It was accordingly but a very short time after these occurrences when
Cosmo, with his wardrobe carefully over-looked, his “new blacks”
supplemented by a coarser every-day suit, which took the place of the
jacket which the lad had outgrown, and a splendid stock of linen,
home-made, snow-white and bleached on the gowans--took his way to
Edinburgh in all the budding glory of a student. In those days few
people had begun to speculate whether the Scotch Universities were or
were not as good as the English ones, or what might be the
characteristic differences of the two. The academic glories of Edinburgh
still existed in the fresh glories of tradition, if they had begun to
decline in reality--and chairs were still held in the northern college
by men at whose feet statesmen had learned philosophy.
The manner in which Cosmo Livingstone went to college was not one,
however, in which anybody goes to Maudlin or Trinity. The lad went to
take up his humble lodging at Mrs. Purdie’s in the High Street, and from
thence dropped shyly to the college, paid his fees and matriculated, and
there was an end of it. There were no rooms to look after, no tutors to
see, no “men” to be made acquainted with. He had a letter in his pocket
to one of the professors, and one to the minister of one of the lesser
city churches. His abode was to be the same little room with the
“concealed bed” and window overlooking the town, in which his mother had
rested as she passed through Edinburgh, and the honest Kirkbride woman,
who was his landlady, had been already engaged at a moderate weekly rate
to procure all that he wanted for him.
After which fashion--feeling very shy and lonely, somewhat embarrassed
by the new coat which his mother called a surtoo and regarded with
respect, dismayed by the necessity of entering shops and making
purchases for himself, and standing a little in awe of the other
students and of the breakfast to which the professor had invited
him--Cosmo began the battle of his life.
He was now nearly seventeen, young enough to be left by himself in that
little lantern and watch-house hanging high over the picturesque heights
and hollows of the beautiful old town, where the lad sat at his window
in the winter evenings, watching the gorgeous frosty sunset, how it
purpled with royal gleams and shadows all the low hills of Fife, and
shed a distant golden glow--sometimes a glow redder and fiercer than
gold--upon the chilly glories of the Firth. Then, as the light faded
from the western horizon, and Inchkeith and Inchcolm no longer stood out
in vivid relief against the illuminated waters, how the lights of the
town, scarcely less fairy-like, began to steal along the streets and to
sparkle out in the windows, hanging in irregular lines from the
many-storied houses at the other side of the North Bridge, and gleaming
like glow-worms in the dark little valley between.
Cosmo sat at his window with a book in his hand, but did not read
much--perhaps the lad was not thinking much either, as he sat in the
silent little room, listening to all the voices of all the population
beneath him, which rose in a softened swell of sound to his high window;
sometimes mournful, sometimes joyful, sometimes with a sharp cry in it
like an appeal to God, sometimes full of distinct tones, inarticulate
yet individual, sometimes sweet with the hum of children--a great, full,
murmuring chorus never entirely silenced, in which the heart of humanity
seemed, somehow, to betray itself, and reveal unawares the unspeakable
blending of emotions which no one man can ever confess for himself.
Cosmo, who had spent a due portion of his time in his class-room, had
taken notes of the lectures, and been, if not a remarkably devoted, at
least a moderately conscientious student, often found himself very
unwilling to light the candle, and sometimes even let his fire go out,
in the charmed idleness of his window-seat, which was so strangely
different from his old meditative haunt in the old castle, yet which
absorbed him even more--and then Mrs. Purdie would come in with brisk
good-humor, and rate him soundly for sitting in the dark, and make up
the much-enduring northern coals into a blaze for him, and sweep the
hearth, and light the candle, and bring in the little tray with its
little tea-pot and blue and white cup and saucer, and the bread and
butter--which Cosmo did full justice to, in spite of his dreams. When
she came to remove the things again, Mrs. Purdie would stand with one
arm a-kimbo to have a little talk with her young lodger; perhaps to tell
him that she had seen the Melrose courier, or met somebody newly arrived
by the coach from Kirkbride, or encountered an old neighbor, who
“speered very kindly” for his mother; or, on the other hand, to confide
to him her fear that the lad from the Highlants in her little garret
overhead, who provided himsel’, would perish with cauld in this frosty
weather, and was just as like as no’ to starve himsel’, and didna keep
up a decent outside, puir callant, without mony a sair pinch that
naebody kent onything about; or that her other lodger, who was also a
student, was in a very ill way, coming in at a’ the hours of the night,
and spending hard-won siller, and that she would be very glad to let his
father and mother ken, but it didna become her to tell tales.
These, and a great many other communications of the same kind, Mrs.
Purdie relieved her mind by making to Cosmo, whose youth and good-looks
and local claims upon her regard, made him a great favorite with the
kind-hearted, childless woman, who compounded “scones” for his tea, and
even occasionally undertook the trouble of a pudding, “a great fash and
fyke,” as she said to herself, puddings being little in favor with
humble Scotchwomen of her class.
Under the care of this motherly attendant, Cosmo got on very well in his
little Edinburgh lodging, and even in some degree enjoyed the solitude
which was so new and so strange to the home-bred boy. He used to sally
out early in the morning, perhaps to climb as far as St. Anthony’s
Chapel, or mount the iron ribs of the Crags, to watch the early mists
breaking over the lovely country, and old Edinburgh rising out of the
cloud like a queen--or perhaps only to hasten along the cheerful length
of Princes Street, when the same mists parted from the crags of the
Castle, or lay white in the valley. The boy knew nothing about his own
sentiments, what manner of fancies they were, and did not pause to
inquire whether any one else thought like him. He hurried in thereafter
to breakfast, fresh and blooming, and then with his books to college,
encountering often enough that grave, gaunt Highlander in the garret,
who had no time for poetic wanderings, and perhaps not much capacity,
but who struggled on towards his own aim, with a desperate fortitude and
courage, which no man of his name ever surpassed in a forlorn hope, or
on a battle-field. The Highland student was nearly thirty, a man full
grown and labor-hardened, working his way through his “humanity” and
Divinity classes, looking forward, as the goal of his ambition, to some
little Gaelic-speaking parish in the far north, where some day, perhaps,
the burning Celtic fervor, imprisoned under his slow English speech and
impenetrable demeanor, might make him the prophet of his district; and
as he entered day by day at the same academic gates, side-by-side with
the seventeen-year-old boy, a strange tenderness for the lad came into
the man’s heart. They grew friends shyly yet warmly, unlike as they
were, though Cosmo never was admitted to any of those secrets of his
friend’s _menage_, which Mrs. Purdie guessed at, but which Cameron would
never have forgiven any one for finding out; and next to the household
of Norlaw, and the strange, half-perceived knowledge that came stealing
to his mind, like a fairy, in his vigils by his window, Cameron was
Cosmo’s first experience of what he was to meet in life.
The Highlander lived in his garret, you could not believe or understand
how, gentleman-commoner--and would have tossed, not only your shoes, but
you out of his high window, had you tried to be benevolent to him, as
you tried it once to that clumsy sizar of Pembroke; notwithstanding, he
was no ignoble beginning for a boy’s friendship, a fact which Cosmo
Livingstone had it in him to perceive.