I am used to listen to approaching footsteps, and to judge beforehand what manner of man is about to present himself at my door. This was a step that struck very cheerfully on the ear. Firm, regular, it had no haste in it, yet a certain eagerness. My mother heard it, too. "The feet of him that bringeth good tidings," she said, smiling. The sun broke out full and clear as she spoke. "Can it be Dr. Borrow?--it must be," I asked and answered myself; and my heart warmed to him as it had not when I was reading his praises in Selden's letter. I heard the gate open and close again. I went to the door, and saw, coming along the path I guided you on that first dark night, a figure that agreed perfectly with the step, but not at all with what I had imagined Dr. Borrow. It was that of a man hardly more than twenty, who carried about with him, it seemed, a world of youthful happiness, but assuredly no great weight of learning. Erect, vigorous, animated, his whole person spoke harmonious strength and freedom of soul and body. His head was uncovered,--or, rather, it was protected only by its masses of fair brown hair, whose curls the light wind that had sprung up to meet him lifted tenderly, as if to show them sparkling in the sunshine. This was no chance visitor; he walked as if he knew where he was going, and felt himself an expected and a welcome guest. He had come from far; his well-fitting travelling-suit of dark gray told of a very distant skill and fashion, and was a little the worse for the long road. He had a knapsack on his shoulders. From a strap which crossed his breast hung a green tin case, such as botanists carry on their tours. This, again, connected him with Dr. Borrow; but the wild-flowers in his hand had been gathered for their beauty, not their rarity, and the happy grace of their arrangement denoted rather the artist than the savant.

He saw me as soon as I came to the door; for he quickened his step, and, from where I stood, I could see his face brighten. You do not know the face, and it is not like any other; how can you understand the impression it made on me?

Our hands were soon joined in a cordial clasp. He answered my warm welcome with a look full of youthful delight, behind which lay an earnest, manly satisfaction.

The name which was in my mind came, though hesitatingly, to my lips: "Dr. Borrow----" I began. A flash of merriment passed over my guest's features; but they were instantly composed, as if he felt the mirthful thought a disrespect to the absent.

"I am Harry Dudley. Dr. Borrow is coming. I walked on before to let you know."

He laid his bouquet of wild-flowers in the shadow of the doorsteps, threw off his knapsack, flung down on it the felt hat he had carried crumpled up under his arm, and, turning, showed himself ready to walk off with me to meet the Doctor. We had reached the gate, when he stopped suddenly and looked towards the house.

"But do you not wish----?"

"No,"--I understood him at once,--"my mother is prepared; we have been for some time expecting Dr. Borrow--and you," I ought in politeness to have added, but in truth I could not. I looked at him a little anxiously, fearing he might have remarked the omission, but his eyes met mine, glad and frank.

Dr. Borrow had engrossed us. His visit, from the time it was first promised, had been the one theme here within doors and without. Morning and evening I had consulted with my mother over his entertainment; Tabitha had, more than once, in his behalf, displaced and reinstated every object in the house; Hans and his boys had stimulated each other to unusual efforts, that the farm might find favor in such enlightened eyes. Harry Dudley! certainly I ought to have been expecting him. Certainly Selden's letter had told me he was coming. But the mention of him had been so slight, or, I will now rather say, so simple, that I had almost overlooked it. A line held it, after three full pages given to Dr. Borrow. "Harry Dudley goes with him,"--that was all. How little importance the name had for me which was to have so much!

But, if no pains had been taken to prepossess me in Harry's favor, full justice, I am sure, had been done me with him. He seemed to regard me not as an acquaintance newly found, but as an old friend rejoined: we were going out to meet and welcome the stranger whose comforts we were to care for together.

"I suppose you will give Dr. Borrow your room, and you will take the little one down-stairs, that you had when Selden was here? I shall sleep in the barn on the hay."

I was, to be sure, just considering whether I should have one of our little impromptu bedsteads set up for Harry, in a corner of the room--yours--which had been assigned to the Doctor, or whether I should share my little nook down-stairs with him. In the end, he had it all his own way.

It was not long before we came upon the Doctor. I could not draw his full portrait at first sight, as I did Harry's, for I had only a profile view of his stooping figure, until I was quite close to him. He, too, carried a knapsack;--a large russet one; Harry's was black;--and strapped to it was a long umbrella, which protruded on either side. He was grubbing in a meadow, and was either really so intent that he did not see us, or thought it better not to let us know that he did until he had finished his work. We stood near him some minutes before he straightened himself up, booty in hand. He scrutinized his prize for a moment, and then, apparently satisfied, came forward and saluted mo in a very friendly tone. His dark-blue spectacles prevented me from seeing whether the eyes seconded the voice, and his other features are too heavy to be very expressive. When I had made known my satisfaction at his arrival, and he had acquiesced,--when I had inquired after Selden, and he had answered that he had not seen our common friend for six weeks, we stood opposite each other, I looking for a subject which could not be disposed of so promptly, and he, apparently, waiting for me to bring it forward. But Harry now spoke eagerly:--

"Have you found it?"--holding out his hand at the same time for the poor little specimen which the Doctor held between his thumb and finger.

"Yes."

"The very one you have been looking for?"

"The very thing."

"Shall I put it into the box?"

Harry received the little object respectfully, and deposited it in the tin case with care. He then relieved Dr. Borrow's shoulders of the knapsack and took it on his own, having first withdrawn the umbrella and placed it in the hands of the owner, who watched its extrication with interest, and received it in a way which showed it to be an object of attachment. The Doctor gathered up some inferior spoil which lay in a circle round the place where he had been at work. Harry found room for all in the box. He had entered so fully into his companion's success, that I thought he might after all be a botanist himself; but he told me, as we walked towards the house, that he knew nothing of plants except what he had learned in journeying with Dr. Borrow.

"But I know what it is to want to complete your collection," he added, laughing. "We have been all the morning looking for this particular kind of grass. Dr. Borrow thought it must grow somewhere in this neighborhood, and here it is at last. The Doctor has a great collection of grasses."

"The largest, I think I may say, on this continent,--one of the largest, perhaps, that exists," said the Doctor, with the candor of a man who feels called upon to render himself justice, since there is no one else qualified to do it. And then he entered upon grasses; setting forth the great part filled by this powerful family, in the history of our earth, and vindicating triumphantly his regard for its humblest member.

When we came within sight of the house, Harry walked rapidly on. By the time the Doctor and I rejoined him at the door, he had disencumbered himself of the knapsack, had taken his flowers from their hiding-place, and stood ready to follow us in.

I introduced Dr. Borrow to my mother in form, and was about to do the same by Harry, who had stood back modestly until his friend had been presented; but he was now already taking her extended hand, bowing over it with that air of filial deference which we hear that high-bred Frenchmen have in their manner to elder women. I wondered that I had before thought him so young; his finished courtesy was that of a man versed in society. But the next moment he was offering her his wild-flowers with the smile with which an infant brings its little fistful of dandelions to its mother, delighting in the pleasure it has been preparing for her. His name had made more impression on my mother than on me. She called him by it at once. This redeemed all my omissions, if, indeed, he had remarked them, and I believe he had not.