As for Colin and his friend, they went upon their way steadily, with that rare sympathy in difference which is the closest bond of friendship. Lauderdale by this time had lost almost all the lingerings of youth which had hung long about him, perhaps by right of his union with the fresh and exuberant youth of his brother-in-arms. His gaunt person was gaunter than ever, though, by an impulse of the tenderest pride—not for himself but for his companion—his dress fitted him better, and was more carefully put on than it had even been during all his life; but his long hair, once so black and wild, was now grey, and hung in thin locks, and his beard, that relic of Italy, which Lauderdale preserved religiously, and had ceased to be ashamed of, was grey also, and added to the somewhat solemn aspect of his long thoughtful face. He was still an inch or two taller than Colin, whose great waves of brown hair, tossed up like clouds upon his forehead, and shining brown eyes, which even now had not quite lost the soft shade of surprise and admiration{384} which had given them such a charm in their earlier years, contrasted strangely with the worn looks of his friend. They were not like father and son; for Lauderdale preserved in his appearance an indefinable air of solitude and of a life apart, which made it impossible to think of him in any such relationship; but perhaps their union was more close and real than even that tie could have made it, since the unwedded childless man was at once young and old, and had kept in his heart a virgin freshness more visionary, and perhaps even more spotless, than that of Colin’s untarnished youth; for, to be sure, the young man not only was conscious of that visionary woman in the clouds, but had already solaced himself with more than one love, and still meant to marry a wife like other men, though that was not at present the foremost idea in his mind; whereas, whatever love Lauderdale might have had in that past from which he never drew the veil, it had never been replaced by another, nor involved any earthly hope.
As they crossed the borders, and found themselves among the Cumberland hills, Lauderdale began to make gradual advances to a subject which had been for a long time left in silence between them. Perhaps it required that refinement of ear natural to a born citizen of Glasgow to recognise that it was “English” which was being spoken round them as they advanced—but the philosopher supposed himself to have made that discovery. He recurred to it with a certain pathetic meaning as they went upon their way. They had set out on foot from Carlisle, each with his knapsack, to make their leisurely way to the Lakes; and, when they stopped to refresh themselves at the humble roadside inn which was their first resting-place, the plaintive cadence of his friend’s voice struck Colin with a certain amusement. “They’re a’ English here,” Lauderdale said, with a tone of sad recollection, as a man might have said in Norway or Russia, hearing for the first time the foreign tongue, and bethinking himself of all the dreary seas and long tracts of country that lay between him and home. It might have been pathetic under such circumstances, though the chances are that even then Colin, graceless and fearless, would have laughed; but at present, when the absence was only half a day’s march, and the difference of tongue, as we have said, only to be distinguished by an ear fine and native, the sigh was too absurd to be passed over lightly. “I never knew you have the mal du pays before,” Colin said with a burst of laughter:—and the patriot himself did not refuse to smile.{385}
“Speak English,” he said, with a quaint self-contradiction; “though I should say speak Scotch if I was consistent;—you needna make your jokes at me. Oh ay, it’s awfu’ easy laughing. It’s no that I’m thinking of; there’s nothing out of the way in the association of ideas this time, though they play bonnie pranks whiles. I’m thinking of the first time I was in England, and how awfu’ queer it sounded to hear the bits of callants on the road, and the poor bodies at the cottage doors.”
“The first time you were in England—that was when you came to nurse me,” said Colin; “I should have died that time but for my mother and you.”
“I’m not saying that,” said Lauderdale; “you’re one of the kind that’s awfu’ hard to kill—but it’s no that I’m thinking of. There are other things that come to my mind with the sound of the English tongue. Hold your peace, callant, and listen; is there nothing comes back to your ain mind when you hear the like of that?”
“I hear a woman talking very broad Cumberland,” said Colin, who notwithstanding began to feel an uncomfortable heat mounting upwards in his face; “you may call it English, if you have a mind. There is some imperceptible difference between that and the Dumfriesshire, I suppose; but I should not like to have to discriminate where the difference lies.”
As for Lauderdale, he sighed; but without intending it, as it appeared, for he made a great effort to cover his sigh with a yawn, for which latter indulgence he had evidently no occasion; and then he tried a faint little unnecessary laugh. “I’m an awfu’ man for associations,” he said; “I’m no to be held to account for the things that come into my head. You may say it’s Cumberland, and I’m no disputing; but for a’ that there’s something in the sound of the voice——”
“Look here,” said Colin impatiently; “listen to my tract. I want you to give me your opinion now it is finished; turn this way, with your face to the hills, and never mind the voice.”
“Oh, ay,” said Lauderdale, with another sigh; “there’s nae voice like his ain voice to this callant’s ear; it’s an awfu’ thing to be an author, and above a’ a reformer; for you may be sure it’s for the sake of the cause, and no because he’s written a’ that himsel’. Let’s hear this grand tract of yours; no that I’ve any particular faith, in that way of working,” he added impartially. It was not encouraging perhaps to the young author; but Colin was sufficiently used by this time to his friend’s predilections, and for his own part was very well pleased to escape from memories{386} more perplexing and difficult to manage. It was with this intention that he had taken out No. I. of the Tracts for the Times. If any of the writers of the original series of these renowned compositions could but have looked over the shoulder of the young Scotch minister, and beheld the different fashion of thoughts, the curious fundamental difference which lay underneath, and yet the apparent similarity of intention on the face of it! Rome and the Pope were about as far off as Mecca and the prophet from Colin’s ideas. He was not in the least urgent for any infallible standard, nor at all concerned to trace a direct line of descent for himself or his Church; and yet withal his notions were as high and absolute and arbitrary on some points as if he had been a member of the most potent of hierarchies. It would, however, be doing Colin injustice to reproduce here this revolutionary document: to tell the truth, circumstances occurred very soon after to retard the continuation of the series, and, so far as his historian is aware, the publication of this preliminary[4] address was only partial. For, to be sure, the young man had still abundance of time before him, and the first and most important thing, as Lauderdale suggested, was the preparation of an audience—an object which was on the whole better carried out by partial and private circulation than by coming prematurely before the public, and giving the adversary occasion to blaspheme, and perhaps frightening the Kirk herself out of her wits.
Having said so much, we may return to the more private and individual aspect of affairs. The two friends were seated, while all this was going on, out of doors, on a stone bench by the grey wall of the cottage inn, in which they had just refreshed themselves with a nondescript meal. The Cumberland hills—at that moment bleaching under the sunshine, showing all their scars and stains in the fulness of the light—stretched far away into the distance, hiding religiously in their depths the sacred woods and waters that were the end of the pilgrimage on which the two friends were bound. Lauderdale sat at leisure and listened, shading the sunshine from his face, and watching the shadows play on the woods and hills; and the same force of imagination which persuaded the unaccustomed traveller that he could detect a difference of tone in the rude talk he heard in the distance, and that that which was only the dialect of Cumberland was English,{387} persuaded him also that the sunshine in which he was sitting was warmer than the sunshine at home, and that he was really, as he himself would have described it, “going south.” He was vaguely following out these ideas, notwithstanding that he also listened to Colin, and gave him the fullest attention. Lauderdale had not travelled much in his life, nor enjoyed many holidays; and, consequently, the very sense of leisure and novelty recalled to him the one great recreation of his life—the spring he had spent in Italy, with all its vicissitudes, prefaced by the mournful days at Wodensbourne. All this came before Lauderdale’s mind more strongly a great deal than it did before that of Colin, because it was to the elder man the one sole and clearly marked escape out of the monotony of a long life—a thing that had occurred but once, and never could occur again. How the Cumberland hills, and the peasant voices in their rude dialect, and the rough stone bench outside the door of a grey lime-stone cottage, could recall to Lauderdale the olive slopes of Frascati, the tall houses shut up and guarded against the sunshine, and the far-off solemn waste of the Campagna, would have been something unintelligible to Colin. But in the meantime these recollections were coming to a climax in his companion’s mind. He gave a great start in the midst of Colin’s most eloquent paragraph, and jumped to his feet, crying, “Do you hear that?” with a thrill of excitement utterly inexplicable to the astonished young man: and then Lauderdale grew suddenly ashamed of himself, and took his seat again, abashed, and felt that it was needful to explain.
“Do I hear what?” said Colin; and, as this interruption occurred just at the moment when he supposed he had roused his hearer to a certain pitch of excitement and anxiety, by his account of the religious deficiencies of Scotland, which he was on the point of relieving by an able exposition of the possibilities of reform, it may be forgiven to him if he spoke with a little asperity. Such a disappointment is a trying experience to the best of men. “What is it, for Heaven’s sake?” said the young man, forgetting he was a minister; and, to tell the truth, Lauderdale was so much ashamed of himself that he felt almost unable to explain.
“She’s singing something, that’s a’,” said the confused philosopher. “I’m an awfu’ haveril, Colin. There’s some things I canna get out of my head. Never you mind; a’ that’s admirable,” said the culprit, with a certain deprecatory eagerness. “I’m awfu’ anxi............