“It was me he took for the tutor, I suppose?” said the strange Mentor who had thus taken possession of Colin; and the tall student laughed with a kind of quaint gratification. “And so I might have been if I had been bred up at Oxford or Cambridge,” he added, after a moment; “that is to say, if it had been my lot to be bred up anywhere; but they’ve a grand system in these English universities. That was not the Duke,” he said interrogatively, looking at Colin, whose blood of clansman boiled at the idea.
“That the Duke!” exclaimed the boy with great disdain; “no more than I am. It’s one of the English that are aye coming and making their jokes about the rain; as if anybody wanted them to come,” said Colin, with an outbreak of scorn; and then the boy remembered that Archie Candlish had just bought a house in expectation of such visitors, and stopped abruptly in full career. “I suppose the English are awfu’ fond of grouse, or they wouldna’ come so far for two or three birds,” he continued, in a tone of milder sarcasm. But his companion was not to be so easily diverted from his questions.
“Grouse is a grand institution, and helps in the good government of this country,” said Lauderdale, “and, through this country, of the world—which is a fine thought for a bit winged creature, if it had the sense to ken. Yon’s another world,” he said, after a little pause, “no Paradise to be sure, but something as far removed from this as Heaven itself; farther, you might say, for there’s many a poor man down below here that’s hovering on the edge of heaven. And how came you to have such grand friends?” asked the self-constituted guardian, stooping from his lofty height to look straight into Colin’s eyes. After a time, he extracted the baldest narrative that ever was uttered by a hero ashamed of his prowess from the half-indignant boy, and managed to guess as clearly as the wonderful little lady in the carriage the nature of Colin’s sentiments towards the young antagonist and rival whom he had saved.
“I wouldna have let a dog drown,” said the aggrieved Colin; “there was nothing to make a work about. But you would have laughed to see that fellow, with his boots like a lassie’s and feared to wet his feet. He could swim, though,” added the boy, candidly; “and I would like to beat him,” he said, after a moment; “I’d like to run races with him for something, and win the prize over his head.”
This was all Colin permitted himself to say; but the vehement sentiment thus recalled to his mind made him, for the moment, less attentive to Lauderdale, who, for his part, was considerably moved by his young companion’s excitement. “I’m not going to see your fine friends,” he said, as he parted from the boy at the “stairfoot” which led to Colin’s lodging; “but there’s many a true word spoken in jest, and, my boy, you shall not want a tutor, though there’s no such thing in our Scotch colleges.”
When he had said so much, hastily, as a man does who is conscious of having shown a little emotion in his words, Colin’s new friend went away, disappearing through the misty night, gaunt and lean as another Quixote. “I should like to have something to do with the making of a new life,” he said to himself, muttering high up in the air over the ordinary passengers’ heads, as he mused on upon his way. And Colin and his story had struck the rock in the heart of the lonely man, and drawn forth fresh streams in that wilderness. He was more moved in his imaginative, reflective soul, than he could have told any one, with, half-consciously to himself, a sense of contrast, which was natural enough, considering all things, and which coloured all his thoughts, more or less, for that night.
As for Colin—naturally, too—he thought no more of Lauderdale, nor of his parting words, and found himself in no need of any tutor or guide, but fell asleep in the midst of his Greek, as was to be expected, and dreamt of that creature with the curls nodding at him out of gorgeous Lord Mayor’s coaches, in endless procession. And it was with this wonderful little vision dancing about his fancy that the Scotch boy ended his first day at the University, knowing no more what was to come of it all than the saucy sparrow which woke him next morning by loud chirping in the Glasgow dialect at his quaint little attic window. The sparrow had his crumbs, and Colin had another exciting day before him, and went out quite calmly to lay his innocent hands upon the edge-tools which were to carve out his life.
CHAPTER VII.
Wonders come natural at fifteen; the farmer’s son of Ramore, though a little dazzled at the moment, was by no means thrown off his balance by the flattering attentions of Lady Frankland, who said everything that was agreeable and forgot that she had said it, and went over the same ground again half a dozen times, somewhat to the contempt of Colin, who knew nothing about fine ladies, but had all a boy’s disdain for a silly woman. Thanks to his faculty of silence, and his intense pride, Colin conducted himself with great external propriety when he dined with his new friends. Nobody knew the fright he was in, nor the strain of determination not to commit himself, which was worthy of something more important than a dinner. But after all, though it shed a reflected glory over his path for a short time, Sir Thomas Frankland’s dinner and all its bewildering accessories was but an affair of a day, and the only real result it left behind was a conviction in the mind of Lauderdale that his young protégé was born to better fortune. From that day the tall student hovered, benignly reflective, like a tall genie over Colin’s boyish career. He was the boy’s tutor so far as that was possible where the teacher was himself but one step in advance of the pupil; and as to matters speculative and philosophical, Lauderdale’s monologue, delivered high up in the air over his head, became the accompaniment and perpetual stimulation of all Colin’s thoughts. The training was strange, but by no means unnatural, nor out of harmony with the habits of the boy’s previous life, for much homely philosophy was current at Ramore, and Colin had been used to receive all kinds of comments upon human affairs with his daily bread. Naturally enough, however, the sentiments of thirty and those of fifteen were not always harmonious, and the impartial and tolerant thoughtfulness of his tall friend much exasperated Colin in the absolutism of his youth.
“I’m a man of the age,” Lauderdale would say as they traversed the crowded streets together; “by which I am claiming no superiority over you, callant, but far the contrary, if you were but wise enough to ken. I’ve fallen into the groove like the rest of mankind, and think in limits as belongs to my century—which is but a poor half-and-half kind of century, to say the best of it—but you are of all the ages, and know nothing about limits or possibilities. Don’t interrupt me,” said the placid giant; “you are far too talkative for a laddie, as I have said before. I tell you I’m a man of the age: I’ve no very particular faith in anything. In a kind of a way, everything’s true; but you needna tell me that a man that believes like that will never make much mark in this world or any other world I ever heard tell of. I know that, a great deal better than you do. The best thing you can do is to contradict me; it’s good for you, and it does me no harm.”