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                                  THE

                           LAIRD OF NORLAW.

                           A SCOTTISH STORY.

                           BY THE AUTHOR OF

            “MARGARET MAITLAND,” “LILLIESLEAF,” “ORPHANS,”
                   “THE DAYS OF MY LIFE,” ETC., ETC.

                               NEW YORK:

                          HARPER & BROTHERS,

                           FRANKLIN SQUARE.

                                 1859.




                         THE LAIRD OF NORLAW.




CHAPTER I.


The house of Norlaw stands upon the <DW72> of a low hill, under shelter
of the three mystic Eildons, and not very far from that little ancient
town which, in the language of the author of “Waverley,” is called
Kennaquhair.

A low, peaceable, fertile <DW72>, bearing trees to its top-most height,
and corn on its shoulders, with a little river running by its base,
which manages, after many circuits, to wind its way into Tweed. The
house, which is built low upon the hill, is two stories in front, but,
owing to the unequal level, only one behind. The garden is all at the
back, where the ground is sheltered, but in front, the green, natural
surface of the hill descends softly to the water without any thing to
break its verdure. There are clumps of trees on each side, straying as
nature planted them, but nothing adorns the sloping lawn, which is not
called a lawn, nor used for any purposes of ornament by the household of
Norlaw.

Close by, at the right hand of this homely house, stands an
extraordinary foil to its serenity and peacefulness. The old castle of
Norlaw, gaunt and bare, and windowless, not a towered and battlemented
pile, but a straight, square, savage mass of masonry, with windows
pierced high up in its walls in even rows, like a prison, and the gray
stone-work below, as high under the first range of windows as the roof
of the modern house, rising up blank, like a rock, without the slightest
break or opening. To see this strange old ruin, in the very heart of the
peaceful country, without a feature of nature to correspond with its
sullen strength, nor a circumstance to suggest the times and the danger
which made that necessary, is the strangest thing in the world; all the
more that the ground has no special capacities for defense, and that the
castle is not a picturesque baronial accumulation of turrets and
battlements, but a big, austere, fortified dwelling-house, which modern
engineering could make an end of in half a day.

It showed, however, if it did nothing better, that the Livingstones were
knights and gentlemen, in the day when the Border was an unquiet
habitation--and for this, if for nothing else, was held in no little
honor by the yeoman Livingstone, direct descendant of the Sir Rodericks
and Sir Anthonys, who farmed the remains of his paternal property, and
dwelt in the modern house of Norlaw.

This house was little more than a farm-house in appearance, and nothing
more in reality. The door opened into a square hall, on either side of
which was a large room, with three deep-set windows in each; four of
these windows looked out upon the lawn and the water, while one broke
each corner of the outer wall. On the side nearest the castle, a little
behind the front level of the house, was an “outshot,” a little wing
built to the side, which formed the kitchen, upon the ever-open door of
which the corner window of the common family sitting room kept up a
vigilant inspection. A plentiful number of bed-chambers up-stairs were
reached by a good stair-case, and a gallery which encircled the hall;
the architecture was of the most monotonous and simple regularity; so
many windows on one side soberly poising so many windows on the other.
The stair-case made a rounded projection at the back of the house, which
was surmounted by a steep little turret roof, blue-slated, and bearing a
tiny vane for its crown, after the fashion of the countryside; and this,
which glimmered pleasantly among the garden fruit trees when you looked
down from the top of the hill--and the one-storied projection, which was
the kitchen, were the only two features which broke the perfect
plainness and uniformity of the house.

But though it was July when this history begins, the flush of
summer--and though the sunshine was sweet upon the trees and the water,
and the bare old walls of the castle, there was little animation in
Norlaw. The blinds were drawn up in the east room, the best
apartment--though the sun streamed in at the end window, and “the
Mistress” was not wont to leave her favorite carpet to the tender
mercies of that bright intruder; and the blinds were down in the
dining-room, which nobody had entered this morning, and where even the
Mistress’s chair and little table in the corner window could not keep a
vicarious watch upon the kitchen door. It was not needful; the two maids
were very quiet, and not disposed to amuse themselves. Marget, the elder
one, who was the byrewoman, and had responsibilities, went about the
kitchen very solemnly, speaking with a gravity which became the
occasion; and Janet, who was the house-servant, and soft-hearted, stood
at the table, washing cups and saucers, very slowly, and with the most
elaborate care, lest one of them should tingle upon the other, and
putting up her apron very often to wipe the tears from her eyes.
Outside, on the broad stone before the kitchen door, a little ragged boy
sat, crying bitterly--and no one else was to be seen about the house.

“Jenny,” said the elder maid, at last, “give that bairn a piece, and
send him away. There’s enow of us to greet--for what we’re a’ to do for
a puir distressed family, when aince the will o’ God’s accomplished this
day, I canna tell.”

“Oh, woman, dinna speak! he’ll maybe win through,” cried Jenny, with
renewed tears.

Marget was calm in her superior knowledge.

“I ken a death-bed from a sick-bed,” she said, with solemnity; “I’ve
seen them baith--and weel I kent, a week come the morn, that it was
little good looking for the doctor, or wearying aye for his physic time,
or thinking the next draught or the next pill would do. Eh sirs! ane
canna see when it’s ane’s ain trouble; if it had been ony ither man, the
Mistress would have kent as weel as me.”

“It’s an awfu’ guid judge that’s never wrang,” said Jenny, with a little
impatience. “He’s a guid faither, and a guid maister; it’s my hope he’ll
cheat you a’ yet, baith the doctor and you.”

Marget shook her head, and went solemnly to a great wooden press, which
almost filled one side of the kitchen, to get the “piece” which Jenny
showed no intention of bestowing upon the child at the door. Pondering
for a moment over the basket of oat cakes, Marget changed her mind, and
selected a fine, thin, flour one, from a little pile.

“It’s next to funeral bread,” she said to herself, in vindication of her
choice; “Tammie, my man, the maister would be nae better if ye could
mak’ the water grit with tears--run away hame, like a good bairn; tell
your mother neither the Mistress nor me will forget her, and ye can say,
I’ll let her ken; and there’s a piece to help ye hame.”

“I dinna want ony pieces--I want to ken if he’s better,” said the boy;
“my mother said I wasna to come back till there was good news.”

“Whisht, sirrah, he’ll hear you on his death-bed,” said Marget, “but
it’ll no do _you_ ony harm, bairn; the Mistress will aye mind your
mother; take your piece and run away.”

The child’s only answer was to bury his face in his hands, and break
into a new fit of crying. Marget came in again, discomfited; after a
while she took out a little wooden cup of milk to him, and set it down
upon the stone without a word. She was not sufficiently hard-hearted to
frown upon the child’s grief.

“Eh, woman Jenny!” she cried, after an interval, “to think a man could
have so little pith, and yet get in like this to folk’s hearts!”

“As if ye didna ken the haill tale,” cried Jenny, with indignant tears,
“how the maister found the wean afield with his broken leg, and carried
him hame--and how there’s ever been plenty, baith milk and meal, for
thae puir orphants, and Tammie’s schooling, and aye a kind word to mend
a’--and yet, forsooth, the bairn maunna greet when the maister’s at his
latter end!”

“We’ll a’ have cause,” said Marget, abruptly; “three bonnie lads that
might be knights and earls, every one, and no’ a thing but debt and
dool, nor a trade to set their hand to. Haud yer peace!--do ye think
there’s no trade but bakers and tailors, and the like o’ that? and
there’s Huntley, and Patie, and Cosmo, my bonnie bairns!--there never
was three Livingstones like them, nor three of ony other name as far as
Tyne runs--and the very bairn at the door has muckle to look to as
they!”

“But it’s nae concern o’ yours, or o’ mine. I’m sure the maister was aye
very good to me,” said Jenny, retiring into tears, and a _non sequitur_.

“No, that’s true--it’s nae concern o’ yours--_you’re_ no’ an auld
servant like me,” said her companion, promptly, “but for mysel’ I’ve
sung to them a’ in their cradles; I would work for them with my hands,
and thankful; but I wouldna desire that of them to let the like o’ me
work, or the Mistress toil, to keep them in idleset. Na, woman--I’m
jealous for my bairns--I would break my heart if Huntley was content to
be just like his father; if either the Mistress or the lads will listen
to me, I’ll gie my word to send them a’ away.”

“Send them away--and their mother in mourning? Oh, my patience! what
for?”

“To make their fortune,” said Marget, and she hung the great pot on the
great iron hook above the fire, with a sort of heroic gesture, which
might have been amusing under other circumstances--for Marget believed
in making fortunes, and had the impulse of magnificent hope at her
heart.

“Eh, woman! you’re hard-hearted,” said her softer companion, “to blame
the Maister at his last, and plan to leave the Mistress her lane in the
world! I would make them abide with her to comfort her, if it was me.”

Marget made no answer--she had comforted herself with the flush of fancy
which pictured these three sons of the house, each completing his
triumph--and she was the byrewoman and had to consider the cattle, and
cherish as much as remained of pastoral wealth in this impoverished
house. She went out with her dark printed gown carefully “kilted” over
her red and blue striped petticoat, and a pail in her hand. She was a
woman of forty, a farm servant used to out-of-door work and homely ways,
and had neither youth nor sentiment to soften her manners or enlarge her
mind. Yet her heart smote her when she thought of the father of the
house, who lay dying while she made her criticism upon him, true though
it was.

“Has he no’ been a good master to me? and would I spare tears if they
could ease him?” she said to herself, as she rubbed them away from her
eyes. “But folk can greet in the dark when there’s no work to do,” she
added, peremptorily, and so went to her dairy and her thoughts.
Tender-hearted Jenny cried in the kitchen, doing no good to any one; but
up-stairs in the room of death, where the family waited, there were
still no tears.




CHAPTER II.


Half a mile below Norlaw, “as Tyne runs,” stood the village of
Kirkbride. Tyne was but one of the many undistinguished Tynes which
water the south of Scotland and the north of England, a clear trout
stream, rapid and brown, and lively, with linns and pools, and bits of
woodland belonging to it, which the biggest brother of its name could
not excel; and Kirkbride also was but one of a host of Kirkbrides, which
preserved through the country, long after every stone of it had
mouldered, the name of some little chapel raised to St. Bridget. This
was an irregular hamlet, straggling over two mounds of rising ground,
between which Tyne had been pleased to make a way for himself. The
morsel of village street was on one bank of the water, a row of
irregular houses, in the midst of which flourished two shops; while at
the south end, as it was called, a little inn projected across the road,
giving, with this corner, and the open space which it sheltered, an air
of village coziness to the place which its size scarcely warranted. The
other bank of the water was well covered with trees--drooping birches
and alders, not too heavy in their foliage to hide the half dozen
cottages which stood at different elevations on the ascending road, nor
to vail at the summit the great jargonel pear-tree on the gable wall of
the manse, which dwelt upon that height, looking down paternally and
with authority upon the houses of the village. The church was further
back, and partially hidden by trees, which, seeing this edifice was in
the prevailing fashion of rural Scottish churches--a square barn with a
little steeple stuck upon it--was all the better for the landscape. A
spire never comes amiss at a little distance, when Nature has fair play
and trees enough--and the hillock, with its foliage and its cottages,
its cozy manse and spire among the trees, filled with thoughts of rural
felicity the stray anglers who came now and then to fish in Tyne and
consume the produce of their labor in the gable parlor of the Norlaw
Arms.

The doctor had just passed through the village. On his way he had been
assailed by more than one inquiry. The sympathy of the hamlet was
strong, and its curiosity neighborly,--and more than one woman retired
into her cottage, shaking her head over the news she received.

“Keep us a’! Norlaw! I mind him afore he could either walk or speak--and
_then_ I was in service, in the auld mistress’s time, at Me’mar,” said
one of the village grandmothers, who stood upon the threshold of a very
little house, where the village mangle was in operation. The old woman
stood at the door, looking after the doctor, as he trotted off on his
stout pony; she was speaking to herself, and not to the little audience
behind, upon whom, however, she turned, as the wayfarer disappeared from
her eyes, and laying down her bundle on the table, with a sigh, “Eh,
Merran Hastie!” she exclaimed, “he’s been guid to you.”

The person thus addressed needed no further inducement to put her apron
to her eyes. The room was very small, half occupied by the mangle, which
a strong country girl was turning; and even in this summer day the
apartment was not over bright, seeing that the last arrival stood in the
doorway, and that the little window was half covered by a curtain of
coarse green gauze. Two other village matrons had come with their
“claes,” to talk over the danger of their neighbor and landlord, and to
comfort the poor widow who had found an active benefactor in “Norlaw.”
She was comforted, grateful and grieved though she was; and the gossips,
though they looked grave, entered _con amore_ into the subject; what the
Mistress was likely to do, and how the family would be “left.”

“My man says they’ll a’ be roupit, baith stock and plenishing,” said the
mason’s wife. “Me’mar himsel’ gave our John an insight into how it was.
I judge he maun have lent Norlaw siller; for when he saw the dry-stane
dike, where his ground marches with Norlaw, he gave ane of his humphs,
and says he to John, ‘A guid kick would drive it down;’ says he, ‘it’ll
last out _his_ time, and for my part, I’m no a man for small fields;’ so
grannie, there’s a family less, you may say already, in the
country-side.”

“I’ll tarry till I see it,” said the old woman; “the ane of his family
that’s likest Norlaw, is his youngest son; and if Me’mar himsel’, or the
evil ane, his marrow, get clean the better of Huntley and Patrick, not
to say the Mistress, it’ll be a marvel to me.”

“Norlaw was aye an unthrift,” said Mrs. Mickle, who kept the grocer’s
shop in Kirkbride; “nobody could tell, when he was a young man, how he
got through his siller. It aye burnt his pockets till he got it spent,
and ye never could say what it was on.”

“Oh, whisht!” exclaimed the widow; “me, and the like of me, can tell
well what it was on.”

“Haud a’ your tongues,” said the old woman; “if any body kens about
Norlaw, it’s me; I was bairn’s-maid at Me’mar, in the time of the auld
mistress, as a’ the town kens, and I’m well acquaint with a’ his
pedigree, and mind him a’ his life, and the truth’s just this, whatever
any body may say. He didna get his ain fancy when he was a young lad,
and he’s never been the same man ever sinsyne.”

“Eh! was Norlaw crossed in love?” said the girl at the mangle, staying
her grinding to listen; “but I’m no sorry for him; a man that wasna
content with the Mistress doesna deserve a good wife.”

“Ay, lass; you’re coming to have your ain thoughts on such like matters,
are ye?” said the old woman; “but take you my word, Susie, that a woman
may be the fairest and the faithfu’est that ever stood on a hearthstane,
but if she’s no her man’s fancy, she’s nae guid there.”

“Susie’s very right,” said the mason’s wife; “he wasna blate! for a
better wife than the Mistress never put her hand into ony housewifeskep,
and it’s her that’s to be pitied with a man like you; and our John
says--”

“I kent about Norlaw before ever you were born, or John either,” said
the old woman; “and what I say’s _fac_, and what you say’s fancy. Norlaw
had never a thought in his head, from ten to five-and-twenty, but half
of it was for auld Me’mar’s ae daughter. I’m no saying he’s a strong man
of his nature, like them that clear their ain road, or make their ain
fortune; but he might have held his ain better than he’s ever done, if
he had been matched to his fancy when he was a young lad, and had a’ his
life before him; that’s just what I’ve to say.”

“Weel, grannie, its awfu’ hard,” said the mason’s wife; “the Mistress
was a bonnie woman in her day, and a spirit that would face onything;
and to wear out her life for a man that wasna heeding about her, and be
left in her prime a dowerless widow!--Ye may say what ye like--but I
wouldna thole the like for the best man in the country-side, let alone
Norlaw.”

“Naebody would, if they kent,” said the oracle, “but what’s a woman to
do, if she’s married and bound, and bairns at her foot, before she ever
finds out what’s been lying a’ the time in her man’s heart?”

“Then it was just a shame!” cried Susie, at the mangle, with tears in
her eyes; “a burning shame! Eh Grannie, to find it out _then_! I would
rather dee!”

“Ay, ay,” said the old woman, shaking her head; “young folk think
so--but that’s life.”

“I’ll never think weel of Norlaw again--I’ll never believe a lad mair!
they might be thinking ony mischief in their heart,” cried Susie,
hastily putting up her particular bundle, and dashing a tear off her hot
cheek. “They can greet for him that likes; I’ll think of naebody but the
Mistress--no me!”

Whereupon this keen sympathizer, who had some thoughts of her own on the
matter, rushed forth, disturbing the elder group, whose interest was
calmer and more speculative.

“Aweel, aweel! we’re a’ frail and full of shortcomings,” said the widow;
“but naebody kens how kind Norlaw has been to me. My little Tammie’s
away somegate about the house now. I thought the bairn’s heart would
break when he heard the news first. I’m sure there’s no one hour, night
or day, that he wouldna lay down his life for Norlaw.”

“He was aye a kind man and weel likit--most folk are that spend their
siller free, and take a’ thing easy,” said Mrs. Mickle, with a sigh
which was partly for that weakness of human nature, and partly for the
departing spirit.

Then new customers began to come in, and the group dispersed. By this
time it was getting late in the afternoon, and John Mellerstone’s wife
had to bethink herself of her husband’s supper, and Mrs. Mickle of her
evening cup of tea. The sun had begun to slant over the face of the brae
opposite to them, brightening the drooping bushes with touches of gold,
and glowing upon the white gable wall of the manse, obscured with the
wealthy branches of its jargonel tree. The minister was making his way
thoughtfully up the path, with his hat over his face a little, and his
hands under the square skirts of his coat, never pausing to look down,
as was his custom when his mind was at ease. He, too, had been at
Norlaw, and his thoughts were still there.




CHAPTER III.


The sun was shining into the west chamber at Norlaw. It was the room
immediately over the dining-room, a large apartment, paneled and painted
in a faint green color, with one window to the front and one to the side
of the house. The side window looked immediately upon the old castle,
and on the heavy masses of blunt-leaved ivy which hung in wild festoons
everywhere from this front of the ruin; and the sun shone in gloriously
to the sick chamber, with a strange mockery of the weakness and the
sorrow there. This bed was what used to be called a “tent-bed,” with
heavy curtains of dark brown moreen, closely drawn at the foot, but
looped up about the pillows. At the side nearest the sunshine, the
Mistress, whose place had been there for weeks, stood by the bed
measuring out some medicine for the sufferer. A fortnight’s almost
ceaseless watching had not sufficed to pale the cheek of health, or
waste the vigor of this wife, who was so soon to be a widow. Her fresh,
middle-aged, matronly bloom, her dress careful and seemly, her anxious
and troubled brow, where deep solicitude and hope had scarcely given way
to the dread certainty which everybody else acknowledged, made a very
strange contrast, indeed, to the wasted, dying, eager face which lay
among those pillows, with already that immovable yellow pallor on its
features which never passes away; a long, thin hand, wasted to the bone,
was on the coverlid, but the sufferer looked up, with his eager, large
black eyes toward the medicine glass in his wife’s hand with a singular
eagerness. He knew, at last, that he was dying, and even in the
solemnity of those last moments, this weak, graceful mind, true to the
instincts of its nature, thought with desire and anxiety of dying well.

The three sons of the house were in the room watching with their mother.
Huntley, who could scarcely keep still, even in the awe of this shadow
of death, stood by the front window, often drawing close to the bed, but
unable to continue there. The second, who was his mother’s son, a
healthful, ruddy, practical lad, kept on the opposite side of the bed,
ready to help his mother in moving the patient. And at the foot,
concealed by the curtains, a delicate boy of fifteen, with his face
buried in his hands, sat upon an old square ottoman, observing nothing.
This was Cosmo, the youngest and favorite, the only one of his children
who really resembled Norlaw.

The caprice of change was strong upon the dying man; he wanted his
position altered twenty times in half an hour. He had not any thing much
to say, yet he was hard to please for the manner of saying it; and
longed, half in a human and tender yearning for remembrance, and half
with the weakness of his character, that his children should never
forget these last words of his, nor the circumstances of his dying. He
was a good man, but he carried the defects of his personality with him
to the very door of heaven. When, at last, the pillows were arranged
round him, so as to raise him on his bed in the attitude he wished, he
called his children, in his trembling voice. Huntley came forward from
the window, with a swelling heart, scarcely able to keep down the tears
of his first grief. Patrick stood by the bed-side, holding down his
head, with a stubborn composure--and Cosmo, stealing forward, threw
himself on his knees and hid his sobbing in the coverlid. They were all
on one side, and on the other stood the mother, the care on her brow
blanching into conviction, and all her tremulous anxiety calmed with a
determination not to disturb this last scene. It _was_ the last. Hope
could not stand before the look of death upon that face.

“My sons,” said Norlaw, “I am just dying; but I know where I am in this
strait, trusting in my Saviour. You’ll remember I said this, when I’m
gone.”

There was a pause. Cosmo sobbed aloud in the silence, clinging to the
coverlid, and Huntley’s breast heaved high with a tumultuous motion--but
there was not a word said to break the monologue of the father, who was
going away.

“And now you’ll have no father to guide you further,” he continued, with
a strange pity for them in his voice. “There’s your mother, at my
side--as true a wife and as faithful, as ever a man had for a blessing.
Boys, I leave your mother, for her jointure, the love you’ve had for me.
Let her have it all--all--make amends to her. Martha, I’ve not been the
man I might have been to you.”

These last words were spoken in a tone of sudden compunction, strangely
unlike the almost formal dignity of the first part of his address, and
he turned his eager, dying eyes to her, with a startled apprehension of
this truth, foreign to all his previous thoughts. She could not have
spoken, to save his life. She took his hand between hers, with a low
groan, and held it, looking at him with a pitiful, appealing face. The
self-accusation was like an injury to her, and he was persuaded to feel
it so, and to return to the current of his thoughts.

“Let your mother be your counselor; she has ever been mine,” he said
once more, with his sad, dying dignity. “I say nothing about your plans,
because plans are ill adjuncts to a death-bed; but you’ll do your best,
every one, and keep your name without blemish, and fear God and honor
your mother. If I were to speak for a twelvemonth I could not find more
to say.”

Again a pause; but this time, besides the sobs of Cosmo, Patrick’s tears
were dropping, like heavy drops of rain, upon the side of the bed, and
Huntley crushed the curtain in his hand to support himself, and only
staid here quite against his nature by strong compulsion of his will.
Whether he deserved it or not, this man’s fortune, all his life, had
been to be loved.

“This night, Huntley will be Livingstone of Norlaw,” continued the
father; “but the world is fading out of my sight, boys--only I mind, and
you know, that things have gone ill with us for many a year--make just
the best that can be made, and never give up this house and the old name
of your fathers. Me’mar will try his worst against you; ay, I ought to
say more; but I’m wearing faint--I’m not able; you’ll have to ask your
mother. Martha, give me something to keep me up a moment more.”

She did so hurriedly, with a look of pain; but when he had taken a
little wine, the sick man’s eye wandered.

“I had something more to say,” he repeated, faintly; “never mind--your
mother will tell you every thing;--serve God, and be good to your
mother, and mind that I die in faith. Bairns, when ye come to your
latter end, take heed to set your foot fast upon the rock, that I may
find you all again.”

They thought he had ended now his farewell to them. They laid him down
tenderly, and, with awe and hidden tears, watched how the glow of
sunset faded and the evening gray stole in over that pallid face which,
for the moment, was all the world to their eyes. Sometimes, he said a
faint word to his wife, who sat holding his hand. He was conscious, and
calm, and departing. His sins had been like a child’s sins--capricious,
wayward, fanciful transgressions. He had never harmed any one but
himself and his own household--remorseful recollections did not trouble
him--and, weak as he was, all his life long he had kept tender in his
heart a child’s faith. He was dying like a Christian, though not even
his faith and comfort, nor the great shadow of death which he was
meeting, could sublime his last hours out of nature. God does not always
make a Christian’s death-bed sublime. But he was fast going where there
is no longer any weakness, and the calm of the evening rest was on the
ending of his life.

Candles had been brought softly into the room; the moon rose, the night
wore on, but they still waited. No one could withdraw from that watch,
which it is agony to keep, and yet worse agony to be debarred from
keeping, and when it was midnight, the pale face began to flush by
intervals, and the fainting frame to grow restless and uneasy. Cosmo,
poor boy, struck with the change, rose up to look at him, with a wild,
sudden hope that he was getting better; but Cosmo shrunk appalled at the
sudden cry which burst as strong as if perfect health had uttered it
from the heaving, panting heart of his father.

“Huntley, Huntley, Huntley!” cried the dying man, but it was not his son
he called. “Do I know her name? She’s but Mary of Melmar--evermore Mary
to me--and the will is there--in the mid chamber. Aye!--where is
she?--your mother will tell you all--it’s too late for me.”

The last words were irresolute and confused, dropping back into the
faint whispers of death. When he began to speak, his wife had risen from
her seat by the bed-side--her cheeks flushed, she held his hand tight,
and over the face of her tenderness came an indescribable cloud of
mortification, of love aggrieved and impatient, which could not be
concealed. She did not speak, but stood watching him, holding his hand
close in her own, even after he was silent--and not even when the head
sank lower down among the pillows, and the eyes grew dim, and the last
hour came, did the watcher resume the patient seat which she had kept
so long. She stood by him with a mind disquieted, doing every thing that
she could do--quick to see, and tender to minister; but the sacramental
calm of the vigil was broken--and the widow still stood by the bed when
the early summer light came in over her shoulder, to show how, with the
night, this life was over, and every thing was changed. Then she fell
down by the bed-side, scarcely able to move her strained limbs, and
struck to the heart with the chill of her widowhood.

It was all over--all over--and the new day, in a blaze of terrible
sunshine, and the new solitude of life, were to begin together. But her
sons, as they were forced to withdraw from the room where one was dead,
and one lost in the first blind agony of a survivor, did not know what
last pang of a long bitterness that was, which struck its final sting,
to aggravate all her grievous trouble, into their mother’s heart.




CHAPTER IV.


Those slow days of household gloom and darkness, when death lies in the
house, and every thought and every sound still bears an involuntary
reference to the solemn inmate, resting unconscious of them all, went
slowly over the roof of Norlaw. Sunday came, doubly mournful; a day in
which Scottish decorum demanded that no one should stir abroad, even to
church, and which hung indescribably heavy in those curtained rooms, and
through the unbroken stillness of its leisure, upon the three youths who
had not even their mother’s melancholy society to help them through the
day. The Mistress was in her own room, closely shut up with her Bible
and her sorrow, taking that first Sabbath of her widowhood, a solitary
day of privilege and indulgence, for her own grief. Not a sound was
audible in the house; Jenny, who could be best spared, and who was
somewhat afraid of the solemn quietness of Norlaw, had been sent away
early this morning, to spend the Sabbath with her mother, in Kirkbride,
and Marget sat alone in the kitchen, with a closed door and partially
shuttered window, reading to herself half aloud from the big Bible in
her lap. In the perfect stillness it was possible to hear the monotonous
hum of her half-whispering voice, and sometimes the dull fall of the
ashes on the kitchen hearth, but not a sound besides.

The blinds were all down in the dining-room, and the lower half of the
shutters closed. Though the July sun made triumphant daylight even in
spite of this, it was such a stifling, closed-in, melancholy light,
bright upon the upper walls and the roof, but darkened and close around
the lads, that the memory of it never quite passed out of their hearts.
This room, too, was paneled and painted of that dull drab color, which
middle-class dining-rooms even now delight in; there were no pictures on
the walls, for the family of Norlaw were careless of ornaments, like
most families of their country and rank. A dull small clock upon the
black marble mantel-piece, and a great china jar on the well-polished,
old-fashioned sideboard, were the only articles in which any thing
beyond use was even aimed at. The chairs were of heavy mahogany and
hair-cloth--a portion of the long dining-table, with a large leaf folded
down, very near as black as ebony, and polished like a mirror, stood
between the front windows--and the two round ends of this same
dining-table stood in the centre of the room, large enough for family
purposes, and covered with a red and blue table-cover. There was a heavy
large chintz easy-chair at the fire-place, and a little table supporting
a covered work-basket in the corner window--yet the room had not been
used to look a dull room, heavy and dismal though it was to-day.

The youngest boy sat by the table, leaning over a large family Bible,
full of quaint old pictures. Cosmo saw the pictures without seeing
them--he was leaning both his elbows on the table, supporting his head
with a pair of long, fair hands, which his boy’s jacket, which he had
outgrown, left bare to the wrists. His first agony of grief had fallen
into a dull aching; his eyes were observant of the faintest lines of
those familiar wood-cuts, yet he could not have told what was the
subject of one of them, though he knew them all by heart. He was
fair-haired, pale, and delicate, with sensitive features, and dark eyes,
like his father’s, which had a strange effect in contrast with the
extreme lightness of his hair and complexion. He was the tender boy--the
mother’s child of the household, and it was Cosmo of whom the village
gossips spoke, when they took comfort in the thought that only his
youngest son was like Norlaw.

Next to Cosmo, sitting idly on a chair, watching how a stream of
confined sunshine came in overhead, at the side of the blind, was
Huntley, the eldest son. He was very dark, very ruddy, with close curls
of black hair, and eyes of happy hazel-brown. Heretofore, Huntley
Livingstone’s principal characteristic had been a total incapacity to
keep still. For many a year Marget had lamented over him, that he would
not “behave himself,” and even the Mistress had spoken her mind only too
often on the same subject. Huntley would not join, with gravity and
decorum, even the circle of evening visitors who gathered on unfrequent
occasions round the fireside of Norlaw. He had perpetually something on
hand to keep him in motion, and if nothing better was to be had, would
rummage through lumber-room and family treasury, hunting up dusty old
sets of newspapers and magazines, risking the safety of precious old
hereditary parchments, finding a hundred forgotten trifles, which he had
nothing to do with. So that it was rare, even on winter evenings, to
find Huntley at rest in the family circle; it was his wont to appear in
it at intervals bringing something with him which had no right to be
there--to be ordered off peremptorily by his mother with the intruding
article; to be heard, all the evening through, knocking in nails, and
putting up shelves for Marget, or making some one of the countless
alterations, which had always to be made in his own bed-chamber and
private sanctuary; and finally, to reappear for the family worship,
during which he kept as still as his nature would permit, and the family
supper, at which Huntley’s feats, in cutting down great loaves of bread,
and demolishing oat-cakes, were a standing joke in the household. This
was the old Huntley, when all was well in Norlaw. Now he sat still,
watching that narrow blade of sunshine, burning in compressed and close
by the side of the blind; it was like his own nature, in those early
days of household grief.

Patrick was a less remarkable boy than either of his brothers; he was
most like Huntley, and had the same eyes, and the same crisp, short
curls of black hair. But Patrick had a medium in him; he did what was
needful, with the quickest practical sense; he was strong in his
perception of right and justice; so strong, that the Quixotry of boyish
enthusiasm had never moved him; he was not, in short, a describable
person; at this present moment, he was steadily occupied with a volume
of sermons; they were extremely heavy metal, but Patrick went on with
them, holding fast his mind by that anchor of heaviness. It was not that
his gravity was remarkable, or his spiritual appreciation great; but
something was needful to keep the spirit afloat in that atmosphere of
death; the boys had been “too well brought up” to think of profaning the
Sabbath with light literature; and amusing themselves while their father
lay dead was a sin quite as heinous. So Patrick Livingstone read, with a
knitted brow, sermons of the old Johnsonian period, and Cosmo pondered
the quaint Bible woodcuts, and Huntley watched the sunshine; and they
had not spoken a word to each other for at least an hour.

Huntley was the first to break the silence.

“I wish to-morrow were come and gone,” he exclaimed, suddenly, rising up
and taking a rapid turn through the room; “a week of this would kill
me.”

Cosmo looked up, with an almost feminine reproof in his tearful black
eyes.

“Well, laddie,” said the elder brother; “dinna look at me with these
e’en! If it would have lengthened out his days an hour, or saved him a
pang, would I have spared years to do it? but what is _he_ heeding for
all this gloom and silence now?”

“Nothing,” said the second brother, “but the neighbors care, and so does
my mother; it’s nothing, but it’s all we can give--and he _would_ have
heeded and been pleased, had he thought beforehand on what we should be
doing now.”

It was so true, that Huntley sat down again overpowered. Yes, _he_ would
have been pleased to think of every particular of the “respect” which
belonged to the dead. The closed houses, the darkened rooms, the funeral
train; that tender human spirit would have clung to every one of them in
his thoughts, keeping the warmth of human sympathy close to him to the
latest possibility, little, little though he knew about them now.

“What troubles me is standing still,” said Huntley, with a sigh. “I can
not tell what’s before us; I don’t think even my mother knows; I
believe it’s worse than we can think of; and we’ve neither friends, nor
money, nor influence. Here are we three Livingstones, and I’m not
twenty, and we’ve debts in money to meet, and mortgages on the land, and
nothing in the world but our hands and our heads, and what strength and
wit God has given us. I’m not grumbling--but to think upon it all, and
to think now that--that he’s gone, and we’re alone and for
ourselves--and to sit still neither doing nor planning, it’s that that
troubles me!”

“Huntley, it’s Sabbath day!” said Cosmo.

“Ay, I ken! it’s Sabbath and rest, but not to us,” cried the young man;
“here’s me, that should have seen my way--I’m old enough--me that should
have known where I was going, and how I was going, and been able to
spare a hand for you; and I’m the biggest burden of all; a man without a
trade to turn his hand to, a man without knowledge in his head or skill
in his fingers--and to sit still and never say a word, and see them
creeping down, day by day, and every thing put back as if life could be
put back and wait. True, Patie! what would you have me do?”

“Make up your mind, and wait till it’s time to tell it,” said Patie,
without either reproof or sympathy; but Cosmo was more moved--he came to
his eldest brother with a soft step.

“Huntley,” said Cosmo, in the soft speech of their childhood, “what
makes ye speak about a trade, you that are Livingstone of Norlaw? It’s
for us to gang and seek our fortunes; you’re the chief of your name, and
the lands are yours--they canna ruin _you_, Huntley. I see the
difference mysel’, the folks see it in the country-side; and as for
Patie and me, we’ll seek our fortunes--we’re only the youngest sons,
it’s our inheritance; but Norlaw, and home, and the name, are with you.”

This appeal had the strangest effect upon Huntley; it seemed to
dissipate in an instant all the impatience and excitement of the youth’s
grief; he put his arm round Cosmo, with a sudden melting of heart and
countenance.

“Do ye hear him, Patie?” cried Huntley, with tears; “he thinks home’s
home forever, because the race has been here a thousand years; he thinks
I’m a prince delivering my kingdom! Cosmo, the land’s gone; I know
there’s not an acre ours after to-morrow. I’ve found it out, bit by
bit, though nobody said a word; but we’ll save the house, and the old
castle, if we should never have a penny over, for mother and you.”

The boy stared aghast into his brother’s face. The land! it had been
Cosmo’s dream by night, and thought by day. The poetic child had made,
indeed, a heroic kingdom and inheritance out of that little patrimonial
farm. Notwithstanding, he turned to Patie for confirmation, but found no
comfort there.

“As you think best, Huntley,” said the second son, “but what is a name?
My mother will care little for Norlaw when we are gone, and the name of
a landed family has kept us poor. _I’ve_ found things out as well as
you. I thought it would be best to part with all.”

“It was almost his last word,” said Huntley, sadly.

“Ay, but he could not tell,” said the stout-hearted boy; “he was of
another mind from you or me; he did not think that our strength and our
lives were for better use than to be wasted on a word. What’s Norlaw
Castle to us, more than a castle in a book? Ay, Cosmo, it’s true. Would
you drag a burden of debt at Huntley’s feet for the sake of an acre of
corn-land, or four old walls? We’ve been kept down and kept in prison,
us and our forbears, because of Norlaw. I say we should go free.”

“And I,” cried Cosmo, lifting his long, white hand in sudden passion,
“I, if Huntley does not care for the name, nor for my father’s last
wish, nor for the house of our ancestors; I will never rest night nor
day, though I break my heart or lose my life, till I redeem Norlaw!”

Huntley, whose arm still rested on the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer,
with a look which had caught a tender, sympathetic, half-compassionate
enthusiasm from his.

“We’ll save Norlaw for my father’s son,” said the elder brother; and,
young as Huntley was, he looked with eyes full of love and pity upon
this boy, who inherited more from his father than his name. Huntley had
been brought up in all the natural love and reverence of a well-ordered
family; he knew there was weakness in his father’s character, beautiful,
lovable, tender weakness, for which, somehow, people only seem to like
him better. He had not permitted himself to see yet what harm and
selfish unconsciousness of others that graceful temperament had hidden.
He looked at Cosmo, thinking as a strong mind thinks of that
constitution which is called poetic--of the sensitive nature which would
shrink from unkindness, and the tender spirit which could not bear the
trials of the world; and the lad’s heart expanded over his father’s son.

Patie got up from his chair, and went to the little bookcase in the
corner to look for another book of sermons. This boy could not blind his
eyes, even with family affection. He loved his father, but he knew
plainly, and in so many words, that his father had ruined their
inheritance. He could not help seeing that this amiable tenderness bore
no better fruit than selfishness or cruelty. He thought it would be
right and just to all their hopes to part with even the name of Norlaw.
But it was not his concern; he was ready to give his opinion at the
proper time, but not to stand out unreasonably against the decision of
his elder brother; and when he, too, looked at Cosmo, it was with
soberer eyes than those of Huntley--not that he cared less for his
father’s son--but Patrick could not help seeing with those clear eyes of
his; and what he feared to see was not the sensitive nature and the
tender spirit, but the self-regard which lay beneath.

Which of them was right, or whether either of them were right, this
history will best show.




CHAPTER V.


Sabbath night; a July night, sweet with summer stars and moonlight, and
with no darkness in it: the water running soft with its quietest murmur,
the thrush and blackbird beguiled to sing almost as late as the
southland nightingale; the scent of the late roses coming round the
corner of the house on the faint breeze; the stars clustered in a little
crowd over the gaunt castle walls, and in the distance the three weird
Eildons, standing out dark against the pale azure blue and flood of
moonlight; a Sabbath evening with not a sound in it, save the sweetest
sounds of nature, a visible holy blessing of quiet and repose.

But the table was spread in the dining-parlor at Norlaw; there was a
basket of oat-cakes and flour “bannocks” upon the table, in a snowy
napkin, and butter, and milk, and cheese, all of the freshest and most
fragrant, the produce of their own lands. Two candles made a little spot
of light upon the white table-cloth, but left all the rest of the room
in dreary shadow. To see it was enough to tell that some calamity
oppressed the house--and when the widow came in, with her face of
exhaustion, and eyes which could weep no more for very weariness, when
the boys followed slowly one by one, and Marget coming in with the
solemn, noiseless step, so unusual to her, hovered about them with all
her portentous gravity, and unwonted attendance, it was not hard to
conclude that they ate and drank under the shadow of death. The Mistress
had not appeared that day, from the early breakfast until now; it was
the only time before or after when she faltered from the ways of common
life.

When they had ended the meal, which no one cared to taste, and when the
lads began to think with some comfort, in the weariness of their youth,
that the day at last was over, Mrs. Livingstone drew her chair away from
the table, and looked at them all with the sorrowful tenderness of a
mother and a widow. Then, after a long interval, she spoke.

“Bairns!” she said, with a voice which was hoarse with solicitude and
weeping, “you’re a’ thinking what you’re to do, and though it’s the
Sabbath day, I canna blame ye, but me, I’m but a weak woman--I could not
say a word to counsel ye, if it was to save the breaking of my heart
this day.”

“We never looked for it, mother. There’s time enough! do you think we
would press our plans on you?” cried the eager Huntley, who had been
groaning but a few hours ago, at this compulsory delay.

“Na, I could not do it,” said the mother, turning her head aside, and
drawing the hem of her apron through her fingers, while the tears
dropped slowly out of her tired eyes; “this is the last Sabbath day that
him and me will be under the same roof. I canna speak to you, bairns;
I’m but a weak woman, and I’ve been his wife this five-and-twenty
years.”

After a pause, the Mistress dried her eyes, and went on hurriedly:--

“But I ken ye must have your ain thoughts; the like of you canna keep
still a long summer day, though it is a Sabbath; and, bairns, I’ve just
this to say to you; ye canna fear mair than we’ll have to meet. I’m
thankful even that he’s gane hame before the storm falls; for you’re a’
young, and can stand a blast. There’s plenty to do, and plenty to bear.
I dinna forbid ye thinking, though it’s Sabbath night, and death is
among us; but oh! laddies, think in a godly manner, and ask a
blessing--dinna darken the Sabbath with worldly thoughts, and him lying
on his last bed up the stair!”

The boys drew near to her simultaneously, with a common impulse. She
heard the rustle and motion of their youthful grief, but she still kept
her head aside, and drew tightly through her fingers the hem of her
apron.

“The day after the morn,” continued the widow, “I’ll be ready with all
that I ken, and ready to hear whatever you think for yourselves; think
discreetly, and I’ll no’ oppose, and think soberly, without pride, for
we’re at the foot of the brae. And we’ve nae friends to advise us,
bairns,” continued the Mistress, raising her head a little with the very
pride which she deprecated; “we’ve neither kith nor kin to take us by
the hand, nor give us counsel. Maybe it’s a’ the better--for we’ve only
Providence to trust to now, and ourselves.”

By this time she had risen up, and taking the candle which Patrick had
lighted for her, she stood with the little flat brass sconce in her
hand, and the light flickering over her face, still looking down. Yet
she lingered, as if she had something more to say. It burst from her
lips, at last, suddenly, almost with passion.

“Bairns! take heed, in your very innermost hearts, that ye think no
blame!” cried the widow; and when she had said these words, hastened
away, as if afraid to follow up or to weaken them by another syllable.
When she was gone, the lads stood silently about the table, each of them
with an additional ache in his heart. There _was_ blame which might be
thought, which might be spoken; even she was aware of it, in the jealous
regard of her early grief.

“The Mistress has bidden you a’ good night,” said Marget, entering
softly; “ye’ve taen nae supper, and ye took nae dinner; how are ye to
live and work, growing laddies like you, if you gang on at this rate? Ye
mean to break my heart amang you. If ye never break bread, Huntley
Livingstone, how will you get through the morn?”

“I wish it was over,” cried Huntley, once more.

“And so do I. Eh! bairns, when I see those blinds a’ drawn down, it
makes my heart sick,” cried Marget, “and grief itsel’s easier to thole
when ane has ane’s wark in hand. But I didna come to haver nonsense
here. I came to bid ye a’ gang to your beds, like good laddies. Ye’ll a’
sleep; that’s the good of being young. The Mistress, I daur to say, and
even mysel’, will not close an eye this night.”

“Would my mother let you remain with her, Marget?” said Huntley; “I
can’t bear to think she’s alone in her trouble. Somebody should have
come to stay with her; Katie Logan from the manse, perhaps. Why did not
some one think of it before?”

“Whisht! and gang to your beds,” said Marget; “no fremd person, however
kindly, ever wins so far into the Mistress’s heart. If she had been
blessed with a daughter of her ain, it might have been different. Na,
Huntley, your mother wouldna put up with me. She’s no ane to have either
friend or servant tending on her sorrows. Some women would, but no’ the
Mistress; and I’m o’ the same mind mysel’. Gang to your beds, and get
your rest, like good bairns; the morn will be a new day.”

“Shut up the house and sleep; that’s all we can do,” said Cosmo; “but I
canna rest--and he’ll never be another night in this house. Oh, father,
father! I’ll keep the watch for your sake!”

“If he’s in this house, he’s here,” said Patrick, suddenly, to the great
amazement of his hearers, moved for once into a higher imagination than
any of them; “do you hear me Cosmo? if he’s out of heaven, he’s here;
he’s no’ on yon bed dead. It’s no’ _him_ that’s to be carried to
Dryburgh. Watching’s past and done, unless he watches us; he’s either in
heaven, or he’s here.”

“Eh, laddie! God bless you, that’s true!” cried Marget, moved into
sudden tears. There was not composure enough among them to add another
word; they went to their rooms silently, not to disturb their mother’s
solitude. But Huntley could not rest; he came softly down stairs again,
through the darkened house, to find Marget sitting by the fire which she
had just “gathered” to last all night, reading her last chapter in the
big Bible, and startled her by drawing the bolts softly aside and
stepping out into the open air.

“I must breathe,” the lad said with a voice full of broken sobs.

The night was like a night of heaven, if such a glory is, where all
glories are. The moon was more lavish in her full, mellow splendor, than
she had ever been before, to Huntley’s eyes; the sky seemed as light as
day, almost too luminous to show the stars, which were there shining
softly in myriads, though you could scarcely see them; and the water
flowed, and the trees rustled, with a perfection of still music,
exquisite, and silent, and beyond description, which Nature only knows
when she is alone. The youth turned back again with a sob which eased
his heart. Out of doors nothing but splendor, glory, a beatitude calm
and full as heaven; within, nothing but death and the presence of death,
heavy, like a pall, upon the house and all its inmates. He went back to
his rest, with the wonder of humanity in his heart; when, God help us,
should this terrible difference be over? when should the dutiful
creation, expanding thus, while the rebel sleeps, receive once more its
fullest note of harmony, its better Eden, the race for whom sin and
sorrow has ended for evermore?




CHAPTER VI.


The day of the funeral rose with a merciful cloud over its brightness--a
sorrowful bustle was in the house of Norlaw; some of the attendants of
the burial train were to return to dine, as the custom was, and Marget
and Jenny were fully employed in the kitchen, with the assistance of the
mother of the latter, who was a widow herself, full of sorrowful
experience, and liked, as is not unusual in her class, to assist in the
melancholy labors of such an “occasion.” The east room was open for the
reception of the funeral guests, and on the table were set out decanters
of wine, and liberal plates of a delicate cake which used to bear the
dismal title of funeral biscuit in Scotland. The widow, who put on for
the first time to-day, the dress which henceforward she should wear all
her life, kept her own apartment, where the wife of the principal farmer
near, and Catharine Logan, the minister’s daughter, had joined her; for
though she would much rather have been left alone, use and precedent
were strong upon the Mistress, and she would not willingly have broken
through any of the formal and unalterable customs of the country-side.
The guests gathered gradually about the melancholy house; it was to be
“a great funeral.” As horseman after horseman arrived, the women in the
kitchen looked out from the corner of their closed shutters, with
mournful pride and satisfaction; every household of any standing in the
district came out to show “respect” to Norlaw--and even the widow in her
darkened room felt a certain pleasure in the sounds which came softened
to her ear, the horses’ hoofs, the clash of stirrup and bridle, and the
murmur of open-air voices, which even the “occasion” could not subdue
beyond a certain measure.

The lads were all assembled in the east room to receive their guests,
and with them, the earliest arrival of all, was the minister, lending
his kindly support and aid to Huntley, in this earliest and saddest
exercise of his new duties as head of the house. One good thing was,
that the visitors did not feel themselves called upon to overwhelm the
fatherless youth with condolences. A hearty grasp of rough hands; a
subdued word of friendship and encouragement, as one by one, or in
little clusters, those great rustic figures, all in solemn mourning,
collected in the room, were all that “the family” were called upon to
undergo.

The hum of conversation which immediately began, subdued in tone and
grave in expression, but still conversation such as rural neighbors use,
interspersed with inquiries and shakes of the head, as to how this
household was “left,” was a relief to the immediate mourners, though
perhaps it was not much in accordance with the sentiment of the time. It
was etiquette that the wine and cake should be served to all present,
and when all the guests were assembled, the minister rose, and called
them to prayer. They stood in strange groups, those stalwart, ruddy
southland men, about the table--one covering his eyes with his hand, one
standing erect, with his head bowed, some leaning against the wall, or
over the chairs. Perhaps eyes unaccustomed to such a scene might have
thought there was little reverence in the fashion of this funeral
service; but there was at least perfect silence, through which the grave
voice of the minister rose steadily, yet not without a falter of
personal emotion. It was not the solemn impersonal words which other
churches say over every man whom death makes sacred. It was an
individual voice, asking comfort for the living, thanking God for the
dead--and when that was done the ceremonial was so far over, and Norlaw
had only now to be carried to his grave.

All the preparations were thus far accomplished. The three brothers and
Dr. Logan had taken their place in the mourning coach; some distant
relatives had taken possession of another; and the bulk of the guests
had mounted and were forming into a procession behind. Every thing had
progressed thus far, when some sudden obstruction became visible to the
horsemen without. The funeral attendants closed round the hearse, the
horses were seized by strangers, and their forward motion checked;
already the farmers behind, leaping from their horses, crowded on to
ascertain the cause of the detention; but the very fact of it was not
immediately visible to the youths who were most interested. When the
sudden contention of voices startled Huntley, the lad gazed out of the
window for a moment in the wild resentment of grief, and then dashing
open the door, sprang into the midst of the crowd; a man who was not in
mourning, and held a baton in his hand, stood firm and resolute, with
his hand upon the door of the hearse; other men conspicuous among the
funeral guests, in their every-day dress, kept close by him, supporting
their superior. The guides of the funeral equipage were already in high
altercation with the intruders, yet, even at their loudest, were visibly
afraid of them.

“Take out the horses, Grierson--do your duty!” shouted the leader at the
hearse door; “stand back, ye blockheads, in the name of the law! I’m
here to do my orders; stand back, or it’ll be waur for ye a’--ha! wha’s
here?”

It was Huntley, whose firm young grasp was on the sturdy shoulder of the
speaker.

“Leave the door, or I’ll fell you!” cried the lad, in breathless
passion, shaking with his clutch of fury the strong thick-set frame
which had double his strength; “what do you want here?--how do you dare
to stop the funeral? take off your hand off the door, or I’ll fell you
to the ground!”

“Whisht, lad, whisht--it’s a sheriff’s officer; speak him canny and
he’ll hear reason,” cried one of the farmers, hastily laying a detaining
grasp on Huntley’s arm. The intruder stood his ground firmly. He took
his hand from the door, not in obedience to the threat, but to the grief
which burned in the youth’s eyes.

“My lad, it’s little pleasure to me,” he said, in a voice which was not
without respect, “but I must do my duty. Felling me’s no’ easy, but
felling the law is harder still. Make him stand aside, any of you that’s
his friend, and has sense to ken; there’s no mortal good in resisting;
this funeral can not gang on this day.”

“Let go--stand back; speak to _me_,” said Huntley, throwing off the
grasp of his friend, and turning to his opponent a face in which bitter
shame and distress began to take the place of passion; “stand aside,
every man--what right have _you_ to stop us burying our dead? I’m his
son; come here and tell me.”

“I am very sorry for you, my lad, but I can not help it,” said the
officer; “I’m bound to arrest the body of Patrick Livingstone, of
Norlaw. It may be a cruel thing, but I must do my duty. I’m Alexander
Elliot, sheriff’s officer at Melrose; I want to make no disturbance more
than can be helped. Take my advice. Take in the coffin to the house and
bid the neighbors back for another day. And, in the meantime, look up
your friends and settle your scores with Melmar. It’s the best you can
do.”

“Elliot,” said Dr. Logan, over his shoulder, “do you call this law, to
arrest the dead? He’s far beyond debt and trouble now. For shame!--leave
the living to meet their troubles, but let them bury their dead.”

“And so I would, minister, if it was me,” said Elliot, twirling his
baton in his hand, and looking down with momentary shame and confusion;
“but I’ve as little to do with the business as you have,” he added,
hurriedly. “I give you my advice for the best, but I must do my duty.
Grierson, look to thae youngsters--dang them a’--do ye ca’ that mair
seemly? it’s waur than me!”

Cosmo Livingstone, wild with a boy’s passion, and stupefied with grief,
had sprung up to the driving-seat of the hearse while this discussion
proceeded; and lashing the half-loosed horses, had urged them forward
with a violent and unseemly speed, which threw down on either side the
men who were at their heads, and dispersed the crowd in momentary alarm.
The frightened animals dashed forward wildly for a few steps, but
speedily brought up in their unaccustomed career by the shouts and
pursuit of the attendants, carried the melancholy vehicle down the <DW72>
and paused, snorting, at the edge of the stream, through which, the boy,
half mad with excitement, would have driven them. Perhaps the wild
gallop of the hearse, though only for so short a distance, horrified the
bystanders more than the real interruption. One of the funeral guests
seized Cosmo in his strong arms, and lifted him down like a child; the
others led the panting horses back at the reverential pace which became
the solemn burden they were bearing; and after that outbreak of passion,
the question was settled without further discussion. Patrick
Livingstone, his eyes swollen and heavy with burning tears, which he
could not shed, led the way, while the bearers once more carried to his
vacant room all that remained of Norlaw.

The mass of the funeral guests paused only long enough to maintain some
degree of quietness and decency; they dispersed with natural good
feeling, without aggravating the unfortunate family with condolence or
observation. Huntley, with the minister and the principal farmer of the
district, Mr. Blackadder, of Tyneside, who happened to be also an old
and steady friend of their father, stood at a little distance with the
officer, investigating the detainer which kept the dead out of his
grave; the melancholy empty hearse and dismal coaches crept off slowly
along the high road; and Cosmo, trembling in every limb with the
violence of his excitement, stood speechless at the door, gazing after
them, falling, in the quick revulsion of his temperament, from unnatural
passion into utter and prostrate despondency. The poor boy scarcely knew
who it was that drew him into the house, and spoke those words of
comfort which relieved his overcharged heart by tears. It was pretty
Katie Logan, crying herself, and scarcely able to speak, who had been
sent down from the widow’s room, by Mrs. Blackadder, to find out what
the commotion was; and who, struck with horror and amazement, as at a
sacrilege, was terrified to go up again, to break the tender, proud
heart of Norlaw’s mourning wife, with such terrible news.

Presently the mournful little party came in to the east room, which
still stood as they had left it, with the funeral bread and wine upon
the table. Patrick came to join them immediately, and the two lads bent
their heads together over the paper: a thousand pounds, borrowed by a
hundred at a time from Mr. Huntley, of Melmar, over and above the
mortgages which that gentleman held on the better part of the lands of
Norlaw. The boys read it with a passion of indignation and shame in
their hearts; their father’s affairs, on his funeral day, publicly
“exposed” to all the countryside; their private distress and painful
prospects, and his unthrift and weakness made the talk of every gossip
in the country. Huntley and Patrick drew a hard breath, and clasped each
other’s hands with the grip of desperation. But Norlaw lay unburied on
his death-bed; they could not bury him till this money was paid; it was
an appalling sum to people in their class, already deeply impoverished,
and in the first tingle of this distressing blow, they saw no light
either on one side or the other, and could not tell what to do.

“But I can not understand,” said Dr. Logan, who was a man limited and
literal, although a most pious minister and the father of his people; “I
can not understand how law can sanction what even nature holds up her
hand against. The dead--man! how dare ye step in with your worldly
arrests and warrants, when the Lord has been before you? how dare ye put
your bit baton across the grave, where a righteous man should have been
laid this day?”

“I have to do my duty,” said the immovable Elliot, “how daur ye, is
naething to me. I must do according to my instructions--and ye ken,
doctor, it’s but a man’s body can be apprehended ony time. Neither you
nor me can lay grips on his soul.”

“Hush, mocker!” cried the distressed clergyman; “but what is to be done?
Mr. Blackadder, these bairns can not get this money but with time and
toil. If that will do any good, I’ll go immediately to Me’mar myself.”

“Never,” cried Huntley; “never--any thing but that. I’ll sell myself for
a slave before I’ll take a favor from my father’s enemy.”

“It’s in Whitelaw’s hands, the writer in Melrose. I’ll ride down there
and ask about it,” said Blackadder; “whisht, Huntley! the minister’s
presence should learn you better--and every honest man can but pity and
scorn ane that makes war with the dead; I’ll ride round to Whitelaw. My
wife’s a sensible woman--she’ll break it softly to your mother--and see
you do nothing to make it worse. I suppose, Elliot, when I come back
I’ll find you here.”

“Ay, sir, I’m safe enough,” said the officer significantly, as
“Tyneside” rose to leave the room. Huntley went with him silently to the
stable, where his horse stood still saddled.

“I see what’s in your eye,” said Blackadder, in a whisper; “take heart
and do it; trust not a man more than is needful, and dinna be violent.
I’ll be back before dark, but I may not chance to speak to you again. Do
what’s in your heart.”

Huntley wrung the friendly hand held out to him, and went in without a
word. His old restless activity seemed to have returned to him, and
there was a kindling fire in his hazel eyes which meant some purpose.

Good Dr. Logan took the lad’s hands, and poured comfort and kindness
into his ears; but Huntley could scarcely pause to listen. It was not
strange--and it seemed almost hard to bid the youth have patience when
the vulgar law--stubborn and immovable--the law of money and
merchandise, kept joint possession with death of this melancholy house.




CHAPTER VII.


Huntley could not see his mother after this outrage became known to her.
The widow resented it with all a woman’s horror and passion, and with
all the shame of a Scottish matron, jealous, above all things, of
privacy and “respect.” Pretty Katie Logan sat at her feet crying in
inarticulate and unreasoning sympathy, which was better for the Mistress
than all the wisdom and consolation with which good Mrs. Blackadder
endeavored to support her. In the kitchen, Jenny and her mother cried
too, the latter telling doleful stories of similar circumstances which
she had known; but Marget went about with a burning cheek, watching “the
laddies” with a jealous tenderness, which no one but their mother could
have surpassed, eager to read their looks and anticipate their meaning.
It was a sultry, oppressive day, hot and cloudy, threatening a thunder
storm; and it is impossible to describe the still heavier oppression of
distress and excitement in this closed-up and gloomy house. When Marget
went out to the byre, late in the afternoon, several hours after these
occurrences, Huntley came to her secretly by a back way. What he said
roused the spirit of a hero in Marget’s frame. She put aside her pail on
the instant, smoothed down her new black gown over her petticoat, and
threw a shawl across her head.

“This moment, laddie--this instant--ye may trust me!” cried Marget, with
a sob; and before Huntley, passing round behind the offices, came in
sight of the high road, his messenger had already disappeared on the way
to Kirkbride.

Then Huntley drew his cap over his eyes, threw round him a gray
shepherd’s plaid, as a partial disguise, and set out in the opposite
direction. Before he reached his journey’s end, the sweeping deluge of a
thunder storm came down upon those uplands, in white sheets of falling
water. The lad did not pause to take shelter, scarcely to take breath,
but pushed on till he reached some scattered cottages, where the men
were just returning from their day’s work. At that time the rain and the
western sun, through the thickness of the thunder cloud, made a
gorgeous, lurid, unearthly glow, like what it might make through the
smoke of a great battle. Huntley called one of the men to him into a
little hollow below the hamlet. He was one of the servants of Norlaw, as
were most of these cottagers. The young master told his tale with little
loss of words, and met with the hearty and ready assent of his horrified
listener.

“I’ll no’ fail ye, Maister Huntley; neither will the Laidlaws. I’ll
bring them up by the darkening; ye may reckon upon them and me,” said
the laborer; “and what use burdening yoursel’ with mair, unless it were
to show respect. There’s enow, with ane of you lads to take turns, and
us three.”

“Not at the darkening--at midnight, Willie; or at earliest at eleven,
when it’s quite dark,” said Huntley.

“At eleven! mid nicht! I’m no heeding; but what will we say to the
wives?” said Willie, scratching his head in momentary dismay.

“Say--but not till you leave them--that you’re coming to serve Norlaw in
extremity,” said Huntley; “and to make my brothers and me debtors to
your kindness forever.”

“Whisht about that,” said Willie Noble; “mony a guid turn’s come to us
out of Norlaw;--and Peggie’s nae like the maist of women--she’ll hear
reason. If we can aince win owre Tweed, we’re safe, Maister Huntley; but
it’s a weary long way to there. What would you say to a guid horse and a
light cart? there’s few folk about the roads at night.”

Huntley shrunk with involuntary horror from the details even of his own
arrangement.

“I’ll take care for that,” he said, hurriedly; “but we could not take a
carriage over Tweed, and that is why I ask this help from you.”

“And kindly welcome; I wish to heaven it had been a blyther errand for
your sake,” said the man, heartily; “but we maun take what God sends;
and wha’s to keep the officer quiet, for that’s the chief of the haill
plan?”

“I’ve to think of that yet,” said Huntley, turning his face towards home
with a heavy sigh.

“I’d bind him neck and heels, and put him in Tyne to cool himsel’!” said
Willie, with a fervent effusion of indignation. Huntley only bade him
remember the hour, shook his hard hand, and hurried away.

It was a painful, troubled, unhappy evening, full of the excitement of a
conspiracy. When Huntley and Patrick communicated with each other it was
impossible to say, for they never seemed to meet alone, and Patrick had
taken upon himself the hard duty of keeping Elliot company.

The minister and his daughter departed sadly in the twilight, knowing no
comfort for the family they left. And Mr. Blackadder returned gloomily
from his visit to the attorney, bringing the news that he had no
authority to stop proceedings till he consulted with his principal,
after which, in good time, and with a look and grasp of Huntley’s hand,
which were full of meaning, the good farmer, too, took his wife away.

Then came the real struggle. The officer kept his watch in the
dining-room, to which he had shifted from some precautionary notion, and
sat there in the great chintz easy-chair, which the hearts of the lads
burned to see him occupy, perfectly content to talk to Patie, and to
consume soberly a very large measure of toddy, the materials for which
stood on the table the whole evening. Patie discharged his painful
office like a hero. He sat by the other side of the table, listening to
the man’s stories, refusing to meet Huntley’s eye when by chance he
entered the room, and taking no note of the reproachful, indignant
glances of Cosmo, who still knew nothing of their plans, and could not
keep his patience when he saw his brother entertaining this coarse
intruder in their sorrowful affairs.

Huntley, meanwhile, moved about stealthily, making all the arrangements.
It was a considerable discouragement to find that the officer had made
up his mind to spend the night in the dining-room, where Marget, with a
swell and excitement in her homely form, which, fortunately, Elliot’s
eyes were not sufficiently enlightened to see, prepared the hair-cloth
sofa for his night’s repose. He was sober, in spite of the toddy, but it
seemed more than mortal powers could bear, keeping awake.

It was midnight; and Huntley knew by Marget’s face that his assistants
were in attendance, but still they scarcely ventured to say to each
other that every thing was ready for their melancholy office.

Midnight, and the house was still. Yet such a perturbed and miserable
stillness, tingling with apprehension and watchfulness! The widow had
left her sorrowful retirement up-stairs; she stood outside on the
gallery in the darkness, with her hands clasped close together, keeping
down all natural pangs in this unnatural hardship. Marget, who was
strong and resolute, stood watching breathless at the closed door of the
dining-room, with a great plaid in her hands, which nobody understood
the occasion for. No one else was to be seen, save a train of four black
figures moving noiselessly up the stairs. At every step these midnight
emissaries took, Marget held her breath harder, and the Mistress clasped
her hand upon her heart with an agonizing idea that its throbs must be
heard throughout the house. A single faint ray of light directed their
way to the room where the dead lay; all beside was in the deepest
darkness of a stormy night--and once more with a merciful noise
pattering loud upon the trees without, came down the deluge of the
thunder storm.

It was at this moment that Cosmo, sitting in his own room, trying to
compose his heart with a chapter in his Bible, saw, for he could not
hear, his door open, and Huntley’s face, pale with agitation, look in.

“Come!” said the elder brother, who was almost speechless with strong
excitement.

“Where?” cried the amazed boy.

Huntley held up his hand to bar speaking.

“To bury my father,” he answered, with a voice which, deep in solemn
meaning, seemed, somehow, to be without common sound, and rather to
convey itself to the mind, than to speak to the ear.

Without a word, Cosmo rose and followed. His brother held him fast upon
the dark gallery, in a speechless grip of intense emotion. Cosmo could
scarcely restrain the natural cry of terror, the natural sob out of his
boy’s heart.

It went down solemnly and noiselessly, down the muffled stair, that
something, dark and heavy, which the noiseless figures carried. At the
foot of the stairs, Patie, his own pale face the only thing there on
which the light fell fully, held with a steady, patient determination,
and without a tremble, the little rush light, hid in a lantern, which
guided their descent, and in the darkness above stood the Mistress, like
a figure in a dream, with her hands pressed on her heart.

Then a blast of colder air, a louder sound of the thunder-rain. The two
brothers stole down stairs, Huntley still holding fast by Cosmo’s
arm--and in another moment the whole procession stood safe and free, in
the garden, under the blast of big rain and the mighty masses of cloud.
So far, all was safe; and thus, under shelter of the midnight, set forth
from his sad house, the funeral of Norlaw.




CHAPTER VIII.


That night was a night of storms. When the heavy rain ceased, peals of
thunder shook the house, and vivid lightning flashed through the
darkness. When the funeral procession was safe, Marget fastened her
plaid across the door of the dining-room as a precaution, and went up
stairs to attend to the Mistress. She found the widow kneeling down,
where she had stood, leaning her hands and her face against the railings
of the gallery, not fainting, perfectly conscious, yet in a condition in
comparison with which a swoon would have been happiness. Her hands clung
tight and rigid about the rails. She had sunk upon her knees from pure
exhaustion, and kept that position for the same reason. Yet she was
terribly conscious of the approach of Marget, afraid of her in the
darkness, as if she were an enemy. The faithful servant managed to rouse
her after great pains, and at last was able to lead her down stairs, to
the gathered fire in the kitchen, where the two sat in the darkness,
with one red spark of fire preserving some appearance of life in the
apartment, listening to the blast of rain against the window, watching
the flashes of wild light which blazed through the three round holes in
the kitchen shutter, and the thunder which echoed far among the distant
hills. Sitting together without a word, listening with feverish anxiety
to every sound, and fearing every moment that the storm must wake their
undesired inmate, who could not stir in the dining-room without their
hearing. It was thus the solemn night passed, lingering and terrible,
over the heads of the women who remained at home.

And through that wild summer midnight--through the heavy roads, where
their feet sank at every step, and the fluttering ghostly branches on
the hedgerows, which caught the rude pall, a large black shawl, which
had been thrown over the coffin--the melancholy clandestine procession
made its way. When they had gone about half a mile, they were met by the
old post-chaise from the Norlaw Arms, at Kirkbride, which had been
waiting there for them. In it, relieving each other, the little party
proceeded onward. At length they came to Tweed, to the pebbly beach,
where the ferryman’s boat lay fastened by its iron ring and hempen
cable. But for the fortunate chance of finding it here, Huntley, who was
unrivaled in all athletic exercises, had looked for nothing better than
swimming across the river, to fetch the boat from the other side.
Rapidly, yet reverently, their solemn burden was laid in the boat; two
of the men, by this time, had ventured to light torches, which they had
brought with them, wrapt in a plaid. The rain had ceased. The broad
breast of Tweed “grit” with those floods, and overflowing the pebbles
for a few yards before they reached the real margin of the stream,
flowed rapidly and strongly, with a dark, swift current, marked with
foam, which it required no small effort to strike steadily across. The
dark trees, glistening with big drops of rain--the unseen depths on
either side, only perceptible to their senses by the cold full breath of
wind which blew over them--the sound of water running fierce in an
expanded tide; and as they set out upon the river, the surrounding gleam
of water shining under their torches, and the strong swell of downward
motion, against which they had to struggle, composed altogether a scene
which no one there soon forgot. The boat had to return a second time, to
convey all its passengers; and then once more, with the solemn tramp of
a procession, the little party went on in the darkness to the grave.

And then the night calmed, and a wild, frightened moon looked out of the
clouds into solemn Dryburgh, in the midst of her old monkish orchards.
Through the great grass-grown roofless nave, the white light fell in a
sudden calm, pallid and silent as death itself, yet looking on like an
amazed spectator of the scene.

The open grave stood ready as it had been prepared this morning--a dark,
yawning breach in the wet grass, its edge all defined and glistening in
the moonlight. It was in one of the small side chapels, overgrown with
grass and ivy, which are just distinguishable from the main mass of the
ruin; here the torches blazed and the dark figures grouped together, and
in a solemn and mysterious silence these solitary remains of the old
house of God looked on at the funeral. The storm was over; the thunder
clouds rolled away to the north; the face of the heavens cleared; the
moon grew brighter. High against the sky stood out the Catherine window
in its frame of ivy, the solitary shafts and walls from which the trees
waved--and in a solemn gloom, broken by flashes of light which magnified
the shadow, lay those morsels of the ancient building which still
retained a cover. The wind rustled through the trees, shaking down great
drops of moisture, which fell with a startling coldness upon the faces
of the mourners, some of whom began to feel the thrill of superstitious
awe. It was the only sound, save that of the subdued footsteps round the
grave, and the last heavy, dreadful bustle of human exertion, letting
down the silent inhabitant into his last resting-place, which sounded
over the burial of Norlaw.

And now, at last, it was all over; the terrible excitement, the dismal,
long, self-restraint, the unnatural force of human resentment and
defiance which had mingled with the grief of these three lads. At last
he was in his grave, solemnly and safely; at last he was secure where no
man could insult what remained of him, or profane his dwelling-place. As
the moon shone on the leveled soil, Cosmo cried aloud in a boyish agony
of nature, and fell upon the wet grass beside the grave. The cry rang
through all the solemn echoes of the place. Some startled birds flew out
of the ivied crevices, and made wild, bewildered circles of fright among
the walls. A pang of sudden terror fell upon the rustic attendants; the
torch bearers let their lights fall, and the chief among them hurriedly
entreated Huntley to linger no longer.

“A’s done!” said Willie Noble, lifting his bonnet reverently from his
head. “Farewell to a good master that I humbly hope’s in heaven lang
afore now. We can do him nae further good, and the lads are timid of the
place. Maister Huntley, may I give them the word to turn hame?”

So they turned home; the three brothers, last and lingering, turned back
to life and their troubles--all the weary weight of toil which _he_ had
left on their shoulders, for whom this solemn midnight expedition was
their last personal service. The three came together, hand in hand,
saying never a word--their hearts “grit” like Tweed, and flowing full
with unspeakable emotions--and passed softly under the old fruit trees,
which shed heavy dew upon their heads, and through the wet paths which
shone in lines of silver under the moon; Tweed, lying full in a sudden
revelation of moonlight, one bank falling off into soft shadows of
trees, the other guarding with a ledge of rock some fair boundary of
possession, and the bubbles of foam gleaming bright upon the rapid
current, was not more unlike the invisible gloomy river over which they
passed an hour ago, than was their own coming and going. The strain was
out of their young spirits, the fire of excitement had consumed itself,
and Norlaw’s sons, like lads as they were, were melting, each one
silently and secretly, into the mood of tears and loving recollections,
the very tenderness of grief.

And when Marget took down the shutter from the window, to see by the
early morning light how this night of watching had at last taken the
bloom from the Mistress’ face, three other faces, white with the wear of
extreme emotion, but tender as the morning faces of children, appeared
to her coming slowly and calmly, and with weariness, along the green
bank before the house. They had not spoken all the way. They were worn
out with passion and sorrow, and want of rest--even with want of
food--for these days had been terrible days for boys of their age to
struggle through. Marget could not restrain a cry of mingled alarm and
triumph. That, and the sound of the bolts withdrawn from the door, did
what the thunder storm could not do. It broke the slumbers of the
sheriff’s officer, who had slept till now. He ran to the window hastily,
and drew aside the curtain--he saw the face of the widow at the
kitchen-door; the lads, travel-soiled and weary, with their wet clothes
and exhausted faces, coming up to meet her; and the slumbrous sentinel
rushed out of the room to entangle himself in the folds of Marget’s
plaid, and overwhelm her with angry questions; for she came to his call
instantly, with a pretense of care and solicitude exasperating enough
under any circumstances.

“Where have the lads been?” cried Elliot, throwing down at her, torn
through the middle, the plaid which she had hung across his door.

“They’ve been at their father’s funeral,” said Marget, solemnly, “puir
bairns!--through the storm and the midnicht, to Dryburgh, to the family
grave.”

The man turned into the room again in a pretended passion--but,
sheriff’s officer though he was, perhaps he was not sorry for once in
his life to find himself foiled.




CHAPTER IX.


“Put on your bonnet, Katie, and come with me--the like of you should be
able to be some comfort to that poor widow at Norlaw,” said Dr. Logan to
his daughter, as they stood together in the manse garden, after their
early breakfast.

After the storm, it was a lovely summer morning, tender, dewy,
refreshed, full of the songs of birds and odors of flowers.

Katie Logan was only eighteen, but felt herself a great deal older. She
was the eldest child of a late marriage, and had been mother and
mistress in the manse for four long years. The minister, as is the fate
of ministers, had waited long for this modest preferment, and many a
heavy thought it gave him to see his children young and motherless, and
to remember that he himself was reaching near the limit of human life;
but Katie was her father’s comfort in this trouble, as in most others;
and it seemed so natural to see her in full care and management of her
four little brothers and sisters, that the chances of Katie having a
life of her own before her, independent of the manse, seldom troubled
the thoughts of her father.

Katie did not look a day older than she was; but she had that
indescribable elder-sister bearing, that pretty shade of thoughtfulness
upon her frank face, which an early responsibility throws into the looks
of very children. Even a young wife, in all the importance of
independent sway, must have looked but a novice in presence of the
minister’s daughter, who had to be mistress and mother at fourteen, and
had kept the manse cosy and in order, regulated the economies, darned
the stockings, and even cut out the little frocks and pinafores from
that time until now. Katie knew more about measles and hooping-cough
than many a mother, and was skilled how to take a cold “in time,” and
check an incipient fever. The minister thought no one else, save his
dead wife, could have managed the three hundred pounds of the manse
income, so as to leave a comfortable sum over every year, to be laid by
for “the bairns,” and comforted himself with the thought that when he
himself was “called away,” little Johnnie and Charlie, Colin and Isabel,
would still have Katie, the mother-sister, who already had been their
guardian so long.

“I’m ready, papa!” said Katie; “but Mrs. Livingstone does not care about
a stranger’s sympathy. It’s no’ like one belonging to herself. She may
think it very kind and be pleased with it, in a way; but it still feels
like an interference at the bottom of her heart.”

“She’s a peculiar woman,” said Dr. Logan, “but you are not to be called
a stranger, my dear: and it’s no small pleasure to me, Katie, to think
that there are few houses in the parish where you are not just as
welcome as myself.”

Katie made no reply to this. She did not think it would much mend the
matter with the Mistress to be reckoned as one of the houses in the
parish. So she tied on her bonnet quietly, and took her father’s arm,
and turned down the brae toward Norlaw; for this little woman had the
admirable quality of knowing, not only how to speak with great good
sense, but how to refrain.

“I’m truly concerned about this family,” said Dr. Logan; “indeed, I may
say, I’m very much perplexed in my mind how to do. A state of things
like this can not be tolerated in a Christian country, Katie. The dead
denied decent burial! It’s horrible to think of; so I see no better for
it, my dear, than to take a quiet ride to Melmar, without letting on to
any body, and seeing for myself what’s to be done with _him_.”

“I don’t like Mr. Huntley, papa,” said Katie, decidedly.

“That may be, my dear; but still, I suppose he’s just like other folk,
looking after his own interest, without meaning any particular harm to
any body, unless they come in his way. Oh, human nature!” said the
minister; “the most of us are just like that, Katie, though we seldom
can see it; but there can be little doubt that Melmar was greatly
incensed against poor Norlaw, who was nobody’s enemy but his own.”

“And his sons!” said Katie, hastily. “Poor boys! I wonder what they’ll
do?” This was one peculiarity of her elder-sisterly position which Katie
had not escaped. She thought it quite natural and proper to speak of
Patie and Huntley Livingstone, one of whom was about her own age, and
one considerably her senior, as the “boys,” and to take a maternal
interest in them; even Dr. Logan, excellent man, did not see any thing
to smile at in this. He answered with the most perfect seriousness,
echoing her words:--

“Poor boys! We’re short-sighted mortals, Katie; but there’s no
telling--it might be all the better for them that they’re left to
themselves, and are no more subject to poor Norlaw. But about Melmar? I
think, my dear, I might as well ride over there to-day.”

“Wait till we’ve seen Mrs. Livingstone, papa,” said the prudent Katie.
“Do you see that man on the road--who is it? He’s in an awful hurry. I
think I’ve seen him before.”

“Robert Mushet, from the hill; he’s always in a hurry, like most idle
people,” said the minister.

“No; it’s not Robbie, papa; he’s as like the officer as he can look,”
said Katie, straining her eyes over the high bank which lay between his
path and the high-road.

“Whisht, my dear--the officer? Do you mean the exciseman, Katie? It
might very well be him, without making any difference to us.”

“I’m sure it’s him--the man that came to Norlaw yesterday!” cried Katie,
triumphantly, hastening the good doctor along the by-road at a pace to
which he was not accustomed. “Something’s happened! Oh papa, be quick
and let us on.”

“Canny, my dear, canny!” said Dr. Logan. “I fear you must be mistaken,
Katie; but if you’re right, I’m very glad to think that Melmar must have
seen the error of his way.”

Katie was very indifferent about Melmar; but she pressed on eagerly,
full of interest to know what had happened at Norlaw. When they came in
sight of the house, it was evident by its changed aspect that things
were altered there. The windows were open, the blinds drawn up, the
sunshine once more entering freely as of old. The minister went forward
with a mind perturbed; he did not at all comprehend what this could
mean.

The door was opened to them by Marget, who took them into the east room
with a certain solemn importance, and who wore her new mourning and her
afternoon cap with black ribbons, in preparation for visitors.

“I’ve got them a’ persuaded to take a rest--a’ but Huntley,” said
Marget; “for yesterday and last night were enough to kill baith the
laddies and their mother--no’ a morsel o’ meat within their lips, nor a
wink of sleep to their e’en.”

“You alarm me, Marget; what does all this mean?” cried Dr. Logan, waving
his hand towards the open windows.

Katie, more eager and more quick-witted, watched the motion of Marget’s
lips, yet found out the truth before she spoke.

“The maister’s funeral,” said Marget, with a solemn triumph, though her
voice broke, in spite of herself, in natural sorrow, “took place
yestreen, at midnicht, sir, as there was nae other way for it, in the
orderings of Providence. Maister Huntley arranged it so.”

“Oh, poor boys!” cried Katie Logan, and she threw herself down on a
chair, and cried heartily in sympathy, and grief, and joy. Nothing else
was possible; the scene, the circumstances, the cause, were not to be
spoken of. There was no way but that way, of showing how this young
heart at least felt with the strained hearts of the family of Norlaw.

“Ye may say sae, Miss Katie,” said Marget, crying too in little
outbursts, from which she recovered to wipe her eyes and curtsey
apologetically to the minister. “After a’ they gaed through yesterday,
to start in the storm and the dark, and lay him in his grave by
torchlight in the dead of the night--three laddies, that I mind, just
like yesterday, bits of bairns about the house--it’s enough to break
ane’s heart!”

“I am very much startled,” said Dr. Logan, pacing slowly up and down the
room; “it was a very out-of-the-way proceeding. Dear me!--at
midnight--by torchlight!--Poor Norlaw! But still I can not say I blame
them--I can not but acknowledge I’m very well pleased it’s over. Dear
me! who could have thought it, without asking my advice or any
body’s,--these boys! but I suppose, Katie, my dear, if they are all
resting, we may as well think of turning back, unless Marget thinks Mrs.
Livingstone would like to have you beside her for the rest of the day.”

“No, papa; she would like best to be by herself--and so would I, if it
was me,” said Katie, promptly.

“Eh, Miss Katie! the like of you for understanding--and you so young!”
cried Marget, with real admiration; “but the minister canna gang away
till he’s seen young Norlaw.”

“Who?” cried Dr. Logan, in amazement.

“My young master, sir, the present Norlaw,” said Marget, with a curtsey
which was not without defiance.

The good minister shook his head.

“Poor laddie!” said Doctor Logan, “I wish him many better things than
his inheritance; but I would gladly see Huntley. If you are sure he’s up
and able to see us, tell him I’m here.”

“I’ll tell him _wha’s_ here,” said Marget, under her breath, as she went
softly away; “eh, my puir bairn! I’d gie my little finger cheerful for
the twa of them, to see them draw together; and mair unlikely things
have come to pass. Guid forgive me for thinking of the like in a house
of death!”

Yet, unfortunately, it was hard to avoid thinking of such profane
possibilities in the presence of two young people like Huntley and
Katie--especially for a woman; not a few people in the parish, of
speculative minds, who could see a long way before them, had already
lightly linked their names together as country gossips use, and perhaps
Huntley half understood what was the meaning of the slight but
significant emphasis, with which Marget intimated that “the minister and
_Miss Katie_” were waiting to see him.

The youth went with great readiness. They were, at least, of all others,
the friends whom Huntley was the least reluctant to confide in, and
whose kindness he appreciated best.

And when pretty Katie Logan sprang forward, still half crying, and with
bright tears hanging upon her eye-lashes, to take her old playmate’s
hand, almost tenderly, in her great concern and sympathy for him, the
lad’s heart warmed, he could scarcely tell how. He felt involuntarily,
almost unwillingly, as if this salutation and regard all to himself was
a sudden little refuge of brighter life opened for him out of the
universal sorrow which was about his own house and way. The tears came
to Huntley’s eyes--but they were tears of relief, of ease and comfort to
his heart. He almost thought he could have liked, if Katie had been
alone, to sit down by her side, and tell her all that he had suffered,
all that he looked forward to. But the sight of the minister,
fortunately, composed Huntley. Dr. Logan, excellent man as he was, did
not seem so desirable a confidant.

“I don’t mean to blame you, my dear boy,” said the minister, earnestly;
“it was a shock to my feelings, I allow, but do not think of getting
blame from me, Huntley. I was shut up entirely in the matter, myself; I
did not see what to do; and I could not venture to say that it was not
the wisest thing, and the only plan to clear your way.”

There was a little pause, for Huntley either would not, or could not,
speak--and then Dr. Logan resumed:

“We came this morning, Katie and me, to see what use we could be; but
now the worst’s over, Huntley, I’m thinking we’ll just go our way back
again, and leave you to rest--for Katie thinks your mother will be best
pleased to be alone.”

“Do you think so?” said Huntley, looking eagerly into Katie’s face.

“Yes, unless I could be your real sister for a while, as long as Mrs.
Livingstone needed me,” said Katie, with a smile, “and I almost wish I
could--I am so good at it--to take care of you boys.”

“There is no fear of us now,” said Huntley. “The worst’s over, as the
minister says. We’ve had no time to think what we’re to do, Dr. Logan;
but I’ll come and tell you whenever we can see what’s before us.”

“I’ll be very glad, Huntley; but I’ll tell you what’s better than
telling me,” said Dr. Logan. “Katie has a cousin, a very clever writer
in Edinburgh--I knew there was something I wanted to tell you, and I had
very near forgotten--if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go in, it’s not
very far, and get him to manage the whole thing for you. Here’s the
address that Katie wrote down last night. Tell your mother about it,
Huntley, and that it’s my advice you should have a sound man in the law
to look after your concerns; and come down to the manse as soon as you
can, if it were only for a change; and you’ll give your mother our
regards, and we’ll bid you good-day.”

“And dinna think more than you should, or grieve more, Huntley--and come
and see us,” said Katie, offering him her hand again.

Huntley took it, half joyfully, half inclined to burst out into boyish
tears once more. He thought it would have been a comfort and refreshment
to have had her here, this wearied, melancholy day. But somehow, he did
not think with equal satisfaction of Katie’s cousin. It seemed to
Huntley he would almost rather employ any “writer” than this one, to
smooth out the raveled concerns of Norlaw.




CHAPTER X.


Common daylight, common life, the dead buried out of their sight, the
windows open, the servants coming to ask common questions about the
cattle and the land. Nothing changed, except that the father was no
longer visible among them--that Huntley sat at the foot of the table,
and the Mistress grew familiar with her widow’s cap. Oh, cruel life!
This was how it swallowed up all the solemnities of their grief.

And now it was the evening, and the eager youths could be restrained no
longer. Common custom had aroused even the Mistress out of her inaction,
sitting by the corner window, she had once more begun mechanically to
notice what went and came at the kitchen door--had been very angry with
the packman, who had seduced Jenny to admit him--and with Jenny for so
far forgetting the decorum due to “an afflicted house;” had even once
noticed, and been partially displeased by the black ribbons in Marget’s
cap, which it was extravagant to wear in the morning; and with
melancholy self-reproof had opened the work basket, which had been left
to gather dust for weeks past.

“I needna be idle _now_"--the Mistress said to herself, with a heavy
sigh; and Huntley and Patie perceived that it was no longer too early to
enter upon their own plans and views.

With this purpose, they came to her about sunset, when she had settled
herself after her old fashion to her evening’s work. She saw
instinctively what was coming, and, with natural feeling, shrunk for the
moment. She was a little impatient, too, her grief taking that form.

“Keep a distance, keep a distance, bairns!” cried the Mistress; “let me
have room to breathe in! and I’m sure if ye were but lassies, and could
have something in your hands to do, it would be a comfort to me. There’s
Jenny, the light-headed thing, taken her stocking to the door, as if
nothing was amiss in the house. Pity me!--but I’ll not be fashed with
_her_ long, that’s a comfort to think of. Laddies, laddies, can ye no
keep still? What are ye a’wanting with me?”

“Mother, it’s time to think what we’re to do; neither Patie nor me can
keep quiet, when we think of what’s before us,” said Huntley--“and
there’s little comfort in settling on any thing till we can speak of it
to you.”

The Mistress gave way at these words to a sudden little outbreak of
tears, which you might almost have supposed were tears of anger, and
which she wiped off hurriedly with an agitated hand. Then she proceeded
very rapidly with the work she had taken up, which was a dark gray
woolen stocking--a familiar work, which she could get on with almost
without looking at it. She did look at her knitting, however, intently,
bending her head over it, not venturing to look up at her children; and
thus it was that they found themselves permitted to proceed.

“Mother,” said Huntley, with a deep blush--“I’m a man, but I’ve learned
nothing to make my bread by. Because I’m the eldest, and should be of
most use, I’m the greatest burden. I understand about the land and the
cattle, and after a while I might manage a farm, but that’s slow work
and weary--and the first that should be done is to get rid of me.”

“Hold your peace!” cried the Mistress, with a break in her voice; “how
dare ye say the like of that to your mother? Are you not my eldest son,
the stay of the house? Wherefore do ye say this to me?”

“Because it’s true, mother,” said Huntley, firmly; “and though it’s true
I’m not discouraged. The worst is, I see nothing I can do near you, as I
might have done if I had been younger, and had time to spare to learn a
trade. Such as it is, I’m very well content with my trade, too; but what
could I do with it here? Get a place as a grieve, maybe, through
Tyneside’s help, and the minister’s, and be able to stock a small farm
by the time I was forty years old. But that would please neither you nor
me. Mother, you must send me away!”

The Mistress did not look up, did not move--went on steadily with her
rapid knitting--but she said:--

“Where?” with a sharp accent, like a cry.

“I’ve been thinking of that,” said Huntley, slowly; “If I went to
America, or Canada, or any such place, I would be like to stay. My
mind’s against staying; I want to come back--to keep home in my eye. So
I say Australia, mother.”

“America, Canada, Australia!--the laddie’s wild!” cried the Mistress.
“Do you mean to say ye’ll be an emigrant? a bairn of mine?”

Emigration was not then what it is now; it was the last resort--sadly
resisted, sadly yielded to--of the “broken man;” and Huntley’s mother
saw her son, in imagination, in a dreary den of a cabin, in a poor
little trading ship, with a bundle on the end of a stick, and despair in
his heart, when he spoke of going away.

“There’s more kinds of emigrants than one kind, mother,” said Patie.

“Ay,” said the Mistress, her imagination shifting, in spite of her, to a
dismal family scene, in which the poor wife had the baby tied on her
back in a shawl, and the children at her feet were crying with cold and
hunger, and the husband at her side looking desperate. “I’ve seen folk
on the road to America--ay, laddies, mony a time. I’m older than you
are. I ken what like they look; but pity me, did I ever think the like
of that would be evened to a bairn of mine!”

“Mother,” said Huntley, with a cheerfulness which he did not quite feel,
“an emigrant goes away to stay--I should not do that--I am going, if I
can, to make a fortune, and come home--and it’s not America; there are
towns _there_ already like our own, and a man, I suppose, has only a
greater chance of getting bread enough to eat. I could get bread enough
in our own country-side; but I mean to get more if I can--I mean to get
a sheep farm and grow rich, as everybody does out there.”

“Poor laddie! Do they sell sheep and lands out there to them that have
no siller?” said the Mistress. “If you canna stock a farm at hame, where
you’re kent and your name respected, Huntley Livingstone, how will you
do it there?”

“That’s just what I have to find out,” said Huntley, with spirit; “a
man may be clear he’s to do a thing, without seeing how at the moment.
With your consent, I’m going to Australia, mother; if there’s any thing
over, when all our affairs are settled, I’ll get my share--and as for
the sheep and the land, they’re in Providence; but I doubt them as
little as if they were on the lea before my eyes. I’m no’ a man out of a
town that knows nothing about it. I’m country bred and have been among
beasts all my days. Do you think I’m feared! Though I’ve little to start
with, mother, you’ll see me back rich enough to do credit to the name of
Norlaw!”

His mother shook her head.

“It’s easy to make a fortune on a summer night at hame, before a lad’s
twenty, or kens the world,” she said. “I’ve seen mony a stronger man
than you, Huntley, come hame baith penniless and hopeless--and the like
of such grand plans, they’re but trouble and sadness to me.”

Perhaps Huntley was discouraged by the words; at all events he made no
reply--and the mind of his mother gradually expanded. She looked up from
her knitting suddenly, with a rapid tender glance.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” said the Mistress; “there’s some will win and some
will fail in spite of the haill world. The Lord take the care of my
bairns! Who am I, that I should be able to guide you, three lads, coming
to be men? Huntley, you’re the auldest, and you’re strong. I canna say
stay at hame--I dinna see what to bid you do. You must take your ain
will, and I’ll no’ oppose.”

If Huntley thanked his mother at all it was in very few words, for the
politenesses were not cultivated among them, the feelings of this
Scottish family lying somewhat deep, and expressing themselves otherwise
than in common words; but the Mistress brushed her hand over her eyes
hurriedly, with something like a restrained sob, intermitting for a
single instant, and no longer, the rapid glitter of her “wires"--but you
would scarcely have supposed that the heart of the mother was moved thus
far, to hear the tone of her next words. She turned to her second son
without looking at him.

“And where are _you_ for, Patie Livingstone?” said the Mistress, with
almost a sarcastic sharpness. “It should be India, or the North Pole to
pleasure you.”

Patie was not emboldened by this address; it seemed, indeed, rather to
discomfit the lad; not as a reproach, but as showing a greater
expectation of his purposes than they warranted.

“You know what I aimed at long ago, mother,” he said, with hesitation.
“It may be that we can ill afford a ’prentice time now--but I’m no’
above working while I learn. I can scramble up as well as Huntley. I’ll
go either to Glasgow or to Liverpool, to one of the founderies there.”

“Folk dinna learn to be _civil_ engineers in founderies,” said the
Mistress; “they’re nothing better than smiths at the anvil. You wanted
to build a light-house, Patie, when ye were a little bairn--but you’ll
no’ learn there.”

“I’ll maybe learn better. There’s to be railroads soon, everywhere,”
said Patie, with a little glow upon his face. “I’ll do what I can--if
I’m only to be a smith, I’ll be a smith like a man, and learn my
business. The light-house was a fancy; but I may learn what’s as good,
and more profitable. There’s some railroads already, mother, and there’s
more beginning every day.”

“My poor bairn!” said the Mistress, for the first time bestowing a
glance of pity upon Patie--“if your fortune has to wait for its making
till folk gang riding over a’ the roads on steam horses, like what’s
written in the papers, I’ll never live to see it. There’s that man they
ca’ Stephenson, he’s made something or other that’s a great wonder; but,
laddie, you dinna think that roads like that can go far? They may have
them up about London--and truly you might live to make another, I’ll no’
say--but I would rather build a tower to keep ships from being wrecked
than make a road for folk to break their necks on, if it was me.”

“Folk that are born to break their necks will break them on any kind of
road,” said Patie, with great gravity; “but I’ve read about it all, and
I think a man only needs to know what he has to do, to thrive; and
besides, mother, there’s more need for engines than upon railroads. It’s
a business worth a man’s while.”

“Patie,” said the Mistress, solemnly, “I’ve given my consent to Huntley
to gang thousands of miles away over the sea; but if _you_ gang among
thae engines, that are merciless and senseless, and can tear a living
creature like a rag of claith--I’ve seen them, laddie, with my own e’en,
clanging and clinking like the evil place itself--I’ll think it’s Patie
that’s in the lion’s mouth, and no’ my eldest son.”

“Well, mother!” said Patie, sturdily--“if I were in the lion’s mouth,
and yet had room to keep clear, would you be feared for me?”

This appeal took the Mistress entirely without preparation. She brushed
her hands hastily over her eyes once more, and went on with her
knitting. Then a long, hard-drawn breath, which was not a sigh, came
from the mother’s breast; in the midst of her objections, her
determination not to be satisfied, a certain unaccountable pride in the
vigor, and strength, and resolution of her sons rose in the kindred
spirit of their mother. She was not “feared"--neither for one nor the
other of the bold youths by her side. Her own strong vitality went forth
with them, with an indescribable swell of exhilaration--yet she was
their mother, and a widow, and it wrung her heart to arrange quietly how
they were to leave her and their home.

“And me?” said Cosmo, coming to his mother’s side.

_He_ had no determination to announce--he came out of his thoughts, and
his musings, and his earnest listening, to lay that white, long hand of
his upon his mother’s arm. It was the touch which made the full cup run
over. The widow leaned her head suddenly upon her boy’s shoulder,
surprised into an outburst of tears and weakness, unusual and
overpowering--and the other lads came close to this group, touched to
the heart like their mother. They cried out among their tears that Cosmo
must not go away--that he was too young--too tender! What they had not
felt for themselves, they felt for him--there seemed something forlorn,
pathetic, miserable, in the very thought of this boy going forth to meet
the world and its troubles. This boy, the child of the house, the son
who was like his father, the tenderest spirit of them all!

Yet Cosmo, who had no plans, and who was only sixteen, was rather
indignant at this universal conclusion. He yielded at last, only because
the tears were still in his mother’s eyes, and because they were all
more persistent than he was--and sat down at a little distance, not
sullen, but as near so as was possible to him, his cheek glowing with a
suspicion that they thought him a child. But soon the conversation
passed to other matters, which Cosmo could not resist. They began to
speak of Melmar, their unprovoked enemy, and then the three lads looked
at each other, taking resolution from that telegraphic conference; and
Huntley, with the blood rising in his cheeks, for the first time asked
his mother, in the name of them all, for that tale which her husband, on
his death-bed, had deputed her to tell them, the story of the will which
was in the mid-chamber, and that Mary who was Mary of Melmar evermore in
the memory of Norlaw.

At the question the tears dried out of the Mistress’s eyes, an impatient
color came to her face--and it was so hard to elicit this story from her
aggrieved and unsympathetic mind, that it may be better for Mrs.
Livingstone, in the estimation of other people, if we tell what she told
in other words than hers.




CHAPTER XI.


Yet we do not see why we are called upon to defend Mrs. Livingstone, who
was very well able, under most circumstances, to take care of herself.
She did not by any means receive her sons’ inquiries with a good grace.
On the contrary, she evaded them hotly, with unmistakable dislike and
impatience.

“Mary of Me’mar! what is she to you?” said the Mistress. “Let bygones be
bygones, bairns--she’s been the fash of my life, one way and another.
Hold your peace, Cosmo Livingstone! Do you think I can tell this like a
story out of a book. There’s plenty gossips in the countryside could
tell you the ins and the outs of it better than me--”

“About the mid-chamber and the will, mother?” asked Patrick.

“Weel, maybe, no about that,” said the Mistress, slightly mollified; “if
that’s what ye want. This Mary Huntley, laddies, I ken very little about
her. She was away out of these parts before my time. I never doubted she
was light-headed, and liked to be admired and petted. She was Me’mar’s
only bairn; maybe that might be some excuse for her--for he was an auld
man and fond. But, kind as he was, she ran away from him to marry some
lad that naebody kent--and went off out of the country with her
ne’er-do-weel man, and has never been heard tell of from that time to
this--that’s a’ I ken about her.”

This was said so peremptorily and conclusively, setting aside at once
any further question, that even these lads, who were not particularly
skilled in the heart or its emotions, perceived by instinct, that their
mother knew a great deal more about her--more than any inducement in the
world could persuade her to tell.

“I’ve heard that Me’mar was hurt to the heart,” said the Mistress, “and
no much wonder. His bairn that he had thought nothing too good for! and
to think of her running off from _him_, a lone auld man, to be married
upon a stranger-lad without friends, that naebody kent any good o’, and
that turned out just as was to be expected. Oh, aye! it does grand to
make into a story--and the like of you, you think it all for love, and a
warm heart, and a’ the rest of it; but I think it’s but an ill heart
that would desert hame and friends, and an auld man above three-score,
for its ain will and pleasure. So Me’mar took it very sore to heart; he
would not have her name named to him for years. And the next living
creature in this world that he liked best, after his ungrateful
daughter, was--laddies, you’ll no’ be surprised--just him that’s gone
from us--that everybody likit weel--just Norlaw.”

There was a pause after this, the Mistress’s displeasure melting into a
sob of her permanent grief; and then the tale was resumed more gently,
more slowly, as if she had sinned against the dead by the warmth and
almost resentment of her first words.

“Me’mar lived to be an auld man,” said the Mistress. “He aye lived on
till Patie was about five years auld, and a’ our bairns born. He was
very good aye to me; mony’s the present he sent me, when I was a young
thing, and was more heeding for bonnie-dies, and took great notice of
Huntley, and was kind to the whole house. It was said through a’ the
country-side that ye were to be his heirs, and truly so you might have
been, but for one thing and anither; no’ that I’m heeding--you’ll be a’
the better for making your way in the world yourselves.”

“And the will, mother?” said Huntley, with a little eagerness.

“I’m coming to the will; have patience;” said the Mistress, who had not
a great deal herself, to tell the truth. “Bairns, it’s no’ time yet for
me to speak to you of your father; but he was aye a just man, with a
tender heart for the unfortunate--you ken that as well as me. He wouldna
take advantage of another man’s weakness, or another man’s ill-doing,
far less of a poor silly lassie, that, maybe, didna ken what she was
about. And when the old man made his will, Norlaw would not let him
leave his lands beyond his ain flesh and blood. So the will was made,
that Mary Huntley, if she ever came back, was to be heir of Melmar, and
if she never came back, nor could be heard tell of, every thing was left
to Patrick Livingstone, of Norlaw.”

It was impossible to restrain the start of amazement with which Huntley,
growing red and agitated, sprang to his feet, and the others stirred out
of their quietness of listening. Their mother took no time to answer the
eager questions in their eyes, nor to hear even the exclamations which
burst from them unawares. She bent her head again, and drew through her
fingers, rapidly, the hem of her apron. She did not see, nor seem to
think of, her children. Her mind was busy about the heaviest epoch of
her own life.

“When Melmar died, search was caused to be made every place for his
daughter,” said the Mistress, passing back and forwards through her
hands this tight strip of her apron. “Your father thought of nothing
else, night nor day; a’ for justice, bairns, doubtless for justice--that
nobody might think he would take an advantage of his kinswoman, though
he could not approve of her ways! He went to Edinburgh himself, and from
there to London. I was young then, and Cosmo little mair than an infant,
and a’ thing left in my hands. Aye this one and the other one coming to
tell about Mary Huntley--and Norlaw away looking for her--and the very
papers full of the heiress--and me my lane in the house, and little used
to be left to mysel’. I mind every thing as if it had happened this very
day.”

The Mistress paused once more--it was only to draw a long breath of
pain, ere she hurried on with the unwelcome tale, which now had a
strange interest, even for herself. The boys could not tell what was
the bitterness of the time which their mother indicated by these
compressed and significant words; but it was impossible to hear even her
voice without perceiving something of the long-past troubles, intense
and vivid as her nature, which nothing in the world could have induced
her to disclose.

“The upshot was, she could not be found,” said the Mistress, abruptly;
“either she never heard tell that she was sought for, or she took guilt
to herself, and would not appear. They kept up the search as long as a
year, but they never heard a word, or got a clue to where she was.”

“And then?” cried Huntley, with extreme excitement.

“And then,” said the Mistress--“was he a man to take another person’s
lands, when but a year had gane?” She spoke with a visible
self-restraint, strong and bitter--the coercion which a mind of energy
and power puts upon itself, determining not to think otherwise than with
approbation of the acts of a weaker nature--and with something deeper
underlying even this. “He said she would still come hame some day, as
was most likely. He would not take up her rights, and her living, as he
was persuaded in his mind. The will was proved in law, for her sake, but
he would not take possession of the land, nor put forward his claims to
it, because he said she lived, and would come hame. So, laddies, there’s
the tale. A Mr. Huntley, a writer, from the northcountry, a far-away
friend, came in and claimed as next of kin. Mary of Melmar was lost and
gane, and could not be found, and Norlaw would not put in his ain claim,
though it was clear. He said it would be taking her rights, and that
then she would never come back to claim her land. So the strange man got
possession and kept it, and hated Norlaw. And from that day to this,
what with having an enemy, and the thought of that unfortunate woman
coming back, and the knowledge in his heart that he had let a wrongful
heir step in--what with all that bairns, and more than that, another day
of prosperity never came to this house of Norlaw.”

“Then we are the heirs of Me’mar!” said Huntley; “we, and not my
father’s enemy! Mother, why did we never hear this before?”

“Na, lads,” said the Mistress, with an indescribable bitterness in her
tone; “it’s her and her bairns that are the heirs--and they’re to be
found, and claim their inheritance, soon or syne.”

“Then this is what I’ll do,” cried Cosmo, springing to his feet; “I’ll
go over all the world, but I’ll find Mary of Melmar! I’m not so strong
as Huntley, or as Patie, but I’m strong enough for this. I’ll do what my
father wished--if she should be in the furtherest corner of the earth,
I’ll bring her hame!”

To the extreme amazement of the boys, the Mistress laid a violent hand
on Cosmo’s shoulder, and, either with intention or unconsciously, shook
the whole frame of the slender lad with her impetuous grasp.

“Will ye?” cried his mother, with a sharpness of suffering in her voice
that confounded them. “Is it no’ enough, all that’s past? Am I to begin
again? Am I to bring up _sons_ for her service? Oh, patience, patience!
it’s more than a woman like me can bear!”

Amazed, grieved, disturbed by her words and her aspect, her sons
gathered around her. She pushed them away impatiently, and rose up.

“Bairns, dinna anger me!--I’m no’ meek enough,” said the Mistress, her
face flushing with a mixture of mortification and displeasure. “You’ve
had your will, and heard the story--but I tell you this woman’s been a
vexation to me all my life--and it’s no’ your part, any one of you, to
begin it a’ over again.”




CHAPTER XII.


This story, which Mrs. Livingstone told with reluctance, and, in fact,
did not tell half of, was, though the youths did not know it, the story
of the very bitterest portion of their mother’s life. The Mistress never
told, either to them or to any one else, how, roused in her honest love
and wifely sincerity into sympathy with her husband’s generous efforts
to preserve her own inheritance to his runaway cousin, she had very soon
good reason to be sick of the very name of Mary of Me’mar; how she found
out that, after years long of her faithful, warm-hearted, affectionate
society, after the birth of children and consecration of time, after all
the unfailing courage and exertions, by which her stout spirit had done
much to set him right in the world, and, above all, in spite of the
unfeigned and undivided love of a full heart like her own, the visionary
heart of her husband had all this time been hankering after his first
love.

Without preparation, and without softening, the Mistress found this out.
He would not advantage his own family at the cost of Mary; he would seek
for Mary through the whole world. These had been the words of Norlaw,
ten years after Mary of Melmar’s disappearance, and even years after he
had become the father of Huntley. The unsuspecting wife thought no harm;
then he went and came for a whole year seeking for his cousin; and
during that time, left alone day after day, and month after month, the
mistress of Norlaw found out the secret. It was a hard thing for her,
with her strong personality and burning individual heart, to bear; but
she did bear it with an indignant heroism, never saying a word to mortal
ear. He himself never knew that she had discovered his prior love, or
resented it. She would have scorned herself could she have reproached
him or even made him conscious of her own feelings. Good fortune and
strong affection at the bottom happily kept contempt out of the
Mistress’s indignation; but her heart continued sore for years with the
discovery--sore, mortified, humiliated. To think that all her wifely,
faithful regard had clung unwittingly to a man who, professing to
cherish her, followed, with a wandering heart, a girl who had run away
from him years before to be another man’s wife! The Mistress had borne
it steadily and soberly, so that no one knew of her discovery, but she
had never got beyond this abiding mortification and injury; and it was
not much wonder that she started with a sudden burst of exasperated
feeling, when Cosmo, her own son, echoed his father’s foolish words. Her
youngest boy, her favorite and last nursling, the one bird that was to
be left in the nest, could stir to this same mad search, when he had not
yet ambition enough to stir for his own fortune. It was the last drop
which made all this bitterness run over. No wonder that the Mistress
lost command of herself for once, and going up to her own room in a gust
of aggravated and angry emotions, thrust Cosmo away from her, and
cried, “Am I to bring up sons for _her_ service?” in the indignation of
her heart.

Yes, it was a very pretty story for romance. The young girl running
away, “all for love"--the faithful forsaken lover thinking of her in
secret--rising up to defend her rights after ten long years--eagerly
searching for her--and, with a jealous tenderness, refusing to do any
thing which might compromise her title, while he alone still fondly
believed in her return. A very pretty story, with love, and nothing
else, for its theme. Yet, unfortunately, these pretty stories have a
dark enough aspect often on the other side; and the Mistress, mortified,
silent, indignant, cheated in her own perfect confidence and honest
tenderness, when you saw her behind the scenes of the other pretty
picture, took a great deal of the beauty out of that first-love and
romantic constancy of Norlaw.

When Mrs. Livingstone went to her room, the sons, vexed and troubled,
were a long time silent. Cosmo withdrew into a corner, and leaned his
head on his mother’s little table. He, too, was deeply mortified, and
could not keep back the hot boyish tears from his eyes--he felt himself
set aside like a child--he felt the shame of a sensitive temperament at
perceiving how greatly his mother was disturbed. Somehow she seemed to
have betrayed herself, and Cosmo, jealous for her perfect honor, was
uneasy and abashed at this disturbance of it; while still his heart,
young, eager, inexperienced, loving romance, secretly longed to hear
more of this mystery, and secretly repeated his determination. Huntley,
who was pacing up and down the room, lifting and replacing every thing
in his way which could be lifted, was simply confounded and
thunderstruck, which emotions Patie shared with his elder brother.
Patie, however, was the most practical of the three, and it was he who
first broke the silence.

“Somehow or other this vexes my mother,” said Patie; “let us ask her no
more questions about it; but, Huntley, you ought to know all the
hiding-holes about the house. You should look up this will and put it in
safe hands.”

“In safe hands?--I’ll act upon it forthwith! Are we to keep terms with
Melmar after all that’s past, and with power to turn him out of his
seat?” cried Huntley; “no, surely; I’ll put it into hands that will
carry it into effect, and that without delay.”

“They would want either this Mary, or proof that she was dead, before
they would do any thing in it,” said Patie, doubtfully; “and yet it’s a
shame!”

“She is not dead!” interrupted Cosmo; “why my mother should be angry, I
can’t tell; but I’ll find out Mary of Melmar, I know I shall, though it
should be twenty years!”

“Be quiet, Cosmo,” said his elder brother, “and see that no one troubles
my mother with another question; she does not like it, and I will not
have her disturbed; but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We know little about
business, and we’re not of a patient race. Me’mar had better not come
near any of us just now, unless it were you, Patie, that can master
yourself. I should like to knock him down, and my mother would do worse.
I’ll write to this friend of the minister’s, this writer, and put it all
in his hands--it’s the best thing I can see. What do you say?”

Patie gave his assent readily; Cosmo did not say any thing. The boy
began to feel his youth somewhat bitterly, and to think that they did
not care for his opinion; so he went out, and swung himself up by an old
elm tree into one of the vacant windows of the castle, a favorite seat
of Cosmo, where, among the cool ivy, and hidden by the deep recess of
the thick old wall, he could see the sunset, and watch how the shadows
stole over the earth. The Eildons were at his right hand, paling
gradually out of their royal purple against the pale sky in the east,
and the last long rays of the sunset, too low to reach them, fell
golden-yellow upon Tyne, and shed a pathetic light on the soft green
bank before the door of Norlaw. The common sounds of life were not so
subdued now about this lonely house; even the cackle of poultry and bark
of dogs seemed louder since the shutters were opened and the curtains
drawn back--and Marget went firmly forth upon her errands to the byre,
and the hush and stealth of mourning had left the place already. Who
would not escape somewhere into some personal refuge out of the
oppressive shadow of grief, while youth remains to make that possible?
Huntley had been startled to feel that there was such an escape for
himself when Katie Logan took his hand in the fullness of her
sympathy--and Huntley and Patie together were seeking a similar ease now
in discussing the plans of their future life together. Cosmo was only a
boy; he had no plans yet which could be called plans--and he was too
young to be moved by the hand or the voice of any woman. So he sat among
the ivy in the ledge of the deep old window, with his head uncovered,
his fair hair falling over his long white hands, and those dark liquid
eyes of his gazing forth upon as fair a landscape as ever entered into
the dream of a poet.

If Cosmo was a poet he was not aware of it; yet his heart was easing
itself after his fashion. He was too young to apprehend the position of
his mother, and how it broke into the superficial romance of his
father’s life. He thought only of Mary of Melmar, of the girl,
beautiful, young, and unfortunate, who ran away “for love,” and had
literally left all for her husband’s sake; he thought of displacing his
father’s enemy and restoring his father’s first love to her rights. In
imagination he pursued her through all the storied countries to which a
young fancy naturally turns. He saw himself delivering her out of
dangers, suddenly appearing when she was in peril or poverty, dispersing
her enemies like a champion of chivalry, and bringing her home in
triumph. This was how, while his brothers comforted themselves with an
earnest discussion of possibilities, and while his mother, differing
from them as age differs from youth--and as personal bereavement, which
nothing can ever make up, and which changes the whole current of a life,
differs from a natural removal and separation--returned into the depths
of the past and lived them over again--this is how Cosmo made his first
personal escape out of his first grief.




CHAPTER XIII.


“Oh! Patricia! Sinclair has been telling me such a story,” cried a young
girl, suddenly rushing upon another, in a narrow winding road through
the woods which clothed a steep bank of Tyne; at this spot, for one
exclusive mile, the rapid little river was “private property,” the
embellishment of a gentleman’s grounds--shut out from vulgar admiration.
Tyne, indifferent alike to admiration and exclusivism, was not less
happy on that account; but foamed over his stony channel as brisk, as
brown, and as clear, as when he ran in unrestricted freedom by the old
castle walls of Norlaw. The path was slippery and irregular with great
roots of trees, and one or two brooks, unseen, trickled down the brae
below the underwood, only detected by the slender, half visible rivulet
on the path which you had to step across, or the homely plank half
penetrated by water, which bridged over Tyne’s invisible tributary. They
did not appear, these fairy springs, but they added each a tingle, like
so many harp strings, to the many sounds of Nature. Through this winding
road, or rather upon it, for she was not going anywhere, the elder of
these two interlocutors had been for some time wandering. She was a
delicate looking girl of seventeen, with blue eyes and pale golden hair,
rather pretty, but very slight, and evidently not in strong health. The
sudden plunge down upon her, which her younger sister made from the top
of the brae, took away Patricia’s breath, and made her drop the book
which she had been reading. This was no very great matter, for the book
was rather an indifferent production, being one of those books of poetry
which one reads at seventeen, and never after--but it was rather more
important that the color came violently into her pale cheek, and she
clasped her hands upon her side, with a gasp which terrified the young
hoiden.

“Oh, I forgot!” she cried, in sympathy, as eager as her onslaught had
been. “Oh! have I hurt you? I did not mean it, you know.”

“No, Joanna,” said Patricia, faintly, “but you forget my nerves
always--you never had any yourself.”

Which was perfectly true, and not to be denied. These two, Patricia and
Joanna Huntley, were the only daughters of their father’s house--the
only children, indeed, save one son, who was abroad. There were not many
feminine family names in this branch of the house of Huntley, and
invention in this matter being very sparely exercised in these parts, it
came about that the girls were called after their uncles, and that the
third girl, had there been such an unlucky little individual, following
in the track of her sisters, would have turned out Jemima or Robina,
according as the balance rose in favor of her father’s brother or her
mother’s. Fortunately, Joanna was the last fruit of the household tree,
which had blossomed sparely. She was only fifteen, tall, strong, red
haired, and full of vigor--the greatest contrast imaginable to her
pretty pale sister, whom Joanna devoutly believed in as a beauty, but
secretly did somewhat grieve over as a fool. The younger sister was not
in the least pretty, and knew it, but she was clever, and Joanna knew
that also, which made an agreeable counterpoise. She was extremely
honest, downright and straightforward, speaking the truth with less
elegance than force, but speaking it always; and on the whole was a good
girl, though not always a very pleasant one. At this present moment she
was flushed, breathless, and eager, having run all the way from the
house with something to tell. But Patricia’s “nerves” could not bear the
sudden announcement, though that delicate young lady loved a piece of
news fully as well as her sister. Joanna, therefore, stood still, making
hasty and awkward apologies, and eager to do something to amend her
mistake, while her delicate companion recovered breath. There was
something more than nerves in the young lady’s discomposure. She was
feeble by nature, the invalid of the family, which Joanna, knowing no
sympathetic ailment in her own vigorous person, sometimes had the ill
luck to forget.

“And my poor book!” said poor Patricia, picking up the unfortunate
volume, which lay fluttering with open leaves on the very edge of that
tiny current trickling over the brown path, which, save that it moved
and caught an occasional sparkle of light, you could not have
distinguished to be a burn. “Oh, Joanna, you are so thoughtless! what
was all this haste about?”

“Oh, such a story!” cried Joanna, eagerly. “It’s easy to speak about
nerves--but when I heard it I could have run to papa and given him a
good shake--I could! and he deserved it! for they say it was all his
blame.”

“I should like to hear what it was,” said Patricia, with an exasperating
and intolerable meekness, which usually quite overpowered the patience
of her sister.

But Joanna was too much interested in the present instance.

“It was Mr. Livingstone of Norlaw,” she said, sinking her voice; “he’s
dead, and his funeral was stopped because he was in debt, and it was
papa that did it--and the three boys got up at midnight and carried him
on their shoulders, with torches in their hands, to Dryburgh, and buried
him there. Sinclair says it’s true, every word; and I don’t know whether
Huntley did not swim over Tweed to get the boat. Oh, Patricia! I feel as
if I could both greet and cry hurra, if I were to see them; and as for
papa, he deserves--I don’t know what he does not deserve!”

“I wish you would talk like a lady, Joanna,” said her sister, without
taking any notice of this unfilial sentiment; “greet! you could just as
well say cry, or weep, for that matter--and it’s only common people that
say Tweed, as if they meant a person instead of a river; why don’t you
say _the_ Tweed, as people of education say?”

“He’s the truest person I know,” cried Joanna. “Tweed and Tyne! you may
say that they’re just streams of water, if you like, but they’re more to
me; but the question is papa--I knew he was ill enough and hard-hearted,
but I never, never thought he could have been so bad as that--and I mean
to go this very moment and ask him how it was.”

“I suppose papa knows better than we do,” said Patricia, with a slight
sigh; “but I wish he would not do things that make people talk. It is
very annoying. I dare say everybody will know about this soon, if it’s
true. If it was all himself it would not so much matter, and you never
go out anywhere, Joanna, so you don’t feel it--but is very unpleasant to
mamma and me.”

“I was not thinking of either mamma or you; I was thinking of the
Livingstones,” cried Joanna, with a flush of shame on her cheeks; “and I
mean to go in this very instant, and ask him what it means.”

So saying, the impetuous girl rushed up the path, slowly followed by
Patricia. It was one of the loveliest bits of woodland on the whole
course of Tyne. Mosses and wild flowers, and the daintiest ferns known
to Scotland, peeped out of every hollow--and overhead and around,
stretching down half way across the river, and thrusting out, with
Nature’s rare faculty of composition, their most graceful curves of
foliage against the sky, were trees, not too great or ancient to
overshadow the younger growth; trees of all descriptions, birches and
beeches and willows, the white-limbed ash, with its green bunches of
fruit, and the tender lime, with its honey blossoms. You could have
almost counted every separate flash of sunshine which burned through the
leaves, misty with motes and dazzling bright with that limitation; and
yet the shadow overhead trembled and fluctuated with such a constant
interchange, that the spot which was in shade one moment was in the
brightest light the very next. The light gleamed in Joanna’s red hair,
as she plunged along in her impetuous way towards the house, and fell in
touches here and there upon the graceful little figure of her sister, in
her close cottage bonnet and muslin gown, as Patricia came softly over
the same road, book in hand. But we are bound to confess that neither of
the two, perfectly accustomed and familiar as they were, found a
moment’s leisure among their other thoughts to pause upon this scene;
they went towards the house, the one after the other--Patricia with a
due regard to decorum as well as to her nerves and feebleness of
frame--Joanna totally without regard for either the one or the other;
and both occupied, to the entire neglect of every thing else, with
thoughts of their own.

The house of Melmar was placed upon a level platform of land, of a
considerably lower altitude than this brae. Pausing to look at it, as
neither Joanna nor Patricia did, on the rustic bridge which crossed the
Tyne, and led from this woodland path into the smooth lawn and properly
arranged trees of “the private grounds,” Melmar appeared only a large
square house, pretentious, yet homely, built entirely for living in, and
not for looking at. If Nature, with her trees, and grass, and bits of
garden land, softening the angles and filling in the gaps, had done her
best to make it seemly, the house was completely innocent of aiding in
any such attempt. Yet, by sheer dint of persistence, having stood there
for at least a hundred years, long enough to have patches of lichen here
and there upon its walls, Melmar had gained that look of steadiness and
security, and of belonging to the soil, which harmonizes even an ugly
feature in a landscape. The door, which was sheltered by a little
portico, with four tall pillars, in reality stone, but looking
considerably like plaster, opened from without after the innocent
fashion of the country. Running across the lawn, Joanna opened the door
and plunged in, without further ado, into her father’s study, which was
at the end of a long passage looking out upon the other side of the
house. He was not there--so the girl came rushing back again to the
drawing-room, the door of which stood open, and once more encountering
her sister there, did her best to disturb the delicate nerves a second
time, and throw Patricia out of breath.

This papa, whom Joanna had no hesitation about bearding in his own den,
could not surely be such an ogre after all. He was not an ogre. You
could not have supposed, to look at him, that any exaltation of enmity,
any heroic sentiment of revenge, could lodge within the breast of Mr.
Huntley, of Melmar. He was a tall man, with a high, narrow head, and
reddish grizzled hair. A man with plenty of forehead, making up in
height for its want of breadth. He was rather jovial than otherwise in
his manner, and carried about with him a little atmosphere of his own, a
whiff of two distinct odors, not unusual attendants of elderly Scotsmen,
twenty years ago, reminiscences of toddy and rappee. He looked around
with a smile at the vehement entrance of Joanna. He permitted all kinds
of rudenesses on the part of this girl, and took a certain pleasure in
them. He was not in the slightest degree an exacting or punctilious
father; but not all his indulgence, nor the practical jokes, banter, and
teasing, which he administered to all children, his own, among the rest,
when they were young enough--had secured him either fondness or respect
at their hands. They got on very well on the whole. Patricia pouted at
him, and Joanna took him to task roundly when they differed in
opinion--but the affection they gave him was an affection of habit, and
nothing more.

“I’ve come to speak to you, papa,” cried Joanna. “I’ve just been hearing
the whole story, every word--and oh, I think shame of you!--it’s a
disgrace, it’s a sin--I wonder you dare look any of us in the face
again!”

“Eh? what’s all this?” said Melmar; “Joan in one of her tantrums
already? Three times in a day! that’s scarcely canny--I’ll have to speak
to your aunt Jean.”

“Oh, papa!” cried Joanna, indignantly, “it’s no fun--who do you think
would carry _you_ to Dryburgh if somebody stopped your funeral? not one!
You would have to stay here in your coffin and never be buried--and I
wouldna be sorry! You would deserve it, and nothing better--oh, I think
shame on you!”

“What? in my coffin? that’s a long look beforehand,” said Melmar. “You
may have time to think shame of me often enough before that time, Joan;
but let’s hear what’s all this about Dryburgh and a funeral--who’s been
here?”

“Sinclair was here,” cried Joanna, “and he heard it all at
Kirkbride--every word--and he says you had better not be seen there,
after all you’ve done at Norlaw.”

“I am sure, papa, it’s very hard,” said Patricia. “You set everybody
talking, and then people look strange at us. Mamma knows they do; and I
could cry when I think that we’re going out to-morrow, and it would have
been such a nice party. But now everybody knows about this, and nobody
will speak to us--it’s too bad of you, papa.”

“What is it, my darling?” cried Mrs. Huntley, from her easy chair.

“Eh, fat’s this?” said Aunt Jean, wheeling round upon hers.

A popular commotion was rising; Melmar saw the premonitory tokens, and
made his escape accordingly.

“Joan,” he said, pulling her ear as he passed her, “you’re an impudent
monkey; but you may spare your wrath about Norlaw--I knew as little as
you did that the man was dead--however, he is dead, and I don’t break my
heart; but you can tell Sinclair I’ll tell him a word of my mind the
next time I’m near Kirkbride.”

“Sinclair doesna care!” said Joanna; but Melmar pulled a thick curl of
her red hair, and betook himself to his study, leaving the rising gust
of questions to wear itself out as it might.




CHAPTER XIV.


The drawing-room of Melmar was a large room tolerably well furnished.
Three long windows on one side of the apartment looked out upon the lawn
before the house, carefully avoiding the view “up Tyne,” which a little
management might have made visible. The fire-place was at the upper end
of the room, sparkling coldly with polished steel and brass, and
decorated with a very elaborate construction of cut paper. The chairs
were all covered with chintz in a large-flowered pattern, red and
green--chintz which did not fit on well, and looked creasy and
disorderly. A large crumb-cloth, spread over the bright- carpet,
had the same disadvantage; one corner of it was constantly loose,
folding up under the chairs and tripping unwary passengers. There was a
round rose-wood table, sparely covered with books and ornaments, and
another oblong one with a cover on it, which was meant for use.

By this last sat Mrs. Huntley, with some knitting in her lap, reclining
in a cushioned chair, with her feet upon a high footstool. She was pale,
with faint pink cheeks, and small, delicate features, a woman who had,
to use her own expression, “enjoyed very bad health” all her life. She
had very little character, not much animation, nothing very good nor
very bad about her. It would scarcely have been true even to say that
she loved her children; she was fond of them--particularly of
Patricia--gave them a great many caresses and sweetmeats while they were
young enough, and afterwards let them have their own will without
restraint; but there did not seem enough of active life in her to
deserve the title of any active sentiment. She was deeply learned in
physic and invalid dietry, and liked to be petted and attended, to come
down stairs at twelve o’clock, to lie on the sofa, to be led out for a
little walk, carefully adapted to her weakness, and to receive all the
little attentions proper to an invalid. Her exclusive pretensions in
this respect had, it is true, been rather infringed upon of late years
by Patricia, who sometimes threatened to be a more serious invalid than
her mother, and who certainly assumed the character with almost equal
satisfaction. However, Patricia was pretty well at the present moment,
and Mrs. Huntley, supported by her maid, had only about half an hour ago
come down stairs. She had a glass of toast-and-water on the table beside
her, a smelling-bottle, an orange cut into quarters upon a china plate,
a newspaper within reach of her hand, and her knitting in her lap. We
beg Mrs. Huntley’s pardon, it was not knitting, but netting--her
industry consisted in making strange, shapeless caps, bags, and
window-curtains, which became excessively yellow after they were washed,
and were of no use to any creature; for the refined art of crotchet was
not then invented, nor had fancy-work reached that perfection which
belongs to it now.

In an arm-chair by one of the windows sat a very different person--an
old woman, black-eyed, white-haired, wearing an old-fashioned black
dress, with a snowy white muslin handkerchief pinned down to her waist
in front and behind--a large muslin apron of the same spotless
complexion, a cap of clear cambric trimmed with rich old-fashioned lace,
and bound round with a broad black ribbon, which was tied in a bow on
the top of her head. This was a relative of Mrs. Huntley, known as Aunt
Jean in the house of Melmar. She was the last survivor of her family,
and had a little annuity, just enough to keep her muslin kerchiefs and
aprons and old-fashioned caps from wearing out. She was quite kindly
used in this house where nobody paid any particular regard to her, but
where long ago it had seemed very good fun to Melmar himself to get up a
little delusion on the score of Aunt Jean’s wealth, which, according to
the inventor of it, was to be bequeathed to his daughter Joanna. This
was a favorite joke of the head of the house; he was never tired of
referring to Aunt Jean’s fortune, or threatening Joanna with the chance
of forfeiting it, which delicate and exquisite piece of fun was always
followed by a loud laugh, equally delicate and characteristic. Aunt
Jean, however, fortunately, was deaf, and never quite understood the wit
of her nephew-in-law; she stuck quietly to her corner, made rather a pet
of Joanna, persisted in horrifying Patricia by her dress and her
dialect, which breathed somewhat strongly of Aberdeenshire, and by dint
of keeping “thretty pennies,” as she said, in the corner of her
old-fashioned leather purse--pennies which were like the oil in the
widow’s cruse, often spent, yet always existing--and in her drawers in
her own room an unfailing store of lace, and muslins, and ribbons, old
dresses, quaint examples of forgotten fashion, and pieces of rich stuff,
such as girls love to turn over and speculate on possible uses for--kept
up an extensive popularity. Aunt Jean was not in the very slightest
degree an invalid--the tap of her little foot, which wore high-heeled
shoes, was almost the smartest in the house. She sat in winter by the
fire, in summer by one of the windows, knitting endless pairs of
stockings, mits, and those shapeless little gloves, with a separate
stall for the thumb, and one little bag for all the fingers, in which
the hapless hands of babies are wont to be imprisoned. It was from an
occupation of this kind that Aunt Jean turned, when the din of Joanna’s
accusation penetrated faintly into her ears.

“Eh, fat’s that?” said Aunt Jean; it was something about a debt and a
funeral, two things which were not particularly likely to interest
Joanna. Something remarkably out of the usual course must have happened,
and the old lady had all the likings of an old woman in the country.
Gossip was sweet to her soul.

“Oh, mamma, so vexatious!” cried Patricia, in a voice which could not by
any possibility reach the ears of Aunt Jean; “papa has been doing
something to Mr. Livingstone, of Norlaw--he’s dead, and there’s been
something done that looks cruel--oh! I’m sure I don’t know exactly what
it is--Joanna knows;--but only think how the people will look at us
to-morrow night.”

“Perhaps I may not be able to go, my dear,” said Mrs. Huntley, with a
sigh.

“Not able to go? after promising so long! mamma, that is cruel!” cried
Patricia; “but nobody cares for me. I never have what other people have.
I am to be shut up in this miserable prison of a place all my life--not
able to go! Oh, mamma! but you’ll all be sorry when there’s no poor
Patricia to be shut up and made a victim of any more!”

“I do think you’re very unreasonable, Patricia,” said Mrs. Huntley;
“I’ve gone out three times this last month to please you--a great
sacrifice for a person in my weak health--and Dr. Tait does not think
late hours proper for you; besides, if there is any thing disagreeable
about your papa, as you say, I really don’t think my nerves could stand
it.”

“Fat’s all this about?” said Aunt Jean; “you ken just as well as me that
I canna hear a word of fat you’re saying. Joan, my bairn, come you
here--fa’s dun wrang? Fat’s happened? Eh! there’s Patricia ta’en to the
tears--fat’s wrang?”

Nothing loth, Joanna rushed forward, and shouted her story into the old
woman’s ears. It was received with great curiosity and interest by the
new hearers. Aunt Jean lifted up her hands in dismay, shook her head,
made all the telegraphic signs with eye and mouth which are common to
people restrained from full communication with their companions. Mrs.
Huntley, too, was roused.

“It’s like a scene in a novel,” she said, with some animation; “but
after all, Mr. Livingstone should not have been in debt to papa, you
know. What with Oswald abroad, and you two at home, you can tell Aunt
Jean we need all our money, Joanna; and if people die when they’re in
debt, what can they expect? I don’t see, really, in my poor health, that
I’m called upon to interfere.”

“Fat’s this I hear?” said Aunt Jean; “Livingstone o’ Norlaw? Na, Jeanie,
if that’s true, your good man’s been sair left to himself. Eh, woman!
Livingstone! fat’s a’body’s thinking of? I would sooner have cut off my
little finger if I had been Me’mar; that man!”

“Oh, what about him, Aunt Jean?” cried Joanna.

“Ay, bairn, but I maun think,” said the old woman. “I’m no’ so clear
it’s my duty to tell you. Your father kens his ain concerns, and so does
your mother, in a measure, and so do I myself. I canna tell onybody mair
than my ain secret, Joan. Hout ay! I’ll tell you, fun I was a young
lass, fat happened to me.”

“I want to hear about Norlaw,” cried Joanna, screaming into the old
woman’s ear.

“Aunt Jean!” cried Mrs. Huntley, making a sudden step out of her chair.
“If you do, Me’mar will kill me--oh! hold your tongues, children! Do you
think I can bear one of papa’s passions--a person in my poor health?
Aunt Jean, if you do, I’ll never speak to you again!”

Aunt Jean contemplated her niece, with her twinkling black eyes, making
a _moue_ of vivid contempt as she nodded her head impatiently.

“Fat for can ye no hold your peace for a fool-wife?” said Aunt Jean;
“did ye think I had as little wit as you? What about Norlaw? You see the
laird here and him were aye ill friends. Hout ay! mony a ane’s ill
friends with Me’mar. I mind the bairns just fun you were born, Joan. Twa
toddling wee anes, and ane in the cradle. Pity me! I mind it because I
was losing my hearing, and turning a cankered auld wife; and it was them
that took and buried their father? Honest lads! I would like to do them
a good turn.”

“But I know there’s something more about Norlaw,” cried Joanna, “and
I’ll say you’re a cankered auld wife till you tell me--I will! and you
would have told me before now but for mamma. Do you hear, Aunt Jean?”

“Hout ay, I hear,” said the old woman, who could manage her deafness
like most people who possess that defect--(where it is not extreme, a
little deafness is in its way quite a possession) “but I maun take time
to think fat it was I promised to tell you. Something that happened when
I was a young lass. Just that, Joan--I was staying at my married
sister’s, that was your grandmother, and Jeanie, there, your mamaw, was
a bit little bairn--she was aye a sma’ thing of her years, taking physic
for a constancy. There was a poor gentleman there, ane of the Gordons,
as good blood in his veins as ony man in the kingdom, and better than
the king’s ain, that was only a German lairdie--but ye see this lad was
poor, and fat should save him but he got into debt, and fat should help
him but he died. So the sheriff’s officers came and stopped the funeral;
and the lads rose, a’ the friends that were at it, and all the men on
the ground, and fat should ail them to crack the officers’ crowns, and
lay them up in a chamber; but I’ve heard say it was a sair sicht to see
the hearse rattling away at a trot, and a’ the black coaches afterhand,
as if it was a bridal--oh fie!--nothing else was in everybody’s mouth on
our side of the water, a’ the mair because the Gordon lad that died was
of the English chapel, and behoved to have a service o’er his grave, and
the English minister was faint-hearted and feared. It wasna done at
nicht, but in broad daylicht, and by the strong hand--and that
happened--I wouldna say but it was forty year ago; for I was a young
lass and your mamaw there a little bairn.”

“I daresay, mamma,” said Patricia, who had dried her tears, “that people
don’t know of it yet; and at the worst it was all papa’s fault--I don’t
think we should be afraid to go--it wasn’t our blame, I’m sure.”

“If I should be able, my dear,” said Mrs. Huntley, with her languid
sigh--whereupon Patricia exerted herself to arrange her mother’s
pillow, and render her sundry little attentions which pleased her.

Poor little Patricia loved “society;” she wanted to shine and to be
admired “like other girls"--even the dull dinner-parties of the
surrounding lairds excited the fragile little soul, who knew no better,
and she spent the rest of the day, oblivious of her former terrors
concerning public opinion, in coaxing Mrs. Huntley into betterness;
while Joanna, for her part, persecuted Aunt Jean with an unavailing but
violent pertinacity, vainly hoping to gain some insight into a family
secret. Patricia was successful in her endeavors; but there never was a
more signal failure than that attack upon Aunt Jean.




CHAPTER XV.


“Bless me callants! what are ye doing here?” said Marget, looking in at
the door of the mid-chamber, where Huntley and Patrick Livingstone were
together.

It was a small apartment, originally intended for a dressing-room, and
communicating by a door locked and barricaded on both sides with the
east room, which was the guest-chamber of the house. Almost its sole
piece of furniture was a large old-fashioned mahogany desk, standing
upon a heavy frame of four tall legs, and filling half the space; it was
not like the bureau of romance, with that secret drawer where some
important document is always being discovered. The heavy lid was held
open by Huntley’s head, as he carried on his investigations. There were
drawers enough, but they were all made by the hand of the joiner of
Kirkbride, who knew nothing of secret contrivances--and these, as well
as all the remaining space of the desk, were filled with the gatherings
of Norlaw’s life, trifles which some circumstance or other made
important to him at the moment they were placed there, but which were
now pathetic in their perfect insignificance and uselessness, closely
connected as they were with the dead man’s memory. Old letters, old
receipts, old curiosities, a few coins and seals, and trifling
memorials, and a heap of papers quite unintelligible and worthless,
made up the store. In one drawer, however, Huntley had found what he
wanted--the will--and along with it, carefully wrapped in at least a
dozen different folds of paper, a little round curl of golden hair.

They were looking at this when Marget, whose question had not been
answered, entered and closed the door. The lads were not aware of her
presence till this sound startled them; when they heard it, Huntley
hurriedly refolded the covers of this relic, which they had been looking
at with a certain awe. Eye of stranger, even though it was this faithful
old friend and servant, ought not to pry into their father’s secret
treasure. The Mistress’s hair was of the darkest brown. It was not for
love of their mother that Norlaw had kept so carefully this childish
curl of gold.

“Laddies,” said Marget, holding the door close behind her, and speaking
low as she watched with a jealous eye the covering up of this secret,
“some of ye’s been minding the Mistress of auld troubles. I said to
myself I would come and give you a good hearing--the haill three--what’s
Mary o’ Melmar to you?”

“Did my mother tell you?” asked Huntley, with amazement.

“Her, laddies! na, it’s little ye ken! _her_ name the like o’ that to
the like o’ me! But Cosmo behoved to ask about the story--he would part
with his little finger to hear a story, that bairn--and ’deed I ken fine
about it. What for could ye no’ speak to me?”

“There was more than a story in Huntley’s thoughts and in mine,” said
Patrick, shutting up the desk with some decision and authoritativeness.

“Hear him! my certy! that’s setting up!” cried Marget; “I ken every
thing about it for a’ you’re so grand. And I ken the paper in Huntley’s
hand is the will, and I ken I would run the risk o’ firing the haill
house, but I would have burnt it, afore he got sight o’t, if it had been
me.”

“Why?” said Huntley, with a little impatience. It was not possible that
the youth could read this bequest conferring Melmar, failing the natural
heiress, on his father and himself, without a thrill of many emotions.
He was ambitious, like every young man; he could not think of this
fortune, which seemed almost to lie within his reach, without a stirring
of the heart.

“It did nothing but harm to your father, and it can do nothing but
mischief to you,” said Marget, solemnly; “you’re young and strong, and
fit to make a fortune. But I tell you, Huntley Livingstone, if you
attempt to seek this lass over the world, as your father did, you’re a
ruined man.”

“Neither Huntley nor me believe in ruined men,” said Patie; “we’ll take
care for that--go to your kye, and never mind.”

“Don’t be angry, Marget,” said Huntley, who was more tender of the
faithful retainer of the house; “trust us, as Patie says--besides, if
she should never be found, Melmar’s mine.”

“Eh, whisht, lad! she’ll come hame with half a dozen bairns before e’er
your feet’s across the door,” cried Marget; “tell me to trust you, that
are only callants, and dinna ken! Trust me, the twa of you! Gang and
spend a’ the best years of your life, if you like, seeking her, or
witness that she’s dead. If ye find her, ye’re nane the better, if ye
dinna find her, ye’re aye deluded with the thought of a fortune ye canna
claim--and if ye get word she’s dead, there’s still Melmar himself, that
was bred a writer and kens a’ the cheats of them, to fight the battle!
They might say it was a false will--they might say, Guid forgive them!
that Norlaw had beguiled the auld man. There’s evil in’t but nae guid;
Huntley, you’re your father’s son, you’re to make his amends to her.
Dinna vex the Mistress’s life with Mary of Melmar ony mair!”

“The short and the long of it all, Marget,” said Patrick, who was at
once more talkative and more peremptory than usual--“is, that you must
mind your own business and we’ll mind ours. Huntley’s not a knight in a
story-book, seeking a distressed lady. Huntley’s not in love with Mary
of Melmar; but if she’s to be found she shall be found; and if she’s
dead my brother’s the heir.”

“No’ till you’re done wi’ a’ her bairns,” cried Marget; “say there’s nae
mair than three of them, like yoursels--and the present Me’mar’s been
firm in his seat this thirteen years. Weel, weel, I daur to say Patie’s
right--it’s nae business o’ mine; but I’d sooner see you a’ working for
your bread, if it was just like laboring men, and I warn ye baith, the
day’s coming when ye’ll think upon what I say!”

Marget disappeared, solemnly shaking her head as she said these last
words. For the moment, the two youths said nothing to each other. The
desk was locked softly, the will placed in an old pocket-book, to be
deposited elsewhere, and then, for the first time, the young men’s eyes
met.

“She’s right,” said Patie, with sudden emphasis; “if you seek her
yourself, Huntley, you’ll neither get Me’mar nor fortune--it’s true.”

Huntley paid little attention to his brother. He stood looking out from
the window, where, in the distance, to the north, the banks of Tyne rose
high among the woods of Melmar--opposite to him, fertile fields, rich in
the glow of coming harvest, lay the wealthy lands of his father’s
enemy--those lands which perhaps now, if he but knew it, were
indisputably his own. He stood fascinated, looking out, tracing with an
unconscious eagerness the line of the horizon, the low hills, and trees,
and ripening corn, which, as far as he could see before him, were still
part of the same inheritance. He was not a dreamy boy like Cosmo--he
thought little of his father’s old love, or of the triumph of restoring
her to her inheritance. The Mary of Norlaw’s fancy was but a shadow upon
the future of his own. He thought, with a glow of personal ambition, of
the fair stretch of country lying before him. Generous, high-spirited,
and incapable of meanness, Huntley still had the impulse of conquest
strong within him. He could not but think, with a rising heart, of this
visible fortune which lay at his feet and seemed to be almost within his
grasp. He could not but think, with indignant satisfaction, of unseating
the false heir whose enmity had pursued Norlaw to the very grave. All
the excitement which had gathered into these few past weeks still
throbbed in Huntley’s heart and stirred his brain. He could not moderate
the pace of his thoughts or subdue his mind at anybody’s bidding. If it
should be hard to get justice and a hearing for his claims, this very
difficulty increased the attraction--for it was his claims he thought of
while the others were thinking of Mary of Melmar. He was not selfish,
but he was young, and had an ardent mind and a strong individual
character. Mary of Melmar--a white ghost, unreal and invisible--faded
from his mind entirely. He thought, instead, of the man who had
arrested Norlaw’s funeral, and of the inheritance of which he was the
rightful heir.

With all these fumes in his brain it was quite impossible that Huntley
could listen soberly to the sober counsels of Patie, or to the warnings
of the old servant. _They_ begged him not to think of a search for Mary.
_He_ thought of nothing of the kind. Mary had taken no position of
romance in the young man’s fancy. The romance which blossomed in his
eyes was a much less disinterested one than that which Cosmo mused upon
in the old window of the castle. He thought of himself, of his own
family, of all the possibilities and powers of an extensive land-owner,
and with the flush of youthful self-belief, of a great life. He had
stood thus at the window a long time gazing out, and paying no attention
to the occasional words of his sensible brother, when the sound of some
one coming roused them both. It was the Mistress’s firm footsteps
ascending the stair--they both left the room immediately, agreed, at
least, in one thing, to trouble their mother no more with recollections
disagreeable to her. Then Patie went about his business, somewhat
disturbed by the thought that Huntley meant to throw away a portion of
his life in the same fruitless folly which had injured their father;
while Huntley himself, remembering something that had to be done at
Kirkbride, set off along the banks of Tyne at a great pace, which did
not, however, overtake the swing of his thoughts. Marget, coming out to
her kitchen door to look after him, held up her hands and exclaimed to
herself, “The laddie’s carried!” as she watched his rapid
progress--which meaning, as it did, that Huntley was fairly lifted off
his feet and possessed by a rapid and impetuous fancy, was perfectly
correct--though the fancy itself was not such as Marget thought.




CHAPTER XVI.


The village lay bright under the afternoon sun when Huntley Livingstone
came in sight of it that day. It was perfectly quiet, as was its
wont--some small children playing at the open doors, the elder ones,
save here and there an elder daughter charged with the heavy
responsibility of a baby, being for the most part safe at school. At the
door of the Norlaw Arms an angler-visitor, with his rod over his
shoulder, a single figure becalmed in the sunshine, stood lazily gazing
about him--and in the shadow of the projecting gable of the inn, another
stranger stood holding his horse before the door of the smithy, from
whence big John Black, the smith, was about to issue to replace a lost
shoe. John was the master of this important rural establishment, and was
a big, soft-hearted giant, full of the good-humored obtuseness which so
often accompanies great personal size and strength. Inside, in the fiery
obscurity of the village Pandemonium, toiled a giant of quite a
different order--a swarthy, thick-set little Cyclops, with a hump on his
shoulder, and one eye. This was John’s brother, the ruling spirit of
mischief in Kirkbride, whom all the mothers of sons held in disgust and
terror, and whom Dr. Logan himself could make no improvement in. Jacob,
or Jaacob, as he was popularly called, was as strong as he was ugly,
and, it was generally understood, as wicked as both. By natural
consequence, his rustic neighbors found a considerable attraction in his
society, and liked to repeat his sayings, which were not always funny,
with explosions of laughter. Huntley’s errand, as it happened, was with
this individual, who was somewhat of a genius in his way, which was the
way of agricultural implements. Jaacob had even taken out what he called
a “paatent” for a new harrow of his own invention, and was, in right of
this, the authority, on all such matters, of the country-side.

“Ye’ll be carrying on the farm then?” said Jaacob. “A plow needs mair
than a new coulter to drive it through a furrow--it’ll be new work to
you, Mr. Huntley, to gang atween the stilts yoursel’.”

Huntley had descended suddenly out of the hurry of his fancies about
Melmar, of which he already saw himself master. He came to the ground
with rather a rude shock when he heard these words, and found himself on
the hard earthen floor of the smithy, with the red sparks flying into
the darkness over his head, and Jaacob’s one eye twinkling at him in the
fiery light. He was not the laird of Melmar to Jaacob, but only the son
of the ruined Norlaw.

“What we want in the meantime is the plow,” said Huntley, somewhat
sharply, his face flushing in spite of himself; then he added, after a
pause, all the humiliation of debt and poverty recurring to his mind,
which had been defended for some time against that lesser pain by the
excitement of grief, and to-day by the violent flush of ambitious hope.
“I believe there is a bill--but if you’ll send it up to the house I’ll
see to it without delay.”

Bowed Jaacob was not ungenerous in his way, but he scorned to defend
himself from any imputation of ungenerosity. He did not hasten,
therefore, as might have been supposed, to say that the aforesaid bill
was of no importance, and could wait. On the contrary, he proceeded,
with sarcastic dryness in his tone:

“You’ll find it hard work to get in your craps. How many acres have ye
in wheat the year, Mr. Huntley? You’ll no’ ken? Houts, man! that’s an
ill beginning for a lad that farms his ain land.”

In spite of himself, tears of mortification stole into Huntley’s eyes.
He turned his head away with a muttered exclamation.

“I don’t know that we’ve half an acre safe!” cried Huntley, in the
bitterness of his heart. His dream was broken. Me’mar, who was their
chief creditor--Me’mar, whom he had not yet displaced--might be able to
get into his hard worldly hands, for aught Huntley knew, every <DW72> of
Norlaw.

“Aweel, aweel, lad,” said Jaacob, striking his hammer fiercely upon the
glowing iron, “a’ the better for you--you’ll be your ain man--but I
wouldna cheat myself with fancies if I was you. Make up your mind ae way
or another, but dinna come here and speak to me about plows, as if that
was what your mind was set on. I’m no’ a Solomon, but if you mean to
thrive, never delude yoursalf with a sham.”

“What’s a’ that?” said big John, as his customer mounted the reshod
horse, and trotted off in leisurely fashion as became the day; “has
Jaacob won to his books, Mr. Huntley? but I reckon he has his match when
he has you.”

John, however, who was rather proud of his brother’s intellectual
powers, thought no such thing--neither did the little Cyclops himself.

“Mind your ain business,” said Jaacob, briefly; “what do you think a man
learns out of books, you haverel? Na, if I’m onything, I’m a man of
observation; and take my word, lad, there never was a man trove yet till
he saw distinck where he was, and ordered his ways according. There’s
mysel’--do you think I could ever make ony progress, ae way or another,
if I minded what a’ these stupid ideots say?”

“What do they say?” said Huntley, who was too much occupied with his own
thoughts to perceive the drift of Jaacob’s personal observations.

“Na, d’ye think I’m heeding?” said Jaacob; “a man can rarely be more
enlightened than his neighbors without suffering for’t. A’ this auld
machinery of the world creaks like an auld bellows. There’s naething but
delusions on every side of ye. Ye canna be clear of a single thing that
ye havena conquished for yoursel’.”

Huntley, who had come out of the languid August afternoon, red in a glow
of sunshine and heat, to which the very idea of long labor was alien,
which accorded well enough with his own ambitious dreams and thoughts of
sudden fortune--could not help feeling somehow as if Jaacob’s hammer,
beneath the strokes of which the sparks flew, struck himself as well as
the iron. Melmar dissipated into thin air, in the ruddy atmosphere of
the smithy. The two darkling giants, large and small, moving about in
the fierce glow of the firelight, the puff of the bellows, plied by an
attendant demon, and the ceaseless clank of the hammer, all combined to
recall to reality and the present, the thoughts of the dreaming lad. In
this atmosphere the long labors of the Australian emigrant looked much
more reasonable and likely than any sudden enrichment; and with the
unconscious self-reference of his age, Huntley took no pains to find out
what Jaacob meant, but immediately applied the counsel to his own case.

“I suppose you’re very right, Jacob,” said Huntley; “but it’s hard work
making a fortune; maybe it’s safer in the end than what comes to you
from another man’s labors; but still, to spend a life in gathering
money, is no very great thing to look forward to.”

“Money!” said Jaacob, contemptuously. “Na, lad; if that’s your thought,
you’re no’ in my way. Did you ever hear of a rich philosopher? ne’er a
are have I heard tell o’, though I ken the maist of that fraternity.
Money! na! it’s ideas, and no that sordid trash, that tempts me.”

“And the mair fuil you!” said big John, half in chagrin, half in
admiration. “You might have made your fortune twenty times over, if it
hadna been for your philosophy.”

“Whew!” whistled bowed Jaacob, with magnificent disdain; “what’s a’ the
siller in the world and a’ its delichts--grand houses, grand leddies,
and a’ the rest of thae vanities--to the purshuit of truth? That’s what
I’m saying, callant--take every thing on trust because you’ve heard sae
a’ your days, and your faither believed it before ye, gin ye please; but
as for me, I’m no’ the man for sham--I set my fit, if a’ the world
should come against me, on ideas I’ve won and battled for mysel’.”

“When they’re as reasonable as the harrow, I’ve nae objection,” said big
John; “but ilka man canna write his idies in wud and iron, Mr. Huntley.
The like o’ that may be a’ very well for _him_, but it doesna answer you
and me. Eh, man, but it’s warm! If it wasna that philosophy’s an awfu’
drouthy thing--and the wife comes down on me like murder when I get a
gill--I wouldna say but it’s the best kind of wark for this weather.
Ye’ll be goin’ up bye to the manse, Mr. Huntley. I hear they’re aye very
well pleased to see onybody out of Norlaw; but ye maunna say ye’ve been
here, for Jaacob and the minister, they’re at daggers drawn.”

“Pish! nae such thing,” cried Jaacob, with complacency; “the like of a
man like yon shouldna mell with a man like me. It’s no’ a fair battle--I
aye say sae--I can tak his measure fast enough, but he can nae mair tak
mine than he can flee. Eh, lad! have you ta’en the gate? and no’ a word
mair about the plow?”

“I’ll take your advice, Jacob,” said Huntley; “the plow can stand till
we see what use we’ll have for it; but as for going between the stilts
myself, if I do you’ll see me draw as fair a furrow as any plowman about
Kirkbride.”

“Hurray!” said Jaacob; “the lad has some speerit after a’; never you
mind--we’ll send down somebody to see to the plow.”

With this assurance, Huntley left the smithy; but not till Jaacob had
begun to sing in the most singular of cracked and elvish voices,
beating time with emphatic strokes of his hammer, “The Flaxen-headed
Cowboy,” a rustic and ancient ditty, much in favor in the country-side.
Whether it was the gestures of the gnome which called them forth, or a
ludicrous application of the song to himself, Huntley could not tell;
but big John and the boy accompanied the chant with audible, yet
restrained explosions of laughter. Huntley grew very red in spite of
himself, as he hurried along to the little bridge. What a change from
the fancy which possessed him as he came up the village street half an
hour ago! He could not have believed that his hypothetical inheritance
could have vanished so utterly; somehow he could not even recall that
evanescent splendor. It was no longer the heir of Melmar who ascended
the brae of Tyne, through the trees and scattered cottages towards the
white-gabled manse. It was the same Huntley Livingstone who had buried
his father at midnight, who had set his face against the evil fortune
which seemed ready to overwhelm his house, and who had pledged himself
to win in a new country a new and stable fortune for the race of Norlaw.

But the young man was by no means contented to part so lightly with his
magnificent vision. He did all he could by dint of thinking to bring it
back to his mind; but even when he paused at the top of the little hill
and surveyed once more the fair fields of Melmar, he could not recover
the enthusiasm and fervor of his former thoughts. Bowed Jaacob, with the
odd philosophy which perceived other people’s mistakes, but could not
see its own ludicrous pretensions--big John, who believed in his
brother--and the ruddy darkness of the smithy, where reality made a rude
assault upon his vision--had disenchanted Huntley. He stood on the brae
of Tyne, seeing every thing with practical and undazzled eyes, feeling
himself to have a certain claim, difficult and doubtful, yet real, upon
the lands before him; but seeing all the obstacles which lay in its way.
And, distinct from this, far apart and separate, with a world between,
lay the fortune far more secure and certain which Huntley had to make
with his own hands.

It was with these thoughts that he entered the manse of Kirkbride.




CHAPTER XVII.


Dr. Logan was in his study writing his sermon--Katie was alone in the
manse parlor. It was a cheerful room, looking over the little front
garden and down the brae to the roofs of the village from its front
window, and peeping out through a flush of foliage upon Tyne and the
Melmar woods from the other. The furniture was very simple, the carpet
old, the walls painted of an ash-green, which was just one degree better
than the drab-<DW52> complexion of the Norlaw dining-room; but
notwithstanding, the room was perfect and could not have been improved
upon. There was only one easy-chair, and that was sacred to the
minister; the others were of the ancient fashion of drawing-room chairs,
once elaborately painted and gilded, but now much dimmed of their
pristine splendor. Katie’s own hands had made all the pretty chintz
covers, which fitted without a wrinkle, and the result was extremely
satisfactory--very much more agreeable to look upon than the crumpled
covers of the Melmar drawing-room. There was a wonderful screen of
needle work, in a very slim ebony frame in one corner, an old-fashioned
work table, with a crimson bag and inlaid top, which could answer as a
chess-board, in another--and a low bookcase, full of books, between the
door and the end window. On the table, at this present moment, stood a
basket, of goodly dimensions, full of stockings--and by the side of that
a little pile of freshly-mangled linen, pinafores and other small
garments in want of strings and buttons. It was Friday, very near the
end of the week--so the minister, too wise to leave his preparations to
the latest day, made ready for his weekly duty in the study, while Katie
did her weekly mendings on the same principle in her own domain.

“You may go to the study if you please Huntley--my father will be glad
to see you,” said the young mistress of the manse, once more drawing
Johnnie’s sock over her hand after she had welcomed her visitor. Huntley
did not avail himself of the privilege so soon as he might have done,
considering that he had come with the intention of asking advice from
the minister. It was pleasant to sit down in that quiet, bright,
home-like room, which looked as though nothing could disturb its
cheerful composure, and see that careful little woman among her family
labors, so fresh, and bright, and young, yet so perfectly in her place
among these pleasant cares. Huntley, whose mind was in a tumult of
unaccustomed anxieties, and who felt himself oppressed with a burden of
responsibility, and the new necessity of deciding for himself, sank into
a chair opposite Katie, with a sensation of rest and relief which he had
not felt for weeks before. She looked up to him brightly with those
smiling brown eyes which were so young and yet so full of elder-sisterly
thoughtfulness. She saw in a moment the shadow on Huntley’s face, and
proceeded to minister to it as if it had been a cloud upon the boyish
horizon of one of her own young brothers. Katie could not help being
half maternal even to Huntley.

“Something ails you,” said the little woman--“are you tired, Huntley?
Oh, I mind when grief was here, what hard, hard work it was keeping up a
smile. Never mind me; look sorrowful, if you like, and take a rest. It
makes me think how I felt myself when dear mamma died, to see you
keeping up a face like that.”

“Oh, Katie, I wish we had you at Norlaw!” cried the lad, with sudden
earnestness.

“Yes,” said Katie, simply, “if you had only had a sister, Huntley!--but
Mrs. Livingstone does not care for strangers. And mothers are sometimes
fondest of their sons--everybody says so; but I know you’re the eldest,
and every thing comes on you.”

“Patie is the wisest,” said Huntley, with a momentary smile; “I think he
could manage better without me--and, Katie, I’ll have to go away.”

She looked up at him with a question in her eyes. She asked nothing
audibly, but merely suspended her work, and turned, with a friendly
anxiety, her steady, kind gaze upon Huntley’s face. The young man was
not “in love"--he was still too familiar with this sisterly face, and
too much occupied with all the sudden troubles in which he had himself
been plunged, to think of any such thing; but, unconsciously, Huntley
paused before answering--paused to take the peaceful scene, the home
apartment, the bright serious eyes into his memory, a picture of
strange influence and tenderness never to fade.

“I thought of going to Australia,” he said; “they say a man with a will
to work and some knowledge, especially of cattle, is sure to thrive
there. It matters but little, I think, Katie, whether I’m a hundred or a
thousand miles away, so long as I _am_ away; and I think the best place
for me is there.”

“But Australia is many a thousand miles away,” said Katie, “at the other
end of the world; and you can not come home to see your friends as you
might do from a nearer place. If you go there, Huntley, we’ll never see
you again.”

“I’ll go there, that I may come back,” said Huntley, eagerly; then he
began to play with the ball of cotton which Katie was mending her
children’s stockings with; then he looked round the room wistfully once
more. “And when I do come home,” said the lad, “Katie, I wonder, I
wonder, what changes I’ll see here?”

“Oh, whisht!” cried Katie, with a little overflow of tears; “papa’s not
young, but he’s no’ very old; and if it’s God’s will, we’ll aye be the
same.”

“It might be ten--fifteen years,” said Huntley; “and I was not thinking
of the minister; I was thinking of--other things.”

Katie did not ask what these other things might be. The color rose in
her cheek a little, but not enough to confuse her.

“The little ones will be all grown up,” she said, with a quiet laugh;
“perhaps some of them away too, Huntley, into the battle; and me an old
Katie with a cap, keeping house for papa.”

She glanced across the table for her cotton as she spoke, and, meeting
Huntley’s eye, blushed a little more, yet was not discomposed. The young
man’s heart beat louder, he could not very well tell why. Some confused
words came rushing into his mind, but none of them were fit to say. His
own face flushed with a hasty flood of unaccustomed and unascertained
emotions; he rose up hastily, scarcely knowing how it was that the
repose of the manse parlor was broken, yet feeling it. Dr. Logan called
Katie from his study, and Huntley answered the call. He gave back the
ball of cotton, and said hurriedly:--

“Dinna forget me, Katie, when _that_ time comes;” and so went away.

That time! what time? Huntley could have given no explanation of what he
meant; neither could Katie, who put up her hand softly to her eyes, and
smiled a very faint smile, and said, “Poor boy!” with a little sigh as
the door closed upon him. But perhaps explanations would have done but
little good, and every thing answered perfectly well as it was.

Huntley came with a blush into the presence of the innocent and
unconscious minister, who had forgotten his own youth many a long day
ago, and had never yet been roused into consciousness that his little
Katie might be something else than a good child and elder sister, in the
perverse imaginations of other people. He looked up from his desk and
his manuscript, and pushed up his spectacles on his forehead when the
young man entered.

“Huntley! is that you? What’s wrong, my man?” said Dr. Logan. He thought
the lad could not have seen Katie, or he must have become more composed
by this time; and the excellent pastor thought of nothing else than some
new accident or coil at Norlaw.

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Huntley, who only blushed the more in shamefaced
self-consciousness, “but I wanted to ask your advice.”

Dr. Logan laid down his pen with resignation; it was a new pen, sharply
nibbed, such as the minister loved, and he had just got a capital idea
for the third head of his sermon, an idea which might be nowhere before
Huntley had half stated his case. The minister paused a moment, trying
very hard to connect his idea with something in the room which might
recall it to him when his visitor was gone. He tried the inkstand, the
pretty paper-weight on the table, and even his large red and green
pocket-handkerchief, in vain. At last he thought he had secured it on
the knob of the glass door of his bookcase; he nodded ruefully to
Huntley and made a knot on his handkerchief.

“Now, Huntley, proceed, my boy,” said the minister with a sigh; he held
the knot on the handkerchief in his hand, and fixed his eyes on the
bookcase. Certainly he had it safe now.

Huntley, glad to get out of his embarrassment so, plunged at once into
his tale. He could not quite make out how it was that the excellent
doctor looked so steadily at the bookcase, and gave himself such divided
and wandering answers. However, at last the minister forgot his idea,
and threw away the handkerchief in despair.

“Eh? what was that you were saying, Huntley?” said Dr. Logan. The story
had to be gone over again. But, to Huntley’s surprise, his friend knew
all about it, more about it indeed than he did himself, and shook his
head when Huntley vehemently declared his conviction that he was the
true heir of Melmar.

“I make no doubt,” said the minister, “that if _she_ could be found, the
will would stand--but I mind the writer laying it down very clear to me
and Norlaw at the time that ye behoved to produce her alive or
dead--that is, by evidence in the last case, no doubt--before your case
could stand. It might be well worth a man’s while that had enough to
keep him, and nothing else to do--but I would not advise _you_ to put
off your time seeking Mary Huntley. You’re the eldest son and the prop
of your family. I would not advise it, Huntley, my man.”

“Nor do I mean it,” said Huntley, with a blush at his own wild fancies;
“and if I had known that you knew it so well, I should not even have
troubled you. No, doctor, I’ve written to your friend in Edinburgh--I
want him to take all our affairs in hand, and save, if it is possible,
Norlaw itself for my mother. What we’ll have to begin upon after, I
can’t very well tell--but Cosmo is the only one of us too young to set
out for himself. I will leave the other matter with Mr. Cassilis, and he
can do what he thinks best.”

“Very wise, Huntley, very wise,” said the minister, whose mind was still
fumbling after his idea; “and you’re thinking of going abroad yourself,
they tell me?--I don’t doubt it’s a shock to your mother, but I would
say it was the best thing you could do. Charlie Cassilis, no doubt, will
be coming here. He’s aye very willing to come to the manse. I’ll make
Katie write him a line to-day, to say we’ll expect him--and any thing I
can do to further the business, you know you can rely upon--eh? what was
that you said?”

“Nothing,” said Huntley, “except that there’s little time to lose, and I
am interrupting you. Good-bye, Dr. Logan--I’ll see you again before I go
away.”

“Before he goes away,” said the minister, with perplexity, half rising
to follow Huntley, as he hurried from the room; “what does the callant
mean?” But just then Dr. Logan’s eye returned to the knob of the
bookcase, which no longer recalled that precious lost idea. “Poor human
nature!” said the good man, with a sigh. He thought it rather selfish of
Huntley to have disturbed his studies just at that particular
moment--and it was the young man’s human nature over which he sighed.

Huntley, meanwhile, went back again to Norlaw in a greater tumult of
mind than that which had brought him forth. But he no longer thought of
Melmar as he had done in that sudden golden vision of fortune and
conquest. His heart leaped within him like one on the verge of a new
world. These three scenes through which he had passed:--bowed Jaacob’s
odd philosophy and startling groundwork--“Trust in nothing that you have
not conquered for yourself;” Katie’s quiet home-parlor, her blush and
glance of kindness, which perhaps understood his unspoken and sudden
fervor as well as he did himself; and, beyond these, the sober, calm
every-day minister, giving only an outside and momentary attention to
those matters in which this young life had all its hopes at stake,
minding his sermon, and only kindly indifferent to Huntley, had brought
the youth on a long way in the education of his life. He could not have
put it all into words, or explained it to the satisfaction of the
philosopher; yet the shock of reality and actual life which brought him
back to himself in the little smithy of Kirkbride--the warm light of
Katie’s eyes which had stirred, with something of personal and distinct
identity, separate from family interests, and individual in the world,
the young man’s heart and spirit--and not least, though very different,
the composed friendliness of the minister, pre-occupied with his sermon,
who had only a very spare amount of attention to bestow upon Huntley,
and showed him that the world in general was not likely to be much
absorbed by his interests, or startled by his hopes--were all very real,
practical and permanent lessons. They sent him back to Norlaw an older
man.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Mr. Cassilis came to the manse in answer to Katie’s invitation and the
business of Huntley. He was young and did not particularly commend
himself to the liking of the young master of Norlaw; but as he pleased
all the other people very tolerably well, there were, perhaps, various
reasons for the less friendly sentiment of Huntley. He was, however, a
brisk man of business, and not sufficiently over-burdened with
occupation to prevent him entering heartily into the concerns of the
half-ruined family.

All this time Patrick Livingstone had been quietly busy, collecting and
arranging all his father’s memoranda which seemed to throw any light
upon their circumstances; among these were many hurried, and only half
intelligible notes of transactions with the former Huntley of Melmar,
from which it very shortly appeared that Norlaw’s debts had all been
contracted to his old kinsman, and had only come into possession of “the
present Melmar,” when he took possession of the house and property, as
heir-at-law, on the old man’s death. They had suspected this before, for
it seemed very unlikely that one man should borrow of another, whose
claims were so entirely antagonistic to his own--but these were their
only real evidence--for Norlaw had been so irregular and unsystematic
that it was impossible to tell what money might or might not have passed
through his hands.

The lawyer took all these scratchy memorandums out of Patrick’s hands,
and examined them carefully in presence of the lads. They were in the
east room, in the midst of a pile of old papers from which these had
been selected. Patie had not completed his task--he was going over his
father’s letters, to see whether they threw any light on these forgotten
transactions. It was no small task; for Norlaw, like most other men of
trifling habits and unimportant correspondence, kept every thing that
everybody wrote to him, and even scrawls of his own letters. Some of
these scrawls were curious enough--among them were one or two anxious
and elaborate epistles to people abroad, whom his search for his lost
love had brought him into contact with; some, dating still further back,
were intimations of the birth of his children, and other family events
of importance to his wife’s relations. They were all composed with
considerable care, and in somewhat pompous diction; they threw wonderful
light upon the weaknesses and vanities of this departed life, and
indifferent people might have laughed at them--but Huntley and Patie
blushed instead of laughing, or folded the scrawls away hurriedly with
tears in their eyes. To them these memorials were still pathetic,
tender, full of a touching appeal to their affection, too sacred to meet
the common eye.

Presently, however, Patie caught a glimpse of a handwriting still more
scratchy than his father’s--the trembling characters of old age. It was
a letter from old Melmar, the most important they had yet lighted
upon--and ran thus:--

“DEAR PATRICK,

     “Touching the matter that was under discussion betwixt us the last
     time I saw you, I have just this to say, namely, that I hold your
     receipts and acknowledgments for money in the interests of your
     wife and family, and not in my own. I know well what would happen
     if you knew yourself free to incur more responsibility; so, mind
     you, though you’ll get them all at my death, and most likely Melmar
     to the boot, I’ll take care, as long as I’m to the fore, to keep my
     hand over you for your good. You can let the Mistress see this if
     you please, and I’ll wager a bodle she agrees with me. I can not
     give you them back--but unless you behave all the worse, they’ll
     never leave my hands until they return to your own.

“H. HUNTLEY.”




“Eh! what’s that?” said Mr. Cassilis, looking up from his little lot of
papers, as he saw the two brothers pass this letter between them.

They were half reluctant to show it; and when Huntley at last handed it
across the table it was with a proud apology.

“My father was generous and liberal to the extreme. I suppose he was not
what people call prudent; few understood him,” said Huntley.

The lawyer took the paper with a half perceptible smile. He knew already
what other people said of Norlaw.

However, he added old Melmar’s letter with care to his own heap of
scribbled memoranda.

“It’s not very much good,” he said, “but it shows intention.
Unquestionably, neither the giver nor the receiver had any thought of
payment for these loans. I had better see the present man to-morrow.
What with the will and these he ought to come to reason.”

“Me’mar?” cried Huntley--“no, I can have no appeal made to him on our
behalf. Do you know how he persecuted my father?”

“I’m not much of an appealing man,” said Cassilis, “but I had better see
him. Don’t be afraid--I’ll not compromise you. You did not know much of
the matter yourself, I understand, till recently. Be charitable--suppose
he were as ignorant as you?”

“Stop!” cried Patie, “never mind personal feelings--is that all the
value of the will?--to bring him to reason?”

“Not if I find Mary Huntley,” said the young lawyer.

If _I_ find. The young men exchanged glances--not quite sure that they
were pleased with this transference of their interests.

“If she’s to be found alive--or if she’s dead, and we can prove it,
every thing, of course, becomes as clear as daylight,” said the
minister’s nephew, “and many a man would tell you that in these days
either the one thing or the other is certain; but I’ve had some
experience. I know there have been cases in which every effort was
baffled; and failing either, I don’t see at this moment what’s to be
done. You expect me to say, go to law, of course, but who’s to pay the
piper? Law’s a very expensive luxury. Wait till you’re rich, and then
come down upon him--that is to say, if this search fails.”

“But it is at least worth while to make the search,” said Huntley,
hastily, “and if it is so, it is too soon to treat with Melmar.
Friendship is out of the question. Let us deal with him honestly. I can
not accept a favor from a man one day and commence a lawsuit against him
the next; it is not possible.”

“In the meantime,” said Cassilis, coolly sweeping all his papers up into
a pocket-book, “you’ve committed your affairs into my hands, and I mean
to do my best for my client, begging your pardon, whether my client
perceives my tactics or no. Don’t be offended. I’ll claim these said
acknowledgments as your right, and not as a favor. I want to see what
kind of an animal this is that we’re to fight; and to let you see what I
mean, I may as well say that I’ve heard all the history of the last few
weeks, and that I understand your feelings; but feelings, Livingstone,
recollect, as your brother says, have little to do with the law.”

Huntley could make very little further opposition; but he did not
respond by any means to his new agent’s friendliness; he received it
even with a little _hauteur_ and surliness, like a ridiculous young
hero, finding out condescension and superiority, and sundry other of
those agreeable figments of the jealous imagination, in the natural
frankness of the young lawyer. If he had been fifty, or had known
nothing of the manse, possibly Mr. Charles Cassilis, W. S., would have
made a more favorable impression upon Huntley Livingstone.




CHAPTER XIX.


“Do I look like a fool?”

The speaker was Huntley of Melmar, seated at that moment in his large
leathern easy-chair at his own study-table; this was a long dim room,
lined with dusty-looking bookcases, and lighted faintly by one window,
from which nothing could be seen but a funereal yew-tree, which kept the
room in perpetual shade. The whole apartment had a stifled, unventilated
look, as if fresh air never entered it, as sunshine certainly never did;
even in winter no fire could be coaxed into a blaze in Melmar’s
study--every thing was dusty, choked, and breathless, partaking in the
general want of order visible through the house, with private additions
of cheerlessness peculiarly its own.

And there could not well be a greater contrast than the two people in
this room; Cassilis was young, good-looking, rather careless in manner,
shrewd and quick, as became his profession, but by no means formal, as
might have become it. He was not the solemn bearer of a legal
challenge--a messenger of heroical enmity or hereditary dislike; he was
only a morning visitor in a morning coat, quite as ready to talk of the
last change of ministry or the ensuing election as of the immediate
business which brought him here. Melmar sat watching him like an old
cat, stealthy and absorbed. In _his_ day business was managed in a
different manner; and the old Aberdeen attorney watched with a chuckle
of professional contempt and private satisfaction the informal
proceedings of his younger brother and adversary. Mr. Huntley thought
himself much too “deep” for the fathoming of this careless neophyte,
while his visitor, on the other hand, found equal satisfaction in
setting down the Laird of Melmar as one of the old school.

“Not exactly,” said Cassilis, “but it’s odd how often a fool and a man
of sense are convertible terms. A man does a thing from a generous
motive, and that’s ridiculous, eh, Mr. Huntley? absurd to men of the
world like you and me, who don’t recognize the principle; but mind you,
there _might_ be circumstances which _might_ induce the most sagacious
of us, out of pure self-regard and prudence, to do the very same thing
as the blockhead did out of generosity; the result would be the same,
you know, in both cases--and who is to judge whether it is done by a
wise man or a fool?”

“Aye, man, you’re ironical, are you?” said Melmar, “very good practice,
but it does not do with me--I’m too old for inuendoes; come, to the
point. You’ve got a foolish case by the hand, though, of course, as an
older man and member of the profession, I think it perfectly right of
you not to seem conscious of that--_perfectly_ proper. I highly approve
of your demeanor in a professional point of view, my young friend.”

“Which is very kind of you,” said Cassilis, laughing; “I think it all
the more so because I can’t agree with you. Do you know, I hear
everywhere about the country that there could not be a greater
difference than between young Livingstone and his father?--quite a
different man, I understand.”

“Eh? and what’s that to me?” asked Melmar, sharply.

“Well, you know, between ourselves as professional men,” said Cassilis,
laughing and speaking with the most delightful frankness, “if this
Norlaw had been a man of spirit and energy, like his son, or indeed
worth his salt, as people say, you know just as well as I do--possibly
far better, for I bow to your experience--that you could not have had a
chance of reigning here as you have done for so many years.”

“What the deevil do you mean, sir?” cried Melmar, growing red and half
rising from his chair; “is this language to hold to me, in my own
house?”

“Nay, I was only appealing to your professional knowledge,” said the
young man, carelessly. “When you speak to me of the profession, of
course I necessarily conclude that you are, at least, as well-informed
as I am--and this is clear to anybody with half an eye. Mind you, I
don’t mean to say that young Livingstone’s claim is weaker than his
father’s--you know it is not. I feel indeed that the whole matter is
immensely simplified by having a professional man like yourself to deal
with--for I don’t presume to suppose that I am telling you any thing
that you don’t know already; but possibly--I can’t tell--the young man
may not feel it for his interest to push his claims at this moment. It’s
for _my_ interest that he should, of course, for it will be a capital
case--but we can both wait; however, under the circumstances, I am
perfectly justified in asking you to consider whether the little
restitution I suggested to you would be the act of a fool or of a wise
man.”

Melmar had been gazing with a kind of hazy, speechless wrath at the
speaker, who passed so jauntily and lightly over this subject, and took
his own perfect acquaintance with its right and wrong, for granted, with
so much coolness. When Cassilis came to this pause, however, no
explosion followed. The florid face grew redder with a bursting fiery
fullness, in which even the grizzled red fringes of hair
sympathized--but, in spite of himself, Melmar was afraid. His “young
friend,” whom he had patronized and despised, seemed somehow to have got
him completely in his power--seemed to see into the very thoughts of the
old worldling, who thought himself so much wiser than his adversary. He
made a pause of consideration, and felt much the reverse of comfortable.
The unconcerned air of his visitor, which had relieved him at first,
seemed somehow to give greater weight to his words now. If these
downright blows were given in play, what should the serious strokes of
the same hand be? and Melmar knew very well that the strength of his
opponent’s case lay in plain right and justice, while his was only to
be held by art and stratagem. While he pondered, a sudden thought struck
him--he rose, went to the window, glanced out there for a moment--then
to the door, opened it and glanced along the long passage to make sure
there were no listeners--then he returned to his chair, and bent towards
the young lawyer, who had been watching all his proceedings with a half
amused curiosity.

“To make an end of all this,” said Melmar, with a very good imitation of
impatience, “and because they are relatives of the old family, and
friends, and all the rest of it--and to prove that I’m sorry for what
took place at Norlaw’s funeral--I’ll tell you what I’ll consent to do--”

“Well?” said Cassilis, quietly.

“I’ll consent,” continued Melmar, “because I’m not a man to have a will,
or a bill, or any thing of the sort stuck into my face every moment of
my life--I’ll consent to give up all Norlaw’s papers, every one of them,
as a matter of favor, on condition that this document, that you’ve all
made so much work about, shall be placed in my hands. After which I’ll
be able to look after my kinswoman’s interests in the proper way--for,
as for the fiction about those Livingstones, who have no more claim to
Melmar than you have, _that’s_ quite beneath any notice from me. But on
that condition, and to be done with the business, I’ll consent to give
up all my claims against Norlaw; and a more liberal offer never was
made.”

The young man looked steadily, and with a smile, into the old man’s
face--indeed, Mr. Cassilis went a step further, and did what is
sometimes extremely impertinent, and always embarrassing. He looked into
Melmar’s eyes with a keen, yet laughing gaze, which his companion could
by no means bear, and which made the florid face once more fiery red
with a troubled and apprehensive rage.

“Would you advise me to accept this offer as one professional man might
advise another?” said Cassilis, quietly, with his smile. That smile, and
that look, and that question, silenced Melmar a thousand times more
effectually than a vehement refusal of his proposition. This man was
sometimes bold, but he was never brave. He saw himself found out in the
laughing eyes of his young antagonist. He thought he had committed
himself and exposed his weak point--somehow he seemed to stand
self-betrayed and unvailed before this stranger, whose gaze was
intolerable, and whose question he should have liked to answer with a
curse, proper man as he was, if he had dared. But he did not dare,
though the self-restraining effort brought the perspiration to his
forehead. He scattered some papers on the table with an irrestrainable
movement, a little safety-valve for his secret fury.

“Do as you please, you’ll get no better,” he said, hoarsely, gathering
them up again, and turning his face from his young adversary, who did
not now seem quite an opponent to be despised.

“I tell you frankly,” said Mr. Cassilis, with that engaging candor of
his, “that it’s very much for my interest that young Livingstone should
carry on his suit at once. It’s for my interest, in short, to protract
the whole business to my utmost ability; and a highly attractive case I
have no doubt we should make of it--especially, Mr. Huntley,
_especially_ permit me to say, after the proposal you have just made.
However, we understand all that, both you and I, and I must ask you
again to consider what I said at first; here is this old man’s letter,
proving his intentions pretty distinctly; on our part we will not pay a
penny under less than compulsion. I leave it entirely in your own
hands--what will you do?”

Patricia Huntley was all alone in the drawing-room. She knew when Mr.
Cassilis entered; she knew he had been shut up with papa for a very
considerable time. She did not know any thing of the questions which
were being put in the study, or how hard they were to answer. Though she
read poetry-books, this poor little creature had very little to occupy
her, save her bad health and her limited imagination--a visitor was an
event to Patricia--especially when the visitor was young, rather
handsome, and newly come from Edinburgh. She thought she might as well
take an accidental stroll into the garden, and see what the gentlemen
were about in the study. Accordingly, with her poetry-book in her hand,
Patricia stole behind the yew-tree just at this particular moment and
crisis of the conversation. She could see them both through the dim
window, papa tumbling about his papers, and looking very stormy, Mr.
Cassilis, smiling and genial as he always was. Perhaps the younger face
of the two, being much the pleasanter, was, spite of filial veneration,
the most attractive to Patricia. She thought Mr. Cassilis, who had been
so long a time in the study, must surely have some very pleasant news to
tell--but at the same time, with sincere and disinterested concern, felt
that he must be dreadfully bored by so long an interview with papa. With
a generous impulse she approached the window, and knocked on the glass
playfully with her fingers.

“Papa, when do you mean to come to luncheon?” cried Patricia.

Melmar started up, opened the window, cried “Get away, you little
fool!--who wanted you?” and shook his fist at her menacingly. Poor
Patricia sprang back in terror, and lost her breath immediately. She did
not know, and perhaps if she had known, would not have appreciated, the
great relief which this little ebullition was to Melmar. He went back
quite refreshed to finish his fight; but his poor little daughter, who
did not understand it, first fell a-crying, and then, drying her eyes,
proceeded to revenge herself. She sought out Joanna immediately, and
informed that heroine of something extraordinary and mysterious going on
in the study--and of the unaccountable and inexcusable affront to
herself, “before Mr. Cassilis!” which Patricia could not forgive.
Luncheon was ordered immediately, half an hour before its time, and
Joanna herself went off to the study like a gale of wind, to order papa
into the dining-room. But the scene had changed by this time in Melmar’s
private apartment. Mr. Cassilis was writing when Joanna entered, while
her father stood by him holding some papers, and looking, stealthily
watchful, over the young man’s shoulder, so like an old brindled big cat
in the most feline concentration of vigilance, that Joanna’s irreverent
imagination was tickled with the resemblance.

“Eh, papa,” cried the girl, with a sudden laugh, “I would not like to be
a mouse in your way!--but Mr. Cassilis is too big for a mouse,” added
Joanna; “come to luncheon, it’s ready--but I don’t believe Patricia will
ever speak to you again--what are these?”

“No business of yours, you gipsy!” said Melmar, as she pulled at his
papers.

“Eh, but it is--I can see Norlaw’s name!” cried Joanna; “Mr. Cassilis,
tell Mrs. Livingstone that we know--and that I think shame of papa!--and
if it was not that I could not help it, I never, never, would have
spoken to him again! What are _you_ getting all these papers for? If
it’s to hurt the boys you shanna take them out of Melmar! You sha’n’t,
whatever he may say!”

“Softly--Mr. Huntley of Melmar will hurt the Livingstones no more,” said
Cassilis.

Meanwhile Melmar read the young lawyer’s receipt for these precious bits
of paper with no very pleasant face. It was a great deal too carefully
worded to be of any ulterior service. Even the pettifogging ingenuity of
the “old school” did not see at present any capabilities in it.




CHAPTER XX.


On the afternoon of the same day the young lawyer dropped in quietly,
with a smile on his lace, to Norlaw.

Huntley was busy in the out-buildings of the farm. He was taking an
inventory of all their stock and belongings, and making such an estimate
as he could, which was a very correct one on the whole, of the value of
this primitive property. Every thing about the house was going on very
much as usual. The Mistress was seated at the end window of the
dining-room, in a position which not only commanded the kitchen door and
all its comings and goings, but was likewise a good post of observation
for the farm-yard in which Huntley was. The stillness and heat of summer
brooded over the old castle walls, and even over the farm-yard, where
the very poultry drowsed in their afternoon siesta. The apples were
growing ruddy on the Norlaw trees, and the <DW72> of the hill brightened
in russet gold towards the harvest. An Irish “shearer,” with his sickle
over his shoulder, waited at a humble distance, till the young master
was ready to hear his application for work; the weather was unusually
favorable and the season early. In another week or ten days everybody
prophesied the harvest would begin.

Huntley Livingstone, however, was not thinking of the harvest. His mind
was busy with thoughts of the wild bush far away, the savage young
colonies then but little advanced in their progress, and the long years
of solitary labor which lay before him. He was not by any means in high
spirits. Melmar had faded out of his fancy like a dream. He thought he
perceived just what degree of probability there was in that vision of
fortune, and turning his back upon it, he set his face towards the
sober, homely, real future which must begin by the serious and solitary
toil of so many years.

So that Huntley was by no means delighted to be interrupted in the midst
of his task by the salutation of the young lawyer. He turned round
immediately and put down his memorandum-book, but not with much
cordiality. Cassilis was smiling--he always smiled; on the whole, this
rather aggravated Huntley.

“I’ve got something for you,” said the lawyer, holding up the same
pocket-book into which he had put Norlaw’s memoranda. He spoke with real
glee and triumph. Independent altogether of the interests of the family,
he felt he had made quite a professional success, and enjoyed it
accordingly.

“What?” said Huntley--he was half unwilling to perceive that this was
some advantage gained over the enemy. He had made up his mind in a
different direction, and did not want to be moved back again by any new
shift of fortune. But when the pocket-book was opened and its contents
disclosed--when Huntley saw before him, safe and certain, those old
yellow bonds and obligations signed with his father’s name, the young
man was startled--and the first idea of his unfriendliness was, that
they had been purchased by some concession.

“You have given up our interests in the more important matter!” cried
Huntley; “I warn you I will not adopt any such bargain; better ruin now
than any sacrifice either of right or of honor.”

“For what do you take me, Mr. Livingstone?” said the other, coldly; but
as he was too good-natured and much too triumphant to keep malice, he
continued, after a moment, in his usual tone:--“Don’t be foolish; take
these affairs and burn them--they’re better out of harm’s way; and go
in, gather the family together, and hold a council of war. Now I’ve seen
the man and understand the question, I’m ready to fight it out. We can
but take our chance. _You_ have every thing in your favor--he nothing
but blood and possession. You are not ruined, Livingstone, you have
enough to begin with--I am inclined to change my advice; if I were you,
I should wait no longer, but put it to the touch. The chances are ten to
one in your favor.”

“This is quite different from your former opinion,” said Huntley, in
amazement.

“Not opinion, say advice,” said Cassilis, who was now somewhat excited;
“I believed, begging your pardon, Livingstone, that you were likely to
need for your own immediate uses every penny you could scrape together;
I thought your father had seriously injured your cause by taking no
steps in the matter, and that the other side might think themselves
justified in saying that he knew this will either to be unfairly got or
invalid. But my visit to Melmar has dispelled these doubts. I think the
course is quite clear if you choose to try.”

This sudden suggestion took away Huntley’s breath; the color mounted in
his cheek in spite of himself--it was impossible to think of such a
prospect unmoved--for Melmar, with its moderate rank and easy fortune,
was very much more agreeable to think of than the bush and all its
peradventures of hardship and solitude. He listened with only a
half-attention while Cassilis explained to him how Mr. Huntley had been
induced to relinquish these valuable scraps of paper. The whole sum
represented by them was not very considerable, but it made all the
difference between bare, absolute stripped poverty, and the enough which
would satisfy everybody’s demands, and leave a little over for
themselves. There were still heavy mortgages upon the little property of
Norlaw, but when Huntley took his father’s canceled bonds in his hand,
he knew there was no longer cause to apprehend a forced and ruinous sale
of all their stock and crop and little possessions. He heard the lawyer
speak of Melmar’s fears, his proposal about the will--his gradual and
growing apprehensions; but all that appeared visible to Huntley was the
fact of their changed circumstances, and the new position in which the
family stood. His companion perceived after a while that the young man
was absorbed in his own thoughts, and paid no attention to what he said,
and Cassilis wisely left him, once more bidding him hold a council of
war. When he was alone, Huntley put aside his memorandum-book, drew his
cap over his eyes, and set off on a rapid walk to the top of the hill.
He scarcely drew breath till he had reached the summit of that fertile
<DW72> from whence he could just see in the distance the gray towers of
Melrose and the silvery gleam of Tweed shining in the hazy golden
sunshine beyond the purple Eildons. The broad country shone before him
in all its tints of color and glow of summer light, wide, great, and
silent as the life upon whose brink he stood--and at his feet lay
Norlaw, with its humble homestead and its ruined castle, where sat this
lad’s mother, who was a widow. He stood there perfectly silent, full of
thought, turning over half unconsciously in his mind the words of his
adviser.

    “He either fears his fate too much,
       Or his deserts are small,
     Who dares not put it to the touch,
       To gain or lose it all.”

Somehow these lines floated in upon Huntley’s mind as he stood gazing
upon the summer landscape. To win Melmar with all its wealth and
influence, or to lose what remained of Norlaw, with all the associations
and hereditary bonds that belonged to that home of his race--should he
put it to the touch? A conflict, not less stormy that it was entirely
unexpressed, rose within the young, ambitious, eager mind, gazing over
those fields and hills. A certain personification and individuality came
to the struggling powers within him. On either side stood a woman, one a
pale, unknown shadow, hovering upon the chances of his triumph, ready to
take the prize, when it was won, out of his hands--the other his own
well-beloved, home-dwelling mother, whose comfort and certain habitation
it was in Huntley’s power at once to secure. Should he put it to the
touch? should he risk all that he might win all?--and the tempters that
assailed Huntley suddenly vailed over to his eyes all that sunny home
landscape, and spread before him the savage solitudes of the far
country, the flocks and the herds which should be his sole
companions--the hut in the strange woods; oh beautiful home valleys,
glorious hills, dear gleams of water-springs! oh, love hiding sweet
among the trees, whispering ere it comes!--oh tender friends and bonds
of youth!--shall he put it to the touch? The council of war held its
debate among the dust and din of battle, though the summer sunshine
shone all the time in an undisturbed and peaceful glory upon the <DW72>
of Norlaw.




CHAPTER XXI.


“Do you think _I_ could bear the thought--me!” cried the Mistress
energetically; “have ye kent me all your days, Huntley Livingstone, and
do ye dare to think your mother would baulk your fortune for ease to
hersel’? is it like me? would any mortal even me with the like, but your
ainsel’?”

The Mistress stood by herself in the middle of the room, with her hand
on the table--her eyes shone with a mortified and grieved fire through
unshed tears--her heightened color--her frame, which seemed to vibrate
with a visible pang--the pain of unappreciated love, which looked like
anger in her face--showed how little congenial to her mind was Huntley’s
self-abnegation. There was no sacrifice in the world which she herself
could not and would not have made for her children; but to feel herself
the person for whom a sacrifice was needed, a hindrance to her son’s
prospects, a person to be provided for, struck with intense and bitter
mortification the high spirit of the Mistress. She could not be content
with this subordinate and passive position. Poverty, labor, want itself,
would have come easier to her proud, tender motherhood, than thus to
feel herself a bar upon the prospects of her boy.

When Huntley looked into his mother’s face, he thanked God silently
within himself, that he had held his council of war upon the hill-side,
and not in the Norlaw dining-parlor. It was the first time in his life
that the young man had made an arbitrary personal decision, taking
counsel with none; he had been naturally somewhat doubtful in his
statement of it, being unused to such independent action--but now he
rejoiced that he had made his conclusion alone. He came to his mother
with tenderness, which perhaps if it touched her secretly, made her
displeasure only the greater so far as appearance went--for the mother
of this house, who was not born of a dependent nature, was still too
young and vigorous in her own person, and too little accustomed to think
of her sons as men, to be able to receive with patience the new idea
that their relative positions were so far changed, and that it was now
her children’s part to provide for her, instead of hers to provide for
them.

“Mother, suppose we were to fail--which is as likely as success,” said
Huntley, “and I had to go away--after all, should you like me to leave
no home to think of--no home to return to?--is that not reason enough to
make you content with Norlaw?”

“Hold your peace!” cried the Mistress--“hame! do you mean to tell me
that I couldna make a cothouse in Kirkbride, or a lodging in a town look
like hame to my own bairns, if Providence ordained it sae, and their
hearts were the same? What’s four walls here or there?--till you’ve
firesides of your ain, your mother’s your hame wherever she may be. Am I
a weak auld wife to be maintained at the ingleside with my son’s
toil--or to have comfort, or fortune, or hope sacrificed to me? Eh,
laddie, Guid forgive ye!--me that would shear in the harvest field, or
guide the kye, or do any day’s work in this mortal world, with a
cheerful heart, if it was needful, for the sake of you!”

“Ay, mother,” cried Cosmo, suddenly springing up from the table where he
had been sitting stooping over a book in his usual attitude, without any
apparent notice of the conversation. “Ay, mother,” cried the boy, “you
could break your heart, and wear out your life for us, because it’s in
your nature--but you’re too proud to think that it’s our nature as well,
and that all you would do for your sons, your sons have a right to do
for you!”

The boy’s pale face shone, and his eyes sparkled; his slender, tall,
overgrown boyish figure, his long arms stretching out of the narrow
sleeves of his jacket, his long slender hands, and long hair, the entire
and extreme youthfulness of his whole appearance, so distinct from the
fuller strength and manhood of his brothers, and animated by the touch
of a delicate spirit, less sober and more fervid than theirs, struck
strangely and suddenly upon the two who had hitherto held this
discussion alone. An instantaneous change came over the Mistress’s face;
the fire in her eyes melted into a tender effusion of love and sorrow,
the yearning of the mother who was a widow. Those tears, which her proud
temper and independent spirit had drawn into her eyes, fell with a
softness which their original cause was quite incapable of. She could
not keep to her first emotions; she could not restrain the expansion of
her heart toward the boy who was still only a boy, and his father’s son.

“My bairn!” cried the Mistress, with a short sob. He was the youngest,
the tenderest, the most like him who was gone--and Cosmo’s words had an
unspeakable pathos in their enthusiasm--the heroism of a child!

After this the mother dropped into her chair, altogether softened, while
Huntley spoke to her low and earnestly.

“Melmar is nothing to me,” said her eldest son, in the half-whispered
forcible words which Cosmo did not hear, but in which his mother
recognized the distinct resolution of a nature as firm as her own;
“nothing at least except a chance of wealth and fortune--only a chance
which can wait; but Norlaw is every thing--house, family, ancestors,
every thing that makes me proud of my name. Norlaw and the Livingstones
must never be disconnected while we can prevent it--and, mother, for
Cosmo’s sake!”

“Eh, Huntley, God forgive me if I set more weight upon him than I should
set!” said the Mistress, with tears; “no’ to your detriment, my own son;
but look at the bairn! is he not _his_ very image that’s gane?”

Not a single shadow of envy or displeasure crossed Huntley’s face; he
stood looking at his young brother with a love almost as tender as their
mother’s, with besides an unconscious swell of manhood and power in his
own frame. He was the eldest brother, the head of the house, and the
purest saint on earth could not have condemned the generous pride which
rose in Huntley’s breast. It was not a weak effusion of sentimental
self-sacrifice--his own hopes, his own heart, his own life, were strong
with an individual identity in the young man’s nature. But the tender
son of this house for the first time had made his own authoritative and
masterly decision. To set aside his ambition and let it wait--to
postpone fortune to labor--to do the first duty of a man on his own sole
and unadvised responsibility--to provide for those of his own house, and
set them above the anxieties of poverty. He was proud, when he thought
of it, to feel the strength in his own arm, the vigor of his own
step--but the pride was such as almost an angel might have shared.

When Huntley left the room, the Mistress called Cosmo to her side. She
had resumed her seat by the corner window, and they could see him going
out, disappearing behind the old castle walls, in the glory of the
autumn sunset.

“Do you see him, Cosmo?” said the Mistress, with renewed tears, which
this time were of mingled pride and tenderness; “I resisted, but I never
wronged his thoughts. Do ye see your brother? Yonder he is, a young lad,
proud, and bold, and masterful--he’s no’ like you--he has it in his
heart to seek power, and riches, and honors, and to take pleasure in
them--and he’s that daring that the chance of a battle would be more
pleasant to Huntley than any thing in this world that was secure.
Yet--do you hear me, laddie? he’s put them all aside, every ane, for the
sake of this hame and name, and for you and me!”

And the color rose high upon the Mistress’s cheek in a flush of triumph;
the necessity and blessing of women came upon her in a sudden flood--she
could not be heroic herself, though she might covet the glory--but with
a higher, tenderer, more delicious pride, she could rejoice and triumph
in the courage of her boy. Her voice rose even in those restrained and
moderate words of common speech as if in a song; there was an
indescribable something in her tone which reminded one involuntarily of
the old songs of Scripture, the old triumphant Hebrew parallelisms of
Miriam and Deborah. She grasped Cosmo’s shoulder with an emphatic
pressure, and pointed with the other hand to the retiring figure of
Huntley, passing slowly and with a thoughtful step by the wall of the
old castle. Cosmo leaned out beside her, catching a flush upon his
delicate cheek from hers, but gazing upon the scene with a different
eye. Insensibly the poetic glance of the boy left his brother, to dwell
upon the other features of this picture before him. Those stern old
walls with their windowless sockets, through which once the sunshine
shone and the summer breezes entered to former generations of their
name--that sweet evening glory of sunshine, pouring aslant in a
lingering tender flood upon the world and the day, which it seemed sad
to leave--that sunshine which never grew old--insensibly his own romance
stole back into Cosmo’s mind. He forgot, with the inadvertence of his
years, that it was not a romance agreeable to his mother, or that, even
if it had been, she was not of a temper to bear the intrusion of other
subjects when her mind was so fully occupied with concerns of her own.

“Mother, Huntley is right,” cried Cosmo; “Melmar can not be his if _she_
is alive--it would not become him to seek _it_ till he has sought
her--and as Huntley can not seek her, for her sake and for my father’s,
_I_ will, though it should take the half of my life!”

Once more the Mistress’s face changed; a glance of fiery impatience
flashed from her eyes, her cheek grew violently red, the tears dried as
if by a spell, and she put Cosmo away hastily with the same arm which
had held him.

“Get away to your plays, bairn--dinna trouble me!” cried the Mistress,
with a harsh contempt, which was as strong as it was unjust; “to think I
should open my heart to you that thinks of nothing but your romances and
story books! Go! I’ve different things to think of--dinna trouble me!”

And she rose with a murmur of indignation and anger, and went hurriedly,
with a flushed cheek, to seek her usual work, and take refuge in
occupation. If the lost heiress had been her dearest friend, she would
still have resented urgently the introduction of an intruder into her
sudden burst of mother-pride. As it was, it overturned temper and
patience entirely. She brushed past Cosmo with a hasty contempt, which
humiliated and mortified the boy beyond expression. He did not attempt
to justify himself--perhaps a kindred spark of resentment, and the
bitterness with which youth appreciates injustice, helped to silence
him--but when his mother resumed her seat and worked on hurriedly in a
disdainful and angry silence, Cosmo withdrew out of the room and out of
the house with a swelling heart. Too proud to betray how much he was
wounded, he stole round behind the farm offices to his favorite perch
among the ruins, where the lad brooded in mournful mood, sinking into
the despairing despondency of his years and temperament, feeling himself
misunderstood and unappreciated, and meditating a hundred melancholy
heroisms. Mary of Melmar, so far, seemed as little propitious to
Norlaw’s son as she had once been to Norlaw.




CHAPTER XXII.


“Go wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please--I
canna see a step before me, for my part--it’s you and no’ me that must
take the lead,” said the Mistress, with a heavy sigh. These words were
said as the little party, Huntley, Patrick and herself, were left
standing by a little pile of luggage, in the dusk of a harvest evening,
in front of the coach office on the Edinburgh pavement. They were on
their way to Liverpool, from which place Huntley was to sail in an
emigrant ship for Port Philip. Princes Street was full of the open-air
and street-loving crowd which gives to that splendid promenade, on
summer nights, so much of a continental aspect. The dusk of the twilight
fell softly in the valley which lay behind, the lights in the high
houses on the other side hung softly midway in the air, the voices of
the passengers, and sounds of the city, though doubtless many of these
were sad enough, mingled in the soft-shadowed air to a harmonious hum of
pleasant sound, which echoed with a mocking gayety into the heavy heart
of the mother who was about to part with her boys. She was bewildered
for the moment with her journey, with the unknown place and unusual
animation around her, and it was only very slowly and by degrees that
her mind regained its usual self-possession. She stood gazing blankly
round her, while the boys made arrangements about their superfluous
packages, which were to be left at the coach office, and finally came up
to her, carrying between them the little trunk which contained the
necessaries for their journey. Cabs were not in those days, and the
Mistress would have been horrified into perfect self-possession by the
preposterous idea of “a noddy.” When they were thus far ready, she
turned with them briskly enough, leading the way without any
uncertainty, for, in spite of her exclamation, it had been already
arranged where they were to go, and the Mistress had been at school in
Edinburgh in her young days, and was by no means unacquainted with the
town. They went along in this order--Mrs. Livingstone carrying a
considerable bag on her own arm, and the young men with a trunk between
them--across the North Bridge towards the old town, that scene of magic
to every stranger; the valley, the hill, the dim gray turrets of
Holyrood, the soft darkness of the night full of sounds, lying beneath
them--the rugged outline, picturesque and noble, of the lofty old street
before--the lights shining here and there like fairy stars in irregular
specks among the high windows, and everywhere the half-seen,
unrecognizable throng of wayfarers, and the world of subdued sound on
every side made but small impression upon the absorbed minds of the
little party. They knew it all before, and their thoughts were otherwise
occupied; yet involuntarily that noble landscape, which no one could
look upon with absolute indifference, soothed them all, in spite of
themselves. Their destination was the High Street, where, in one of the
more respectable closes, and at the top of an interminable ascent of
stairs, there lived a native of Kirkbride, who was in the habit of
letting lodgings to students, and with whom they were to find
accommodation for the night. Mrs. Purdie gave to the Mistress a little
room boasting a “concealed bed,” that is to say, a recess shut in by
folding-doors, and just large enough to contain a bedstead, and to the
lads a bed-closet, with a borrowed light, both of which inventions
specially belong to the economy of flats and great subdivided houses,
and are the most unfavorable features in the same. But the window of
Mrs. Livingstone’s room, where they had tea, looked abroad over that
great panorama, bounded by the gleam of the Firth, and the low green
line of the Fife hills, which makes it worth while to ascend stairs and
watch at lofty windows in Edinburgh. The yellow harvest moon had risen
ere they had finished the simple meal, which none of them had any heart
for, and Huntley drew his mother to the window to bid her look at the
wonderful broad moonlight lying white upon the long line of street
below, and thrusting out all the monuments of the little hill into bold
and striking relief against the luminous sky. The Mistress turned away
from the window, with big tears in her eyes.

“Eh, Huntley, laddie, what do I care? if it was the grandest view that
ever was, do you think I could see it?” cried his mother, “when I ken
that I’ll never see the light of the moon mair without weary thoughts
and yearning to where my bairns are, hundreds and thousands of miles
away from me!”

“But, mother, only till we come home,” said Huntley, with his arm round
his mother, speaking low in her ear.

The Mistress only turned towards the dim little table, with its dim
candles, hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes. This was
endurable--but the night and the calm, and the glory of the heavens and
the earth, were too much for the mother. If she had remained there
looking out, it almost seemed to her as if she must have wept her very
heart dry.

The next morning they set out once more upon their journey--another
day’s travel by the canal to Glasgow. The canal was not to be despised
in those days; it was cheaper, and it was not a great deal slower than
the coach; and if the errand had been happier, the mode of traveling, in
that lovely harvest weather, with its gradual glide and noiseless
progress, was by no means an unpleasant one. Glasgow itself, a strange,
unknown, smoky Babel, where, after Huntley was gone, the Mistress was to
part with her second son, bewildered her mind completely with its first
aspect; she could make nothing of it as they pursued their way from the
canal to the river, through a maze of perplexing and noisy streets,
where she felt assured hundreds of people might lose themselves, never
to be found again. And, with a feeling half of awe and half of disgust,
Mrs. Livingstone contemplated the place, so unlike the only other large
town she knew, where Patie was to pass the next half dozen years of his
life. Instinctively she caught closer hold of him, forgetting Huntley
for the moment--Huntley’s dangers would be those of nature, the sea and
the wilderness--but temptation! ill-doing! The Mistress grasped her
son’s sleeve with tenacious fingers, and looked into his face with half
an entreaty, half a defiance.

“If I should ever see the like of that in a bairn of mine!” she cried
aloud, as they passed a corner where stood some of those precocious men,
haggard and aged beyond double their years, whom it is the misfortune of
a great town sometimes to produce. The idea struck her with an impatient
dread which overcame even her half-apprehensive curiosity about the
voyage they were going to undertake; and she had scarcely overcome this
sudden alarm, when they embarked in the snorting steamer which was to
convey them to Liverpool. Standing on the deck, surrounded by the pile
of boxes which formed Huntley’s equipment, and looking with startled and
disapproving eyes upon the arriving passengers, and the crowded sheds of
the Broomielaw, the Mistress saw the same moon rising above the masts,
and housetops, and smoke of Glasgow, without any thing like the same
feelings which had moved her on the previous night. Her mind was
excited, her active spirit stirred, her very nerves, steady as they
were, influenced a little by the entirely new anticipation of the
voyage; a night at sea!--it seemed almost as great looking forward to it
as Huntley’s journey, though that was to the other end of the world.

And so they glided down the beautiful Clyde, the breeze freshening about
them, as hills began to rise black in the moonlight, and little towns to
glimmer on the water’s edge. The mother and the sons walked about the
deck together, talking earnestly, and when the vessel rose upon the
bigger waves, as they stole out to sea, and every thing but the water
and the sky, and the moonlight, gradually sank out of sight, the
Mistress, with a little thrill of danger and adventure at her heart,
forgot for the moment how, presently, she should return alone by the
same road, and almost could suppose that she was setting out with
Huntley. The fancy restored her to herself: she was not much of an
advice giver. Her very cautions and counsels, perhaps, were arbitrary
and slightly impatient, like her nature; but she was their true mother,
heart and soul; and the lads did not forget for long years after what
the Mistress said as she paced about the deck between them, with a firm,
yet sometimes uncertain foot, as the midnight glided into morning, and
the river disappeared in the bigger waters of the sea.




CHAPTER XXIII.


The voyage, as it happened, was a very favorable one--even the
Mistress’s inland terrors were scarcely aroused by the swell of that
summer sea; and Huntley himself, though his ideas expanded to a much
longer journey, unconsciously took it as a good omen that his first
night at sea should be so calm and fair. They came into the great
seaport late on another summer evening. It was not nearly so extensive
then as it is now, but still the masts were in forests, the ships in
navies; and their inexperienced eyes, unenlightened by the hasty and
darkling glimpse of the Clyde, and knowing nothing greater or busier
than the Forth, with its great bosom diversified by an island and a
sail, the one scarcely more plentiful than the other, opened wide with
amazement at the fleet of vessels in the Mersey. Insensibly to herself,
the Mistress drew a certain comfort from the fact, as the Glasgow
steamer went gliding up the river, in the late summer sunset. Ships were
moored in the deep calm and shadow of the banks; ships were coming and
going in the midwaters of the river, and lines of spars and masts,
indistinguishable and without number, fringed the whole water edge, from
which the smoke of the town, reddened by a last ray of sunshine, rose
inland, out of sight, in a great overhanging cloud. The sight of such a
throng brought a momentary comfort to the heart of Huntley’s mother. The
very sea, it almost seemed, could not be so lonely, when all these big
wayfarers, and thousands more, were tracking its waters day by day.

“Mony a mother’s son is there,” she said to herself softly, as she stood
gazing about her--and even the community of hardship had a solace in it.
As the steamboat puffed and snorted to its destination, a big ship,
crowded with pensive faces, bare of sails, and tugged along by a little
steamer, came lumbering silently along through the peaceful evening
light, going out to sea. Two or three voices round announced it “an
emigrant ship,” and the Mistress gazed into it and after it, clasping
her son’s arm with a thrill at her heart. Evening; the sweet daylight
fading into a charmed and tender twilight--the sky growing pale with
very calm; the houses and churches and piles of buildings beginning to
stand out black against the colorless, mysterious light which casts no
shadows; the water gleaming in long, still ripples, as pale as the
sky--every thing softening and darkening into natural rest--yet, through
all, the great ship departing silently, with her throng of travelers,
beginning to unfold the sails of her wayfaring, beginning to vibrate to
the quickening wave, as she neared the sea.

“God go with them!” said the Mistress, with a sob out of her full heart.
“Oh, Huntley, laddie! mony a mother’s son is there!”

The landing, when they came to it; the rush of porters and vagabonds
from the pier; the half light, in which it seemed doubly necessary to
the Mistress, roused into prompt and vigorous self-defense, to keep the
most vigilant watch on the luggage--and the confusion with which both
mother and sons contemplated the screaming, shouting crowd who
surrounded them with offers of service, and bawled to them from the
shore, made altogether a very serious business of the arrival. The
Mistress never knew how she came through that ordeal; the “English
tongue,” which had a decidedly Irish brogue in that scene, and under
these circumstances, deafened the rural Scottish woman. The crowd of
spectators, and the foray upon everybody’s luggage made by some scores
of ragged fellows, whom her uncharitable imagination set down as robbers
or madmen, filled her with indignation and a strong propensity to
resistance; and it was not till she found herself safely deposited in an
odd little sitting-room of a little inn, close to the docks, with all
her packages safe and undiminished, that a measure of calmness returned
to the ruffled bosom of Mrs. Livingstone. Then, after they had rested
and refreshed themselves, Huntley and Patrick went out with natural
curiosity to see the new scene and the new country--for the whole party
fully considered that it was “England,” not Liverpool, in which they now
found themselves--and the Mistress was left alone. She sat in the little
parlor under the unfamiliar gas-light, looking round with forlorn eyes
upon the room. There was a little model of a ship upon the mantel-piece
in front of the little mirror, and another upon a small side-table under
the barometer; other odd little ornaments, such as sailors bring home,
shells and curious boxes, and little painted glass cups of Dutch art,
gave a very nautical aspect to the shabby apartment, which, further,
bore traces of having recently been smoked in, which disgusted the
Mistress. Then all the noises of a noisy and not very well-behaved
quarter seemed to rise up to her window, mingled with a jar of music
from a big blazing drinking-place, almost next door--and the private
tumult of the inn itself, voices and footsteps, shutting of doors and
ringing of bells, still further oppressed the solitary stranger.

“Mercy on me! is that what they ca’ speaking English?” cried the
Mistress to herself, disturbed, lonely, sick at heart, and almost
offended with her sons for leaving her. She put her hands to her ears
with a gesture of disdain; the unfamiliar accent was quite an
aggravation and insult to her solitude--and then her thoughts settled
down upon the circumstances which brought her here. But a day or two
more, and she might never see Huntley again.

Meanwhile the boys were straying through the mean, noisy streets,
blazing with light, which only showed their squalor the more, where a
whole disreputable population seemed to be exerting all its arts for the
fascination of the sailors, who were the patrons and support of all this
quarter. It was quite a new phase of life to the lads, fresh from their
rural solitudes, and all the proprieties of a respectable Scottish
family--but the novelty beguiled them on, though it disgusted them. They
went wandering about, curious, astonished, revolted, till they found
themselves among dark mazes of warehouses from which it was not easy to
find their way back. When they did get back it was late, though the
noise remained undiminished, and the Mistress’s temper was not improved,
if truth must be told, by her solitude. She had been trying to look out
from the window, where opposite there was nothing but the high brick
walls of the docks, and beneath, upon the lighted pavement, only such
scenes as horrified the soul of the Mistress within her.

“It’s a marvel to me what pleasure even thoughtless laddies could find
wandering about a place like that,” said the Mistress; “England, quotha!
I thought mysel’ there must be something worth seeing in a place that
folk make such a wark about; but instead of that, it’s waur than the
Cowgate; pity me! and sharp tongues that gang through my head like a
bell!”

“But Liverpool is not England,” said Huntley, coming to a slow
perception of that fact, and laughing at himself as he said it.

“And maybe this is not Liverpool,” said Patie, with still greater
enlightenment.

“Hold your peace, bairns,” cried the Mistress, peremptorily; “what can
you ken, twa laddies that have no more insight into life than babes
unborn--how can the like of you tell? Do I no’ see sin outbye there with
a painted face, and sounds of fiddling and laughing, and light enough
to burn up the haill town? Eh, bairns, if ever ye touch such dirt with
but the ends of your fingers, the mother that bore ye will think shame
of ye--burning shame! It sounds like pleasure--do ye hear?--but it’s no
pleasure, it’s destruction!--and I canna tell, for my ain part, how a
decent woman can daur to close her e’en, kenning what evil’s nigh. But
I’m no’ meaning that for you,” added the Mistress, changing her tone;
“the like of you young things need sleep and rest, and though I canna
tell where we’re to get the things we want in a miserable place like
this, we’ll have to be stirring early the morn.”

“And we’ll find a better place,” said Huntley; “don’t be afraid,
mother--but for that and all the rest that we have to do and to bear,
you must try to rest yourself.”

“Aye, laddie,” said the Mistress, hurriedly wiping her eyes, “but I
canna get my thoughts out of that ship that’s on the sea this nicht! and
maybe mony a lone woman sitting still with nae sons to come in to
her--and whiles I canna but mind what’s coming to mysel’.”

“I am only twenty, mother, and Patie but eighteen,” said Huntley; “would
you like us to remain as we are, knowing nothing of life, as you say? or
are you afraid to trust your sons in the battle, like other men?”

“Na! no’ me!” cried the Mistress; “you’re baith right, and I approve in
my mind--but only just this, bairns;--I’m your mother--and yon ship is
sailing in the dark before my very e’en, as plain as if I saw her now!”

And whether it was thinking of that ship, or of the sons of other
mothers who were errant in her, or of her own boy, so soon to join their
journey, the Mistress heard the last sound that disturbed the house that
night, and the earliest in the morning. Her eyes were dry and sore when
she got up to see the daylight aspect of the unknown and unlovely world
around her; and the lads were still fast asleep in their privilege of
youth, while their mother stood once more wistfully looking out upon the
high black wall of the dock, and the masts appearing over it. She could
not see the river, or any thing more gracious than this seaman-tempting
street. There was nothing either within or without to divert her from
her own thoughts; and as she watched the early sunshine brighten upon a
scene so different from that of her own hills and streams, these
thoughts were forlorn enough.

During the day, the little party went out to make some last purchases
for Huntley. The young man was to carry with him, in the securest form
which they could think of, a little fortune of a hundred pounds, on
which he was to make his start in the world, nothing doubting to find in
it a nucleus of wealth; and the Mistress, spite of the natural economy
of her ideas, and her long habit of frugality, was extravagant and
lavish in her anxiety to get every thing for Huntley that he could or
might require. When they came into the region of shops, she began to
drop behind, anxiously studying the windows, tempted by many a possible
convenience, which, if she had acted on her first impulse and purchased
each incontinently, would have made Huntley’s outfit an unbelievable
accumulation of peddlery.

As it was, his mother’s care and inexperience freighted the young man
with a considerable burden of elaborate conveniences--cumbrous machines
of various forms, warranted invaluable for the voyage or for the bush,
which Huntley lugged about with many a year after, and tried to use for
his mother’s sake. When they got back to their inn, the Mistress had
suffered herself to be convinced that the noisy street outside the docks
was not Liverpool, much less England. But the “English tongue,” which
“rang through her head like a knife,” to vary the image--the mean brick
houses at which the triumphant Scotchwoman pointed her finger with
unspeakable contempt, the narrow streets, and noise and dust of the
great commercial town, filled her patriotic spirit with a disdainful
complacency.

“Weel, laddies,” said Mrs. Livingstone, when they reached the inn, very
tired, that night; and the Mistress spoke with the natural satisfaction
of a traveled person; “I have aye heard a great wark made about
England--but I’m very sure, now that we’ve been in it, and seen for
ourselves, none of us desires to gang any further. Bits of brick houses
that you can mostly see through!--streets that neighbors could shake
hands across!--and for my part, ilka time I hear them speak, I think
they’re flyting. Eh, bairns, such sharp tongues! I wouldna gie Melrose
though it’s wee-er and hasna sae mony shops, for twenty of this
place--and as for Edinburgh--!”

But the contrast was unspeakable, and took away the Mistress’s breath.




CHAPTER XXIV.


They were detained for some days waiting the sailing of the ship, which
already the little party had gone over, the Mistress with awe and
solemnity, the brothers with eager interest and excitement, more than
once. The bark Flora, Captain Gardner master, bound for Port
Philip--through those days and nights of suspense, when they hoped and
feared every morning to hear that this was the last day, this name might
have been heard even among the dreams of Huntley’s mother. Yet this
procrastination of the parting was not good even for her. She said her
farewell a hundred times in the bitterness of imagination before the
real moment came, and as they all went down every morning early to one
of the piers, opposite to which in the river the Flora lay, and made a
mournful, anxious promenade up and down, gazing at the anchored ship,
with her bare cordage, the emigrant encampments on her big deck, and the
fresh vegetables strung in her bows, noting with sharp and solicitous
eyes any signs of preparation there, the pain of parting was
indefinitely repeated, though always with a pang of joy at the
end--another day. However, even emigrant ships have to make up their
minds some time. At last came the last night, when they all sat
together, looking into each other’s faces, knowing that, after
to-morrow, they might never meet again. The Mistress had not a great
deal to say on that last night; what she did say was of no one
continuous tone. She could not make sermons to her boys--it might be
that there was abruptness and impatience even in her motherly warnings.
The grief of this farewell did not change her character, though it
pierced to her heart.

“Try and get a decent house to live in--dinna be about inns or such like
places,” said the Mistress; “I ken by mysel’, just the time we’ve been
here, Huntley--and if it’s unsettling to the like of me, what should it
be to a young lad?--but dinna be owre great friends either with them
that put you up--I’m no fond of friendship out of folks’ ain degree,
though I ken weel that nobody that’s kind to my bairn will find an
ungrateful thought in me; but mind aye what ye are, and wha ye are, and
a’ that’s looked for at your hands.”

“A poor emigrant, mother,” said Huntley, with rather a tremulous smile.

“Hold your peace, laddie, dinna be unthankful,” said the Mistress; “a
lad with a good house and lands at hame, and a hundred pound clear in
his pocket, no’ to say how mony conveniences and handy things in his
boxes, and a’ the comforts that ye can carry. Dinna sin your mercies,
Huntley, before me.”

“It would not become me,” said Huntley, “for I might have had few
comforts but for you, mother, that thought of every thing; as every
thing I have, if I needed reminding, would make me think of home and
you.”

“Whisht, whisht, bairn!” said the Mistress, with a broken voice and a
sob, two big tears falling out of her eyes upon her trembling hands,
which she wiped off hurriedly, almost with a gesture of shame; “and
ye’ll no’ forget your duty, Huntley,” she added with agitated haste;
“mind what the minister said; if there be nae kirk, as there might not
be, seeing it’s a savage place, never let the Sabbath day slip out of
your hand, as if there was na difference. Kirks and ministers are a
comfort, whiles--but, Huntley, mind God’s aye nigh at hand. I bid ye
baith mind that--I’m no’ what I should be--I canna say a’ that’s in my
heart--but, oh, laddies, mind if you should never hear another word out
of your mother’s lips! They speak about ships and letters that make
far-away friends nigh each other, but, bairns, the Lord Himsel’ is the
nighest link between you and me--as He’s the only link between us a’ and
him that’s gane.”

There was a long pause after this burst out of the desolate heart of
Norlaw’s widow and Huntley’s mother; a pause in which words would have
been vain, even if any one of them could have found any words to say,
and in which the fatherless sons, and the mother who was a widow, turned
their faces from each other, shedding those hurried, irrestrainable
tears, which they dared not indulge. It was the Mistress who found
composure first, but she did not prolong the emotion of the little party
by continuing the same strain. Like herself, she had no sooner found her
voice, than, shy of revealing the depths of her heart, even to her
children, she resumed on a totally different theme.

“If ye gang up into the country, Huntley, dinna bide aye among the
beasts,” said the Mistress, abruptly; “mind, it’s no’ that I put very
much faith in this lad Cassilis, but still, whatever’s possible shouldna
be forgotten. You might be Melmar, with a great estate, before mony
years were past, and, at any rate, you’re master of your ain land, and
have as good a name to bear as ever came of _that_ house. It’s my hope
to see you back at the head of your household, a man respected--so dinna
you sink into a solitary, Huntley, or dwell your lane ower lang. I’ve
nothing to say against the making of siller--folk canna live without it
in this world--but a fortune’s no equal to a man--and if ye canna make
the ane without partly sacrificing the other, come hame.”

“I will, mother,” said Huntley, seriously.

“And there’s just one thing mair,” added the Mistress, not without a
look of uneasiness, “be aye particular about the kind of folk you make
friends o’--and specially--weel, weel, you’re both young lads. I canna
keep ye bairns--you’ll soon be thinking of the like of that yoursel’.
I’m no fond of strangers, Huntley Livingstone, I dinna understand their
ways; dinna bring me a daughter of that land to vex me as the fremd
women vexed Rebecca. No’ that I’m meaning to put bondage on you--na--I
wouldna have it said I was jealous of my sons--but you’re young, and
young lads are easily beguiled; wait till you come hame.”

“I give you my word for that, mother!” cried Huntley, eagerly, the blood
rushing over his face, as he grasped the Mistress’s hand with a quite
unnecessary degree of fervor.

Perhaps his mother found him rather more in earnest than the vague
nature of her advice seemed to justify. She looked at him with a
startled glance of suspicion and dawning displeasure.

“Ay, laddie!” cried the Mistress; “ane would think you had made up your
mind!” and she turned her eyes upon the glow and brightening of
Huntley’s face, with a little spark of impatience. But at that moment
the clock below stairs began to strike twelve; it startled them all as
they sat listening--and gradually, as stroke followed stroke with that
inevitable regularity, the heart of Huntley’s mother sank within her.
She took the hand, which she had been half angry to find grasping hers
in confirmation of his earnestness, tenderly between her own--she
stroked the strong young fingers with that hand of hers, somewhat
large, somewhat wrinkled, without an ornament upon it save its worn
wedding-ring, the slow, fond, loving touch of which brought hot tears to
Huntley’s eyes. The Mistress did not look up, because her own face was
moved with a grief and tenderness unspeakable and beyond the reach of
words--she could not say any thing--she could only sit silent, keeping
down the sob in her throat, the water that gathered in her eyes, fondly
holding her son’s hand, caressing it with an indescribable pathetic
gesture, more touching than the wildest passionate embrace.

Then they all stood up together to say good-night.

“Laddies, it’s no more night!--it’s morning, and Huntley sails this
day,” said the Mistress; “oh, my bairns!--and I canna speak; dinna say a
word to me!--but gang and lie down and take your rest, and the Lord send
sleep to us a’ and make us ready for what’s to come.”

It was with this good-night, and no more, that they parted, but the
sleep and rest for which she had prayed did not come to the mother. She
was up by daybreak, once more looking over the last box which Huntley
was to take with him on board, to see if any thing could be added to its
stores.

She stole into her sons’ room to look at them in their sleep, but would
not suffer any one to wake them, though the lads slept long, worn out by
excitement and emotion. Then the Mistress put on her bonnet, and went
out by herself to try if she could not get something for their
breakfast, more delicate and dainty than usual, and, when she returned,
arranged the table with her own hands, pausing often to wipe away, not
tears, but a sad moisture with which her eyes were always full. But she
was perfectly composed, and went about all these homely offices of love
with a smile more touching than grief. The emergency had come at last,
and the Mistress was not a woman to break down or lose the comfort of
this last day. Time enough to break her heart when Huntley was gone.

And the inevitable hours went on, as hours do before one of those
life-partings--slow, yet with a flow and current in their gradual
progress, which seemed to carry them forward more forcibly than the
quickest tide of pleasure. And at last it was time to embark. They went
down to the river together, saying very little; then on the river, in a
boat, to reach the ship.

It was a glorious harvest-day, warm, sunny, overflowing with happiness
and light. The opposite bank of the river had never looked so green, the
villages by its side had never detached themselves so brightly from the
fields behind and the sands before. The very water swelling under their
boat rippled past with a heave and swell of enjoyment, palpitating under
the sunshine; and the commonest boatman and hardest-laboring sailor on
these rejoicing waters looked like a man whose life was holiday. People
on the pier, ignorant bystanders, smiled even upon this little party as
their boat floated off into the midway of the sun-bright stream, as if
it was a party of pleasure. Instinctively the Mistress put down her
thick, black vail, worked with big, unearthly flowers, which made so
many blots upon the sunshine, and said to Huntley, from behind its
shelter:--

“What a pleasure it was to see such a day for the beginning of his
voyage!”

They all repeated the same thing over mechanically at different times,
and that was almost the whole substance of what they said until they
reached the ship.

And presently, the same little boat glided back again over the same
gleaming, golden waters, with Patie, very pale and very red by turns, in
one end of it, and the Mistress, with her black vail over her face,
sitting all alone on one side, with her hands rigidly clasped in her
lap, and her head turned towards the ship. When the Flora began to move
from her place, this silent figure gave a convulsive start and a cry,
and so Huntley was gone.

He was leaning over the bulwark of the ship, looking out at this speck
in the water--seeing before him, clearer than eyes ever saw, the faces
of his mother, his brothers, his dead father--perhaps even of others
still--with a pang at his heart, which was less for himself than for the
widow who could no longer look upon her son; his heart rising, his heart
sinking, as his own voyage hence, and her voyage home, rose upon his
imagination--living through the past, the present, and the future--the
leave-taking to which his mind vibrated--the home-coming which now
seemed almost as near and certain--the unknown years of absence, which
fled before him like a dream.

He, too, started when the vessel moved upon the sunny river--started
with a swell of rising enterprise and courage. The daring of his
nature, and the gay wind blowing down the river; fresh and favorable,
dried the tears in Huntley’s eyes; but did not dry that perpetual
moisture from the pained eyelids of the Mistress, as she turned to Patie
at last, with faltering lips, to repeat that dreary congratulation:--

“Eh, Patie! what a blessing, if we could but think upon it, to see such
a day as this for a guid beginning on the sea!”




CHAPTER XXV.


It was very well for the Mistress’s spirit, though scarcely for her
purse, that she was roused the next day to horror and indignation,
scarcely restrainable, by the supposed exorbitant bill of the inn. She
thought it the most monstrous imposition which ever had been practiced,
and could scarcely be persuaded to depart from her first resolution of
seeking out a “decent writer,” “if there is such a person in this wicked
town,” as she added, scornfully--to arbitrate between her and the
iniquitous publican. At last, however, Patie succeeded in getting his
mother safely once more within the Glasgow steamer.

It was a melancholy voyage, for every breath of wind that blew, agitated
Huntley’s mother with questions of his safety; and she had no better
prospect than to part with Patie at this journey’s end. They reached
their destination in the afternoon, when the great, smoky, dingy
Glasgow, looked almost hotter and more stifled than the other great
seaport they had left. From the Broomielaw, they went upon their weary
way, through the town, to a humble lodging recommended by Dr. Logan,
whose letter to the manager of one of the founderies Patie carried in
his pocket. The house which the travelers sought was up three long
flights of stairs, in a dark-complexioned close, where each flat was
divided into two houses. The “land,” or block of buildings in which it
was placed, formed one side of a little street, just behind the place
where Patie was to work; and the windows of their lodging looked across
the black yard and big buildings of this great, noisy foundery, to a
troubled, smoky glimpse of the Clyde, and Glasgow Green upon the other
side.

After he had seen his mother safely arrived in this shelter, Patie had
to set out immediately to deliver his letter. The Mistress was left once
more by herself to examine her new resting-place. It was a little room,
with a little bed in the corner, hung with dark, unlined chintz. It was
also what is called in these regions “coomcieled,” which is to say, the
roof sloped on one side, being close under the leads. A piece of carpet
in the centre, a little table in the centre of that, three chairs, a
chest of drawers, and a washing stand, completed the equipment of the
room. Was this to be Patie’s room--the boy’s only substitute for home?

The Mistress went to the window, to see if any comfort was to be found
there; but there was only the foundery--the immense, black, coaly, smoky
yard into which these windows looked; and, a little to the right, a
great cotton factory, whence, at the sound of a big bell, troops of
girls came crowding out, with their uncovered heads shining in the
evening sun. The Mistress turned abruptly in again, much discomposed by
the prospect. With their  petticoats and short gowns, and
shining, uncovered hair, the Glasgow mill girls were--at this distance
at least--rather a pretty sight; and a perfectly uninterested person
might have thought it quite seemly and natural that the black moleskin
giants of the foundery, issuing from their own cavernous portals at the
same time, should have exchanged sundry jokes and rough encounters of
badinage with their female neighbors.

But the Mistress, whose son was to be left at this same foundery, awoke
in a horror of injured pride and aristocracy to contemplate an
unimagined danger.

“A barefooted lassie from a mill!--a bairn of mine!” cried the Mistress,
with looks aghast; and she drew a chair carefully out of reach of the
window, and sat down at the table to consider the matter.

But when she looked round upon the bare, mean room, and thought of the
solitary lad, who knew nobody in Glasgow, who had been used to the
kindly cares of home all his life, and who was only a boy, although a
“bairn of mine!” it is not very wonderful, perhaps, that the Mistress
should have done even the staid and sensible Patie the injustice of
supposing him captivated by some one of that crowd of dumpy daughters of
St. Mungo, who were so far beneath the dignity of a son of Norlaw. Even
Huntley, far away at sea, disappeared, for the moment, from her anxious
sight. Worse dangers than those of sea or storm might be here.

Patie, meanwhile, thinking of no womankind in the world, not even of his
mother, was explaining very forcibly and plainly to Dr. Logan’s friend,
the manager, his own wishes and intentions; railways were a very recent
invention in those days, and steamboats not an old one--it was the
bright day of engineering, while there still lingered a certain romance
about those wondrous creations of steel and steam, with which the world
had not yet grown too familiar--gentlemen apprentices were not uncommon
in those great Cyclopean workshops--but Patrick Livingstone did not mean
to be a gentleman apprentice. He wanted to put himself to school for a
couple of years, to learn his craft like a man, without privilege of
gentility, he was too old for the regular trade apprenticeship, but he
desired nothing more than a lessening of the time of that probation--and
whatever circumstances might lead him to do at the end of it, Patie was
not afraid of being found wanting in needful skill or knowledge. Dr.
Logan had given a most flattering description of his family and
“station,” partly stimulated thereto by the zeal with which his nephew
Cassilis took up the cause of the Livingstones--and Mr. Crawford, the
Glasgow manager, was very civil to the lad, who was the son of a landed
proprietor, and whose brother might, in a few years, be one of the first
gentlemen in the county of Melrose; the interview on the whole was a
very satisfactory one, and Patie plodded his way back to the little room
where he had left his mother, engaged to return next day with her, to
conclude the arrangement by which he should enter the foundery; the lad
was satisfied, even exhilarated, in his sober fashion, to find himself
thus upon the threshold of a more serious life. Though he observed
perfectly the locality and appearances around him, they had not so much
effect upon Patie as they might have had on a more imaginative temper.
His calmer and more practical mind, paradox though it seems to say so,
was less affected by external circumstances than either his mother or
Huntley, and a thousand times less than Cosmo would have been. He did
not concern himself about his surroundings--_they_ had little debasing
or depressing influence upon his thoughts--he scarcely noticed them
indeed, if they were sufficient for his necessities. Patie could very
well contrive to live without beauty, and could manage to get on with a
very moderate degree of comfort, so long as his own vigorous mind
approved his life, and he had plenty to do.

In consequence of which it happened that Patie scarcely comprehended his
mother’s dissatisfaction with the room; if he remained here, it was the
only room the mistress of the house could give her lodger. He thought it
very well, and quite as much as he required, and apprehended no
particular cheerlessness in consequence of its poverty.

“It is not home, of course,” he said, with great nonchalance, “but,
granting that, mother, I don’t see what difference it makes to me. It’s
all well enough. I don’t want any thing more--it’s near the work, and
it’s in a decent house--that should be enough to please you.”

“Hold your peace, Patie--do you think I’m careless of my bairn’s
comfort?” cried the Mistress, with a half tone of anger; “and wha’ was
ever used to a place like this, coming out of Norlaw?”

“But there can not be two Norlaws,” said Patie, “nor two homes. I want
but one, for my part. I have no desire at present to like a second place
as well.”

“Eh, laddie, if you can but keep that thought, and be true!” cried the
Mistress, “I wouldna heed, save for your ain comfort, where you were
then.”

“Do you doubt me, mother? what are you feared for? tell me, and I’ll
know what to do,” said Patie, coming close to her, with his look of
plain, unmistakable sincerity.

“I’m no’ feared,” said the Mistress, those ever-rising, never-falling
tears dimming her eyes again, while yet a little secondary emotion, half
shame of her own suspicions, half petulance, rose to her voice; “but
it’s a poor place for a laddie like you, bred up at hame--and it’s a
great town, full of temptations--and night and day in a place like this,
ilka street is full of evil--and naething but bare bed and board instead
of hame. Oh! Patie if I was feared, it was because I knew mony a dreary
story of lads that meant as well as yoursel’!”

“Perhaps I was presumptuous, mother,” said Patie; “I will not say
there’s no fear;--but there’s a difference between one man and another,
and time and your own judgment will prove what’s temptation to me. Now,
come, if you have rested enough--the air will do you more good than
sitting here.”

The Mistress was persuaded, and went out accordingly with her son,
feeling strangely forlorn and solitary in the crowded thoroughfares,
where she was struck with the common surprise of country people, to meet
so many and to know no one. Still there was a certain solace in the calm
summer evening, through which the moon was rising in that pale sky so
far away and clear, above the hanging smoke of the town--and in Patie’s
arm, which seemed to support her with more pride and tenderness now that
Huntley was gone. The soft moon shining down upon the river, which here
was not the commercial Clyde, of ships and steamers, the many
half-distinguishable figures upon the Green opposite, from which color
and light were fading, and the tranquillity of the night even here, bore
back the thoughts of the mother into a tenderer channel. She put up her
hand to her eyes to clear them.

“Eh Patie! I think I see my son on the sea, looking up at that very
sky,” said the Mistress, with a low sob; “how will I look at it from
Norlaw, where Cosmo and me will be our lane?--and now but another day
more, and I’ll lose you!”




CHAPTER XXVI.


The Mistress traveled home once more by the slow canal to Edinburgh, and
from thence by the stage-coach to Kirkbride. She had left Patie, at
last, with some degree of confidence, having seen Mr. Crawford, the
manager of the foundery, and commended her son specially to his care;
and having, besides, done what she could to improve the comfort of
Patie’s little apartment, and to warn him against the temptations of
Glasgow. It was rather heavy work afterward, gliding silently home alone
by the monotonous motion of that canal, seeing the red-tiled cottages,
the green <DW72>s, the stubble-fields move past like a dream, and
remembering how she had left her boys behind, one on the sea, and one
among strangers, both embarked upon the current of their life. She sat
still in the little cabin of the boat by one of the windows, moving
nothing but her fingers, which clasped and unclasped mechanically. Her
big black vail hung over her bonnet, but did not shroud her face; there
was always moisture in her eyes, but very seldom tears that came the
length of falling; and her mind was very busy, and with life in its
musings--for it was not alone of the past she was thinking, but also of
the future--of her own life at home, where Huntley’s self-denial had
purchased comfort for his mother, and where his mother, not to be
outdone, silently determined upon the course of those days, which she
did not mean to be days of leisure. This Melmar, which had been a
bugbear to the Mistress all her days, gradually changed its aspect now.
It no longer reminded her of the great bitterness of her life--it was
her son’s possible inheritance, and might be the triumphant occasion of
Huntley’s return.

It was late on a September afternoon, when she descended from the coach
at the door of the Norlaw Arms, and found Cosmo and Marget waiting there
to welcome her. The evening sunshine streamed full in their faces,
falling in a tender glory from the opposite brae of Tyne, where the
white manse at the summit, and the cottages among the trees, shone in
the tranquil light, with their kindliest look of home. The Mistress
turned hurriedly from the familiar prospect, to repose her tired and wet
eyes on the shadowed corner of the village street, where the gable of
the little inn kept out the sunshine, and where the ostler had lifted
down her trunk. She grasped Cosmo’s hand hastily, and scarcely ventured
to look the boy in the face; it was dreary coming home alone; as she
descended, bowed Jaacob at the smithy door took off his cowl in token of
respect, and eyed her grimly with his twinkling eye. Jaacob, who was a
moral philosopher, was rather satisfied, on the whole, with the demeanor
of the family of Norlaw under their troubles, and testified his
approbation by a slightly authoritative approval. The Mistress gave him
a very hasty nod, but could not look even at Jaacob; a break-down, or
public exhibition of emotion, being the thing of all others most
nervously avoided by respectable matrons of her country and temper, a
characteristic very usual among Scotchwomen, of middle age and sober
mind. She would have “thought shame” to have been seen crying or “giving
way,” “in the middle of the town,” as, even now, enlightened by the
sight of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Liverpool, the Mistress still called
the village street of Kirkbride; another hasty nod acknowledged the
sympathetic courtesy of the widow who kept the village mangle, and whose
little boy had wept at the door of Norlaw when its master was dying; and
then Cosmo and Marget took the trunk between them, and the Mistress drew
down her vail, and the little party set out, across the foot-bridge,
through the tender slanting sunshine going home.

Then, at last, between the intervals of question and answer as to the
common matters of country life, which had occurred during her absence,
the Mistress’s lips were opened. Marget and Cosmo went on before, along
the narrow pathway by the river, and she followed. Cosmo had spent half
of his time at the manse, it appeared, and all the neighbors had sent to
make kindly inquiry when his mother was expected home.

“It’s my hope you didna gang oftener than you were welcome, laddie,”
said the Mistress, with a characteristic doubt; “but I’ll no deny the
minister’s aye very kind, and Katie too. You should not call her Katie
now, Cosmo, she’s woman grown. I said the very same to Huntley no’ a
week ago, but _he’s_ no like to offend onybody, poor lad, for many a day
to come. And I left him very weel on the whole--oh, yes, very weel, in a
grand ship for size, and mony mair in her--and they say they’ll soon be
out of our northerly seas, and win to grand weather, and whiles I think,
if there was _great_ danger, fewer folk would gang--no’ to say that the
Almighty’s no’ a bit nigher by land than he is by sea.”

“Eh! and that’s true!” cried Marget, in an involuntary amen.

The Mistress was not perfectly pleased by the interruption. This tender
mother could not help being imperative even in her tenderest
affections; and even the faithful servant could not share her
mother-anxieties without risk of an occasional outbreak.

“How’s a’ the kye?” said the Mistress with a momentary sharpness. “I’ve
never been an unthrifty woman, I’m bauld to say; but every mutchkin of
milk maun double itself now, for my bairns’ sakes.”

“Na, mem,” said Marget, touched on her honor, “it canna weel do that;
but you ken yoursel’, if you had ta’en my advice, the byre might have
been mair profit years ago. Better milkers are no’ in a’ the Lowdens;
and if you sell Crummie’s cauf, as I aye advised--”

“You’re aye very ready with your advice, my woman. I never meant any
other thing,” said the Mistress, with some impatience; “but after this,
the house of Norlaw maun even get a puir name, if it must be so; for I
warn ye baith, my thoughts are upon making siller; and when I put my
mind to a thing, I canna do it by halves.”

“Then, mother, you must, in the first place, do something with me,” said
Cosmo. “I’m the only useless person in the house.”

“Useless, laddie!--hold you peace!” said the Mistress. “You’re but a
bairn, and you’re tender, and you maunna make a profitless beginning
till you win to your strength. Huntley and Patie--blessings on
them!--were both strong callants in their nature, and got good time to
grow; and I’ll no’ let my youngest laddie lose his youth. Eh, Cosmo, my
man! if you were a lassie, instead of their brother, thae twa laddies
that are away could not be mair tender of you in their hearts!”

A flush came over Cosmo’s face, partly gratified affection, partly a
certain shame.

“But I’ll soon be a man,” he said, in a low and half excited tone; “and
I can not be content to wait quietly at home when my brothers are
working. I have a right to work as well.”

“Bless the bairn!” cried Marget, once more involuntarily.

“Dinna speak nonsense,” said the Mistress. “There’s a time for every
thing; and because I’m bereaved of twa, is that a reason my last bairn
should leave me? Fie, laddie! Patie’s eighteen--he’s come the length of
a man--there’s a year and mair between him and you. But what I was
speaking of was the kye. There’s nae such stock in the country as the
beasts that are reared at Tyneside; and I mean to take a leaf out of Mr.
Blackadder’s book, if I’m spared, and see what we can do at Norlaw.”

“Eh, Mistress, Mr. Blackadder’s a man in his prime!” cried Marget.

“Weel, you silly haverel, what am I? Do you think a man that’s laboring
just for good name and fame, and because he likes it, and that has nae
kin in the world but a far-away cousin, should be stronger for his wark
than a widow woman striving for her bairns?” cried the Mistress, with a
hasty tear in her eye, and a quick flush on her cheek; “but I’ll let you
a’ see different things, if I’m spared, in Norlaw.”

While she spoke with this flush of resolution, they came in sight of
their home; but it was not possible to see the westerly sunshine
breaking through those blank eyes of the old castle, and the low, modern
house standing peacefully below, those unchanged witnesses of all the
great scenes of all their lives, without a strain of heart and courage,
which was too much for all of them. To enter in, remembering where the
father took his rest, and how the sons began their battle--to have it
once more pierced into the depths of her heart, that, of all the family
once circling her, there remained only Cosmo, overpowered the Mistress,
even in the midst of her new purpose, with a returning agony. She went
in silent, pressing her hand upon her heart. It was a sad coming home.




CHAPTER XXVII.


“And so you’re the only ane of them left at hame?” said bowed Jaacob,
looking up at Cosmo from under his bushy brows, and pushing up his red
cowl off his forehead.

And there could not have been a more remarkable contrast of appearance
than between this slight, tall, fair boy, and the swart little demon,
who considered him with a scientific curiosity, keen, yet not unkindly,
from the red twilight of the blacksmith’s shop.

“I should be very glad not to be left at home,” said Cosmo, with a
boyish flush of shame; “and it will not be for long, if I can help it.”

“Weel, I’ll no’ say but ye a’ show a good spirit--a very good spirit,
considering your up-bringing,” said Jaacob, “which was owre tender for
laddies. I’ve little broo, for my ain part, of women’s sons. We’re a’
that, more or less, doubtless, but the less the better, lad. I kent
little about mothers and such like when I was young mysel’.”

“They say,” said Cosmo, who, in spite of his sentiment, had a quick
perception of humor, and was high in favor with the little Cyclops,
“they say you were a fairy, and frightened everybody from your cradle,
Jacob, and that your mother fainted with fear when she saw you first--is
it true?”

“True!--aye, just as true as a’ the rest,” said Jaacob. “They’ll say
whatever ye like that’s marvellous, if ye’ll but listen to them. A man
o’ sense is an awfu’ phenomenon in a place like this. He’s no’ to be
accounted for by the common laws o’ nature; that’s the philosophy of the
matter. _You’re_ owre young yet to rouse them; but they’ll make their
story, or a’s one--take my word for it--of a lad of genius like
yoursel’.”

“Genius, Jacob!”

The boy’s face grew red with a sudden, violent flush; and an intense,
sudden light shone in his dark eyes. He did not laugh at the
compliment--it awoke some powerful sentiment of vanity or
self-consciousness in his own mind. The lighting-up of his eyes was like
a sudden gleam upon a dark water--a revelation of a hundred unknown
shadows and reflections which had been there unrevealed for many a day
before.

“Aye, genius. I ken the true metal when I hear it ring,” said Jaacob.
“Like draws to like, as ony fool can tell.”

And then the boy turned away with a sudden laugh--a perfectly mirthful,
pure utterance of the half-fun, half-shame, and wholly ludicrous
impression which this climax made upon him.

Strangely enough, Jaacob was not offended. He went on, moving about the
red gloom of his workshop, without the slightest appearance of
displeasure. He had no idea that the lad whom he patronized could laugh
at him.

“I can not say but I’m surprised at your brother for a’ that,” said
Jaacob. “Huntley’s a lad of spirit; but he should have stood up to
Me’mar like a man.”

“Do you know about Me’mar, too?” cried Cosmo, in some surprise.

“I reckon I do; and maist things else,” said Jaacob, dryly. “I’m no’
vindictive mysel’, but when a man does me an ill turn, I’ve a real good
disposition to pay him back. He aye had a grudge against the late
Norlaw, this Aberdeenawa’ man; and if _I_ had been your faither, Cosmo,
lad, I’d have fought the haill affair to the last, though it cost me
every bodle I had; for wha does a’ the land and the rights belong to,
after all?--to _her_, and no’ to him!”

“Did you know her?” asked Cosmo, breathlessly, not perceiving, in his
eager curiosity, how limited Jaacob’s real knowledge of the case was.

“Aye,” said Jaacob; and the ugly little demon paused, and breathed from
his capacious lungs a sigh, which disturbed the atmosphere of the smithy
with a sudden convulsion. Then he added, quietly, and in an undertone,
“I had a great notion of her mysel’.”

“You!” said Cosmo.

The boy did not know whether to fall upon his companion with sudden
indignation, and give him a hearty shake by his deformed shoulders, or
to retire with an angry laugh of ridicule and resentment. Both the more
violent feelings, however, merged into the unmitigated amazement with
which Cosmo at last gazed at the swarthy hunchback, who had ventured to
lift his eyes to Norlaw’s love.

“And what for no’ me?” said Jaacob, sturdily; “do ye think it’s good
looks and naught else that takes a woman’s e’e? do you think I havena
had them in my offer as weel favored as Mary Huntley? Na, I’ll do them
this justice; a woman, if she’s no’ a downright haverel, kens a man of
sense when she sees him. Mony a wiselike woman has cast her e’e in at
this very smiddy; but I’m no’ a marrying man.”

“You would have made many discontented, and one ungrateful,” said the
boy, laughing. “Is that what kept you back, Jacob?”

“Just that,” said the philosopher, with a grim smile; “but I had a great
notion of Miss Mary Huntley; she was aulder than me; that’s aye the way
with callants; ye’ll be setting your heart on a woman o’ twenty
yoursel’. I’d have gane twenty miles a-foot, wet or dry, just to shoe
her powny; and I wouldna have let her cause gang to the wa’, as your
father did, if it had been me.”

“Was she beautiful? what like was she, Jacob?” cried Cosmo, eagerly.

“I can not undertake to tell you just what she was like, a callant like
you,” said Jaacob; then the dark hobgoblin made a pause, drawing himself
half into his furnace, as the boy could suppose. “She was like a man’s
first fancy,” continued the little giant, abruptly, drawing forth a
red-hot bar of iron, which made a fiery flash in the air, and lighted up
his own swart face for the moment; “she was like the woman a lad sets
his heart on, afore he kens the cheats of this world,” he added, at
another interval, with a great blow of his hammer, which made the sparks
fly; and through the din and the flicker no further words came. Cosmo’s
imagination filled up the ideal. The image of Mary of Melmar rose
angel-like out of the boy’s stimulated fancy, and there was not even a
single glimmer of the grotesque light of this scene to diminish the
romantic halo which rose around his father’s first love.

“As for me, if you think the like of me presumed in lifting his e’en,”
said Jaacob, “I’ll warn you to change your ideas, my man, without delay;
a’ that auld trash canna stand the dint of good discussion and opinion
in days like these. Speak about your glorious revolutions! I tell you,
callant, we’re on the eve of the real glorious revolution, the time when
every man shall have respect for his neighbors--save when his neighbor’s
a fool; nane o’ your oligarchies for a free country; we’re men, and
we’ll have our birthright; and do you think I’m heeding what a coof’s
ancestors were, when I ken I’m worth twa o’ him--ay, or ten o’ him!--as
a’ your bits o’ lords and gentlemen will find as soon as we’ve The
Bill.”

“An honorable ancestor is an honor to any man,” said Cosmo, firing with
the pride of birth. “I would not take the half of the county, if it was
offered me, in place of the old castle at Norlaw.”

“Well,” said Jaacob, with a softening glance, “it’s no’ an ill sentiment
that, I’ll allow, so far as the auld castle gangs; but ony man that
thinks he’s of better flesh and bluid than me, no’ to say intellect and
spirit, on the strength of four old wa’s, or the old rascals that
thieved in them--I’ll tell ye, Cosmo, my lad, I think he’s a fool, and
that’s just the short and the long o’ the affair.”

“Better flesh and blood, or better intellect and spirit!” said the boy,
with a half-meditative, half-mirthful smile. “Homer was a beggar, and so
was Belisarius, and so was Blind Harry, of Wallace’s time.”

This highly characteristic, school-boyish, and national confusion of
heroes, moved the blacksmith-philosopher with no sensation of the
absurd. Homer and Blind Harry were by no means unfit companions in the
patriotic conception of bowed Jaacob, who, nevertheless, knew Pope’s
Homer very tolerably, and was by no means ignorant of the pretensions of
the “blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle.”

“A feesical disqualification, Cosmo, is quite a different matter,” said
Jaacob; “nae man could make greater allowance for the like of that than
me, that might have been supposed at one time to be on the verge of it
mysel’.”

And as he spoke, his one bright eye twinkled in Jaacob’s head with
positive scintillations, as if Nature had endowed it with double power
to make up for its solitude.

“The like of Homer and Blind Harry, however, belong to a primitive age,”
said Jaacob; “the minstrel crew were aye vagrants--no’ to say it was
little better than a kind of a servile occupation at the best, praises
of the great. But the world’s wiser by this time. I would not say I
would make the Bill final, mysel’, but let’s aince get it, laddie, and
ye’ll see a change. We’ll hae nae mair o’ your lordlings in the high
places--we’ll hae naething but _men_.”

“Did you ever hear any thing, Jacob,” said Cosmo, somewhat abruptly--for
the romantic story of his kinswoman was more attractive to the boy’s
mind than politics--“of where the young lady of Me’mar went to, or who
it was she married? I suppose not, since she was searched for so long.”

“No man ever speered at me before, so far as I can mind,” said Jaacob,
with a little bitterness; “your father behoved to manage the haill
business himsel’, and he was na great hand. I’m no’ fond of writers when
folk can do without them, but they’re of a certain use, nae doubt, like
a’ other vermin; a sharp ane o’ them would have found Mary Huntley, ye
may take my word for that. I was aince in France mysel’.”

“In France?” cried Cosmo, with, undeniable respect and excitement.

“Ay, just that,” said Jaacob, dryly; “it’s nae such great thing, though
folk make a speech about it. I wasna far inower. I was at a bit seaport
place on the coast; Dieppe they ca’ it, and deep it was to an innocent
lad like what I was at the time--though I could haud my ain with maist
men, both then and at this day.”

“And you saw there?"--cried Cosmo, who became very much interested.

“Plenty of fools,” said Jaacob, “and every wean in the streets jabbering
French, which took me mair aback than onything else I heard or saw; but
there was ae day a lady passed me by. I didna see her face at first, but
I saw the bairn she had in her hand, and I thought to mysel’ I could not
but ken the foot, that had a ring upon the path like siller bells. I
gaed round about, and round about, till I met her in the face, but
whether it was her or no I canna tell; I stood straight afore her in the
midroad, and she passed me by with a glance, as if she kent nae me.”

The tone in which the little hunchback uttered these words was one of
indescribable yet suppressed bitterness. He was too proud to acknowledge
his mortification; yet it was clear enough, even to Cosmo, that this
pride had not only prevented him from mentioning his chance meeting at
the proper time, but that even now he would willingly persuade himself
that the ungrateful beauty, who did not recognize him, could not be the
lady of his visionary admiration.

“Do you think it was the Lady of Melmar?” asked the boy, anxiously, for
Jaacob’s “feelings,” though they had no small force of human emotion in
them, were, for the moment, rather a secondary matter to Cosmo.

“If it had been her, she would have kent _me_,” said Vulcan, with
emphasis, and he turned to his hammering with vehemence doubly
emphatic. Jaacob had no inclination to be convinced that Mary of Melmar
might forget him, who remembered her so well. He returned to the Bill,
which was more or less in most people’s thoughts in those days, and
which was by no means generally uninteresting to Cosmo--but the boy’s
thoughts were too much excited to be amused by Jaacob’s politics; and
Cosmo went home with visions in his mind of the quaint little Norman
town, where Mary of Melmar had been seen by actual vision, and which
henceforth became a region of dreams and fancy to her young knight and
champion, who meant to seek her over all the world.




CHAPTER XXVIII.


Ere the winter had fully arrived, visible changes had taken place in the
house and steading of Norlaw. As soon as all the operations of the
harvest were over, the Mistress dismissed all the men-servants of the
farm, save two, and let, at Martinmas, all the richer portion of the
land, which was in good condition, and brought a good rent. Closely
following upon the plowmen went Janet, the younger maidservant, who
obtained, to her great pride, but doubtful advantage, a place in a great
house in the neighborhood.

The Norlaw byres were enlarged and improved--the Norlaw cattle increased
in number by certain choice and valuable specimens of “stock,”
milch-kine, sleek and fair, and balmy-breathed. Some few fields of
turnips and mangelwurzel, and the rich pasture lands on the side of Tyne
behind the castle, were all that the Mistress retained in her own hands,
and with Marget for her factotum, and Willie Noble, the same man who had
assisted in Norlaw’s midnight funeral, for her chief manager and
representative out of doors, Mrs. Livingstone began her new undertaking.

She was neither dainty of her own hands, nor tolerant of any languid
labor on the part of others. Not even in her youth, when the hopes and
prospects of Norlaw were better than the reality ever became, had the
Mistress shown the smallest propensity to adopt the small pomp of a
landed lady. She was always herself, proud, high-spirited, somewhat
arbitrary, by no means deficient in a sense of personal importance, yet
angrily fastidious as to any false pretensions in her house, and
perceiving truly her real position, which, with all the added dignity of
proprietorship, was still in fact that of a farmer’s wife. All the
activity and energy with which she had toiled all her life against her
thriftless husband’s unsteady grasp of his own affairs, and against the
discouraging and perpetual unprosperity of many a year, were intensified
now by the consciousness of having all her purposes within her own hand
and dependent on herself. Naked and empty as the house looked to the
eyes which had been accustomed to so many faces, now vanished from it,
there began to grow an intention and will about all its daily work,
which even strangers observed. Though the Mistress sat, as usual, by the
corner window with her work in the afternoon, and the dining-parlor was
as homelike as ever, and the neighbors saw no change, except the change
of dress which marked her widowhood, Marget, half ashamed of the
derogation, half proud of the ability, and between shame and pride
keeping the secret of these labors, knew of the Mistress’s early toils,
which even Cosmo knew very imperfectly; her brisk morning hours of
superintendence and help in the kitchen and in the dairy, which, with
all its new appliances and vigorous working, became “just a picture,” as
Marget thought, and the pride of her own heart. Out of the produce of
those carefully tended precious “kye,” out of the sweet butter, smelling
of Tyne gowans, and the rich, yellow curds of cheese, and the young,
staggering, long-limbed calves which Willie Noble had in training, the
Mistress, fired with a mother’s ambition, meant to return tenfold to
Huntley his youthful self-denial, and even to lay up something for her
younger sons.

It was still only fourteen years since the death of the old Laird of
Melmar, the father of the lost Mary; and there was yet abundant time for
the necessary proceedings to claim her inheritance, without fear of the
limiting law, which ultimately might confirm the present possessor
beyond reach of attack. The last arrangement made by Huntley had
accordingly been, that all these proceedings should be postponed for
three or four years, during which time the lost heiress might reappear,
or, more probable still, the sanguine lad thought, his own fortunes
prosper so well, that he could bear the expense of the litigation
without touching upon the little patrimony sacred to his mother. After
so long an interval, a few years more or less would not harm the cause,
and in the meantime every exertion was to be made by Cassilis, as
Huntley’s agent, for the discovery of Mary of Melmar. This was the only
remaining circumstance of pain in the whole case to the Mistress. She
could not help resenting everybody’s interest about this heiress, who
had only made herself interesting by her desertion of that “home and
friends,” which, to the Mistress herself, were next to God in their
all-commanding, all-engrossing claim. She was angry even with the young
lawyer, but above all, angry that her own boys should be concerned for
the rights of the woman who had forsaken all her duties so violently,
and with so little appearance of penitence; and if sometimes a thought
of despondency and bitterness crossed the mind of the Mistress at night,
as she sat sewing by the solitary candle, which made one bright speck of
light, and no more, in the dim dining-room of Norlaw, the aggrieved
feeling found but one expression. “I would not say now, but what after
we’ve a’ done our best--me among the beasts, and my laddie ower the
seas, and the writers afore the Fifteen,” were the words, never spoken,
but often conceived, which rose in the Mistress’s heart; “I would not
wonder but then, when the land’s gained and a’s done, she’ll come hame.
It would be just like a’ the rest!” And let nobody condemn the Mistress.
Many a hardly-laboring soul, full of generous plans and motives, has
seen a stranger enter into its labors, or feared to see it, and felt the
same.

In the meantime, Cosmo, who had got all that the parish schoolmaster of
Kirkbride--no contemptible teacher--could give him, had been drawing
upon Dr. Logan’s rusty Latin and Greek, rather to the satisfaction of
the good minister than to his own particular improvement, and tired of
reading every thing that could be picked up in the shape of reading from
the old parchment volumes of second-rate Latin divinity, which the
excellent minister never opened, but had a certain respect for, down to
the _Gentle Shepherd_ and the floating ballad literature of the
country-side, began to grow more and more anxious to emulate his
brothers, and set out upon the world. The winter nights came on,
growing longer and longer, and Cosmo scorched his fair hair and stooped
his slight shoulders, reading by the fire-light, while his mother worked
by the table, and while the November winds began to sound in the echoing
depths of the old castle. The house was very still of nights, and missed
the absent sorely, and both the Mistress and her faithful servant were
fain to shut up the house and go to rest as soon as it was seemly, a
practice to which their early habits in the morning gave abundant
excuse, though its real reason lay deeper.

“Ane can bear mony a thing in good daylight, when a’ the work’s in
hand,” Marget said; “but womenfolk think lang at night, when there’s nae
blythe step sounding ower the door, nor tired man coming hame.” And
though she never said the same words, the same thought was in the
Mistress’s heart.

One of these slow nights was coming tardily to a close, when Cosmo, who
had been gathering up his courage, having finished his book on the
hearth-rug, where the boy half sat and half reclined, rose suddenly and
came to his mother at the table. Perhaps some similar thoughts of her
own had prepared the Mistress to anticipate what he was about to say.
She did not love to be forestalled, and, before Cosmo spoke, answered
with some impatience to the purpose in his eye.

“I ken very well what you’re going to say. Weel, I wot the night’s lang,
and the house is quiet--mair folk than you can see that,” said the
Mistress, “and you’re a restless spirit, though I did not think it of
you. Cosmo, do you ken what _I_ would like you to do?”

“I could guess, mother,” said the boy.

“Ay, ’deed, and ye could object. I might have learned that,” said his
mother.

“I’ve got little of my ain will a’ my life, though a fremd person would
tell you I was a positive woman. Most things I’ve set my heart on have
come to naught. Norlaw’s near out of our hands, and Huntley and Patie
are in the ends of the earth, and I’m a widow woman, desolate of my
bairns; weel, weel, I’m no complaining--but when I saw you first in your
cradle, Cosmo--you were the bonniest of a’ my bairns--I put my hands on
your head, and I said to myself--‘I’ll make him my offering to the Lord,
because he’s the fairest lamb of a’.’ Na, laddie--never mind, I’m no
heeding. You needna put your arms round me. It’s near seventeen year
ago, and mony a weary day since then, but I’ve aye thought upon my vow.”

“Mother, if I can, I’ll fulfill it!” cried Cosmo; “but how could I know
your heart was in it, when you never spoke of it before?”

“Na,” said the Mistress, restraining herself with an effort. “I’ve done
my best to bring you up in the fear of the Lord, and it’s no written
that you maun be a minister, before you can serve Him. I’ll no’ put a
burden on your conscience; but just I was a witless woman, and didna
mind when I saw the bairn in the cradle that before it came that length,
it would have a will of its own.”

“Send me to college, mother!” said Cosmo, with tears in his eyes. “I
have made no plans, and if I had I could change them--and at the worst,
if we find I can not be a minister, I will never forget your vow--put
your hands on my head and say it over again.”

But when the boy knelt down at her side with the enthusiasm of his
temper, and lifted his glowing, youthful face, full of a generous young
emotion, which was only too generous and ready to be swayed by the
influences of love, the Mistress could only bend over him with a silent
burst of tenderness.

“God bless my dearest bairn!” she said at last, with her broken voice.
“But no, no!--I’ve learned wisdom. The Lord make ye a’ His ain
servants--every ane--I can say nae mair.”




CHAPTER XXIX.


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.




CHAPTER XXX.


“I mean to call on Miss Logan at the manse to-day,” said Patricia
Huntley, as she took her place with great dignity in “the carriage,”
which she had previously employed Joanna to bully Melmar into ordering
for her conveyance. Mrs. Huntley was too great an invalid to make calls,
and Aunt Jean was perfectly impracticable as a companion, so Patricia
armed herself with her mother’s card-case, and set out alone.

Alone, save for the society of Joanna, who was glad enough of a little
locomotion, but did not much enjoy the call-making portion of the
enterprise. Joanna, whom no pains, it was agreed, could persuade into
looking genteel, had her red hair put up in bows under her big bonnet,
and a large fur tippet on her shoulders. Her brown merino frock was
short, as Joanna’s frocks invariably became after a few weeks’ wearing;
and the abundant display of ankle appearing under it said more for the
strength than the elegance of its proprietor. Patricia, for her part,
wore a  silk cloak, perfectly shapeless, and as long as her
dress, with holes for her arms, and a tippet of ermine to complete it.
It was a dress which was very much admired, and “quite the fashion” in
those days; when the benighted individuals who wore such vestments
actually supposed themselves as well-dressed as _we_ have the comfort of
knowing ourselves now.

“For I am sure,” said Patricia, as they drove along towards Kirkbride,
“that there is some mystery going on. I am quite sure of it. I never
will forget how shamefully papa treated me that day Mr. Cassilis was at
Melmar--before a stranger and a gentleman too! and you know as well as I
do, Joanna, how often that poor creature, Whitelaw, from Melrose, has
been at our house since then.”

“Yes, I know,” said Joanna, carelessly. “I wonder what Katie Logan will
say when she knows I’m going to school?”

“What a selfish thing you are, always thinking about your own concerns,”
said Patricia; “do you hear what I say? I think there’s a mystery--I’m
sure there’s a secret--either papa is not the right proprietor, or
somebody else has a claim, or there’s something wrong. He is always
making us uncomfortable some way or other; wouldn’t it be dreadful if we
were all ruined and brought to poverty at the end?”

“Ruined and brought to poverty? it would be very good fun to see what
mamma and you would do,” cried the irreverent Joanna. “_I_ could do
plenty things; but I’m no’ feared--it’s you, that’s always reading
story-books.”

“It’s not a story-book; I almost heard papa say it,” said Patricia,
reddening slightly.

“Then you’ve been listening!” cried her bolder sister. “I would scorn to
do that. I would ask him like a man what it was, if it was me, but I
wouldna go stealing about the passages like a thief. I wouldna do it for
twice Melmar--nor for all the secrets in the world!”

“I wish you would not be so violent, Joanna! my poor nerves can not
stand it,” said Patricia; “a thoughtless creature like you never looks
for any information, but I’m older, and I know we’ve no fortunes but
what papa can give us, and we need to think of ourselves. Think, Joanna,
if you can think. If anybody were to take Melmar from papa, what would
become of you and me?”

“You and me!” the girl cried, in great excitement. “I would think of
Oswald and papa himsel’, if it was true. Me! I could nurse bairns, or
keep a school, or go to Australia, like Huntley Livingstone. I’m no’
feared! and it would be fun to watch _you_, what you would do. But if
papa had cheated anybody and was found out--oh, Patricia! could you
think of yourself instead of thinking on that?”

“When a man does wrong, and ruins his family, he has no right to look
for any thing else,” said Patricia.

“I would hate him,” cried Joanna, vehemently, “but I wouldna forsake
him--but it’s all havers; we’ve been at Melmar almost as long as I can
mind, and never any one heard tell of it before.”

“I mean to hear what Katie Logan says--for Mr. Cassilis is her cousin,”
said Patricia, “and just look, there she is, on the road, tying little
Isabel’s bonnet. She’s just as sure to be an old maid as can be--look
how prim she is! and never once looking to see what carriage it is, as
if carriages were common at the manse. Don’t call her Katie, Joanna;
call her Miss Logan; I mean to show her that there is a difference
between us and the minister’s daughter at Kirkbride.”

“And I mean no such thing,” cried Joanna, with her head half out at the
window; “she’s worth the whole of us put together, except Oswald and
Auntie Jean. Katie! Katie Logan! we’re going to the manse to see you--oh
don’t run away!”

The day was February, cold but sunny, and the manse parlor was almost as
bright in this wintry weather as it had been in summer. The fire
sparkled and crackled with an exhilaration in the sound as well as the
warmth and glow it made, and the sunshine shone in at the end window,
through the leafless branches, with a ruddy wintry cheerfulness, which
brightened one’s thoughts like good news or a positive pleasure. There
were no stockings or pinafores to be mended, but instead, a pretty
covered basket, holding all Katie’s needles and thread, and scraps of
work in safe and orderly retirement, and at the bright window, in an
old-fashioned china flower-pot, a little group of snow-drops, the
earliest possibility of blossom, hung their pale heads in the light.
Joanna Huntley threw herself into the minister’s own easy-chair with a
riotous expression of pleasure.

“Fires never burn as if they liked to burn in Melmar,” cried Joanna;
“oh, Katie Logan, what do you do to yours? for every thing looks as if
something pleasant happened here every day.”

“Something pleasant is always happening,” said Katie, with a smile.

“It depends upon what people think pleasure,” said Patricia. “I am sure
you that have so much to do, and all your little brothers and sisters to
look after, and no society, should be worse off than me and Joanna; but
it’s very seldom that any thing pleasant happens to us.”

“Never mind her, Katie. Listen to me. I’m going to Edinburgh to school,”
cried Joanna. “I don’t know whether to like it or to be angry. What
would you do, if you were me?”

“I don’t think I could fancy myself you, Joanna,” said Katie, laughing;
“but I should have liked it when I was younger, and had less to do. I’m
to go in with papa if he goes to the Assembly this May. We have friends
in Edinburgh, and I like it for that--besides the Assembly and all the
things country folk see there.”

“But Edinburgh is a very poor place after being in London,” said
Patricia; “if you could only see Clapham, where _I_ was at school! But
Mr. Cassilis is a cousin of yours--is he not? I suppose he told you how
papa behaved to me when he was last at Melmar.”

“No, indeed--he did not,” said Katie, with some curiosity.

“Oh! I thought perhaps he noticed it, being a stranger,” said Patricia;
“do you know what was his business with papa?”

“No.”

“You might tell _us_--for we ought to hear, if it is any thing
important,” said Patricia; “and as for papa, he never lets us know any
thing till everybody else has heard it first. I am sure it was some
business, and business which made papa as cross as possible; do tell us
what it was.”

“I don’t know any thing about it,” said Katie. “My cousin staid here
only two or three days, and he never spoke of business to me.”

“Oh! but you know what he came here about,” insisted Patricia.

“He came to see us, and also--oh, yes--to manage something for the
Livingstones, of Norlaw,” said Katie, with a slight increase of color.

For the moment she had actually forgotten this last and more important
reason for the visit of the young lawyer, having a rather uncomfortable
impression that “to see us” was a more urgent inducement to Cousin
Charlie than it had better be. She paused accordingly with a slight
embarrassment, and began to busy herself opening her work basket.
Patricia Huntley was not a person of the liveliest intelligence in
general, but she was quick-sighted enough to see that Katie stumbled in
her statement, and drew up her small shoulders instantly with two
distinct sentiments of jealous offense and disapproval, the first
relating to the presumption of the minister’s daughter in appropriating
the visit of Cassilis to herself, and the second to a suggestion of the
possible rivalry, which could affect the house of Melmar in the family
of Norlaw.

“I think we are never to be done with these Livingstones,” cried
Patricia, “and all because the old man owed papa a quantity of money.
_We_ can’t help it when people owe us money, and I am sure I am very
much surprised at Mr. Cassilis, if he came to annoy papa about a thing
like that. I thought he was a gentleman! I thought it must be something
important he came to say.”

“Perhaps it might be,” said Katie, quietly, coloring rather more, but
losing her embarrassment; “and the more important it was, the less
likely is it that my cousin would tell it to any one whom it did not
concern. Mr. Huntley could answer your questions better than I.”

“Oh, I see you’re quite offended. I see you’re quite offended. I am sure
I did not know Mr. Cassilis was any particular kind of cousin,” said
Patricia, spitefully. “If I had known I should have taken care how I
spoke; but if my papa was like yours, and was not very able to afford a
housekeeper, it would need to be another sort of a man from Mr. Cassilis
who could make _me_ go away and leave my home.”

“Katie, you should flyte upon her,” said Joanna. “She does not
understand any thing else--never mind her--talk to me--are all the
Livingstones away but Cosmo? Patricia thinks there’s a mystery and
papa’s wronged somebody. If he has, it’s Norlaw.”

“I don’t think any thing of the sort--hold your tongue, Joanna,” said
her sister.

“Eh, what else?” cried the young lady, roused to recrimination. “Katie,
do you think Mrs. Livingstone knows? for I would go and ask her in a
minute. I would not forsake papa if he was poor, but if he’s wronged
anybody, I’ll no’ stand it--for it would be my blame as well as his the
moment I knew!”

“I don’t think you have any thing to do with it,” said Katie, with
spirit, “nor Patricia either. Girls were not set up to keep watch over
their fathers and mothers; are you the constable at Melmar, Joanna, to
keep everybody in order? I wish you were at the manse sometimes when the
boys have a holiday. Our Johnnie would be a match for you. The
Livingstones are all away,--Cosmo, too; he’s gone to college in
Edinburgh, and some day, perhaps, you’ll hear him preach in Kirkbride.”

“I am quite sure papa would not give him the presentation; he’s promised
it to a cousin of our own,” said Patricia, eagerly.

Katie grew very red, and then very pale.

“My father is minister of Kirkbride,” she said, with a great deal of
simple dignity; “there is no presentation in anybody’s power just now.”

“Katie, I wish you would not speak to her, she’s a cat!” cried Joanna,
with intense disgust, turning her back upon her sister; “oh I wish you
would write Cosmo to come and see me! I’ll be just the same as at
college, too; and I’m sure I’ll like him a great deal better than any of
the girls. Or, never mind; if that’s not right, I’ll be sure to meet him
in the street. I’m to go next week, Katie, and there’s a French
governess and a German master, and an Italian master, and nothing but
vexation and trouble. It’s quite true, and we’re not even to speak our
own tongue, but jabber away at French from morning to night. English is
far better--I know I’ll quarrel with them a’.”

“Do you call your language English, Joanna?” said her sister, with
contempt.

“If it’s no’ English it’s Scotch, and that’s far better,” cried Joanna,
with an angry blush; “wha cares for English? They never say their r’s
and their h’s, except when they shouldna say them, and they never win
the day except by guile, and they canna do a thing out of their own head
till Scotsmen show them how! and it’s a’ true, and I’d rather be a
servant-maid in Melmar, than one of your Clapham fine ladies, so you
needna speak your English either to Katie or me.”

And it must be confessed that Katie, sensible as she was, laughed and
applauded, and that poor little Patricia, who could find nothing
heroical to say on behalf of Clapham, was very much disposed to cry with
vexation, and only covered her defeat by a retreat to the carriage,
where Joanna followed, only after a few minutes’ additional conversation
with Katie, who was by no means disposed to aid the elder sister. When
they were gone, however, Katie Logan shook her wise little
elder-sisterly head over the pair of them. She thought if Charlie (which
diminutive in the manse meant Charlotte) and Isabel grew up like
Patricia and Joanna, she would “break her heart;” and the little
mistress of the manse went into the kitchen to oversee the progress of a
birthday cake and give her homely orders, without once thinking of the
superior grandeur of the carriage, as it rolled down the <DW72> of the
brae and through the village, the scene of a continued and not very
temperate quarrel between the two daughters of Melmar, which was only
finished at last by the sudden giving way of Patricia’s nerves and
breath, to the most uncomfortable triumph of Joanna. Joanna kept sulkily
in her corner, and refused to alight while the other calls were made. On
the whole, it was not a very delightful drive.




CHAPTER XXXI.


Three months later, in the early sweetness of May, Cosmo Livingstone
stood upon an “outside stair,” one of those little flights of stone
steps, clearing the half-cellar shops of the lowest story, which are not
unfrequent in the High Street of Edinburgh, and which make a handy
platform when any thing is to be seen, or place of refuge when any thing
is to be escaped from. A little further down, opposite to him, was the
Tron Church, with its tall steeple striking up into the sunny mid-day
heavens; and above, at a little distance, the fleecy white clouds hung
over the open crown of St. Giles’s, with the freshness of recent rain.
Many bystanders stood on the other “stair-heads,” and groups of heads
looked out from almost every window of the high houses on every side.
The High Street of Edinburgh, lined with expectant lookers-on, darkening
downwards towards the picturesque <DW72> of the Canongate, with its two
varied and noble lines of lofty old houses, black with time, between
which the sunshine breaks down in a moted and streamy glory, as into a
well, is no contemptible object among street sights; and the population
of Edinburgh loves its streets as perhaps only the populations of places
rich in natural beauty can love them. A man who has seen a crowd in the
High Street might almost be tempted to doubt, indeed, whether the
Scottish people were really so reserved and grave and self-restraining
as common report pronounces them. The women on the landings of the
stairs shrilly claiming here and there a Tam or a Sandy, or else
discussing in chorus the event of the moment; the groups of men
promenading up and down upon the pavement with firm-set mouth and
gleaming eyes--the mutter of forcible popular sentiment saying rather
more than it means, and saying that in the plainest and most emphatic
words; and the stir of general excitement in a scene which has already
various recollections of tumults which are historical, make altogether a
picturesque and striking combination, which is neither like a Parisian
mob nor a London one, yet is quite as characteristic as either. It was
not, however, a mob on this day, when Cosmo Livingstone stood on the
stair-head in front of a little bookseller’s shop, the owner of which,
in high excitement, came every minute or two to the door, uttering
vehement little sentences to the little crowd on his steps:--

“We’ll have it oot o’ them if we have to gang to St. Stephen’s very
doors for’t!” cried the shopkeeper. “King William had better mind his
crown than mind his wife. We’re no’ to lose the Bill for a German
whimsey. Hey, laddies! dinna make so muckle clatter--they’re coming! do
ye hear them?”

They were coming, as the increased hum and cluster of the bystanders
told clearly enough--an extraordinary procession of its kind. Without a
note of music, without a tint of color, with a tramp which was not the
steady tramp of trained footsteps, but only the sound of a slowly
advancing crowd, to which immense excitement gave a kind of
solemnity--a long line of men in their common dress, unornamented,
unattended, keeping a mysterious silence, and carrying a few flags,
black, and with ominous devices, which only the strain of a great climax
of national feeling could have suffered to pass without that ridicule
which is more fatal than state prosecutions. Nobody laughed, so far as
we are aware, at the skulls and cross-bones of this voiceless
procession; and the tramp of that multitude of men, timed and cheered by
no music, broken by no shouts, lightened by no gleam of weapons, or
glitter of emblems, or variety of color, and only accompanied by the
agitated hum of the bystanders, had a very remarkable and somewhat
“gruesome” impressiveness. The people who were looking on grew silent
gradually, and held their breath as the long train went slowly past. It
might not be a formidable band. _Punch_--if _Punch_ had been in those
days--might very likely have found a comfortable amount of laughter in
the grim looks of the processionists, who were not likely to do much in
justification of their deadly-looking flags. But the occasion was a
remarkable occasion in the national history; the excitement was such--so
general and overpowering--as no subsequent agitation has been able to
equal. The real force of popular emotion in it covered even its own
mock-heroics, which is no small thing to say; and there was something
solemn in the unanimity of so many sober persons, who were not under the
immediate sway and leadership of any demagogue, nor could be supposed to
look for personal advantages, and whose extreme fervor and excitement at
the same time were not revolutionary, but simply political. The “Bill,”
on which the popular hope had fixed itself, had just met with one of its
failures, and this was the exaggerated, yet expressive way in which the
Edinburgh crowd demonstrated the popular sentiment of the day.

These things can not be judged in cold blood; at that time everybody was
excited. Cosmo Livingstone, white with boyish fervor, watched and
counted them as they passed, with irresistible exclamations--“twenty,
forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred!” the boy cried aloud with triumph, as
score after score went past; and the women on the lower steps of the
stair began to share his calculations and exult in them. The very
children beneath, who were looking on with restless and excited
curiosity, knew something about the “Bill,” which day by day, as the
coach from the south, with the London mails, came in, they had been sent
to learn tidings of; and the bookseller in the little shop could not
restrain himself.

“There will be news of this!” he cried, as the last detachment passed;
“when the men of Edinburgh take up a matter, nothing can stand before
them. There ne’er was a march like it that I ever heard o’ in a’ my
reading. Kings, Lords, and Commons--I defy them to stand against it--how
many?--hurra for Auld Reekie! Our lads, when they do a thing, never make
a fool o’t. Hark to the tramp of them! man, it’s grand!”

“I’ve seen the sodgers out for far less in my day,” said an old woman.

“A snuff for the sodgers!” cried the excited shopkeeper, snapping his
fingers; “‘a wheen mercenaries, selling their bluid for a trade. They
daur nae mair face a band like that than I dare face Munch Meg.”

“Oh, Cosmo--Cosmo Livingstone!” cried a voice from below; “it’s me--look
this way!--do you no’ mind me?--I’m Joanna; come down this moment and
tell us how we’re to get home.”

Cosmo looked down through the railings, close to the bottom of which the
owner of the voice had been pressed by the crowd. She had a little silk
umbrella in her hand, with the end of which, thrust between the rails,
she was impatiently, and by no means lightly, beating upon his foot.

An elderly person, looking very much frightened, clung close to her arm,
and a girl somewhat younger stood a little apart, looking with bright,
vivacious eyes and parted lips after the disappearing procession.

The swarm of lads, of idle women and children, who followed in the wake
of the Reformers, as of every other march, had overwhelmed for a moment
this little group, which was not like them; and the tumult of voices,
which rose when the sight was over, made it difficult to hear even
Joanna, clear, loud, and unhesitating as her claim was.

“Miss Huntley!” cried Cosmo, with a momentary start--but it was not so
much to witness his recognition as to save his foot from further
chastisement.

“It’s no’ Miss Huntley--it’s me!” cried Joanna; “we’ve lost our
road--come and tell us how we’re to go. Oh, madame, don’t hold so fast
to my arm!”

Cosmo made haste to swing himself down over the railings, when Joanna’s
elderly companion immediately addressed herself to him in a long and
most animated speech, which, unfortunately, however, was in French, and
entirely unintelligible to the poor boy. He blushed violently, and stood
listening with a natural deference, but without the slightest hope of
comprehending her--making now and then a faint attempt to interrupt the
stream. Joanna in the meantime, who was not a great deal more
enlightened than he was, vainly endeavored to stay the course of
madame’s eloquence by pulling her shawl and elbow.

“He does not understand you! he canna understand you!” cried Joanna, in
words which, the Frenchwoman comprehended as little as Cosmo did _her_
address.

During this little episode, the other girl stood by with an evident
impulse to laughter, and a sparkle of amusement in her black eyes. At
last she started forward with a rapid motion, said something to madame
which succeeded better than the remonstrances of Joanna, and addressed
Cosmo in her turn.

“Madame says,” said the lively little stranger, “that she can not
understand your countrymen--they are so grave, so impassionate, so
sorrowful, she knows not if they march in _le corétge funêbre_ or go to
make the barricades. Madame says there is no music, no shouts, no voice.
She demands what the _jeune Monsieur_ thinks of a so grave procession.”

“The men are displeased,” said Cosmo, hastily; “they think that the
government trifles with them, and they warn it how they feel. They don’t
mean to make a riot, or break the peace--we call it a demonstration
here.”

“A de-mon-stracion!” said the little Frenchwoman; “I shall look for it
in my dictionary. They are angry with the king--_eh bien!_--why do not
they fight?”

“Fight! they could fight the whole world if they liked!” cried Joanna;
“but they would scorn to fight for every thing like people that have
nothing else to do. Desirée and I wanted to see it, Cosmo, and madame
did not know in the least where we were bringing her to--and so we got
into the crowd, and I don’t know how to get back to Moray Place, unless
you’ll show us the way.”

“Madame says,” said the other girl laughing, after receiving another
vehement communication from the governess, “that _ce jeune Monsieur_ is
to go with us only to Princes Street--then we shall find our own way. He
is not to go with you, _belle_ Joanna; and madame demands to know what
all the people say.”

“What all the people say!--they’re gossiping, and scolding, and speaking
about the procession, and about us, and about their own concerns, and
about every thing,” said Joanna; “and how can I tell her? Oh, Cosmo,
I’ve looked everywhere for you! but you never walk where we walk; and I
saw your mother at the church, and I saw Katie Logan, and I told Katie
to write you word to come and see me--but everybody teazes us to death
about being proper; however, come along, and I’ll tell you all about
everybody--wasn’t it grand to see the procession? Papa’s a terrible
Tory, and says it’ll destroy the country--so I hope they’ll get it. Are
you for the Reform?”

“Yes,” said Cosmo, but the truth was, the boy felt considerably
embarrassed walking onward by the side of Joanna, with the governess and
the little Frenchwoman behind, talking in their own language with a
rapidity which made Cosmo dizzy, interrupted by occasional bursts of
laughter from the girl, which he, being still very young and
inexperienced, and highly self-conscious, could not help suspecting to
be excited by himself--an idea which made him excessively awkward.
However, Joanna trudged along, with her umbrella in one hand, and with
the other holding up the skirt of her dress, which, however, was neither
very long nor very wide. Joanna’s tall figure might possibly be handsome
some day--but it certainly wanted filling up and rounding in the
meantime--and was not remarkably elegant at present, either in garb or
gait.

But her young companion was of a very different aspect. She was little,
graceful, light, with a step which, even in the High Street, reminded
Cosmo of Jaacob’s bit of sentiment--“a foot that rang on the path like
siller bells"--with sparkling black eyes, a piquant rosy mouth, and so
bright and arch a look, that the boy forgave her for laughing at
himself, as he supposed she was doing. Desirée!--there was a charm too
in the strange foreign name which he could not help saying over to
himself--and if Joanna had been less entirely occupied with talking to
him, she could not have failed to notice how little he answered, and how
gravely he conducted the party to Princes Street, from whence the
governess knew her way. Joanna shook hands with Cosmo heartily at
parting, and told him she should write to Katie Logan to say she had
seen him--while Desirée made him a pretty parting salutation, half a
curtsey, with a mischievous glance out of her bright eyes, and madame
made him thanks in excellent French, which the lad did not appreciate.

By that time, as he turned homeward, Cosmo had forgotten all about the
procession, we are grieved to say, and was utterly indifferent to the
fate of the “Bill.”

He was quite confused in his thoughts, poor boy, as he betook himself to
his little room and his high window. This half frolic, half adventure,
which gave the two girls a little private incident to talk of, such as
girls delight in, buzzed about Cosmo’s brain with embarrassing pleasure.
He felt half disposed to begin learning French on the instant--not that
he might have a better chance of improving his acquaintance with
Desirée--by no means--but only that he might never feel so awkward and
so mortified again as he did to-day, when he found himself addressed in
a language which he did not know.




CHAPTER XXXII.


Cosmo saw nothing more of Joanna Huntley, nor of her bright-eyed
companion for a long time. He fell back into his old loneliness, with
his high window, and his landlady, and the Highland student for society.
Cameron, whom the boy made theories about, and wistfully contemplated on
the uncomprehended heights of his maturer age, knew a good deal by this
time of the history of the Livingstones, a great deal more than Cosmo
was aware of having told him, and had heard all about the adventure in
the High Street, about Desirée’s laugh and the old French grammar which
Cosmo had secretly bought at a book-stall.

“If she had only taken to Latin, as the philosophers used to do at the
Reformation time,” cried Cosmo, with a little fun and a great deal of
seriousness, “but women never learn Latin now-a-days. Why shouldn’t
they?”

“Does it do _us_ so much good?” said Cameron, brushing a little dust
carefully from the sleeve of that black coat of his, which it went to
his heart to see growing rustier every day, and casting a momentary
glance of almost envy at the workmen in their comfortable fustian
jackets. Cameron was on his way to knock the “Rudiments” into the heads
of three little boys, in whose service the gaunt Highlander tasted the
sweets of “private tuition,” so that at the moment he had less
appreciation than usual of the learning after which he had toiled all
his life.

“If any one loves scholarship, you should!” cried Cosmo, with a little
enthusiasm.

“Why?” said the elder man, turning round upon him with a momentary gleam
of proud offense in his eye. The Highlander wanted no applause for the
martyrdoms of his life. On the contrary, it galled him to think that his
privations should be taken into account by any one as proofs of his love
of learning. His strong, absolute, self-denying temper wanted that last
touch of frankness and candor which raises the character above
detraction and above narrowness. He could not acknowledge his poverty,
and take his stand upon it boldly. It was a necessity of his nature to
conceal what he could manfully endure. But the glance which rested on
Cosmo softened.

“Letters may be humane and humanizing, Cosmo,” said the Highland
student, with a little humor; “but I doubt if men feel this particular
influence of them in teaching little callants. I don’t think, in a
general way, that either my genteel boys in Fette’s Row, or my little
territorial villains in St. Mary’s Wynd, improve _my_ humanity.”

“Yet the last, at least, is purely a voluntary office and labor of
love,” said Cosmo, earnestly.

Cameron smiled.

“I’m but a limited man,” he said; “love takes but narrow bounds with the
like of me. Two or three at the most are as many as my heart can hold.
Are you horrified to hear it, Cosmo? I’ll do my neighbor a good turn if
I can, and I’ll not think ill of him if I can help it; but love, laddie,
love!--that’s for one friend--for a mother or--a wife--not for every
common man or every bairn I see in the street and have compassion on.
No! Love is a different concern.”

“Is it duty, then?” said Cosmo, with a small shrug of his boyish
shoulders.

“Hush! If I can not love every man I see, I can love Him who loves all!”
said the Highlander, raising his high head with an unconscious loftiness
and elevation of gesture. Cosmo made no answer and no comment--he was
awed for the moment with the personal reality of that heavenly affection
which made this limited earthly man, strong in his own characteristic
individualities, and finding it impossible to abound in universal
tenderness, still to do with fervor those works of the Evangelist which
were for love of One who loved the all, whom he himself had not a heart
expansive enough to love.

When Cameron arrived at the house of his pupils, Cosmo wandered back
again toward the region of his friend’s unrewarded labors;--ah! those
young champions of Maudlin and Trinity!--what a difference between this
picture and that. Let us confess that the chances are that Cameron, at
the height of his hardly-earned scholarship, would still be a world
behind a double-first; and it is likely, unless sheer strength had done
it, that nothing earthly could have made a stroke-oar of the
Highlandman. If any one could have watched him through the course of one
of his laborious days, getting up to eat his rude and scanty breakfast,
going out to his lecture and classes, from thence to one quarter and
another to his pupils--little boys in the “Rudiments;” from thence to
St. Mary’s Wynd to do the rough pioneer evangelist work of a degraded
district--work which perhaps his Divinity professor, perhaps the
minister of his church urged upon him as the best preparation for his
future office--then home to his garret to a meal which he would not have
liked any one to see or share, to labor over his notes, to read, to get
up his college work for the next day, to push forward, steadily,
stoutly, silently, through almost every kind of self-denial possible to
man.

Then, when the toilsome session was over, perhaps the weary man went
home--not to Switzerland or Wales with a reading party--not to shoot,
nor to fish, nor to travel, nor to give himself up to the pure delights
of uninterrupted study--perhaps, instead, to return to weary days of
manual labor, to the toils of the field, or the trials of the
schoolmaster; or perhaps finding the expense of the journey too much for
him, or thinking it inexpedient to risk his present pupils, lingered
through the summer in Edinburgh, teaching, reading, pinching, refreshing
himself by his work in St. Mary’s Wynd. The result of all this was not
an elegant divine, nor an accomplished man of the world--very possibly
it might be an arbitrary optimist, a one-sided Christian--but it was
neither an idle nor a useless man.

Some thoughts of this kind passed through the mind of Cosmo Livingstone
as he went through the same St. Mary’s Wynd, pondering the occupations
and motives of his friend--the only comparison which he made, thinking
of Cameron, was with himself; forgetting the difference of their age
entirely, as such a boy was likely to do, Cosmo could not be
sufficiently disgusted and discontented with his own dependence and
worthlessness. Then he had, at the present moment, no particular
vocation for the church. St. Mary’s Wynd, so far from attracting him,
even failed at this moment to convey to the visionary lad the sentiment
which it wrote with words of fire upon the less sensitive mind of
Cameron. Love for the inhabitants of those wretched closes--for the
miserable squalid forms coming and going through those high, dark,
narrow, winding stairs, down which sometimes a stray sunbeam, piercing
through a dusty window, threw a violent glory into the darkness, like a
Rembrandt or an indignant angel, seemed something impossible. He
believed in the universal love of the Lord, but it only filled him with
awe and wonder--he did not understand it as Cameron did--and Cosmo could
not see how reaching ultimately into the position of teaching,
preaching, laboring, wearing out, for the benefit of such a population,
was worth the terrible struggle of preparation which at present taxed
all the energies of his friend. He repeated to himself dutifully what he
had heard--that to save a soul was better than to win a kingdom--but
such words were still only of the letter, and not of the spirit, for
Cosmo. And he was glad at last to escape from the subject, and hasten to
the fresh and breezy solitude of the hill, which was not a mile from
this den of misery, yet seemed as far away as another world.

It was spring, and the air was full of that invigorating hopefulness,
which was none the worse to Cosmo for coming on a somewhat chilly
breeze. The glory of the broad, blue Firth, with its islands and its
bays, and the world of bright, keen, sunny air in which its few sails
shone with a dazzling indescribable whiteness, like nothing but
themselves--the round white clouds ranging themselves in lines and
fantastic groups over the whole low varied line of the opposite
coast--and the intoxication of that free, unbroken breeze, coming fresh
over miles of country and leagues of sea, lifted Cosmo out of his former
thoughts, only to rouse in him a vague heroical excitement--a longing
after something, he knew not what, which any tangible shaping would but
have vulgarized. The boy spread out his arms with an involuntary
enthusiasm, drinking in that wine of youth. What would he do?--he stood
upon the height of the hill like a young Mercury, ready to fly over all
the world on the errands of the gods--but even the voice of Jupiter,
speaking out of the clouds, would only have been prose and bathos to the
unconscious, unexplainable poetic elevation of the lad, who neither knew
himself nor the world.

A word of any kind, even the sublimest, would have brought him to his
feet and to a vague sense of shame and self-ridicule in a moment--which
consummation happened to him before he was aware.

The word was a name--a name which he had only heard once before--and the
voice that spoke it was at some distance, for the sound came ringing to
him, faint yet clear, brightened into a cry of pleasure by the breath of
the hills on which it came. “Desirée!” The boy started, blushed at
himself in the awaking of his dream, and pausing only a moment, rushed
down the <DW72> of Arthur’s Seat toward Duddingstone, where, on the first
practicable road which he approached, he perceived a solemn procession
of young ladies, two-and-two, duly officered and governed, and behaving
themselves irreproachably. Cosmo did not make a rush down through their
seemly and proper ranks, to find out Desirée or Joanna; instead, the lad
watched them for a moment, and then turned round laughing, and went back
to his lodging--laughing the shamefaced rosy laugh of his years, when
one can feel one has been a little ridiculous without feeling one’s self
much the worse for it, and when it strikes rather comically than
painfully to find how different one’s high-flown fancies are, to all the
sober arrangements of the every-day world.




CHAPTER XXXIII.


The end of the season arrived, Cosmo came home, leaving his
fellow-student, who would not even accept an invitation to Norlaw,
behind him in Edinburgh. Cameron thought it half a weakness on his part,
the sudden affection to which the boy had moved him, but he would not
yield so much to it as to lay himself under “an obligation,” nor suffer
any one to suppose that any motive whatever, save pure liking, mingled
in the unlikely friendship he had permitted himself to form. Inveterate
poverty teaches its victims a strange suspiciousness; he was half afraid
that some one might think he wanted to share the comforts of Cosmo’s
home; so, as he was not going home himself, he remained in Edinburgh,
working and sparing as usual, and once more expanding a little with the
idea, so often proved vain hitherto, of getting so much additional work
as to provide for his next session, leaving it free to its own proper
studies; and Cosmo returned to rejoice the hearts of the women in
Norlaw.

Who found him grown and altered, and “mair manlike,” and stronger, and
every way improved, to their hearts’ content. The Mistress was not given
to caresses or demonstrations of affection--but when the lad got home,
and saw his mother’s eye brighten, and her brow clear every time she
looked at him, he felt, with a compunction for his own discontented
thoughts, of how much importance he was to the widow, and tried hard to
restrain the instinct of wandering, which many circumstances had
combined to strengthen in his mind, although he had never spoken of it.
Discontent with his present destination for one thing; the example of
Huntley and Patrick; the perpetual spur to his energy which had been
before him during all his stay in Edinburgh, in the person of Cameron;
his eager visionary desire to seek Mary of Melmar, whom the boy had a
strong fancy that _he_ was destined to find; and, above and beyond all,
a certain vague ambition, which he could not have described to any one,
but which lured him with a hundred fanciful charms--moved him to the new
world and the unknown places, which charmed chiefly because they were
new and unknown. Cosmo had written verses secretly for a year or two,
and lately had sent some to an Edinburgh paper, which, miracle of
fortune! published them. He was not quite assured that he was a poet,
but he thought he could be something if he might but reach that big,
glorious world which all young fancies long for, and the locality of
which dazzling impossible vision, is so oddly and so often placed in
London. Cosmo was not sure that it was in London--but he rather thought
it was not in Edinburgh, and he was very confident it could not be in
Norlaw.

About the same time, Joanna Huntley came home for the long summer
holidays. Joanna had persuaded her father into giving her a pony, on
which she trotted about everywhere unattended, to the terror of her
mother and the disgust of Patricia, who was too timid for any such
impropriety. Pony and girl together, on their rambles, were perpetually
falling in with Cosmo Livingstone, whom Joanna rather meant to make a
friend of, and to whom she could speak on one subject which occupied, at
the present time, two thirds of her disorderly thoughts, and deafened,
with perpetual repetition, the indifferent household of Melmar.

This was Desirée. The first of first loves for a girl is generally
another girl, or young woman, a little older than herself; and nothing
can surpass the devotion of the worshiper.

Desirée was only a year older than Joanna, but she was almost every
thing which Joanna was not; and she was French, and had been in Paris
and London, and was of a womanly and orderly temper, which increased the
difference in years. She was, for the time being, Joanna’s supreme
mistress, queen, and lady-love.

“I’m very glad you saw her, Cosmo,” cried the girl, in one of their
encounters, “because now you’ll know that what I say is true. They laugh
at me at Melmar; and Patricia (she’s a cat!) goes on about her Clapham
school, and says Desirée is only a little French governess--as if I did
not know better than that!”

“Is she a governess?” asked Cosmo.

“She’s a lady!” said Joanna, reddening suddenly; “but she does not pay
as much as we do; and she talks French with the girls, and sometimes
she helps the little ones on with their music, and--but as for a
governess like madame, or like Miss Trimmer, or even Mrs. Payne
herself--she is no more like one of them than you are. Cosmo. I think
Desirée would like you!”

“Do you think so?” said Cosmo, with a boyish blush and laugh.

Joanna, however, was far too much occupied to notice his shamefacedness.

“I’ll tell you just what I would like,” she said, as they went on
together, the pony rambling along at its own will, with the reins lying
on its neck, while Cosmo, half-attracted, half-reluctant, walked by its
side. “I don’t think I should tell you either,” said Joanna, “for I
don’t suppose you care about us. Cosmo Livingstone, I am sure, if I were
you, I would hate papa; but you’ll no’ tell--I would like Desirée to
come here and marry my brother Oswald, and be lady of Melmar. I would
not care a bit what became of _me_. Though she’s French, there’s nobody
like her; and that’s just what I would choose, if I could choose for
myself. Would it not be grand? But you don’t know Oswald--he’s been away
nearly as long as I can mind; but he writes me letters sometimes, and I
like him better than anybody else in the world.”

“Where is he?” said Cosmo.

“He’s in Italy. Whiles he writes about the places, whiles about Melmar;
but he never seems to care for coming home,” said Joanna. “However, I
mean to write him to tell him he _must_ come this summer. Your Huntley
is away too. Isn’t it strange to live at home always the same, and have
so near a friend as a brother far, far away, and never, be able to know
what he is doing? Oswald might be ill just now for any thing we know;
but I mean to write and tell him he must come to see Desirée, for that
is what I have set my heart upon since I knew her first.”

Joanna, for sheer want of breath, came to a pause; and Cosmo made no
reply. He walked on, rather puzzled by the confidence she gave him,
rather troubled by this other side of the picture--the young man in
Italy, who very likely thought himself the unquestionable heir,
perfectly entitled to marry and bring home a lady of Melmar. The whole
matter embarrassed Cosmo. Even his acquaintance with Joanna, which was
not of his seeking, seemed quite out of place and inappropriate. But the
girl was as totally unconscious as the pony of the things called
improprieties, and had taken a friendship for Cosmo as she had taken a
love for Desirée--partly because the house of Norlaw bore a certain
romance to her fancy--partly because “papa would be mad"--and partly
because, in all honesty, she liked the boy, who was not much older, and
was certainly more refined and gentle than herself. Joanna was not
remarkably amiable in her present development, but she could appreciate
excellence in others.

“And she’s beautiful, too--don’t you think so?” said Joanna; “not
pretty, like Patricia, nor bonnie, like Katie Logan--but beautiful. I
wish I could bring her to Melmar--I wish Oswald could see her--and I’ll
do any thing in the world rather than let Desirée go to anybody’s house
like any other governess. Isn’t it a shame? A delicate little lady like
her has to go and teach little brats of children, and me that am strong
and big, and could do lots of things--I never have any thing to do! I
don’t understand it--they say it’s providence. I would not make things
be like that if it was me. What do you think? You never say a word. I
suppose you just listen, and laugh at me because I speak every thing
out. What for do you not speak like a man?”

“A man sometimes has nothing to say, Miss Huntley,” said Cosmo, with a
rather whimsical shyness, which he was half-inclined himself to laugh
at.

“Miss Huntley!--I’m Joanna!” cried the girl, with contempt. “I would
like to be friends with you, Cosmo, because papa behaved like a wretch
to your father; and many a time I think I would like to come and help
Mrs. Livingstone, or do any thing for any of you. I canna keep in Melmar
in a corner, and never say a word to vex folk, like Patricia, and I
canna be good, like Katie Logan. Do you want to go away and no’ to speak
to me? You can if you like--I don’t care! I know I’m no’ like a lady in
a ballad; but neither are you like one of the old knights of Norlaw!”

“Not if you think me rude, or dull, or ungrateful for your frankness!”
cried Cosmo, touched by Joanna’s appeal, and eager to make amends; but
the girl pulled up the pony’s reins, and darted away from him in mighty
dudgeon, with the slightest touch of womanish mortification and shame
heightening her childish wrath. Perhaps this was the first time it had
really occurred to Joanna that, after all, there was a certain soul of
truth in the proprieties which she hated, and that it might not be
perfectly seemly to bestow her confidence, unasked, upon Cosmo--a
confidence which was received so coldly.

She comforted herself by starting off at a pace as near a gallop as she
and her steed were equal to, leaving Cosmo rather disconcerted in his
turn, and not feeling particularly pleased with himself, but with many
thoughts in his mind, which were not there when he left Norlaw.




CHAPTER XXXIV.


Day by day, the summer went over Cosmo’s head, leaving his thoughts in
the same glow and tumult of uncertainty, for which, now and then, the
lad blamed himself bitterly, but which, on the whole, he found very
bearable. Every thing went on briskly at Norlaw. The Mistress,
thoroughly occupied, and feeling herself, at last, after so many
unprosperous years, really making some forward progress, daily recovered
heart and spirit, and her constant supervision kept every thing alive
and moving in the house. Here Cosmo filled the place of natural
privilege accorded to him alike as the youngest child and the
scholar-son. Though the Mistress’s heart yearned over the boys who were
away, she expected to be most tenderly proud of Cosmo, whose kirk and
manse she could already see in prospect.

It is not a very great thing to be a minister of the Church of Scotland,
but, in former days, at least, when the Church was less divided than it
is now, the people of Scotland regarded with a particular tenderness of
imagination the parish pastor. He was less elevated above his flock than
the English rector, and sprang very seldom from the higher classes; but
even among wealthy yeomen families in the country, the manse was still a
kind of _beau ideal_ of modest dignity and comfort, the pride and
favorite fancy of the people. It was essentially so to the Mistress,
whose very highest desire it had been to move her boy in this direction,
and whose project of romance now, in which her imagination amused
itself, was, above all other things, the future home and establishment
of Cosmo. She had no idea to what extent her favorite idea was
threatened in secret.

For the moment, however, Melmar and their connection with that house
seemed to have died out of everybody’s mind save Cosmo’s. It never could
quite pass from his so long as he took his place at sunset in that
vacant window of the old castle, where the ivy tendrils waved about him,
and where the romance of Norlaw’s life seemed to have taken up its
dwelling. The boy could not help wandering over the new ground which
Joanna had opened to him--could not help associating that Mary of
Melmar, long lost in some unknown country, with Oswald Huntley, a
stranger from home for years; and the boy started with a jealous pang of
pain to think how likely it was that these two might meet, and that
another than his father’s son should restore the inheritance to its true
heir. This idea was galling in the extreme to Cosmo. He had never
sympathized much in the thought that Melmar was Huntley’s, nor been
interested in any proceedings by which his brother’s rights were to be
established; but he had always reserved for himself or for Huntley the
prerogative of finding and reinstating the true lady of the land, and
Cosmo was human enough to regard “the present Melmar” with any thing but
amiable feelings. He could not bear the idea of being left out entirely
in the management of the concern, or of one of the Huntleys exercising
this champion’s office, and covering the old usurpation with a vail of
new generosity. It was a most uncomfortable view of the subject to
Cosmo, and when his cogitations came to that point, the lad generally
swung himself down from his window-seat and went off somewhere in high
excitement, scarcely able to repress the instant impulse to sling a
bundle over his shoulder and set off upon his journey. But he never
could rouse his courage to the point of reopening this subject with his
mother, little witting, foolish boy, that this admirable idea of his
about Oswald Huntley was the very inducement necessary to make the
Mistress as anxious about the recovery of Mary of Melmar as he himself
was--and the only thing in the world which could have done so.

It happened on one of these summer evenings, about this time, when his
own mind was exceedingly restless and unsettled, that Cosmo, passing
through Kirkbride as the evening fell, encountered bowed Jaacob just out
of the village, on the Melrose road. The village street was full of
little groups in earnest and eager discussion. It was still daylight,
but the sun was down, and lights began to sparkle in some of the
projecting gable windows of the Norlaw Arms, beneath which, in the
corner where the glow of the smithy generally warmed the air, a little
knot of men stood together, fringed round with smaller clusters of
women. A little bit of a moon, scarcely so big as the evening star which
led her, was already high in the scarcely shadowed skies. Every thing
was still--save the roll of the widow’s mangle and the restless feet of
the children, so many of them as at this hour were out of bed--and most
of the cottage doors stood open, revealing each its red gleam of fire,
and many their jugs of milk, and bowls set ready on the table for the
porridge or potatoes which made the evening meal. On the opposite brae
of Tyne was visible the minister, walking home with an indescribable
consciousness and disapproval, not in his face, for it was impossible to
see that in the darkness, but in his figure and bearing, as he turned
his back upon his excited parishioners, which was irresistibly ludicrous
when one knew what it meant. Beyond the village, at the opposite
extremity, was Jaacob, in his evening trim, with a black coat and hat,
which considerably changed the little dwarf’s appearance, without
greatly improving it. He had his face to the south, and was pushing on
steadily, clenching and opening, as he walked, the great brown fist
which came so oddly out of the narrow cuff of his black coat. Cosmo, who
was quite ready to give up his own vague fancies for the general
excitement, came up to Jaacob quite eagerly, and fell into his pace
without being aware of it.

“Are you going to Melrose for news? I’ll go with you,” said Cosmo.

The road was by no means lonely; there were already both men and boys
before them on the way.

“We should hear to-night, as you ken without me telling you,” said
Jaacob. “I’m gaun to meet the coach; you may come if you like--but what
matter is’t to the like o’ you?”

“To me! as much as to any man in Scotland,” cried Cosmo, growing red; he
thought the dignity of his years was impugned.

“Pish! you’re a blackcoat, going to be,” said Jaacob; “there’s your
friend the minister there, gaun up the brae. I sent _him_ hame wi’ a
flea in his lug. What the deevil business has the like of him to meddle
in our concerns? The country’s coming to ruin, forsooth! because the
franchise is coming to a man like me! Get away with you, callant! as
soon as you come to man’s estate you’ll be like a’ the rest! But ye may
just as weel take an honest man’s, advice, Cosmo. If we dinna get it
we’ll tak it, and that’ll be seen before the world afore mony days are
past.”

“What do you think the news will be?” asked Cosmo.

“Think! I’m past thinking,” cried Jaacob, thrusting some imaginary
person away; “haud your tongue--can a man think when he’s wound up the
length of taking swurd in hand, if need should be? If we dinna get it,
we’ll tak it--do ye hear?--that’s a’ I’m thinking in these days.”

And Jaacob swung along the road, working his long arms rather more than
he did his feet, so that their action seemed part of his locomotive
power. It was astonishing, too, to see how swiftly, how steadily, and
with what a “way” upon him, the little giant strode onward, swinging the
immense brown hands, knotted and sinewy, which it was hard to suppose
could ever have been thrust through the narrow cuffs of his coat, like
balancing weights on either side of him. Before them was the long line
of dusty summer road disappearing down a <DW72>, and cut off, not by the
sky, but by the Eildons, which began to blacken in the fading
light--behind them the lights of the village--above, in a pale, warm
sky, the one big dilating star and the morsel of moon; but the thoughts
of Jaacob, and even of Cosmo, were on a lesser luminary--the red lantern
of the coach, which was not yet to be seen by the keenest eyes advancing
through the summer dimness from the south.

“Hang the lairds and the ministers!” cried Jaacob, after a pause, “it’s
easy to see what a puir grip they have, and how well they ken it. Free
institutions dinna agree with the like of primogeniture and thae
inventions of the deevil. Let’s but hae a reformed Parliament, and we’ll
learn them better manners. There’s your grand Me’mar setting up for a
leader amang the crew, presenting an address, confound his impudence! as
if he wasna next hand to a swindler himself.”

“Jacob, do you know any thing about his son?” asked Cosmo, eagerly.

“He’s a virtuoso--he’s a dilettawnti; I ken nae ill of him,” said
Jaacob, who pronounced these titles with a little contempt, yet secretly
had a respect for them; “he hasna been seen in this country, so far as
I’ve heard tell of, for mony a day. A lad’s no aye to blame for his
father and his mother; it’s a thing folk in general have nae choice
in--but he’s useless to his ain race, either as friend or foe.”

“Is he a good fellow, then? or is he like Me’mar?” cried Cosmo.

“Tush! dinna afflict me about thae creatures in bad health,” said
Jaacob; “what’s the use o’ them, lads or lasses, is mair than I can
tell--can they no’ dee and be done wi’t? I tell you, a docken on the
roadside is mair guid to a country than the like of Me’mar’s son!”

“Is he in bad health?” asked the persistent Cosmo.

“They’re a’ in bad health,” said Jaacob, contemptuously, “as any auld
wife could tell you; a’ but that red-haired lassie, that Joan. Speak o’
your changelings! how do ye account to me, you that’s a philosopher, for
the like of an honest spirit such as that, cast into the form of a
lassie, and the midst of a hatching o’ sparrows like Me’mar? If she had
but been a lad, she would have turned them a’ out like a cuckoo in the
nest.”

“And Oswald Huntley is ill--an invalid?” said Cosmo, softly returning to
the thread of his own thoughts.

Jaacob once more thrust with contempt some imaginary opponent out of the
way.

“Get away with you down Tyne or into the woods wi’ your Oswald
Huntleys!” cried Jaacob, indignantly--“do you think I’m heeding about
ane of the name? Whisht! what’s that? Did you hear onything?--haud your
tongue for your life!”

Cosmo grew almost as excited as Jaacob--he seized upon the lowest bough
of a big ash tree, and swung himself up, with the facility of a country
boy, among the fragrant dark foliage which rustled about him as he stood
high among the branches as on a tower.

“D’ye see onything?” cried Jaacob, who could have cuffed the boy for the
noise he made, even while he pushed him up from beneath.

“Hurra! here she comes--I can see the light!” shouted Cosmo.

The lad stood breathless among the rustling leaves, which hummed about
him like a tremulous chorus. Far down at the foot of the <DW72>, nothing
else perceptible to mask its progress, came rushing on the fiery eye of
light, red, fierce, and silent, like some mysterious giant of the night.
It was impossible to hear either hoofs or wheels in the distance, still
more to see the vehicle itself, for the evening by this time was
considerably advanced, and the shadow of the three mystic hills lay
heavy upon the road.

“She’s late,” said Jaacob, between his set teeth. The little Cyclops
held tight by the great waving bough of the ash, and set his foot in a
hollow of its trunk, crushing beneath him the crackling underwood. Here
the boy and he kept together breathless, Cosmo standing high above, and
his companion thrusting his weird, unshaven face over the great branch
on which he leaned. “She’s up to Plover ha’--she’s at the toll--she’s
stopped. What’s that! listen!” cried Cosmo, as some faint, far-off
sound, which might have been the cry of a child, came on the soft
evening air towards them.

Jaacob made an imperative gesture of silence with one hand, and grasped
at the branch with the other till it shook under the pressure.

“She’s coming on again--she’s up to the Black ford--she’s over the
bridge--another halt--hark again!--that’s not for passengers--they’re
hurraing--hark, Jaacob! hurra! she’s coming--they’ve won the day!”

Jaacob, with the great branch swinging under his hands like a willow
bough, bade the boy hold his peace, with a muttered oath through his set
teeth. Now sounds became audible, the rattle of the hoofs upon the road,
the ring of the wheels, the hum of exclamations and excited voices,
under the influence of which the horses “took the brae” gallantly, with
a half-human intoxication. As they drew gradually nearer, and the noise
increased, and the faint moonlight fell upon the flags and ribbons and
dusty branches, with which the coach was ornamented, Cosmo, unable to
contain himself, came rolling down on his hands and feet over the top of
Jaacob, and descended with a bold leap in the middle of the road.
Jaacob, muttering fiercely, stumbled after him, just in time to drag the
excited boy out of the way of the coach, which was making up for lost
time by furious speed, and on which coachman, guard, and outside
passengers, too much excited to be perfectly sober, kept up their
unanimous murmurs of jubilee, with only a very secondary regard to the
road or any obstructions which might be upon it.

“Wha’s there? get out o’ my road, every soul o’ ye! I’ll drive the gait
blindfold, night or day, but I’ll no’ undertake the consequence if ye
rin among my wheels,” cried the driver.

“Hurra! lads! the Bill’s passed--we’ve won! Hurra!” shouted another
voice from the roof of the vehicle, accompanying the shout with a
slightly unsteady wave of a flag, while, with a little swell of
sympathetic cheers, and a triumphant flourish of trumpet from the guard,
the jubilant vehicle dashed on, rejoicing as never mail-coach rejoiced
before.

Jaacob took off his hat, tossed it into the air, crushed it between his
hands as it came down, and broke into an extraordinary shout, bellow, or
groan, which it was impossible to interpret; then, turning sharp round,
pursued the coach with a fierce speed, like the run of a little tiger,
setting all his energies to it, swinging his long arms on either side of
him, and raising about as much dust as the mail which he followed.
Cosmo, left behind, followed more gently, laughing in spite of himself,
and in spite of the heroics of the day, which included every national
benefit and necessity within the compass of “the Bill,” at the grotesque
little figure disappearing before him, twisting its great feet, and
swinging its arms in that extraordinary race. When the boy reached
Kirkbride, the coach was just leaving the village amid a chorus of
cheers and shouts of triumph. No one could think of any thing else, or
speak of any thing else; everybody was shaking hands with everybody, and
in the hum of amateur speechifying, half a dozen together, Cosmo had
hard work to recall even that sober personage, the postmaster, who felt
himself to some extent a representative of government and natural
moderator of the general excitement, to some sense of his duties.
Cosmo’s exertions, however, were rewarded by the sight of three letters,
with which he hastened home.




CHAPTER XXXV.


“The Reform Bill’s passed, mother! we’ve won the day!” cried Cosmo,
rushing into the Norlaw dining-parlor with an additional hurra! of
exultation. After all the din and excitement out of doors, the summer
twilight of the room, with one candle lighted and one unlit upon the
table, and the widow seated by herself at work, the only one living
object in the apartment, looked somewhat dreary--but she looked up with
a brightening face, and lighted the second candle immediately on her
son’s return.

“Eh, laddie, that’s news!” cried the Mistress; “are you sure it’s true?
I didna think, for my part, the Lords had as much sense. Passed! come to
be law!--eh, my Huntley! to think he’s at the other end of the world and
canna hear.”

“He’ll hear in time,” said Cosmo, with a little agitation, producing his
budget of letters. “Mother, I’ve more news than about the Bill. I’ve a
letter here.”

His mother rose and advanced upon him with characteristic vehemence:--

“Do you dare to play with your mother, you silly bairn? Give it to me,”
said the Mistress, whom Cosmo’s hurried, breathless, joyful face had
already enlightened; “do you think I canna bear gladness, me that never
fainted with sorrow? Eh Huntley, my bairn!”

And in spite of her indignation, Huntley’s mother sank into the nearest
chair, and let her tears fall on his letter as she opened it. It did
not, however, prove to be the intimation of his arrival, which they
hoped for. It was written at sea, three months after his departure, when
he was still not above half way on his journey; for it was a more
serious business getting to Australia in those days than it is now.
Huntley wrote out of his little berth in the middle of the big ocean,
with all the strange creaks of the ship and voices of his
fellow-passengers to bear him company, with a heart which was still at
Norlaw. The Mistress tried very hard to read his letter aloud; she drew
first one and then the other candle close to her, exclaiming against the
dimness of the light; she stopped in the middle of a sentence, with
something very like a sob, to bid Cosmo sharply be quiet and no’
interrupt her, like a restless bairn, while she read his brother’s
letter; but at last the Mistress broke down and tried no further. It was
about ten months since she bade him farewell, and this was the first
token of Huntley’s real person and existence which for all that
lingering and weary time had come to his mother, who had never missed
him out of her sight for a week at a time, all his life before.

There was not a very great deal in it even now, for letter-writing had
been a science little practiced at Norlaw, and Huntley had still nothing
to tell but the spare details of a long sea voyage; there was, however,
in it, what there is not in all letters, nor in many--even much more
affectionate and effusive epistles than this--Huntley himself. When the
Mistress had come to the end, which was but slowly, in consideration of
the dimness of the candles or her eyes, she gave it to Cosmo, and waited
rather impatiently for his perusal of the precious letter. Then she went
over it again, making hasty excuse, as she did so; for “one part I didna
make out,” and finally, unable to refrain, got up and went to the
kitchen, where Marget was still busy, to communicate the good news.

The kitchen door was open; there was neither blind nor shutter upon the
kitchen-window, and the soft summer stars, now peeping out in half
visible hosts like cherubs, might look in upon Marget, passing back and
forward through the fire light, as much and as often as they pleased.
From the open door a soft evening breath of wind, with the fragrance of
new growth and vegetation upon it, which is almost as sweet as positive
odors, came pleasantly into the ruddy apartment, where the light found a
hundred bright points to sparkle in, from the “brass pan” and copper
kettle on the shelf to the thick yolks of glass in one or two of the
window-panes. It was not quite easy to tell what Marget was doing; she
was generally busy, moving about with a little hum of song, setting
every thing in order for the night.

“Marget, my woman, you’ll be pleased to hear--I’ve heard from my son,”
said the Mistress, with unusual graciousness. She came and stood in
front of the fire, waiting to be questioned, and the fire light still
shone with a very prismatic radiance through the Mistress’s eyelashes,
careful though she had been, before she entered, to remove the dew from
her eyes.

“You’re no’ meaning Mr. Huntley? Eh! bless him! has he won there?” cried
Marget, letting down her kilted gown, and hastening forward.

And then the Mistress was tempted to draw forth her letter, and read “a
bit here and a bit there,” which the faithful servant received with sobs
and exclamations.

“Bless the laddie, he minds every single thing at Norlaw--even the like
of me!” cried Marget; upon which the Mistress rose again from the seat
she had taken, with a little start of impatience:--

“Wherefore should he no’ mind you?--you’ve been about the house a’ his
life; and I hope I’ll never live to see the day when a bairn of mine
forgets his hame and auld friends! It’s time to bar the door, and put up
the shutter. You should have had a’ done, and your fire gathered by this
time; but it’s a bonnie night!”

“’Deed, ay!” said Marget to herself, when Huntley’s mother had once more
joined Cosmo in the dining-room; “the bonniest night that’s been to her
this mony a month, though she’ll no’ let on--as if I didna ken how her
heart yearns to that laddie on the sea, blessings on him! Eh, sirs! to
think o’ thae very stars shining on the auld castle and the young laird,
though the world itsel’s between the twa--and the guid hand of
Providence ower a’--God be thanked!--to bring the bairn hame!”

When the Mistress returned to the dining-parlor, she found Cosmo quite
absorbed with another letter. The lad’s face was flushed with
half-abashed pleasure, and a smile, shy, but triumphant, was on his lip.
It was not Patie’s periodical letter, which still lay unopened before
her own chair, where it had been left in the overpowering interest of
Huntley’s. The Mistress was not perfectly pleased. To care for what
anybody else might write--“one of his student lads, nae doubt, or some
other fremd person,” in presence of the first letter from Huntley, was
almost a slight to her first-born.

“You’re strange creatures, you laddies,” said the Mistress. “I dinna
understand you, for my part. There are you, Cosmo Livingstone, as
pleased about your nonsense letter, whatever it may be, as if there was
no such person as my Huntley in the world--him that aye made such a wark
about you!”

“This is not a nonsense letter--will you read it, mother?” said Cosmo.

“Me!--I havena lookit at Patie’s letter yet!” cried the Mistress,
indignantly. “Do you think I’m a person to be diverted with what one
callant writes to another? Hold your peace, bairn, and let me see what
my son says.”

The Mistress accordingly betook herself to Patrick’s letter with great
seriousness and diligence, keeping her eyes steadily upon it, and away
from Cosmo, whom, nevertheless, she could still perceive holding _his_
letter, his own especial correspondence, with the same look of shy
pleasure, in his hand. Patie’s epistle had nothing of remarkable
interest in it, as it happened, and the Mistress could not quite resist
a momentary and troubled speculation, Who was Cosmo’s correspondent, who
pleased him so much, yet made him blush? Could it be a woman? The idea
made her quite angry in spite of herself--at his age!

“Now, mother, read this,” said Cosmo, with the same smile.

“If it’s any kind of bairn’s nonsense, dinna offer it to me,” said the
Mistress, impatiently. “Am I prying into wha writes you letters? I tell
you I’ve had letters enough for ae night. Peter Todhunter!--wha in the
world is he?”

“Read it, mother,” repeated Cosmo.

The Mistress read in much amazement; and the epistle was as follows:

“NORTH BRITISH COURANT OFFICE,
“EDINBURGH.

“DEAR SIR,

     “Hearing that you are the C. L. N. who have favored the _North
     British Courant_ from time to time with poetical effusions which
     seem to show a good deal of talent, I write to ask whether you have
     ever done any thing in the way of prose romance, or essays of a
     humorous character in the style of Sterne, or narrative poetry. I
     am just about to start (with a good staff of well-known
     contributors) a new monthly, to be called the _Auld Reekie
     Magazine_, a miscellany of general literature; and should be glad
     to receive and give my best consideration to any articles from your
     pen. The rates of remuneration I can scarcely speak decisively
     about until the success of this new undertaking is in some degree
     established; but this I may say--that they shall be _liberal_ and
     _satisfactory_, and I trust may be the means of inaugurating a new
     and better system of mutual support between publishers and
     authors--the accomplishment of which has long been a great object
     of my life.

“Your obedient servant,
“PETER TODHUNTER.”




“The _North British Courant!_ poetry! writing for a magazine!--what does
it a’ mean?” cried the Mistress. “Do you mean to tell me you’re an
author, Cosmo Livingstone?--and me never kent--a bairn like you!”

“Nothing but some--verses, mother,” said the boy, with a blush and a
laugh, though he was not insensible to the importance of Mr. Todhunter’s
communication. Cosmo’s vanity was not sufficiently rampant to say poems.
“I did not send them with my name. I wanted to do something better
before I showed them to you.”

“And here they’re wanting the callant for a magazine!” cried the
Mistress. “Naething but a bairn--the youngest! a laddie that was never
out of Norlaw till within six months time! And I warrant they ken what’s
for their ain profit, and what kind of a lad they’re seeking after--and
me this very night thinking him nae better than a bairn!”

And the Mistress laughed in the mood of exquisite pride at its highest
point of gratification, and followed up her laugh by tears of the same.
The boy was pleased, but his mother was intoxicated. The _North British
Courant_ and the _Auld Reekie Magazine_ were glorious in her eyes as
celestial messengers of fame, and she could not but follow the movements
of her boy with the amazed observation of a sudden discovery. He who was
“naething but a bairn” had already proved himself a genius, and
Literature urgent called him to her aid. He might be a Scott--he might
turn out a Shakespeare. The Mistress looked at him with no limit to her
wonder, and for the moment none in her faith.

“And just as good a laddie as he aye was,” she murmured to herself,
stroking his hair fondly--“though mony a ane’s head would have been
clean turned to see themsels in a printed paper--no’ to say in a book.
Eh, bairn! and to think how little I kent, that am your mother, what God
had put among my very bairns!”

“Mother, it may turn out poor enough, after all,” cried Cosmo, half
ashamed--“I don’t know yet myself what I can do.”

“I daresay no’,” said the Mistress, proudly, “but you may take my word
this decent man does, Cosmo, seeing his ain interest is concerned. Na,
laddie, _I_ ken, if you dinna, the ways of this world, and I wouldna say
but they think they’ve got just a prize in my bairn. Eh! if the laddies
were but here and kent!--and oh, Cosmo! what _he_ would have thought of
it that’s gone!”

When the Mistress had dried her eyes, she managed to draw from the boy a
gradual confession that the _North British Courant_, sundry numbers of
it, were snugly hid in his own trunk up stairs, from which concealment
they were brought forth with much shamefacedness by Cosmo, and read with
the greatest triumph by his mother. The Mistress had no mind to go to
rest that night--she staid up looking at him--wondering over him; and
Cosmo confessed to some of his hitherto secret fancies--how he would
like to go abroad to see new countries, and to hear strange tongues, and
how he had longed to labor for himself.

“Whisht! laddie--I would have been angry but for this,” said the
Mistress. “The like of you has nae call to work; but I canna say
onything mair, Cosmo, now that Providence has taken it out of my hand.
And I dinna wonder you would like to travel--the like of you canna be
fed on common bread like common folk--and you’ll hae to see every thing
if you’re to be an author. Na, laddie, no’ for the comfort of seeing you
and hearing you would I put bars on your road. I aye thought I would
live to be proud of my sons, but I didna ken I was to be overwhelmed in
a moment, and you naething but a bairn!”




CHAPTER XXXVI.


The result of this conversation was that Cosmo made a little private
visit to Edinburgh to determine his own entrance into the republic of
letters, and to see the enterprising projector of the _Auld Reekie
Magazine_ through whom this was to take place. The boy went modestly,
half abashed by his good fortune and dawning dream of fame, yet full of
a flush of youthful hope, sadly out of proportion to any possible
pretensions of the new periodical. He saw it advertised in the newspaper
which one of his fellow-passengers on the coach read on the way. He saw
a little printed hand-bill with its illustrious name in the window of
the first bookseller’s shop he looked into on his arrival in Edinburgh,
and Cosmo marched over the North Bridge with his carpet-bag in his hand,
with a swell of visionary glory. He could not help half wondering what
the indifferent people round him would think, if they knew--and then
could not but blush at himself for the fancy. Altogether the lad was in
a tumult of delightful excitement, hope, and pleasure, such as perhaps
only falls to the lot of boys who hope themselves poets, and think at
eighteen that they are already appreciated and on the highway to fame.

As he ascended the stairs to Mrs. Purdie’s, he met Cameron coming down.
There was a very warm greeting between them--a greeting which surprise
startled into unusual affectionateness on the part of the Highlander.
Cameron forgot his own business altogether to return with Cosmo, and
needed very little persuasion to enter the little parlor, which no other
lodger had turned up to occupy, and share the refreshment which the
overjoyed landlady made haste to prepare for her young guest. This was
so very unusual a yielding on Cameron’s part, that Cosmo almost forgot
his own preoccupation in observing his friend, who altogether looked
brightened and smoothed out, and younger than when they parted. The
elder and soberer man, who knew a little more of life and the world than
Cosmo, though very little more of literature, could not help a
half-perceptible smile at the exuberance of Cosmo’s hopes. Not that
Cameron despised the _Auld Reekie Magazine_; far from that, the
Divinity student had all the reverence for literature common to those
who know little about it, which reverence, alas! grows smaller and
smaller in this too-knowing age. But at thirty years old people know
better than at eighteen how the sublimest undertakings break down, and
how sometimes even “the highest talent” can not float its venture. So
the man found it hard not to smile at the boy’s shy triumph and
undoubting hope, yet could not help but be proud, notwithstanding, with
a tenderness almost feminine, of the unknown gifts of the lad, whose
youth, he could not quite tell how, had found out the womanish corner of
his own reserved heart, in which, as he said himself, only two or three
could find room at any time.

“But you never told me of these poetical effusions, Cosmo,” said his
friend, as he put up the bookseller’s note.

“Don’t laugh at Mr. Todhunter. _I_ only call them verses,” said Cosmo,
with that indescribable blending of vanity and humility which belongs to
his age; “and I knew you would not care for them; they were not worth
showing to you.”

“I’m not a poetical man,” said Cameron, “but I might care for _your_
verses in spite of that; and now Cosmo, laddie, while you have been
thinking of fame, what novel visitor should you suppose had come to me?”

“Who?--what?” cried Cosmo, with eager interest.

“What?” echoed Cameron, “either temptation or good fortune--it’s hard to
say which--only I incline to the first. Satan’s an active chield, and
thinks little of trouble; but I doubt if the other one would have taken
the pains to climb my stair. I’ve had an offer of a tutorship, Cosmo--to
go abroad for six months or so with a callant like yourself.”

“To go abroad!” Cosmo’s eyes lighted up with instant excitement, and he
stretched his hand across the table to his friend, with a vehemence
which Cameron did not understand, though he returned the grasp.

“An odd enough thing for me,” said the Highlandman, “but the man’s an
eccentric man, and something has possessed him that his son would be in
safe hands; as in safe hands he might be,” added the student in an
undertone, “seeing I would be sorry to lead any lad into evil--but as
for _fit_ hands, that’s to be seen, and I’m far from confident it would
be right for me.”

“Go, and I’ll go with you,” said Cosmo, eagerly. “I’ve set my heart upon
it for years.”

“More temptation!” said the Highlandman. “Carnal inclinations and
pleasures of this world--and I’ve little time to lose. I can not afford
a session--whisht! Comfort and ease to the flesh, and pleasure to the
mind, are hard enough to fight with by themselves without help from
you.”

It was almost the first time he had made the slightest allusion to his
own hard life and prolonged struggle, and Cosmo was silent out of
respect and partially in the belief that if Cameron’s mind had not been
very near made up in favor of this new proposal, he would not have
suffered himself to refer to it. The two friends sat up late together
that night. Cosmo pouring out all his maze of half-formed plans and
indistinct intentions into Cameron’s ears--his projects of authorship,
his plan for a tragedy of which Wallace wight should be the hero; of a
pastoral poem and narrative, something between Colin Clout and the
Gentle Shepherd--and of essays and philosophies without end; while
Cameron on his part smiled, as he could not but smile by right of his
thirty years, yet somehow began to believe, like the Mistress, in the
enthusiastic boy, with all that youthful flush and fervor in the face
which his triumph and inspiration of hope made beautiful. The elder man
could not give his own confidence so freely as Cosmo did, but he opened
himself as far as it was his nature to do, in droppings of shy
frankness--a little now and a little then--which were in reality the
very highest compliment which such a man could pay to his companion.
When they separated, Cameron, it is true, knew all about Cosmo, while
Cosmo did not know all about Cameron; but the difference was not even so
much a matter of temperament as of years, and the lad, without hearing
many particulars, or having a great deal of actual confidence given to
him, knew the man better at the end of this long evening than ever he
had done before.

In the morning Cosmo got up full of pleasurable excitement, and set out
early to call on Mr. Todhunter. The _North British Courant_ office was
in one of the short streets which run between Princes Street and George
Street, and in the back premises, a long way back, through a succession
of rooms, Cosmo was ushered into the especial little den of the
publisher. Mr. Todhunter was of a yellow complexion, with loose, thick
lips, and wiry black hair. The lips were the most noticeable feature in
his face, from the circumstance that when he spoke his mouth seemed
uncomfortably full of moisture, which gave also a peculiar character to
his voice. He was surrounded by a mass of papers, and had paste and
scissors--those palladiums of the weekly press--by his side. If there
was one thing more than another on which the _North British Courant_
prided itself, it was on the admirable collection of other people’s
opinions which everybody might find in its columns. Mr. Todhunter made
no very great stand upon politics. What he prized was a reputation which
he thought “literary,” and a skill almost amounting to genius for making
what he called “excerpts.”

“Very glad to make your personal acquaintance, Mr. Livingstone,” said
the projector of the _Auld Reekie Magazine_, “and still more to receive
your assurances of support. I’ve set my heart on making this a real,
impartial, literary enterprise, sir--no’ one of your close boroughs, as
they say now-a-days, for a dozen or a score of favored contributors, but
open to genius, sir--genius wherever it may be--rich or poor.”

Cosmo did not know precisely what to answer, so he filled in the pause
with a little murmur of assent.

“Ye see the relations of every thing’s changing,” said Mr. Todhunter;
“old arrangements will not do--wull not answer, sir, in an advancing
age. I have always held high opinions as to the claims of literary men,
myself--it’s against my nature to treat a man of genius like a
shopkeeper; and my principle, in the _Auld Reekie Magazine_, is just
this--first-rate talent to make the thing pay, and first-rate pay to
secure the talent. That’s my rule, and I think it’s a very safe guide
for a plain man like me.”

“And it’s sure to succeed,” said Cosmo, with enthusiasm.

“I think it wull, sir--upon my conscience, if you ask me, I think it
wull,” said Mr. Todhunter; “and I have little doubt young talent will
rally round the _Auld Reekie Magazine_. I’m aware it’s an experiment,
but nothing shall ever make me give in to an ungenerous principle. Men
of genius must be protected, sir; and how are they protected in your
old-established periodicals? There’s one old fogy for this department,
and another old fogy for that department; and as for a genial
recognition of young talent, take my word for’t, there’s no such
thing.”

“I know,” said Cosmo, “it is the hardest thing in the world to get in.
Poor Chatterton, and Keats, and--”

“Just that,” said Mr. Todhunter. “It’s for the Keatses and the
Chattertons of this day, sir, that I mean to interpose; and no lad of
genius shall go to the grave with a pistol in his hand henceforward if I
can help it. I admire your effusions very much, Mr. Livingstone--there’s
real heart and talent in them, sir--in especial the one to Mary, which,
I must say, gave me the impression of an older man.”

“I am pretty old in practice--I have been writing a great many years,”
said Cosmo, with that delightful, ingenuous, single-minded, youthful
vanity, which it did one’s heart good to see. Even Mr. Todhunter, over
his paste and scissors, was somehow illumined by it, and looked up at
the lad with the ghost of a smile upon his watery lips.

“And what do you mean to provide us for the opening of the feast?” said
the bookseller, “which must be ready by the 15th, at the very latest,
and be the very cream of your inspiration. It’s no small occasion, sir.
Have you made up your mind what is to be your _deboo_?”

“It depends greatly upon what you think best,” said Cosmo, candid and
impartial; “and as you know what articles you have secured already, I
should be very glad of any hint from you.”

“A very sensible remark,” said Mr. Todhunter. “Well, I would say, a good
narrative now, in fine, stirring, ballad verse--a narrative always
pleases the public fancy--or a spirited dramatic sketch, or a historical
tale, to be completed, say, in the next number. I should say, sir, any
one of these would answer the _Auld Reekie_;--only be on your mettle. I
consider there’s good stuff in you--real good stuff--but, at the same
time, many prudent persons would tell me I was putting too much reliance
on so young a man.”

“I will not disappoint you,” said Cosmo, with a little pride; “but,
supposing this first beginning over, could it do any good to the
magazine, do you think, to have a contributor--letters from abroad--I
had some thoughts--I--I wished very much to know--”

“Were you thinking of going abroad?” said the bookseller, benignantly.

“I can scarcely say _think_--but, there was an opportunity,” said
Cosmo, with a blush; “that is, if it did not stand in the way of--”

“_Auld Reekie?_ Certainly not--on the contrary, I know nothing I would
like better,” said Mr. Todhunter. “Some fine Italian legends, now, or a
few stories from the Rhine, with a pleasant introduction, and a little
romantic incident, to show how you heard them--capital! but I must see
you at my house before you go. And as for the remuneration, we can
scarcely fix on that, perhaps, till the periodical’s launched--but ye
know my principle, and I may say, sir, with confidence, no man was left
in the lurch that put reliance upon me. I’m a plain man, as you see me,
but I appreciate the claims of genius, and young talent shall not want
its platform in this city of Edinburgh; or, if it does, it shall be no
fault of mine.”

With a murmured applause of this sentiment, and in a renewed tumult of
pleasure, Cosmo left his new friend, and went home lingering over the
delightful thought of Italian legends and stories of the Rhine, told in
the very scenes of the same. The idea intoxicated him almost out of
remembrance of Mary of Melmar, and if the boy’s head was not turned, it
seemed in a very fair way of being so, for the sentiments of Mr.
Todhunter--a publisher!--a practical man!--one who knew the real value
of authorship! filled the lad with a vague glory in his new craft. A
London newspaper proprietor, who spoke like the possessor of the _North
British Courant_, would have been, the chances are, a conscious humbug,
and perhaps so might an Edinburgh bookseller of the present time, who
expressed the same sentiments. Mr. Todhunter, however, was not a humbug.
He was like one of those dabblers in science who come at some simple
mechanical principle by chance, and in all the flush of their discovery,
claim as original and their own what was well known a hundred years
since. He was perfectly honest in the rude yet simple vanity with which
he patronized “young talent,” and in his vulgar, homely fashion, felt
that he had quite seized upon a new idea in his _Auld Reekie
Magazine_--an idea too original and notable to yield precedence even to
the _Edinburgh Review_.




CHAPTER XXXVII.


The pace of events began to quicken with Cosmo. When he encountered his
fellow-lodger in the evening, he found that Cameron had been permitting
his temptation to gain more and more ground upon him. The Highlander,
humbly born and cottage bred as he was, and till very recently bounded
by the straitest prospects as to the future, had still a deep reserve of
imaginative feeling, far away down where no one could get at it--under
the deposit left by the slow toil and vulgar privations of many years.
Unconsciously to himself, the presence and society of Cosmo Livingstone
had recalled his own boyhood to the laboring man, in the midst of that
sweat of his brow in which he ate his scanty bread in the Edinburgh
garret. Where was there ever boyhood which had not visions of adventure
and dreams of strange countries? All that last winter, through which his
boy companion stole into his heart, recollections used to come suddenly
upon the uncommunicating Highlander of hours and fancies in his own
life, which he supposed he had long ago forgotten--hours among his own
hills, herding sheep, when he lay looking up at the skies, and entranced
by the heroic lore with which he was most familiar, thinking of David’s
well at Bethlehem, and the wine-press where Gideon thrashed his wheat,
and the desert waters where Moses led his people, and of all the
glorious unknown world beside, through which his path must lie to the
Holy Land. Want, and labor, and the steady, desperate aim, with which he
pushed through every obstacle towards the one goal of his ambition, had
obscured these visions in his mind, but Cosmo’s fresh boyhood woke them
by degrees, and the unusual and unexpected proposal lately made to him,
had thrilled the cooled blood in Cameron’s veins as he did not suppose
it could be thrilled. Ease, luxury (to him), and gratification in the
meantime, with a reserve fund great enough to carry him through a
session without any extra labor. Why did he hesitate? He hesitated
simply because it might put off for six months--possibly for a year--the
accomplishment of his own studies and the gaining of that end, which was
not a certain living, however humble, but merely a license to preach,
and his chance with a hundred others of a presentation to some poor
rural parish, or a call from some chapel of ease. But he did hesitate
long and painfully. He feared, in his austere self-judgment, to prefer
his own pleasure to the work of God, and it was only when his
boy-favorite came back again and threw all his fervid youthful influence
into the scale, that Nature triumphed with Cameron, and that he began to
permit himself to remember that, toilworn as he was, he was still young,
and that the six months’ holiday might, after all, be well expended. The
very morning after Cosmo’s arrival, after lying awake thinking of it
half the night, he had gone to the father of his would-be-pupil to
explain the condition on which he would accept the charge, which was,
that Cosmo might be permitted to join the little party. Cameron’s patron
was a Highlander, like himself--obstinate, one-sided, and imperious. He
did not refuse the application. He only issued instant orders that Cosmo
should be presented to him without delay, that he might judge of his
fitness as a traveling companion--and Cameron left him, pledged, if his
decision should be favorable, to accept the office.

The next day was a great day in Edinburgh--an almost universal holiday,
full of flags, processions, and all manner of political rejoicings--the
Reform Jubilee. Cosmo plunged into the midst of it with all the zeal of
a young politician and all the zest of a school-boy, and was whirled
about by the crowd through all its moods and phases, through the heat,
and the dust, and the sunshine, through the shouts and groans, the
applauses and the denunciations, to his heart’s content. He came in
breathless somewhere about midday, as he supposed, though in reality it
was late in the afternoon, to snatch a hurried morsel of the dinner
which Mrs. Purdie had vainly endeavored to keep warm for him, and to
leave a message for Cameron to be ready for him in the evening, to go
out and see the illumination. When Cosmo reappeared again, flushed,
tired, excited, yet perfectly ready to begin once more, it was already
darkening towards night. Cameron was ready, and the boy was not to be
persuaded to lose the night and “the fun,” which already began to look
rather like mischief. The two companions, so unlike each other, made
haste to the Calton Hill, where a great many people had already preceded
them. Oh, dwellers on the plains! oh, cockney citizens!--spite of your
gas stars and your transparencies--your royal initials and festoons of
lamps, don’t suppose that you know any thing about an illumination; you
should have seen the lines of light stealing from <DW72> to <DW72> along
the rugged glory of that antique Edinburgh--the irregular gleams
descending into the valley, the golden threads, here and there broken,
that intersected the regular lines of the new town. Yonder tall houses,
seven stories high, where every man is a Reformer, and where the lights
come out in every window, star by star, in a flicker and glow, as if the
very weakness of those humble candles gave them the animation and
humanness of a breathing triumph--swelling higher towards the dark
Castle, over whose unlighted head the little moon looks down, a serene
spectator of all this human flutter and commotion--undulating down in
rugged breaks towards lowly Holyrood, sometimes only a thin line visible
beneath the roof--sometimes a whole house aglow. The people went and
came, in excited groups, upon the fragrant grass of the Calton Hill;
sometimes turning to the other side of the landscape, to see the more
sparely lighted streets of gentility, or the independent little sparkle
which stout little Leith in the distance threw out upon the Firth--but
always returning with unfailing fascination to this scene of magic--the
old town shining with its lamps and jewels, like a city in a dream.

But it was not destined to be a perfectly calm summer evening’s
spectacle. The hum of the full streets grew riotous even to the
spectators on the hill. Voices rose above the hum, louder than peaceful
voices ever rise. The triumph was a popular triumph, and like every
other such, had its attendant mob of mischief. Shouts of rising clamor
and a noise of rushing footsteps ran through the busy streets--then came
a sharp rattle and peal like a discharge of musketry. What was it? The
crowd on the hill poured down the descent, in fright, in excitement, in
precaution--some into the mischief, some eager to escape out of it.
“It’s the sodgers,” “it’s the police,” “it’s the Tories,” shouted the
chorus of the crowd--one suggestion after another raising the fury of
some and the terror of others; again a rattling, dropping, continued
report--one after another, with rushes of the crowd between, and
perpetual changes of locality in the sound, which at last indicated its
nature beyond mistake. It was no interference of authority--no firing
of “the sodgers.” It was a sound less tragic, yet full of mischief--the
crash of unilluminated windows, the bloodless yet violent revenge of the
excited mob.

The sound--the swell--the clamor--the tramp of feet--the shouts--the
reiterated volleys, now here, now there, in constant change and
progress, the silent flicker and glow of the now neglected lights, the
hasty new ones thrust into exposed windows, telling their story of
sudden alarm and reluctance, and above all the pale, serene sky, against
which the bold outline of Arthur’s Seat stood out as clear as in the
daylight, and the calm, unimpassioned shining of the little moon,
catching the windows of the Castle and church beneath with a glimmer of
silver, made altogether a scene of the most singular excitement and
impressiveness. But Cosmo Livingstone had forgotten that he was a
poet--he was only a boy--a desperate, red-hot Radical--a friend of the
people. Despite all Cameron’s efforts, the boy dragged him into the
crowd, and hurried him along to the scene of action. The rioters by this
time were spreading everywhere, out of the greater streets into the calm
of the highest respectability, where not one window in a dozen was
lighted, and where many had closed their shutters in defiance--far to
the west in the moonlight, where the illuminations of the old town were
invisible, and where wealth and conservatism dwelt together. Breathless,
yet dragging his grave companion after him, Cosmo rushed along one of
the dimmest and stateliest of these streets. The lad leaped back again
into the heart of a momentary fancy, which was already old and
forgotten, though it had been extremely interesting a month ago. He
cried “Desirée!” to himself, as he rushed in the wake of the rioters
through Moray Place. He did not know which was the house, yet followed
vaguely with an instinct of defense and protection. In one of the houses
some women appeared, timidly putting forward candles in the highest line
of windows; perhaps out of exasperation at this cowardice, perhaps from
mere accident, some one among the crowd discharged a volley of stones
against one of the lower range. There was a moment’s pause, and it
remained doubtful whether this lead was to be followed, when suddenly
the door of the house was thrown open, and a girl appeared upon the
threshold, distinctly visible against the strong light from the hall.
Though Cosmo sprang forward with a bound, he could not hear what she
said, but she rushed down on the broad step, and made a vehement address
to the rioters, with lively motions of her hands, and a voice that
pierced through their rough voices like a note of music. This lasted
only a moment; in another the door had closed behind her with a loud
echo, and all was dark again. Where was she? Cosmo pushed through the
crowd in violent excitement, thrusting them away on every side with
double strength. Yes, there she stood upon the step, indignant,
vehement, with her little white hands clasped together, and her eyes
flashing, from the rioters before her to the closed door behind.

“You English!--you are cowards!” cried the violent little heroine; “you
do not fight like men, with balls and swords--you throw pebbles, like
children--you wound women--and when one dares to go to speak to the
madmen, she is shut out into the crowd!”

“We’re no’ English, missie, and naebody meant to hurt you; chap at the
door for her, yin o’ you lads--and let the poor thing alone--she’s a
very good spirit of her ain. I’m saying, open the door,” cried one of
the rioters, changing his soothing tone to a loud demand, as he shook
the closed door violently. By this time Cosmo was by the little
Frenchwoman’s side.

“I know her,” cried Cosmo, “they’ll open when you’re past--pass on--it’s
a school--a housefull of women--do you mean to say you would break a
lady’s windows that has nothing to do with it?--pass on!--is that sense,
or honor, or courage? is that a credit to the Bill, or to the country?
I’ll take care of the young lady. Do you not see they think you robbers,
or worse? They’ll not open till you pass on.”

“He’s in the right of it there--what are ye a’ waiting for?” cried some
one in advance. The throng moved on, leaving a single group about the
door, but this little incident was enough to damp them. Moray Place
escaped with much less sacrifice of glass and temper than might have
been looked for--while poor little Desirée, subsiding out of her
passion, leaned against the pillar of the inhospitable door, crying
bitterly, and sobbing little exclamations of despair in her own tongue,
which sounded sweet to Cosmo’s ear, though he did not know what they
were.

“Mademoiselle Desirée, don’t be afraid,” cried the boy, blushing in the
dark. “I saw you once with Joanna Huntley--I’m a friend. Nobody will
meddle with you. When they see these fellows gone, they’ll open the
door.”

“And I despise them!” cried Desirée, suddenly suspending her crying;
“they will shut me out in the crowd for fear of themselves. I despise
them! and see here!”

A stone had struck her on the temple; it was no great wound, but Desirée
was shocked and excited, and in a heroic mood.

“And they will leave me here,” cried the little Frenchwoman,
pathetically, with renewed tears; “though it is my mother’s country, and
I meant to love it, they shut me out among strangers, and no one cares.
Ah, they would not do so in France! there they do not throw stones at
women--they kill men!”

Cosmo was horrified by the blow, and deeply impressed by the heroics.
The boy blushed with the utmost shame for his townsmen and
co-politicians. He thought the girl a little Joan of Arc affronted by a
mob.

“But it was accident; and every man would be overpowered with shame,”
cried Cosmo, while meanwhile Cameron, who had followed him, knocked
soberly and without speaking, at the door.

After a little interval, the door was opened by the mistress of the
school, a lady of grave age and still graver looks; a couple of
women-servants in the hall were defending themselves eagerly.

“I was up stairs, and never heard a word of it, mum,” said one. “Eh, it
wasna me!” cried another; “the French Miss flew out upon the steps, and
the door just clashed behind her; it was naebody’s blame but her ain.”

In the midst of these self-exculpatory addresses, the mistress of the
house held the door open.

“Come in, Mademoiselle Desirée,” she said gravely.

The excited little Frenchwoman was not disposed to yield so quietly.

“Madame, I have been wounded, I have been shut out, I have been left
alone in the crowd!” cried Desirée; “I demand of you to do me
justice--see, I bleed! One of the _vauriens_ struck me through the
window with a stone, and the door has been closed upon me. I have stood
before all the crowd alone!”

“I am sorry for it, my dear,” said the lady, coldly; “come in--you ought
never to have gone to the door, or exposed yourself; young ladies do not
do so in this country. Pray come in, Mademoiselle Desirée. I am sorry
you are hurt--and, gentlemen, we are much obliged to you--good night.”

For the girl, half-reluctantly, half-indignantly, had obeyed her
superior, and the door was calmly closed in the faces of Cosmo and
Cameron, who stood together on the steps. Cosmo was highly incensed and
wrathful. He could have had the heart to plunge into that cold, proper,
lighted hall, to snatch the little heroine forth, and carry her off like
a knight of romance.

“Do you hear how that woman speaks to her?” he cried, indignantly.

Cameron grasped his arm and drew him away.

“She’s French!” said the elder man, laconically, and without any
enthusiasm; “and not to anger you, Cosmo, the lady is perfectly right.”




CHAPTER XXXVIII.


Cosmo went home that evening much excited by his night’s adventures.
Mrs. Payne, of Moray Place, was an ogre in the boy’s eyes, the Giantess
Despair, holding bewitched princesses in vile durance and
subjection--and Desirée, with the red mark upon her pretty forehead,
with her little white hands clasped together, and her black eyes
sparkling, was nothing less than a heroine. Cosmo could not forget the
pretty attitude, the face glowing with resentment and girlish boldness;
nor the cold gravity of the voice which bade her enter, and the
unsympathetic disapproval in the lady’s face. He could not rest for
thinking of it when he got home. In his new feeling of importance and
influence as a person privileged to address the public, his first idea
was to call upon Mrs. Payne in the morning, by way of protector to
Desirée, to explain how the whole matter occurred; but on further
thoughts Cosmo resolved to write a very grave and serious letter on the
subject, vindicating the girl, and pointing out, in a benevolent way,
the danger of repressing her high spirit harshly.

As soon as he was alone, he set about carrying out this idea in an
epistle worthy the pages of the _Auld Reekie Magazine_, and written with
a solemn authority which would have become an adviser of eighty instead
of eighteen. He wrote it out in his best hand, put it up carefully, and
resolved to leave it himself in the morning, lest the post (letters were
dear in those days) might miscarry with so important a document. But
Cosmo, who was much worn out, slept late in the morning, so late that
Cameron came into his room, and saw the letter before he was up. It
excited the curiosity of the Highlander, and Cosmo, somewhat shyly,
admitted him to the privilege of reading it. It proved too much,
however, for the gravity of his friend; and, vexed and ashamed at last,
though by no means convinced the lad tore it in bits, and threw it into
the fire-place. Cameron kept him occupied all day, breaking out,
nevertheless, into secret chuckles of amusement now and then, which it
was very difficult to find a due occasion for; and Cosmo was not even
left to himself long enough to pass the door of the house in Moray
Place, or to ask after the “wound” of his little heroine. He did the
only thing which remained possible to him, he made the incident into a
copy of verses, which he sent to the _North British Courant_, and which
duly appeared in that enlightened newspaper--though whether it ever
reached the eyes of Desirée, or touched the conscience of the
schoolmistress by those allusions which, though delicately vailed, were
still, Cosmo flattered himself, perfectly unmistakable by the chief
actors in the scene, the boy could not tell.

These days of holiday flew, however, as holidays will fly. Cameron’s
Highland patron had Cosmo introduced to him, and consented that his son
should travel in the company of the son of “Mrs. Livingstone, of
Norlaw,” and the lad went home, full of plans for his journey, to which
the Mistress as yet had given only a very vague and general consent, and
of which she scarcely still understood the necessity. When Cosmo came
home, he had the mid-chamber allotted to him as a study, and went to
work with devotion. The difficulty was rather how to choose between the
narrative in ballad verse, the spirited dramatic sketch, and the
historical tale, than how to execute them, for Cosmo had that facility
of language, and even of idea, which many very youthful people, with a
“literary turn,” (they were very much less common in those days) often
possess, to the half-amusement, half-admiration of their seniors and
their own intense confusion in maturer days. Literature was not then
what it is now, the common resource of most well-educated young men, who
do not know what else to do with themselves. It was still a rare glory
in that rural district where the mantle of Sir Walter lay only over the
great novelist’s grave, and had descended upon nobody’s shoulders; and
as Cosmo went on with his venture, the Mistress, glowing with
mother-pride and ambition, hearing the little bits of the
“sketch"--eighteen is always dramatical--which seemed, to her loving
ears, melodious, and noble, and life-like, almost above comparison,
became perfectly willing to consent to any thing which was likely to
perfect this gift of magic. “Though I canna weel see what better they
could have,” she said to herself, as she went down from Cosmo’s study,
wiping her eyes. Cosmo’s muse had sprung, fully equipped, like Minerva,
into a glorious existence--at least, so his mother, and so, too, if he
had permitted himself to know his own sentiments--perhaps also Cosmo
thought.

The arrangement was concluded, at last, on the completion of Cosmo’s
article. Cameron and his young pupil were to start in August; and the
Mistress herself went into Edinburgh to buy her boy-author the handiest
of portmanteaus, and every thing else which her limited experience
thought needful for him; the whole country-side heard of his intended
travels, and was stirred with wonder and no small amount of derision.
The farmers’ wives wondered what the world was coming to, and their
husbands shook their heads over the folly of the widow, who would ruin
her son for work all his days. The news was soon carried to Melmar,
where Mr. Huntley by no means liked to hear it, where Patricia turned up
her little nose with disgust, and where Joanna wished loudly that she
was going too, and announced her determination to intrust Cosmo with a
letter to Oswald. Even in the manse, the intelligence created a little
ferment. Dr. Logan connected it vaguely--he could not quite tell
how--with the “Bill,” which the excellent minister feared would
revolutionize every thing throughout the country, and confound all the
ranks and degrees of social life; and shook his head over the idea of
Cosmo Livingstone, who had only been one session at college, and was but
eighteen, writing in a magazine.

“Depend upon it, Katie, my dear, it’s an unnatural state of things,”
said the Doctor, whose literature was the literature of the previous
century, and who thought Cosmo’s pretensions unsafe for the stability of
the country.

And sensible Katie, though she smiled, felt still a little doubtful
herself, and, in her secret heart, thought of Huntley gone away to labor
at the other end of the world, while his boy-brother tasted the sweets
of luxury and idleness in an indulgence so unusual to his station.

“Poor Huntley!” said Katie to herself, with a gentle recollection of
that last scene in the manse parlor, when she mended her children’s
stockings and smiled at the young emigrant, as he wondered what changes
there might be there when he came back. Katie put up her hand very
softly to her eyes, and stood a long time in the garden looking down the
brae into the village--perhaps only looking at little Colin, who was
visible amid some cottage boys on the green bank of Tyne--perhaps
thinking of Cosmo, who was going “to the Continent,"--perhaps traveling
still further in her thoughts, over a big solitary sea; but Katie said
“nothing to nobody,” and was as blythe and busy in the manse parlor when
the minister rejoined her, as though she had not entered with a little
sigh.

All this time Cosmo never said a word to his mother of Mary of Melmar;
but he leaped up into the old window of the castle every evening to
dream his dream, and a hundred times, in fancy, saw a visionary figure,
pale, and lovely, and tender, coming home with him to claim her own. He,
too, looked over the woods of Melmar as his brother had done, but with
feelings very different--for no impulse of acquisition quickened in the
breast of Cosmo. He thought of them as the burden of a romance, the
chorus of a ballad--the inheritance to which the long lost Mary must
return; and while the Mistress stocked his new portmanteau, and made
ready his traveling wardrobe, the lad was hunting everywhere with
ungrateful pertinacity for scraps of information to guide him in this
search which his mother had not the most distant idea was the real
motive of his journey. If she had known it, scarcely even the discovery
of her husband’s longing after his lost love could have affected the
Mistress with more overpowering bitterness and disgust. Marget shut the
door when Cosmo came to question her on the subject, and made a vehement
address to him under her breath.

“Seek her, if you please,” said Marget, in a violent whisper; “but if
your mother ever kens this--sending out her son into the world with a’
this pride and pains for _her_ sake--I’d rather the auld castle fell on
our heads, Cosmo Livingstone, and crushed every ane of us under a
different stane!”

“Hush, Marget! my mother is not unjust,” said Cosmo, with some
displeasure.

“She’s no’ unjust; but she’ll no’ be second to a stranger woman that has
been the vexation of her life,” said Marget, “spier where you like,
laddie. Ye dinna ken, the like of you, how things sink into folks’
hearts, and bide for years. I ken naething about Mary of Melmar--neither
her married name nor naught else--spier where ye like, but dinna spier
at me.”

But it did not make very much matter where Cosmo made inquiry. Never was
disappearance more entire and complete than that of Mary of Melmar. He
gathered various vague descriptions of her, not quite so poetical in
sentiment as Jaacob’s, but quite as confusing. She was “a great toast
among a’ the lads, and the bonniest woman in the country-side"--she was
“as sweet as a May morning"--she was “neither big nor little, but just
the best woman’s size"--she was, in short, every thing that was pretty,
indefinite, and perplexing. And with no clue but this, Cosmo set out, on
a windy August morning, on his travels, to improve his mind, and write
for the _Auld Reekie Magazine_, as his mother thought--and to seek for
the lost heir of the Huntleys, as he himself and the Laird of Melmar
knew.




CHAPTER XXXIX.


“Oh, papa,” cried Joanna Huntley, bursting into Melmar’s study like a
whirlwind, “they’re ill-using Desirée! they shut her out at the door
among a crowd, and they threw stones at her, and she might have been
killed but for Cosmo Livingstone. I’ll no’ stand it! I’ll rather go and
take up a school and work for her mysel’.”

“What’s all this?” said Melmar, looking up in amazement from his
newspaper; “another freak about this Frenchwoman--what is she to you?”

“She’s my friend,” said Joanna, “I never had a friend before, and I
never want to have another. You never saw anybody like her in all your
life; Melmar’s no’ good enough for her, if she could get it for her very
own--but I think she would come here for me.”

“That would be kind,” said Mr. Huntley, taking a somewhat noisy pinch of
snuff; “but if that’s all you have to tell me, it’ll keep. Go away and
bother your mother; I’m busy to-day.”

“You know perfectly well that mamma’s no’ up,” said Joanna, “and if she
was up, what’s the use of bothering _her_? Now, papa, I’ll tell you--I
often think you’re a very, very ill man--and Patricia says you have a
secret, and I know what keeps Oswald year after year away--but I’ll
forgive you every thing if you’ll send for Desirée here.”

“You little monkey!” cried Melmar, swinging his arm through the air with
a menaced blow. It did not fall on Joanna’s cheek, however, and perhaps
was not meant to fall--which was all the better for the peace of the
household--though feelings of honor or delicacy were not so
transcendentally high in Melmar as to have made a parental chastisement
a deadly affront to the young lady, even had it been inflicted. “You
little brat!” repeated the incensed papa, growing red in the face, “how
dare you come to me with such a speech--how dare you bother me with a
couple of fools like Oswald and Patricia?--begone this moment, or
I’ll--”

“No, you will not, papa,” interrupted Joanna. “Oswald’s no’ a fool--and
I’m no’ a monkey nor a brat, nor little either--and if any thing was to
happen I would never forsake you, whatever you had done--but I like
Desirée better than ever I liked any one--and she knows every thing--and
she could teach me better than all the masters and mistresses in
Edinburgh--and if you don’t send for her here to be my governess, I may
go to school, but I’ll never learn a single thing again!”

Melmar was perfectly accustomed to be bullied by his youngest child; he
had no ideal of feminine excellence to be shocked by Joanna’s rudeness,
and in general rather enjoyed it, and took a certain pleasure in the
disrespectful straightforwardness of the girl, who in reality was the
only member of his family who had any love for him. His momentary
passion soon evaporated--he laughed and shook his closed hand at her, no
longer threateningly.

“If you like to grow up a dunce, Joan,” he said, with a chuckle, “what
the deevil matter is’t to me?”

“Oh, yes, but it is, though,” said Joanna. “I know better--you like
people to come to Melmar as well as Patricia does--and Patricia never
can be very good for any thing. She canna draw, though she pretends--and
she canna play, and she canna sing, and I could even dance better
myself. It’s aye like lessons to see her and hear her--and nobody cares
to come to see mamma--it’s no’ her fault, for she’s always in bed or on
the sofa; but if _I_ like to learn--do you hear, papa?--and I would like
if Desirée was here--_I_ know what Melmar might be!”

It was rather odd to look at Joanna, with her long, angular, girl’s
figure, her red hair, and her bearing which promised nothing so little
as the furthest off approach to elegance, and to listen to the
confidence and boldness of this self-assertion--even her father
laughed--but, perhaps because he was her father, did not fully perceive
the grotesque contrast between her appearance and her words; on the
contrary, Melmar was considerably impressed with these last, and put
faith in them, a great deal more faith than he had ever put in
Patricia’s prettiness and gentility, cultivated as these had been in the
refined atmosphere of the Clapham school.

“You are a vain little blockhead, Joan,” said Mr. Huntley, “which I
scarcely looked for--but it’s in the nature of woman. When Aunt Jean
leaves you her fortune, we’ll see what a grand figure you’ll make in the
country. A French governess, forsooth! the bairn’s crazy. I’ll get her
to teach _me_.”

“She could teach you a great many things, papa,” said Joanna, with
gravity, “so you need not laugh. I’m going to write to her this moment,
and say she’s to come here--and you’re to write to Mrs. Payne and tell
her what you’ll give, and how she’s to come, and every thing. Desirée is
not pleased with Mrs. Payne.”

“What a pity!” said Melmar, laughing; “and possibly, Joan--you ought to
consider--Desirée might not be pleased with me.”

“You are kind whiles--when you like, papa,” said Joanna, taking this
possibility into serious consideration, and fixing her sharp black eyes
upon her father, with half an entreaty, half a defiance.

Somehow this appeal, which he did not expect, was quite a stroke of
victory, and silenced Melmar. He laughed once more in his loud and not
very mirthful fashion, and the end of the odd colloquy was, that Joanna
conquered, and that, to the utter amazement of mother, sister, and Aunt
Jean, the approaching advent of a French governess for Joanna became a
recognized event in the house. Patricia spent one good long summer
afternoon crying over it.

“No one ever thought of getting a governess for me!” sobbed Patricia,
through a deluge of spiteful tears.

And Aunt Jean put up her spectacles from her eyes, and listened to the
news which Joanna shouted into her ear, and shook her head.

“If she’s a <DW7> it’s a tempting of Providence,” said Aunt Jean, “and
they’re a’ <DW7>s, if they’re no’ infidels. She may be nice enough and
bonnie enough, but I canna approve of it, Joan. I never had any broo of
foreigners a’ my days. Deseery? fhat ca’ you her name? I like names to
be Christian-like, for my part. Did ever ye hear that, or the like o’
that, in the Scriptures? Na, Joan, it’s very far from likely she should
please me.”

“Her name is _Desirée_, and it means desired; it’s like a Bible name for
that,” cried Joanna. “My name means nothing at all that ever I heard
of--it’s just a copy of a boy’s--and I would not have copied a man if
anybody had asked me.”

“What’s that the bairn says?” said Aunt Jean. “I like old-fashioned
plain names, for my part, but that’s to be looked for in an old woman;
but I can tell you, Joan, I’m never easy in my mind about French
folk--and never can tell fha they may turn out to be; and ’deed in this
house, it’s no canny; and I never have ony comfort in my mind about your
brother Oswald, kenning faur he was.”

“Why is it not canny in this house, Aunt Jean?” asked Joanna.

“Eh, fhat’s that?” said the old woman, who heard perfectly, “fhat’s no
canny? just the Pope o’ Rome, Joan, and a’ his devilries; and they’re as
fu’ o’ wiles, every ane, as if ilka bairn was bred up a priest. Oh, fie,
na! you ma ca’ her desired, if you like, but she’s no’ desired by me.”

“Desired!” cried Patricia; “a little creature of a governess, that is
sure always to be scheming and trying to be taken notice of, and making
herself as good as we are. It’s just a great shame! it’s nothing else!
no one ever _thought_ of a governess for me. But it’s strange how I
always get slighted, whatever happens. I don’t think any one in the
world cares for me!”

“Fhat’s Patricia greeting about?” said Aunt Jean, “eh, bairns! if I were
as young as you I would save up a’ my tears for real troubles. You’ve
never kent but good fortune a’ your days, but that’s no’ to say ill
fortune can never come. Whisht then, ye silly thing! I can see you,
though I canna hear you. Fhat’s she greeting for, Joan? eh! speak
louder, I canna hear.”

“Because Desirée is coming,” shouted Joan.

“Aweel, aweel, maybe I’m little better mysel’,” said the old woman. “I’m
just a prejudiced auld wife, I like my ain country best--but’s no malice
and envie with me; fhat ails Patricia at her for a stranger she doesna
ken? She’s keen enough about strangers when they come in her ain way.
You’re a wild lassie, Joan, you’re no’ just fhat I would like to see
you--but there’s nae malice in _you_, so far as I ken.”

“Oh, Auntie Jean,” cried Joanna, with enthusiasm, “wait till you see
what I shall be when Desirée comes!”




CHAPTER XL.


After a little time Desirée came to Melmar. She had been placed in
charge of Mrs. Payne by an English lady, who had brought her from her
home in France with the intention of making a nursery governess of the
little girl, but who, finding her either insufficiently trained or not
tractable enough, had transferred her, with the consent of her mother,
to the Edinburgh boarding-school as half pupil, half teacher. When
Melmar’s proposal came, Desirée, still indignant at her present ruler,
accepted it eagerly, declared herself quite competent to act
independently, and would not hear of anybody being consulted upon the
matter. She herself, the little heroine said, with some state, would
inform her mother, and she made her journey accordingly half in spite of
Mrs. Payne, who, however, was by no means ill pleased to transfer so
difficult a charge into other hands. Desirée arrived alone on an August
afternoon, by the coach, in Kirkbride. The homely little Scotch village,
so unlike any thing she had seen before, yet so pretty, dwelling on the
banks of its little brown stream, pleased the girl’s fanciful
imagination mightily. Two or three people--among them the servant from
Melmar who had come to meet her--stood indolently in the sultry sunshine
about the Norlaw Arms. In the shadow of the corner, bowed Jaacob’s weird
figure toiled in the glow of the smithy. One or two women were at the
door of the cottage which contained the widow’s mangle, and the opposite
bank lay fair beneath the light, with that white gable of the manse
beaming down among its trees like a smile. The wayward, excitable little
Frenchwoman had a tender little heart beneath all her vivacity and
caprices. Somehow her eyes sought instinctively that white house on the
brae, and instinctively the little girl thought of her mother and
sister. Ah, yes, this surely, and not Edinburgh, was her mother’s
country! She had never seen it before, yet it seemed familiar to her;
they could be at home here. And thoughts of acquiring that same white
house, and bringing her mother to it in triumph, entered the wild little
imagination. Women make fortunes in France now and then; she did not
know any better, and she was a child. She vowed to herself to buy the
white house on the brae and bring mamma there.

Melmar pleased Desirée, but not so much; she thought it a great deal too
square and like a prison; and Patricia did not please her at all, as she
was not very slow to intimate.

“Mademoiselle does not love me, Joanna,” she said to her pupil as they
wandered about the banks of Tyne together, “to see every thing,” as
Joanna said before they began their lessons; “and I never can love any
one who does not love me.”

“Patricia does not love anybody,” cried Joanna, “unless maybe herself,
and not herself either--right; but never mind, Desirée, _I_ love you,
and by-and-by so will Aunt Jean; and oh! if Oswald would only come
home!”

“I hope he will not while I am here,” said Desirée, with a little frown;
“see! how pretty the sun streams among the trees; but I do not like
Melmar so well as that white house at the village; I should like to live
there.”

“At the manse?” cried Joanna.

“What is the manse? it is not a great house; would they sell it?” said
Desirée.

“Sell it!” Joanna laughed aloud in the contempt of superior knowledge;
“but it’s only because you don’t know; they could as well sell the
church as the manse.”

“I don’t want the church, however--it’s ugly,” said Desirée; “but if I
had money I should buy that white house, and bring mamma and Maria
there.”

“Eh, Desirée! your mamma is English--I heard you say so,” cried Joanna.

“_Eh bien!_ did I ever tell you otherwise?” said the little Frenchwoman,
impatiently; “she would love that white house on the hill.”

“Did _she_ teach you to speak English?” asked Joanna, “because everybody
says you speak so well for a Frenchwoman--and I think so myself; and
papa said you looked quite English to him, and he thought he knew some
one like you, and you were not like a foreigner at all.”

The pretty little shoulders gave an immediate shrug, which demonstrated
their nationality with emphasis.

“Every one must think what every one pleases,” said Desirée. “Who, then,
lives in that white house? I remember mamma once spoke of such a house,
with a white gable and a great tree. Mamma loves rivers and trees. I
think, when she was a child, she must have been here.”

“Why?” asked Joanna, opening her eyes wide.

“I know not why,” said Desirée, still with a little impatience, as she
glanced hurriedly round with a sudden look of half-confused
consideration; “but either some one has told me of this place, or I have
been here in a dream.”

It was the loveliest dell of Tyne. The banks rose so high on either
side, and were so richly dotted with trees, that it was only here and
there, through breaks in the foliage, that you could catch a momentary
glimpse of the brown river, foaming over a chance rock, or sparkling
under some dropping line of sunshine which reached it, by sweet caprice
and artifice of nature, through an avenue of divided branches. The path
where the two girls stood together was at a considerable height above
the stream; and close by them, in a miniature ravine, thickly fringed
with shrubs, poured down a tiny, dazzling waterfall, white as foam
against the background of dark soil and rocks, the special feature of
the scene. Desirée stood looking at it with her little French hands
clasped together, and the chiming of the water woke strange fancies in
her mind. Had she seen it somewhere, in fairy-land or in dreams?--or had
she heard of it in that time which was as good as either--when she was a
child? She stood quite silent, saying nothing to Joanna, who soon grew
weary of this pause, complimentary as it might be. Desirée was confused
and did not know what to make of it. She said no more of the white
house, and not much more of her own friends, and kept wondering to
herself as she went back, answering Joanna’s questions and talking of
their future lessons, what strange sentiment of recollection could have
moved her in sight of that waterfall. It was very hard to make it out.

And no doubt it was because Desirée’s mother was English that Aunt Jane
could not keep up her prejudice against the foreigner, but gradually
lapsed to Joanna’s opinion, and day by day fell in love with the little
stranger. She was not a very, very good girl--she was rather the
reverse, if truth must be told. She had no small amount of pretty little
French affectations, and when she was naughty fell back upon her own
language, especially with Patricia, whose Clapham French was not much
different from the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe, and who began with
vigor and reality to entertain, not a feeble prejudice but a hearty
dislike, to the invader. Neither did she do what good governesses are so
like to do, at least in novels--she did not take the place of her
negligent daughters with the invalid Mrs. Huntley, nor remodel the
disorderly household. Sometimes, indeed, out of pure hatred to things
ugly, Desirée put a sofa-cover straight, or spread down a corner of the
crumb-cloth; but she did not captivate the servants, and charm the young
ladies into good order and good behavior; she exercised no very
astonishing influence in that way over even Joanna. She was by no means
a model young lady in herself, and had no special authority, so far as
she was aware of. She taught her pupil, who was one half bigger than
herself, to speak French very tolerably, and to practice a certain time
every day. She took charge of Joanna’s big hands, and twisted, and
coaxed, and pinched them into a less clumsy thump, upon the trembling
keys of the piano. She mollified her companion’s manners even
unconsciously, and suggested improvements in the red hair and brown
merino frock; but having done this, Desirée was not aware of having any
special charge of the general morals and well-being of the family; she
was rather a critic of the same, indeed, but she was not a Mentor nor a
reformer. She obeyed what rules there were in the sloven house--she
shrugged her little French shoulders at the discomforts and quarrels.
She sometimes pouted, or curled her little disdainful upper lip; but she
took nobody’s part save Joanna’s, whom she always defended manfully. It
was not a particularly brilliant or entertaining life for Desirée.
Melmar himself, with his grizzled red hair, and heated face; Mrs.
Huntley, who sometimes never left her room all day, and who, when she
did, lay on a sofa; Patricia, who was spiteful, and did her utmost to
shut out both Joanna and Desirée when any visitors came to break the
tedium--were not remarkably delightful companions; and as the winter
closed in, and there were long evenings, and less pleasure out of
doors--winter, when all the fires looked half choked, and would not
burn, and when a perennial fog seemed to lie over Melmar, did not
increase the comforts of the house. Yet it happened that Desirée was by
no means unhappy; perhaps at sixteen it is hard to be really unhappy,
even when one feels one ought, unless one has some very positive reason
for it. Joanna and she sat together at the scrambling breakfast, which
Patricia was always too late for; then they went to the music lesson,
which tried Joanna’s patience grievously, but which Desirée managed to
get some fun out of, and endured with great philosophy. Then they read
together, and the unfortunate Joanna inked her fingers over her French
exercise. In the afternoon they walked--save when Joanna was compelled
to accompany her sister “in the carriage,” a state ceremonial in which
the little governess was never privileged to share; and after their
return from their walk, Desirée taught her pupil all manner of fine
needleworks, in which she was herself more than usually learned, and
which branch of knowledge was highly prized by Aunt Jean, and even by
Mrs. Huntley. Such was the course of study pursued by Joanna under the
charge of her little governess of sixteen.




CHAPTER XLI.


“A French governess!--she is not French, though she might be born in
France. Anybody might be born in France,” said Patricia, with some
scorn; “but her mother was Scotch--no, not English, Joanna, I know
better--just some Scotchwoman from the country; I should not wonder if
she was a little impostor, after all.”

“You had better take care,” cried Joanna, “I’m easier affronted than
Desirée; you had better not say much more to me.”

“It is true though,” said Patricia, with triumph; “she took quite a
fancy to Kirkbride, when she came first, and was sure she had heard of
the Kelpie waterfall. _I_ expect it will turn out some poor family from
this quarter that have gone to France and changed their name. Joanna may
be as foolish about her as she likes, but _I_ know she never was a true
Frenchwoman by her look. I have seen French people many a time in
England.”

“Yet you always look as if you would like to eat Desirée when she speaks
to you in French,” said Joanna, with a spice of malice; “if you knew
French people, you should like the language.”

“Low people don’t pronounce as ladies do,” said Patricia. “Perhaps she
was not even born in France, for all she says--and I am _quite_ sure her
mother was some country girl from near Kirkbride.”

“What is that you say?” said Melmar, who was present, and whose
attention had at last been caught by the discussion.

“I say Joanna’s French governess is not French, papa. Her mother was a
Scotchwoman and came from this country,” cried Patricia, eagerly. “I
think she belongs to some poor family who have gone abroad and changed
their name--perhaps her father was a poacher, or something, and had to
run away.”

“And that is all because Desirée thinks she must have heard her mamma
speak of the Kelpie waterfall,” said Joanna; “because she thought she
knew it as soon as she saw it--that is all!--did you ever hear the like,
papa?”

Melmar’s face grew redder, as was its wont when he was at all disturbed.
He laid down his paper.

“She thought she knew the Kelpie, did she?--hum! and her mother is a
Scotchwoman--for that matter, so is yours. What is to be made of that,
eh, Patricia?”

“_I_ never denied where I belonged to,” said Patricia, reddening with
querulous anger; “and I did not speak to you, papa, so you need not take
the trouble to answer. But her mother _was_ Scotch--and I do not believe
she is a proper Frenchwoman at all. I never did think so; and as for a
governess, Joanna could learn as much from mamma’s maid.”

Joanna burst out immediately into a loud defense, and denunciation of
her sister. Melmar took no notice what, ever of their quarrel, but he
still grew redder in the face, twisted about his newspaper, got up and
walked to the window, and displayed a general uneasiness. He was
perfectly indifferent as to the tone and bearing of his daughters, but
he was not indifferent to what they said in this quarrel, which was all
about Desirée. Presently, however, both the voices ceased with some
abruptness. Melmar looked round with curiosity. Desirée herself had
entered the room, and what his presence had not even checked, her
presence put an end to. Desirée wore a brown merino frock, like Joanna,
with a little band and buckle round the waist, and sleeves which were
puffed out at the shoulders, and plain at the wrists, according to the
fashion of the time. It had no ornament whatever except a narrow binding
of velvet at the neck and sleeves, and was not so long as to hide the
handsome little feet, which were not in velvet slippers, but in stout
little shoes of patent leather, more suitable a great deal for Melmar,
and the place she held there. The said little feet came in lightly, yet
not noiselessly, and both the sisters turned with an immediate
acknowledgment of the stranger’s entrance. Patricia’s delicate pink
cheeks were flushed with anger, and Joanna looked eager and defiant, but
quarrels were so very common between them that Desirée took no notice of
this one. She came to a table near which Melmar was standing, and opened
a drawer in it to get Joanna’s needlework.

“You promised to have--oh, such an impossible piece, done to-day!” said
Desirée, “and look, you naughty Joanna!--look here.”

She shook out a delicate piece of embroidery as she spoke, with a merry
laugh. It was a highly-instructive bit of work, done in a regular
succession of the most delicate perfection and the utmost bungling, to
wit, Desirée’s own performance and the performance of her pupil. As the
little governess clapped her hands over it, Joanna drew near and put her
arms round the waist of her young teacher, overtopping her by all her
own red head and half her big shoulders.

“I’ll never do it like you, Desirée,” said the girl, half in real
affection, half with the benevolent purpose of aggravating her sister.
“I’ll never do any thing so well as you, if I live to be as old as Aunt
Jean.”

“Ah, then, you will need no governess,” said Desirée, “and if you did it
as well as I, now, you should not want me, Joanna. I shall leave it for
you there--and now it is time to come for one little half hour to the
music. Will mademoiselle do us the honor to come and listen? It shall be
only one little half hour.”

“No, thank you! I don’t care to hear girls at their lessons--and
Joanna’s time is always so bad,” said the fretful Patricia. “Oh, I
can’t help having an ear! I can hear only too well, thank you, where I
am.”

Desirée made a very slight smiling curtsey to her opponent, and pressed
Joanna’s arm lightly with her fingers to keep down the retort which
trembled on that young lady’s lips. Then they went away together to the
little supplementary musical lesson. Melmar had never turned round, nor
taken the slightest notice, but he observed, notwithstanding, not only
all that was done, but all that was looked and said, and it struck him,
perhaps for the first time, that the English of Desirée was perfectly
familiar and harmonious English, and that she never either paused for a
word nor translated the idiom of one tongue into the speech of another.
Uneasy suspicions began to play about his mind: he could scarcely say
what he feared, yet he feared something. The little governess was French
undeniably and emphatically--and yet she was not French, either, yet
bore an unexplainable something of familiarity and home-likeness which
had won for her the heart of Aunt Jean, and had startled himself
unawares from her first introduction to Melmar. He stood at the window,
looking out upon the blank, winterly landscape, the leafless trees in
the distance, the damp grass and evergreens near the door, as the
cheerful notes of Joanna’s music came stealing through the cold
passages. The music was not in bad time, and it was in good taste, for
Joanna was ambitious, and Desirée, though not an extraordinary musician
herself, kept her pupil to this study with the most tenacious
perseverance. As Melmar listened, vague thoughts, almost of fear, stole
over him. He had been a lawyer, and a lawyer of a low class, smart in
schemes and trickeries. He was ready to suspect everybody of cunning and
the mean cleverness of deceit. Perhaps this was a little spy whom he
fostered in his house. Perhaps her presence in the Edinburgh school was
a trick to attract Joanna, and her presence here a successful plot to
undermine and find out himself. His face grew redder still as he “put
things together;” and by the time the music ceased, Melmar had concocted
and found out (it is so easy to find out what one has concocted one’s
own self,) a very pretty little conspiracy. He _had_ found it out, he
was persuaded, and it should go no further--trust him for that!

Accordingly, when his daughter and her governess returned, Melmar paid
them a compliment upon their music, and was disposed to be friendly, as
it appeared. Finally, after he had exhausted such subjects of chat as
occurred to him, he got up, looking at Desirée, who was now busy with
her embroidery.

“I rather think, mademoiselle, you have been more than three months
here,” said Melmar, “and I have been inconsiderate and ungallant enough
to forget the time. I’ll speak with you about that in my study, if
you’ll favor me by coming there. I never speak of business but in my own
room--eh, Joan? You got your thrashings there when you were young
enough. Where does mademoiselle give you them now?”

“Don’t be foolish, papa,” said Joanna, jerking her head aside as he
pinched her ear. “What do you want of Desirée? if it’s for Patricia, and
you’re going to teaze her, I’ll not let her go, whatever you say.”

“And it is not quite three months, yet,” said Desirée, looking up with a
smile. “Monsieur is too kind, but it still wants a week of the time.”

“Then, lest I should forget again when the week was over, we’ll settle
it now, mademoiselle,” said Melmar. Desirée rose immediately to follow
him. They went away through the long passage, he leading, suspicious and
stealthy, she going after him, with the little feet which rang frankly
upon the stones. Desirée thought the study miserable when she went into
it. She longed to throw open the window, to clear out the choked
fire--she did not wonder that her pupil’s papa had a heated face, even
before dinner; the wonder seemed how any one could breathe here.

They had a conference of some duration, which gradually diverged from
Desirée’s little salary, which was a matter easily settled. Mr. Huntley
took an interest in her family. He asked a great many questions, which
the girl answered with a certain frankness and a certain reserve, the
frankness being her own, and the reserve attributable to a letter which
Desirée kept in her pocket, and beyond the instructions of which nothing
could have tempted her to pass. Mr. Huntley learned a great deal during
that interview, though not exactly what he expected and intended to
learn. The afternoon was darkening, and as he sat in the dubious light,
with the window and the yew-tree on the other side of him, he became
more and more like the big, brindled, watchful cat, which he had so
great a tendency to resemble. Then he dismissed “mademoiselle” with a
kindly caution. He thought she had better not mention--not even to any
one in the house, that her mother was a Scotchwoman--as she was French
herself, he thought the less said about that the better--he would not
even speak of it much to Joanna, he thought, if she would take his
advice--it might injure her prospects in life--and with this fatherly
advice he sent Desirée away.

When she was gone, he looked out stealthily for some one else, though he
had taken previous precautions to make sure that no one could listen. It
was Patricia for whom her father looked, poor little delicate Patricia,
who _would_ steal about those stone-cold passages, and linger in all
manner of draughts at half-closed doors, to gain a little clandestine
information. When Melmar had watched a few minutes, he discovered her
stealing out of a little store-room close by, and pounced upon the poor
little stealthy, chilly figure. He did not care that the grasp of his
fingers hurt her delicate shoulders, and that her teeth chattered with
cold; he drew her roughly into the dusk of the study, where the pale
window and the black yew were by no means counterbalanced by any light
from the fire. Once here, Patricia began to vindicate herself, and
upbraid papa’s cruelty. Her father silenced her with a threatening
gesture.

“At it again!” said Melmar; “what the deevil business have you with my
affairs? let me but catch you prying when there is any thing to learn,
and for all your airs, I’ll punish you! you little cankered elf! hold
your tongue, and hear what I have to say to you. If I hear another word
against that governess, French or no French--or if you try your hand at
aggravating her, as I know you have done, I’ll turn you out of this
house!”

For once in her life Patricia was speechless; she made no answer, but
stood shivering in his grasp, with a hundred terrified malicious fancies
in her mind, not one of which would come to utterance. Melmar
proceeded:--

“If anybody asks you who she is, or what she is, you can tell them _I_
know--which is more than you know, or she either--and if you let any
mortal suppose she’s slighted at Melmar, or give her ground to take
offense, or are the means of making her wish to leave this place--if it
should be midnight, or the depths of winter, I’ll turn you out of doors
that moment! Do you hear?”

Patricia did hear, with sullen terror and wicked passion, but she did
not answer; and when she was released, fled to her own room, ready, out
of the mere impotence of her revengeful ill-humor to harm herself, since
she could not harm Desirée, and with all kinds of vile suspicions in her
mind--suspicions further from the reality than Melmar’s had been, and
still more miserable. When she came to herself a little, she cried and
made her eyes red, and got a headache, and the supernumerary maid was
dispatched up stairs to nurse her, and be tormented for the evening.
Suffering is very often vicarious in this world, and poor Jenny Shaw
bore the brunt which Desirée was not permitted to bear.




CHAPTER XLII.


“I should like to live here,” said Desirée, looking out of the window of
the manse parlor, with a little sigh.

Katie Logan looked up at her with some little doubt. She had come by
herself to the manse, in advance of Joanna, who had been detained to
accompany her sister. The two girls had been invited some time before to
“take tea” at the manse--and Desirée had been very curious and
interested about her first visit to her white house on the hill. Now
that she had accomplished it, however, it subdued her spirit a little,
and gave the little Frenchwoman for once a considerable inclination to
get “low,” and cry. The house and the room were very unlike any house
she had ever known--yet they were so homelike that Desirée’s thoughts
grew tender. And Katie Logan looked at her doubtfully. Desirée’s
impulsive little heart had clung to Katie every time she saw her. She
was so sweet and neat--so modest and natural--so unlike Patricia and
Joanna, and all the womankind of that sloven house of Melmar. The girl,
who had a mother and an elder sister, and was far from home, yearned to
Katie--but the little mistress of the manse looked with doubt upon the
French governess--principally, to tell the truth, because she was
French, and Katie Logan, with all her good sense, was only a country
girl, and had but a very, very small experience of any world beyond
Kirkbride.

“Mamma came from this country,” said Desirée, again, softly. She had a
letter in her pocket--rather a sentimental letter--from mamma, which
perhaps a wiser person might have smiled at a little--but it made
Desirée’s heart expand toward the places which mamma too had seen in her
youth, and remembered still.

“Indeed! then you are a little bit Scotch, you are not all French,” said
Katie, brightening a little; “is it very long since your mamma went
away?--is she in France now? Is she likely to come back again?”

Desirée shook her head.

“I should like to be rich, and buy this house, and bring her here--I
love this house,” cried the girl.

A little cloud came upon Katie’s face. She was jealous of any inference
that some time or other the manse might change hands. She could not bear
to think of that--principally because Katie had begun to find out with
painful anxiety and fear, that her father was growing old, that he felt
the opening chill of winter a great deal more than he used to do--and
that the old people in the village shook their heads, and said to
themselves that the minister was “failing” every time he passed their
doors.

“This house can never be sold,” said Katie, briefly--even so briefly as
though the words were rather hard to say.

“It is not like Melmar,” said Desirée. “I want the air and the sun to
come into that great house--it can not breathe--and how the people
breathe in it I do not know.”

“But they are very kind people,” said Katie, quickly.

Desirée lifted her black eyes and looked full at her--but Katie was
working and did not meet the look.

“Joanna is fond of you,” said Desirée, “and I like her--and I am fond of
the old lady whom they call Aunt Jean.”

This distinct summary of the amount of her affection for the household
amused Katie, who was half afraid of a governess-complaint against her
employers.

“Do you like to be so far from home?” she said.

“Like!” Desirée became suddenly vehement. “I should like to live with
mamma--but,” cried the girl, “how could you ask me?--do not _you_ know?”

“I have no mother,” said Katie, very quietly; “boys are always eager to
leave home--girls might sometimes wish it too. Do you know Cosmo
Livingstone, whom you saw in Edinburgh, has gone abroad for no reason at
all that I know--and his brothers have both gone to work, and make their
fortunes if they can--and my little brothers speak already of what they
are going to do when they grow men--they will all go away.”

“In this country, people always talk of making fortunes. I should like
to make a fortune too,” said Desirée, “but I do not know what to do.”

“Girls never make fortunes,” said Katie, with a smile.

“Why?” cried the little governess, “but I wish it--yes, very
much--though I do not know how to do it; here I have just twenty pounds
a year. What should you do if you had no papa, and had to work for
yourself.”

Katie rose from her chair in trouble and excitement.

“Don’t speak so--you frighten me!” she cried, with an involuntary pang.
“I have all the children. You do not understand it--you must not speak
of _that_.”

“Of what?” asked Desirée, with a little astonishment. But she changed
the subject with ready tact when she saw the painful color on Katie’s
face. “I should like mamma to see you,” she said in a vein of perfectly
natural and sincere flattery. “When I tell her what kind of people I
live among, I do not speak of mademoiselle at Melmar, or even of
Joanna--I tell her of you, and then she is happy--she thinks poor little
Desirée is very well where she is with such as these.”

“I am afraid you are too good to me,” said Katie, with a half conscious
laugh--“you don’t know me well enough yet--is it Patricia whom you call
mademoiselle?”

Desirée shrugged her little shoulders slightly; she gave no other
answer, but once more looked out from the window down the pretty brae of
Tyne, where all the cottages were so much the clearer from the winterly
brown aspect of the trees, stripped of their foliage. It was not like
any other scene familiar to Desirée, still it did seem familiar to
her--she could not tell how--as if she had known it all her life.

“Does Cosmo Livingstone, whom you spoke of, live near?” asked Desirée,
“and will you tell me of _his_ mother? Is she by herself, now that all
her boys are gone?--is she a lady? Are they great people or are they
poor? Joanna speaks of a great old castle, and I think I saw it from the
road. They must be great people if they lived there.”

“They are not great people now,” said Katie, the color warming in her
cheek--“yet the castle belonged to them once, and they were different.
But they are good people still.”

“I should like to hear about them,” said Desirée, suddenly coming up to
Katie, and sitting down on a stool by her feet. Katie Logan was slightly
flattered, in spite of herself. She thought it very foolish, but she
could not help it. Once more a lively crimson kindled in her cheek. She
bent over her work with great earnestness, and never turned her eyes
toward the questioning face of the girl.

“I could not describe the Mistress if I were to try all day,” said Katie
at last, in a little burst, after having deliberated. Desirée looked up
at her very steadily, with grave curiosity.

“And that is what I want most,” said the little Frenchwoman. “What! can
you not tell if she has black eyes or blue ones, light hair or dark
hair?--was she pretty before she grew old--and does she love her
boys--and did her husband love her? I want to know all that.”

Desirée spoke in the tone of one who had received all these questions
from another person, and who asked them with a point-blank quietness and
gravity, for the satisfaction of some other curiosity than her own; but
the investigation was half amusing, half irritating to Katie. She shook
her head slightly, with a gesture expressing much the same sentiment as
the movement of her hand, which drew away the skirts on which Desirée
almost leaned. Her doubt changed into a more positive feeling. Katie
rather feared Desirée was about to fulfill all her unfavorable
anticipations as to the quality of French governesses.

“Don’t go away,” said Desirée, laying her little white hand upon the
dress which Katie withdrew from her touch. “I like to sit by you--I like
to be near you--and I want to hear; not for me. Tell me only what you
please, but let me sit here till Joanna comes.”

There was a little pause. Katie was moved slightly, but did not know
what to say, and Desirée, too, sat silent, whether waiting for her
answer or thinking, Katie could not tell. At last she spoke again with
emotion, grasping Katie’s dress.

“I like Joanna,” said Desirée, with tears upon her eyelashes--“but I am
older than she is--a great deal older--and no one else cares for me. You
do not care for me--it is not likely; but let me sit here and forget all
that house and every thing till Joanna comes. Ah, let me! I am far away
from home--I am a little beggar girl, begging at your window--not for
crumbs, or for sous, but for love. I am so lonely. I do not think of it
always--but I have thought so long and so often of coming here.”

“You must come oftener then,” said Katie, who, unused to any
demonstration, did not quite know what to say.

“I can not come often,” said Desirée, softly, “but let me sit by you and
forget all the others--only for a very, very little time--only till
Joanna comes. Ah, she is here!”

And the little Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders, and ran to the window
to look out, and came back with a swift gliding motion to take Katie’s
hand out of her work and kiss it. Katie was surprised, startled, moved.
She did not half understand it, and she blushed, though the lips which
touched her hand were only those of a girl; but almost before she could
speak, Desirée had sprung up again, and stood before her with a smile,
winking her pretty long eyelashes to clear them of those wayward April
tears. She was very pretty, very young, with her little foreign graces.
Katie did not understand the rapid little girl, who darted from one
thought to another, so quickly, yet with such evident truthfulness--but
her heart was touched and surprised. Joanna came in immediately, to put
an end to any further confidences. Joanna, loudly indignant at
Patricia’s selfishness, and making most audible and uncompromising
comparisons between Melmar and the manse, which Desirée skillfully
diverted, soothed, and gradually reduced to silence, to Katie’s much
amazement. On the whole, it was a very pleasant little tea-party to
everybody concerned; but Katie Logan, when she stood at the door in the
clear frosty moonlight, looking after her young guests, driving away in
the double gig which had been sent for them, still doubted and wondered
about Desirée, though with a kindly instead of an unfavorable sentiment.
What could the capricious little foreigner mean, for instance, by such
close questions about Norlaw?




CHAPTER XLIII.


At Norlaw every thing was very quiet, very still, in this early winter.
The “beasts” were thriving, the dairy was prosperous, the Mistress’s
surplus fund--spite of the fifty pounds which had been given out of it
to Cosmo--grew at the bank. Willie Noble, the factotum, lived in his
cosy cottage at a little distance, and throve--but no one knew very well
how the Mistress and Marget lived by themselves in that deserted house.
No one could have told any external difference in the house, save for
its quietness. It was cheerful to look upon in the ruddy winter
sunshine, when the glimmer of the fire shone in the windows of the
dining-parlor, and through the open door of Marget’s kitchen; and not
even the close pressure of the widow’s cap could bring decay or
melancholy to the living looks of the Mistress, who still was not old,
and had much to do yet in the world where her three boys were wandering.
But it was impossible to deny that both Mistress and servant had a
little dread of the long evenings. They preferred getting up hours
before daylight, when, though it was dark, it was morning, and the
labors of the day could be begun--they took no pleasure in the night.

It was a habitual custom with the minister, and had been for years, to
“take tea” occasionally, now and then, without previous invitation, at
Norlaw. When Dr. Logan was new in his pastorate, he thought this device
of dropping in to take tea the most admirable plan ever invented for
“becoming acquainted with his people,” and winning their affections; and
what was commenced as a famous piece of wisdom, had fallen years ago
into natural use and wont, a great improvement upon policy. From the
same astute reasoning, it had been the fancy of the excellent minister,
whose schemes were all very transparent, and, indeed, unconcealable, to
take Katie with him in these domestic visitations. “It pleased the
people,” Dr. Logan thought, and increased the influence of the
ecclesiastical establishment. The good man was rather complacent about
the manner in which he had conquered the affections of his parish. It
was done by the most elaborate statesmanship, if you believed Dr. Logan,
and he told the young pastors, with great satisfaction, the history of
his simple devices, little witting that his devices were as harmless as
they were transparent, and that it was himself, and not his wisdom,
which took the hearts of his people. But in the meantime, those plans of
his had come to be the course of nature, and so it was that Katie Logan
found herself seated with her work in the Norlaw dining-parlor at sunset
of a wintry afternoon, which was not exactly the day that either she or
the Mistress would have chosen for her visit there.

For that day the Mistress had heard from her eldest son. Huntley had
reached Australia--had made his beginning of life--had written a long,
full-detailed letter to his mother, rich in such particulars as mothers
love to know; and on that very afternoon Katie Logan came with her
father to Norlaw. Now in her heart the Mistress liked Katie as well,
perhaps better, than she liked any other stranger out of the narrow
magic circle of her own blood and family--but the Mistress was warm of
temper and a little unreasonable. She could not admit the slightest
right on Katie’s part, or on the part of any “fremd person,” to share in
the communication of her son. She resented the visit which interrupted
her in the midst of her happiness and excitement with a suggestion of
some one else who might claim a share in Huntley. She knew they were not
lovers, she knew that not the shadow of an engagement bound these two,
she believed that they had never spoken a word to each other which all
the world might not have heard--yet, notwithstanding all these
certainties, the Mistress was clear-sighted, and had the prevision of
love in her eyes, and with the wildest unreasonableness she resented the
coming of Katie, of all other days in the year, upon that day.

“She needna have been in such an awfu’ hurry; she might have waited a
while, if it had only been for the thought of what folk might say,”
muttered the Mistress to herself, very well knowing all the time,
though she would not acknowledge it to herself, that Katie Logan had no
means whatever of knowing what precious missive had come in the
Kirkbride letter-bag that day.

And when the Mistress intimated the fact with a little heat and
excitement, Katie blushed and felt uncomfortable. She was conscious,
too; she did not like to ask a natural question about Huntley. She sat
embarrassed at the homely tea-table, looking at the cream scones which
Marget had made in honor of the minister, while Dr. Logan and the
Mistress kept up the conversation between them--and when her father rose
after tea to go out, as was his custom, to call at the nearest cottages,
Katie would fain have gone too, had that not been too great an invasion
of established rule and custom, to pass without immediate notice. She
sat still accordingly by the table with her work, the Mistress sitting
opposite with _her_ work also, and her mind intent upon Huntley’s
letter. The room was very still and dim, with its long background of
shade, sometimes invaded by a red glimmer of fire, but scarcely
influenced by the steady light of the two candles, illuminating those
two faces by the table; and the Mistress and her visitor sat in silence
without any sound but the motion of their hands, and the little rustle
of their elbows as they worked. This silence became very embarrassing
after a few minutes, and Katie broke it at last by an inquiry after
Cosmo--where was he when his mother heard last?

“The laddie is a complete wanderer,” said the Mistress, not without a
little complacence. “I could not undertake to mind, for my part, all the
places he’s been in--though they’re a’ names you see in books--he’s been
in Eetaly, and he’s been in Germany, and now he’s back again in France;
but I canna say he forgets hame either,” she added, with a tender pride,
“only the like of him must improve his mind; and foreign travel, folk
say, is good for that--though I canna say I ever had much to do with
foreigners, or likit them mysel’.”

“Did you ever hear of any one from this country marrying a Frenchman,
Mrs. Livingstone?” asked Katie.

“Marrying a Frenchman? I’ll warrant have I--it’s no’ such a great
wonder, but the like of me might hear tell of it in a lifetime,” said
the Mistress, with a little offense, “but marriage is no’ aye running
in everybody’s head, Miss Katie, and there’s little fear of my Cosmo
bringing me hame a French wife.”

“No, I did not think of that,” said Katie, with a smile, “I was thinking
of the little French governess at Melmar, whose mother, they say, came
from this quarter, or near it. She is an odd little girl and yet I like
her--Cosmo saw her in Edinburgh, and she was very anxious, when she came
to the manse, to hear about Norlaw. I thought perhaps you might have
known who her mother was.”

The Mistress was slightly startled--she looked up at Katie quickly, with
a sparkle of impatience in her eye, and a rising color.

“Me!” said the Mistress. “How should I ken? There might have been a
hundred young women in the countryside married upon Frenchmen for any
thing I could tell. ‘This quarter’ is a wide word. I ken nae mair about
Melrose and what happens there, wha’s married or wha dies, than if it
was a thousand miles away. And many a person has heard tell of Norlaw
that I ken naething about, and that never heard tell of me.”

Katie paused to consider after this. She knew and understood so much of
the Mistress’s character that she neither took offense nor wished to
excite it. This had not been a quite successful essay at conversation,
and Katie took a little time to think before she began again.

But while Katie’s thoughts left this subject, those of the Mistress held
to it. Silence fell upon them again, disturbed only by the rustle of
their sleeves as they worked, and the crackle of the fire, which burned
brightly, when suddenly the Mistress asked:--

“What like is she?” with an abruptness which took away Katie’s breath.

“She?"--it required an effort to remember that this was Desirée of whom
they had been speaking--“the little girl at Melmar?” asked Katie. “She
is little and bright, and pretty, with very dark eyes and dark hair, a
quick little creature, like a bird or a fairy. I confess I was half
afraid of her, because she was French,” admitted the little mistress of
the manse with a blush and a laugh, “but she is a very sweet, winning
little girl, with pretty red lips, and white teeth, and black eyes--very
little--less than me.”

The Mistress drew a long breath and looked relieved.

“I do not know any thing about her,” she said slowly; and it seemed
quite a comfort to the Mistress to be able to say so, distinctly and
impartially. “And so she’s at Melmar--a governess--what is that for,
Katie? The oldest is woman grown, and the youngest is more like a laddie
than a lassie. What are they wanting with a governess? I canna say I ken
much of the present family mysel’, though my Huntley, if he had but
sought his ain, as he might have done--but you’ll hear a’ that through
your cousin, without me.”

“No,” said Katie.

“Ah, Katie Logan! you speak softly and fairly, and you’re a good lassie,
and a comfort to the house you belong to,” cried the Mistress. “I ken a’
that, and I never denied it a’ your days! But my Huntley, do you ken
what that laddie did before he went away? He had a grand laird-ship
within his hand if he would gang to the law and fight it out, as the
very writer, your ain cousin, advised him to do. But my son said, ‘No;
I’ll leave my mother her house and her comfort, though they’re a’ mine,’
said my Huntley. ‘I’ll gang and make the siller first to fight the
battle with.’ And yonder he is, away at the end of the world, amang his
beasts and his toils. He wouldna listen to me. I would have lived in a
cothouse or one room, or worked for my bread rather than stand in the
way of my son’s fortune; but Huntley’s a man grown, and maun have his
way; and the proud callant had that in his heart that he would make his
mother as safe as a queen in her ain house before he would think of
either fortune or comfort for himsel’.”

The Mistress’s voice was broken with her mother-grief, and pride, and
triumph. It was, perhaps, the first time she had opened her heart so
far--and it was to Katie, whose visit she had resented, and whose secret
hold on Huntley’s heart was no particular delight to his mother. But
even in the midst of the angry impatience with which the Mistress
refused to admit a share in her son’s affections, she could not resist
the charm of sympathy, the grateful fascination of having some one
beside her to whom every thing concerning Huntley was almost as
interesting as to herself. Huntley’s uncommunicated letter was very near
running over out of her full heart, and that half-apologetic,
half-defiant burst of feeling was the first opening of the tide.
Katie’s eyes were wet--she could not help it--and they were shining and
glowing behind their tears, abashed, proud, joyous, tender, saying what
lips can not say--she glanced up, with all her heart in them, at the
Mistress, and said something which broke down in a half sob, half laugh,
half sigh, and was wholly and entirely inarticulate, though not so
unintelligible as one might have supposed. It was a great deal better
than words, so far as the Mistress was concerned--it expressed what was
inexpressible--the sweet, generous tumult in the girl’s heart--too shy
even to name Huntley’s name, too delicate to approve, yet proud and
touched to its depths with an emotion beyond telling. The two women did
not rush into each other’s arms after this spontaneous burst of mutual
confidence. On the contrary, they sat each at her work--the Mistress
hurriedly wiping off her tears, and Katie trying to keep her’s from
falling, if that were possible, and keeping her eyes upon the little
glancing needle, which flashed in all manner of colors through the sweet
moisture which filled them. Ah! that dim, silent dining-parlor, which
now there was neither father nor children to fill and bless!--perhaps by
the solitary fireside, where she had sat for so many hours of silent
night, alone commanding her heart, a new, tender, soothing, unlooked for
relationship suddenly surprised the thoughts of the Mistress. She had
not desired it, she had not sought it, yet all at once, almost against
her will, a freshness came to her heart like the freshness after
showers. Something had happened to Huntley’s mother--she had an
additional comfort in the world after to-night.

But when Dr. Logan returned, after seeing Willie Noble, the good
minister, with pleasant consciousness of having done his duty, was not
disturbed by any revelation on the part of the Mistress, or confession
from his daughter. He heard a great many extracts read from Huntley’s
letter, feeling it perfectly natural and proper that he should hear
them, and expressing his interest with great friendliness and good
pleasure; and then Marget was called in, and the minister conducted
family worship, and prayed with fervor for the widow’s absent sons, like
a patriarch. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil bless the lads,”
said the minister in his prayer; and then he craved a special blessing
on the first-born, that he might return with joy, and see the face of
his mother, and comfort her declining years. Then the excellent pastor
rose from his knees placidly, and shook the Mistress’s hand, and wended
his quiet way down Tyne through the frosty moonlight, with his daughter
on his arm. He thought the Mistress was pleased to see them, and that
Katie had been a comfort to her to-night. He thought it was a very fine
night, and a beautiful moon, and there were Orion, Katie, and the Plow;
and so Dr. Logan went peacefully home, and thought he had spent a very
profitable night.




CHAPTER XLIV.


It was frost, and Tyne was “bearing” at Kirkbride, where the village
held a carnival of sliding and skating, and where even the national
winter sport, the yearly curling matches, began to be talked of. There
was, however, no one at Melmar to tempt Tyne to “bear,” even had it been
easy to reach his glassy surface through the slippery whitened trees,
every twig of which was white and stiff with congealed dew. The Kelpie
fell scantily, with a drowsy tinkle, over its little ravine, reduced to
the slenderest thread, while all the branches near it were hung with
mocking icicles. The sun was high in the blue, frosty midday skies, but
had only power enough to clear here and there an exposed branch, and to
moisten the path where some little burn crept half frozen under a crust
of ice. It was a clear, bracing, invigorating day, and Joanna and
Desirée, spite of the frost, were on Tyne-side among the frozen woods.

When standing close together, investigating a bit of moss, both
simultaneously heard a crackling footstep among the underwood, and
turning round at the same moment, saw some one approaching from the
house. He was one of her own countrymen, Desirée thought, with a little
flutter at her heart. He wore a large blue cloak, with an immense fur
collar, a very French hat, a moustache, and long black hair; Desirée
gazed at him with her heart in her eyes, and her white little French
hands clasped together. No doubt he brought some message from mamma.
But Desirée’s hopes were brought to an abrupt conclusion when Joanna
sprang forward, exclaiming:

“Oh, Oswald, Oswald! have you really come home? I am so glad you have
come home!” with a plunge of welcome which the stranger looked half
annoyed, half pleased to encounter. He made a brotherly response to it
by stooping to kiss Joanna, a salutation which the girl underwent with a
heightened color, and a half-ashamed look; she had meant to shake both
his hands violently; any thing in the shape of an embrace being much out
of Joanna’s way--but Oswald’s hands were occupied with his cloak, which
he could not permit to fall from his shoulders in the fervor of his
brotherly pleasure. Holding it fast, he had only half a hand to give,
which Joanna straightway possessed herself of, repeating as she did so
her cry of pleasure: “Oh, Oswald, how glad I am! I have wished for such
a long time that you would come home!”

“It was very kind of my little sister--or should I say my big sister,”
said the stranger, looking gallant and courtier-like, “but why, may I
ask, were you so anxious for me now? that was a sudden thought, Joanna.”

Joanna grew very red as she looked up in his face--then unconsciously
she looked at Desirée. Mr. Oswald Huntley was a man of the world, and
understood the ways and fancies of young ladies--at least he thought so.
He followed Joanna’s glance, and a comical smile came to his lips. He
took off his hat with an air half mocking, half reverential.

“May I hope to be introduced to your friend, Joanna?” said the new-found
brother. With great haste, heat, and perturbation, blushing fiery red,
and feeling very uncomfortable, Joanna stumbled through this ceremony,
longing for some private means of informing the new-comer who “her
friend” was, ere accident or Patricia made him unfavorably aware of it.
He was a little amazed evidently by the half-pronounced,
half-intelligible name.

“Mademoiselle Desirée?” he repeated after Joanna, with an evident
uncertainty, and an air of great surprise.

“Oh, Oswald, you have never got my last letter,” cried Joanna; “did you
really not know that Desirée was here?”

“I am the governess,” cried Desirée, with immense pride and dignity,
elevating her little head and drawing up her small figure. Patricia had
done her best during these three months to annoy and humiliate the
little Frenchwoman--but her pride had never been really touched until
to-day.

Oswald’s countenance cleared immediately into suavity and good-humor--he
smiled, but he bowed, and looked with great graciousness upon the two
girls. He could see at a glance how pretty and graceful was this
addition to the household of Melmar--and Oswald Huntley was a
dilettanti. He liked a pretty person as well as a pretty picture. He
begged to know how they could find any pleasure out of doors in this
ferocious climate on such a day--and with a glance, and a shrug and a
shiver at the frosty languor of the diminished Kelpie, drew his cloak
close round him, and turned towards the house, whither, Joanna eagerly,
and Desirée with great reluctance and annoyance, the girls were
constrained to follow. He walked between them, inclining his ear to his
sister, who overwhelmed him with questions, yet addressing now and then
a courteous observation to Desirée which gradually mollified that little
lady. He was a great deal more agreeable than Melmar or than
Patricia--he was something new in the house at least--he knew her own
country, perhaps her own very town and house. Desirée became much
softened as they drew near the house, and she found herself able to
withdraw and leave the brother and sister together. To know the real
value of a new face and a new voice, one needs to live for a long winter
in a country house like Melmar, whose hospitality was not very greatly
prized in the country-side. Desirée had quite got over her anger by the
time she reached her own apartment. She made rather a pretty toilet for
the evening, and was pleased, in spite of herself, that there would be
some one else to talk to besides Melmar, and Aunt Jean and Joanna. The
whole house, indeed, was moved with excitement. A dark Italian servant,
whom he had brought with him, was regulating with a thermometer, to the
dismay and wonder of all the maids, the temperature of Mr. Oswald’s
room, where these unscientific functionaries had put on a great,
uncomfortable fire, piled half-way up the chimney. Patricia had entered
among them to peer over her brother’s locked trunks, and see if there
was any thing discoverable by curiosity. Mrs. Huntley was getting up in
haste to see her son, and even Aunt Jean trotted up and down stairs on
her nimble little feet, on errands of investigation and assistance. It
made no small commotion in the house when the only son of Melmar came
home.

Oswald Huntley, but for his dark hair, was like his sister Patricia. He
was tall, but of a delicate form, and had small features, and a faint
color which said little for his strength. When they all met together in
the evening, the traveled son was by much the most elegant member of the
household circle. His dainty, varnished boots, his delicate white hands,
his fine embroidered linen, filled Joanna with a sentiment which was
half impatience and half admiration. Joanna would rather have had Oswald
despise these delicacies of apparel, which did not suit with her ideal
of manhood. At the same time she had never seen any thing like them, and
they dazzled her. As for Patricia, she looked from her brother to
herself, and  red with envious displeasure. One of Oswald’s rings
would have purchased every thing in the shape of jewelry which Patricia
ever had or hoped for--his valet, his dress, his “style,” at once awed
and irritated his unfortunate sister. If papa could afford to keep
Oswald thus, was it not a disgrace to confine “me!” within the tedious
bounds of this country house? Poor little Patricia could have cried with
envy and self pity.

In the meantime, Oswald made himself very agreeable, and drew the little
party together as they seldom were drawn. His mother sat up in her easy
chair, looking almost pretty with her pink cheeks, and for once without
any invalid accompaniments of barley-water or cut oranges. Melmar
himself staid in the drawing-room all the evening, displaying his
satisfaction by some occasional rude fun with Joanna and jokes at
“Mademoiselle,” and listening to his son very complacently though he
seldom addressed him. Aunt Jean had drawn her chair close to Mrs.
Huntley, and seriously inclined, not her ear only, which was but a dull
medium, but the lively black eyes with which she seemed almost able to
hear as well as see. Joanna hung upon her mother’s footstool, eagerly
and perpetually asking questions. The only one out of the family group
was Desirée, who kept apart, working at her embroidery, but whom Mr.
Oswald by no means neglected. The new comer had good taste. He thought
the little table which held the governess’s thread and scissors, and
little crimson work-bag, and the little chair close by, where the little
governess herself sat working with her pretty white hands, her graceful
girlish dress, her dark hair in which the light shone, and her
well-formed, well-poised head bending over her embroidery, was the
prettiest bit in the room, and well worth looking at. He looked at it
accordingly as he talked, distributing his favors impartially among the
family, and wondered a little who this little girl might be, and what
brought her here. When Oswald stooped forward to say something politely
to the little Frenchwoman--when he brought a flush to her cheek by
addressing her in her own language, though Desirée’s own good sense
taught her that it was best to reply in English--when he pronounced
himself a connoisseur in embroidery, and inspected the pretty work in
her hands--his ailing mother and his deaf aunt, as well as the spiteful
Patricia, simultaneously perceived something alarming in the courtesy.
Desirée was very young and very pretty, and Oswald was capricious,
fanciful, and the heir of Melmar. What if the little governess, sixteen
years old, should captivate the son, who was only five-and-twenty? The
fear sprang from one feminine mind to another, of all save Joanna, who
had already given her thoughts to this catastrophe as the most desirable
thing in the world. Oswald’s experience and knowledge of the world, on
which he prided himself, went for nothing in the estimation of his
female relatives. They thought Desirée, at sixteen, more than a match
for him, as they would have thought any other girl in the same
circumstances. People say women have no _esprit du corps_, but they
certainly have the most perfect contempt for any man’s powers of
resistance before the imagined wiles and fascinations of “a designing
girl.” These ladies almost gave Oswald over, as he stood, graceful and
self-satisfied, in the midst of them--a monarch of all he
surveyed--extending his lordly courtesies to the poor little governess.
Had he but known! but he did not know any thing about it, and said to
himself compassionately, “Poor little thing--how pretty she is!--what
could bring her here?” as he threw himself back upon the pillow in that
room of which Antonio had regulated the temperature, and thought no more
about Desirée; whereas poor little Desirée, charmed with the new voice,
and the new grace, and the unusual kindness, dreamed of him all night.




CHAPTER XLV.


“Am I to understand that our title is somehow endangered? I do not quite
comprehend your last letter,” said Oswald, addressing his father
somewhat haughtily. They were in Melmar’s study, where everybody went to
discuss this business, and where the son sat daintily upon a chair which
he had selected from the others for his own use, leaning the points of
his elbows upon the table, and looking elaborately uncomfortable--so
much so, that some faint idea that this study, after all, could not be a
very pleasant apartment, entered, for the first time, the mind of
Melmar.

“Come nearer to the fire, Oswald,” said Mr. Huntley, suddenly. He was
really solicitous about the health and comfort of his son.

“Thank you; I can scarcely breathe _here_,” said the young man,
ungratefully. “Was I right, sir, in supposing _that_ to be your reason
for writing me such a letter as your last?”

“You were right in supposing that I wanted to see you,” said the father,
with some natural displeasure. “You live a fine life in foreign parts,
my lad; you’ve little to put you about; but what could you do for
yourself if the funds at Melmar were to fail?”

“Really the idea is disagreeable,” said Oswald, laughing. “I had rather
not take it into consideration, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“If it were so,” said Melmar, with a little bitterness, “which of you
could I depend upon--which of you would stretch out a helping hand to
help me?”

“To help _you_? Upon my word, sir, I begin to think you must be in
earnest,” said his son. “What does this mean? Is there really any other
claimant for the estate? Have we any real grounds for fear? Were not you
the heir-at-law?”

“I was the heir-at-law; and there is no other claimant,” said Melmar,
dryly; “but there is a certain person in existence, Oswald Huntley, who,
if she but turns up soon enough--and there’s two or three years yet to
come and go upon--can turn both you and me to the door, and ruin us with
arrears of income to the boot.”

Oswald grew rather pale. “Is this a new discovery?” he said, “or why did
I, who am, next to yourself, the person most concerned, never hear of it
before?”

“You were a boy, in the first place; and in the second place, a
head-strong, self-willed lad; nextly, delicate,” said Melmar, still with
a little sarcasm; “and it remains to be seen yet whether you’re a
reasonable man.”

“Oh, hang reason!” cried the young man with excitement. “I understand
all that. What’s to be done? that seems the main thing. Who is this
certain person that has a better right to Melmar than we?”

“Tell me first what you would do if you knew,” said Mr. Huntley, bending
his red gray eyes intently upon his son. Melmar knew that there were
generous young fools in the world, who would not hesitate to throw
fortune and living to the winds for the sake of something called honor
and justice. He had but little acquaintance with his son; he did not
know what stuff Oswald was made of. He thought it just possible that the
spirit of such Quixotes might animate this elegant mass of good breeding
and dillettanteism; for which reason he sat watching under his grizzled,
bushy eyebrows, with the intensest looks of those fiery eyes.

“Pshaw! do? You don’t suppose _I_ would be likely to yield to any one
without a struggle. Who is it?” said Oswald; “let me know plainly what
you mean.”

“It is the late Me’mar’s daughter and only child; a woman with children;
a woman in poor circumstances,” replied Mr. Huntley, still with a
certain dry sarcasm in his voice.

“But she was disinherited?” said Oswald, eagerly.

“Her father left a will in her favor,” said Melmar, “reinstating her
fully in her natural rights; that will is in the hands of our enemies,
whom the old fool left his heirs, failing his daughter: she and her
children, and these young men, are ready to pounce upon the estate.”

“But she was lost--did I not hear so?” cried Oswald, rising from his
chair in overpowering excitement.

“Ay!” said his father, “but I know where she is.”

“In Heaven’s name, what do you mean?” cried the unfortunate young man;
“is it to bewilder and overwhelm me that you tell me all this? Have we
no chance? Are we mere impostors? Is all this certain and beyond
dispute? What do you mean?”

“It is all certain,” said Melmar, steadily; “her right is
unquestionable; she has heirs of her own blood, and I know where she
is--she can turn us out of house and home to-morrow--she can make me a
poor writer, ruined past redemption, and you a useless fine gentleman,
fit for nothing in this world that I know of, and your sisters
servant-maids, for I don’t know what else they’re good for. All this she
can do, Oswald Huntley, and more than this, the moment she makes her
appearance--but she is as ignorant as you were half an hour ago. _I_
know--but _she_ does not know.”

What will Oswald do?--he is pacing up and down the little study, no
longer elegant, and calm, and self-possessed; the faint color on his
cheeks grows crimson--the veins swell upon his forehead--a profuse cold
moisture comes upon his face. Pacing about the narrow space of the
study, thrusting the line of chairs out of his way, clenching his
delicate hand involuntarily in the tumult of his thoughts, there could
not have been a greater contrast than between Oswald at his entrance and
Oswald now. His father sat and watched him under his bushy
eyebrows--watched him with a steady, fixed, fascinating gaze, which the
young man’s firmness was not able to withstand. He burst out into
uneasy, troubled exclamations.

“What are we to do, then?--must we go and seek her out, and humble
ourselves before her?--must we bring her back in triumph to her
inheritance? It is the only thing we can do with honor. What _are_ we to
do?”

“Remember, Oswald,” said Melmar, significantly, “_she_ does not know.”

The young man threw himself into a chair, hid his face in his hands, and
broke into low, muttered groans of vexation and despair, which sounded
like curses, and perhaps were so. Then he turned towards his father
violently and suddenly, with again that angry question, “What are we to
do?”

He was not without honor, he was not without conscience; if he had there
could have been little occasion for that burning color, or for the cold
beads of moisture on his forehead. The sudden and startling intelligence
had bewildered him for a moment--then he had undergone a fierce but
brief struggle, and then Oswald Huntley sank into his chair, and into
the hands of his father, with that melancholy confession of his
weakness--a question when the matter was unquestionable--“what are we to
do?”

“Nothing,” said Melmar, grimly, regarding his son with a triumph which,
perhaps, after all, had a little contempt in it. This, then, was all the
advantage which his refinement and fine-gentlemanliness gave him--a
moment’s miserable, weakly hesitation, nothing more nor better. The
father, with his coarse methods of thought, and unscrupulous motives,
would not have hesitated: yet not a whit stronger, as it appeared, was
the honor or courage of the son.

“Nothing!” said Melmar; “simply to keep quiet, and be prepared against
emergencies, and if possible to stave off every proceeding for a few
years more. They have a clever lad of a lawyer in their interests, which
is against us, but you may trust me to keep him back if it is possible;
a few years and we are safe--I ask nothing but time.”

“And nothing from me?” said Oswald, rising with a sullen shame upon his
face, which his father did not quite comprehend. The young man felt that
he had no longer any standing ground of superiority; he was humiliated,
abased, cast down. Such advantage as there was in moral obtuseness and
strength of purpose lay altogether with Melmar. His son only knew
better, without any will to do better. He was degraded in his own eyes,
and angrily conscious of it, and a sullen resentment rose within him. If
he could do nothing, why tell him of this to give him a guilty
consciousness of the false position which he had not courage enough to
abandon? Why drag him down from his airy height of mannerly and educated
elevation to prove him clay as mean as the parent whom he despised? It
gave an additional pang to the overthrow. There was nothing to be
done--the misery was inflicted for nothing--only as a warning to guard
against an emergency which, perhaps, had it come unguarded, might not
have stripped Oswald so bare of self-esteem as this.

“We’ll see that,” said Melmar, slowly; then he rose and went to the door
and investigated the passages. No one was there. When he returned, he
said something in his son’s ear, which once more brought a flush of
uneasy shame to his cheek. The father made his suggestion lightly, with
a chuckle. The young man heard it in silence, with an indescribable look
of self-humiliation. Then they separated--Oswald to hurry out, with his
cloak round him, to the grounds where he could be alone--Melmar to bite
his pen in the study, and muse over his victory. What would come of
it?--his own ingenuity and that last suggestion which he had breathed in
Oswald’s ear. Surely these were more than enough to baffle the foolish
young Livingstones of Norlaw, and even their youthful agent? He thought
so. The old Aberdonian felt secure in his own skill and cunning--he had
no longer the opposition of his son to dread. What should he fear?

In the meantime, Patricia, who had seen her brother leave the house in
great haste, like a man too late for an appointment, and who had spied a
light little figure crossing the bridge over Tyne before, wrapped
herself up, though it was a very cold day, and set out also to see what
she could discover. Malice and curiosity together did more to keep her
warm than the cloak and fur tippet, yet she almost repented when she
found herself among the frozen, snow-sprinkled trees, with the faint
tinkle of the Kelpie striking sharp, yet drowsy, like a little stream of
metal through the frost-bound stillness, and no one visible on the path,
where now and then her foot slid upon a treacherous bit of ice, inlaid
in the hard brown soil. Could they have left the grounds of Melmar?
Where could they have gone? If they had not met, one of them must
certainly have appeared by this time; and Patricia still pushed on,
though her cheeks were blue and her fingers red with cold, and though
the intensity of the chill made her faint, and pierced to her poor
little heart. At last she was rewarded by hearing voices before her.
Yes, there they were. Desirée standing in the path, looking up at the
trunk of a tree, from which Oswald was stripping a bit of velvet moss,
with bells of a little white fungus, delicate and pure as flowers,
growing upon it. As Patricia came up, her brother presented the prize to
the little Frenchwoman, almost with the air of a lover. The breast of
his poor little sister swelled with bitterness, dislike, and malicious
triumph. She had found them out.

“Oswald! I thought you were quite afraid of taking cold,” cried
Patricia--“dear me, who could have supposed that you would have been in
the woods on such a day! I am sure Mademoiselle ought to be very
proud--you would not have come for any one else in the house.”

“I am extremely indebted to you, Patricia, for letting Mademoiselle know
so much,” said Oswald. “One does not like to proclaim one’s own merits.
Was it on Mademoiselle’s account that you, too, undertook the walk, poor
child? Come, I will help you home.”

“Oh, I’m sure she does not want _me_!” exclaimed Patricia, ready to cry
in the height of her triumph. “Papa and you are much more in her way
than I am--as long as she can make you gentlemen do what she pleases,
she does not care any thing about your sisters. Oh, I know all about
it!--I know papa is infatuated about her, and so are you, and she is a
designing little creature, and does not care a bit for Joanna. You may
say what you please, but I know I am right, and I will not stand it
longer--I shall go this very moment and tell mamma!”

“Mademoiselle Huntley shall not have that trouble,” cried Desirée, who
had been standing by utterly amazed for the first few moments, with
cheeks alternately burning red and snow pale. “_I_ shall tell Mrs.
Huntley; it concerns me most of any one. Mademoiselle may be unkind if
she pleases--I am used to that--but no one shall dare,” cried the little
heroine, stamping her little foot, and clapping her hands in sudden
passion, “to say insulting words to me! I thank you, Monsieur
Oswald--but it is for me, it is not for you--let me pass--I shall tell
Mrs. Huntley this moment, and I shall go!”

“Patricia is a little fool, Mademoiselle,” said Oswald, vainly
endeavoring to divert the seriousness of the incident. “Nay--come, we
shall all go together--but every person of sense in the house will be
deeply grieved if you take this absurdity to heart. Forget it; she shall
beg your pardon. Patricia!” exclaimed the young man, in a deep undertone
of passion, “you ridiculous little idiot! do you know what you have
done?”

“Oh, I know! I’ve told the truth--I am too clear-sighted!” sobbed
Patricia, “_I_ can not help seeing that both papa and you are crazy
about the governess--it will break poor mamma’s heart!”

Though Desirée was much wounded, ashamed, and angry, furious rather, to
tell the truth, she could not resist the ludicrous whimper of this mock
sorrow. She laughed scornfully.

“I shall go by myself, please,” she said, springing through a by-way,
where Oswald was not agile enough or sufficiently acquainted with to
follow. “I shall tell Mrs. Huntley, instantly, and she will not break
her heart--but no one in the world shall dare to speak thus again to
me.”

So Desirée disappeared like a bird among the close network of frozen
branches, and Patricia and her brother, admirable good friends, as one
might suppose, together pursued their way home.




CHAPTER XLVI.


A series of violent scenes in Melmar made a fitting climax to this
little episode in the wood. Desirée demanded an interview with Mrs.
Huntley, and obtained it in that lady’s chamber, which interview was not
over when Patricia appeared, and shortly after Melmar himself, and
Oswald, who sent both the governess and her enemy away, and had a
private conference with the unfortunate invalid, who was not unwilling
to take up her daughter’s suspicions, and condemn the little Frenchwoman
as a designing girl, with schemes against the peace of the heir of
Melmar. Somehow or other, the father and son together managed to still
these suspicions, or to give them another direction; for, on the
conclusion of this conference Desirée was sent for again to Mrs.
Huntley’s room; the little governess in the meanwhile had been busy in
her own, putting her little possessions together with angry and
mortified haste, her heart swelling high with a tumult of wounded pride
and indignant feeling. Desirée obeyed with great stateliness. She found
the mother of the house lying back upon her pillow, with a flush upon
her pink cheeks, and angry tears gleaming in her weak blue eyes. Mrs.
Huntley tried to be dignified, too, and to tell Desirée that she was
perfectly satisfied, and there was not the slightest imputation upon
her, the governess; but finding this not answer at all, and that the
governess still stood in offended state, like a little queen before her,
Mrs. Huntley took to her natural weapons--broke down, cried, and
bemoaned herself over the trouble she had with her family, and the
vexation which Patricia gave her. “And now, when I had just hoped to see
Joanna improving, then comes this disturbance in the house, and my poor
nerves are shattered to pieces, and my head like to burst, and you are
going away!” sobbed Mrs. Huntley. Desirée was moved to compassion; she
went up to the invalid, and arranged her cushions for her, and trusted
all this annoyance would not make her ill. Mrs. Huntley seized the
opportunity; she went on bewailing herself, which was a natural and
congenial amusement, and she made Desirée various half-sincere
compliments, with a skill which no one could have suspected her of
possessing. The conclusion was, that the little Frenchwoman yielded, and
gave up her determination to leave Melmar; instead of that she came and
sat by Mrs. Huntley all day, reading to her, while Patricia was shut
out; and a storm raged below over that exasperated and unhappy little
girl. The next day there was calm weather. Patricia was confined to her
room with a headache. Joanna was energetically affectionate to her
governess, and Mrs. Huntley came down stairs on purpose to make Desirée
feel comfortable. Poor little Desirée, who was so young, and in reality
so simple-hearted, forgot all her resentment. Her heart was touched by
the kindness which they all seemed so anxious to show her--impulses of
affectionate response rose within herself--she read to Mrs. Huntley, she
put her netting in order for her, she arranged her footstool as the
invalid declared no one had ever been able to do it before; and Desirée
blushed and went shyly away to her embroidery, when Oswald came to sit
by his mother’s little table. Oswald was very animated, and anxious to
please everybody; he found a new story which nobody had seen, and read
it aloud to them while the ladies worked. The day was quite an Elysian
day after the troubles of the previous one; and Desirée, with a little
tumult in her heart, found herself more warmly established in Melmar
that evening than she had ever been hitherto; she did not quite
comprehend it, to tell the truth. All this generous desire to make her
comfortable, though the girl accepted it without question as real, and
never suspected deceit in it, was, notwithstanding, alien to the
character of the household, and puzzled her unconsciously. But Desirée
did not inquire with herself what was the cause of it. If some fairy
voice whispered a reason in her ear, she blushed and tried to forget it
again. No, his father and mother were proud of Oswald; they were
ambitious for him; they would think such a fancy the height of folly,
could it even be possible that he entertained it. No, no, no! it could
not be that.

Yet, next day, when Joanna and Desirée went out to walk, Oswald
encountered them before they had gone far, and seemed greatly pleased to
constitute himself the escort of his sister and her governess. If he
talked to Joanna sometimes, it was to Desirée that his looks, his cares,
his undertones of half-confidential conversation were addressed. He
persuaded them out of “the grounds” to the sunny country road leading to
Kirkbride, where the sun shone warmer; but where all the country might
have seen him stooping to the low stature of his sister’s governess.
Desirée was only sixteen; she was not wise and fortified against the
blandishments of man;--she yielded with a natural pleasure to the
natural pride and shy delight of her position. She had never seen any
one so agreeable; she had never received before that unspoken but
intoxicating homage of the young man to the young woman, which puts an
end to all secondary differences and degrees. She went forward with a
natural expansion at her heart--a natural brightening in her eyes--a
natural radiance of young life and beauty in her face. She could not
help it. It was the first tender touch of a new sunshine upon her heart.

A woman stood by herself upon the road before them, looking out, as it
seemed, for the entrance of a little by-way, which ran through the
Melmar woods, and near the house, an immemorial road which no proprietor
could shut up. Desirée observed Joanna run up to this bystander;
observed the quick, lively, middle-aged features, the pleasant
complexion and bright eyes, which turned for a moment to observe the
party; yet would have passed on without further notice but for hearing
the name of Cosmo. Cosmo! could this be his mother? Desirée had her own
reasons for desiring to see the Mistress; she went forward with her
lively French self-possession to ask if it was Mrs. Livingstone, and if
she might thank her for her son’s kindness in Edinburgh. The Mistress
looked at her keenly, and she looked at the Mistress; both the glances
were significant, and meant more than a common meeting; half a dozen
words, graceful and proper on Desirée’s part, and rather abrupt and
embarrassed on that of the Mistress, passed between them, and then they
went upon their several ways. The result of the interview, for the
little Frenchwoman, was a bright and vivid little mental photograph of
the Mistress, very clear in external features, and as entirely wrong in
its guess at character as was to be expected from the long and far
difference between the little portrait-painter and her subject. Desirée
broke through her own pleasant maze of fancy for the moment to make her
rapid notes upon the Mistress. She was more interested in her than there
seemed any reason for; certainly much more than simply as the mother of
Cosmo, whom she had seen but twice in her life, and was by no means
concerned about.

“Who is that?” asked Oswald, when the Mistress had passed.

“It is Mrs. Livingstone, of Norlaw,” said Joanna, “Cosmo’s mother;
Desirée knows; but I wonder if she’s going up to Melmar? I think I’ll
run and ask her. I don’t know why she should go to Melmar, for I’m sure
she ought to hate papa.”

“That will do; I am not particularly curious--you need not trouble
yourself to ask on my account,” said Oswald, putting out his hand to
stop Joanna, “and, pray, how does Mademoiselle Desirée know? I should
not suppose that ruddy countrywoman was much like a friend of _yours_.”

“I have never seen her before,” said Desirée.

“Ah, I might have trusted that to your own good taste,” said Oswald,
with a bow and a smile; “but you must pardon me for feeling that such a
person was not an acquaintance meet for you.”

Desirée made no answer. The look and the smile made her poor little
heart beat--she did not ask herself why he was so interested in her
friendships and acquaintances. She accepted it with downcast eyes and a
sweet, rising color; he _did_ concern himself about all the matters
belonging to her--that was enough.

“Mrs. Livingstone of Norlaw is not a common person--she is as good as we
are, if she is not as rich,” cried Joanna. “_I_ like her! I would rather
see her than a dozen fine ladies, and, Desirée, you ought to stand up
for her, too. If you think Norlaw is no’ as good as Melmar, it’s because
you’re not of this country and don’t know--that is all.”

Desirée, looking up, saw to her surprise an angry and menacing look upon
the face, which a minute ago had been bent with such gallant courtesy
towards her own, and which was now directed to Joanna.

“Norlaw may be as good as Melmar,” said the gentle Oswald, with an
emphasis which for the moment made him like Patricia; “but that is no
reason why one of that family should be a worthy acquaintance for
Mademoiselle Desirée, who is not much like you, Joanna, nor your
friends.”

Joanna loved Desirée with all her heart--but this was going too far even
for her patience; she ended the conversation abruptly by a bewildered
stare in her brother’s face, and a burst of tears.

“Desirée used to be fond of me, till you came--_she_ was my only
friend!” cried poor Joanna, whom Desirée’s kiss scarcely succeeded in
comforting. She did not know what to do, this poor little governess--it
seemed fated that Oswald’s attentions were to embroil her with all his
family--yet somehow one can not resent with very stern virtue the
injustice which shows particular favor to one’s self. Desirée still
thought it was very kind of Oswald Huntley to concern himself that she
should have proper friends.




CHAPTER XLVII.


Katie Logan was by herself in the manse parlor. Though the room was as
bright as ever, the little housekeeper did not look so bright. She was
darning the little stockings which filled the basket, but she was not
singing her quiet song, nor thinking pleasant thoughts. Katie’s eyes
were red, and her cheeks pale. She was beginning to go, dark and
blindfold, into a future which it broke her heart to think of. Those
children of the manse, what would become of them when they had neither
guide nor guardian but Katie? This was question enough to oppress the
elder sister, if every thing else had not been swallowed in the thought
of her father’s growing weakness, of the pallor and the trembling which
every one observed, and of the exhaustion of old age into which the
active minister visibly began to fall. Katie was full of these thoughts
when she heard some one come to the door; she went immediately to look
at herself in the mirror over the mantel-piece, and to do her best to
look like her wont; but it was alike a wonder and a relief to Katie,
looking round, to find the Mistress, a most unusual visitor, entering
the room.

The Mistress was not much in the custom of paying visits--it embarrassed
her a little when she did so, unless she had some distinct errand. She
dropped into a chair near the door, and put back her vail upon her
bonnet, and looked at Katie with a little air of fatigue and past
excitement.

“No, no, thank ye,” said the Mistress, “I’ve been walking, I’ll no’ come
to the fire; it’s cold, but it’s a fine day outbye--I just thought I
would take a walk up by Whittock’s Gate.”

“Were you at Mrs. Blackadder’s?” asked Katie.

“No,” said the Mistress, with a slightly confused expression. “I was no
place, but just taking a walk. What for should I no’ walk for pleasure
as well as my neighbors? but indeed, to tell the truth, I had a very
foolish reason, Katie,” she added, after a little interval. “I’ve never
had rest in my mind after what you said of the French lassie at Melmar.
I did ken of a person that was lost and married long ago, and might just
as well be in France as in ony other place. She was no friend of mine,
but I kent of her, and I’ve seen her picture and heard what like she
was, so, as I could not help but turn it over in my mind, I just took
the gate up there, a wise errand, to see if I could get a look of this
bairn. I meant to go through the Melmar footpath, though that house and
them that belong to it are little pleasure to me; but as guid fortune
was, I met them in the road.”

“Joanna and the governess?” said Katie.

“And mair than them,” answered the Mistress. “A lad that I would take
to be the son that’s been so long away. An antic with a muckle cloak,
and a black beard, and a’ the looks of a French fiddler; but Joanna
called him by his name, so he bid to be her brother; and either he’s
deluding the other bit lassie, or she’s ensnaring him.”

Katie smiled, so faintly and unlike herself, that it was not difficult
to perceive how little her heart was open to amusement. The Mistress,
however, who apprehended every thing after her own fashion, took even
this faint expression of mirth a little amiss.

“You needna laugh--there’s little laughing matter in it,” said the
Mistress. “If a bairn of mine were to be led away after ony such
fashion, do ye think _I_ could find in my heart to smile? Na, they’re
nae friends of mine, the present family of Melmar; but I canna see a son
of a decent house maybe beguiled by an artfu’ foreign woman, however
great an antic he may be himself, and take ony pleasure in it. It’s aye
sure to be a grief to them he belongs to, and maybe a destruction to the
lad a’ his life.”

“But Desirée is only sixteen, and Oswald Huntley, if it was Oswald--is a
very great deal older--he should be able to take care of himself,” said
Katie, repeating the offense. “You saw her, then? Do you think she was
like the lady you knew?”

“I never said I knew any lady,” said the Mistress, testily. “I kent of
one that was lost mony a year ago. Na, na, this is naebody belonging to
_her_. She was a fair, soft woman that, with blue e’en, and taller than
me; but this is a bit elf of a thing, dark and little. I canna tell what
put it into my head for a moment, for Melmar was the last house in the
world to look for a bairn’s of _hers_ in; but folk canna help nonsense
thoughts. Cosmo, you see, he’s a very fanciful laddie, as indeed is no’
to be wondered at, and he wrote me hame word about somebody he had
seen--and then hearing of this bairn asking questions about me; but it
was just havers, as I kent from the first--she is no more like her than
she’s like you or me. But I’m sorry about the lad. Naething but ill and
mischief can come of the like, so far as I’ve seen. If he’s deluding the
bairn, he’s a villain, Katie, and if she’s leading him on--and ane can
never tell what snares are in these Frenchwomen from their very
cradle--I’m sorry for Melmar and his wife, though they’re no friends to
me.”

“I think Oswald Huntley ought to be very well able to take care of
himself,” repeated Katie--“and to know French ways, too. I like Desirée,
and I don’t like him. I hope she will not have any thing to say to him.
When is Cosmo coming home?”

The Mistress, however, looked a little troubled about Cosmo. She did not
answer readily.

“He’s a fanciful bairn,” she said, half fondly, half angrily--“as indeed
what else can you expect? He’s ane of the real auld Livingstones of
Norlaw--aye some grand wild plan in his head for other folks, and no’
that care for himself that might be meet. He would have been a knight
like what used to be in the ballads in my young days, if he hadna lived
ower late for that.”

Pausing here, the Mistress closed her lips with a certain emphatic
movement, as though she had nothing more to say upon this subject, and
was about proceeding to some other, when they were both startled by the
noisy opening of a door, which Katie knew to be the study. The sound was
that of some feeble hand, vainly attempting to turn the handle, and
shaking the whole door with the effort which was at last successful;
then came a strange, incoherent, half-pronounced “Katie!” Katie flew to
the door, with a face like death itself. The Mistress rose and waited,
breathless, yet too conscious of her own impatience of intrusion to
follow. Then a heavy, slow fall, as of some one whose limbs failed under
him, a cry from Katie, and the sudden terrified scream of one of the
maids from the kitchen moved the Mistress beyond all thoughts but those
of help. She ran into the little hall of the manse, throwing her cloak
off her shoulders with an involuntary promise that she could not leave
this house to-day. There she saw a melancholy sight, the minister, with
a gray ashen paleness upon his face, lying on the threshold of his
study, not insensible, but powerless, moving with a dreadful impotence
those poor, pale, trembling lips, from which no sound would come. Katie
knelt beside him, supporting his head, almost as pallid as he,
aggravating, unawares, the conscious agony of his helplessness by
anxious, tender questions, imploring him to speak to her--while the maid
stood behind, wringing her hands, crying, and asking whether she should
bring water? whether she should get some wine? what she should do?

“Flee this moment,” cried the Mistress, pushing this latter to the door,
“and bring in the first man you can meet to carry him to his bed--that’s
what _you’re_ to do--and, Katie, Katie, whisht, dinna vex him--he canna
speak to you. Keep up your heart--we’ll get him to his bed, and we’ll
get the doctor, and he’ll come round.”

Katie lifted up her woeful white face to the Mistress--the poor girl did
not say a word--did not even utter a sob or shed a tear. Her eyes said
only, “it has come! it has come!” The blow which she had been trembling
for had fallen at last. And the Mistress, who was not given to tokens of
affection, stooped down in the deep pity of her heart and kissed Katie’s
forehead. There was nothing to be said. This sudden calamity was beyond
the reach of speech.

They got the sufferer conveyed to his room and laid on his bed a few
minutes after, and within a very short time the only medical aid which
the neighborhood afforded was by the bed-side. But medical aid could do
little for the minister--he was old, and had long been growing feeble,
and nobody wondered to hear that he had suffered “a stroke,” and that
there was very, very little hope of his recovery. The old people in
Kirkbride clustered together, speaking of it with that strange, calm
curiosity of age, which always seems rather to congratulate itself that
some one else is the present sufferer, yet is never without the
consciousness that itself may be the next. A profound sympathy,
reverence, and compassion was among all the villagers--passive towards
Dr. Logan, active to Katie, the guardian and mother of the little
household of orphans who soon were to have no other guardian. They said
to each other, “God help her!” in her youth and loneliness--what was she
to do?

As for the Mistress, she was not one of those benevolent neighbors who
share in the vigils of every sick room, and have a natural faculty for
nursing. To her own concentrated individual temper, the presence of
strangers in any household calamity was so distasteful, that she could
scarcely imagine it acceptable to others; and she never offered services
which she would not have accepted. But there was neither offer nor
acceptance now. The Mistress sent word at once to Marget, took off her
bonnet, and without a word to any one, took her place in the afflicted
house. Even now she was but little in the sick chamber.

“If he kens her, he’ll like best to see Katie--and if he doesna ken her,
it’ll aye be a comfort to herself,” said the Mistress. “I’ll take the
charge of every thing else--- but his ain bairn’s place is there.”

“I only fear,” said the doctor, “that the poor thing will wear herself
out.”

“She’s young, and she’s a good bairn,” said the Mistress, “and she’ll
have but one father, if she lives ever so long a life. I’m no feared.
No, doctor, dinna hinder Katie; if she wears herself out, poor bairn,
she’ll have plenty of sad time to rest in. Na, I dinna grudge her
watching; she doesna feel it now, and it’ll be a comfort to her a’ her
life.”

It was, perhaps, a new doctrine to the country doctor; but he
acknowledged the truth of it, and the Mistress, wise in this, left Katie
to that mournful, silent, sick room, where the patient lay motionless
and passive in the torpor of paralysis, perhaps conscious, it was hard
to know--but unable to communicate a word of all that might be in his
heart. The children below, hushed and terror-stricken, had never been
under such strict rule, yet never had known so many indulgences all
their lives before; and the Mistress took _her_ night’s rest upon the
sofa, wrapped in a shawl and morning gown, ready to start in an instant,
should she be called; but she did not disturb the vigil of the daughter
by her father’s bed-side.

And Katie, absorbed by her own sorrows, hardly noticed--hardly
knew--this characteristic delicacy. She sat watching him with an
observation so intent, that she almost fancied she could see his breath,
watching the dull, gray eyes, half closed and lustreless, to note if,
perhaps, a wandering light of expression might kindle in them; watching
the nerveless, impotent hands, if perhaps, motion might be restored to
them; watching the lips, lest they should move, and she might lose the
chance of guessing at some word. There was something terrible,
fascinating, unearthly in the task; he was there upon the bed, and yet
he was not there, confined in a dismal speechless prison, to which
perhaps--they could not tell--their own words and movements might
penetrate, but out of which nothing could come. His daughter sat beside
him, looking forward with awe into the blank solemnity of the future. No
mother, no father; only the little dependent children, who had but
herself to look to. She went over and over again the very same ground.
Orphans, and desolate; her thoughts stopped there, and went no further.
She could not help contemplating the terrible necessity before her; but
she could not make plans while her father lay there, speechless yet
breathing, in her sight.

She was sitting thus, the fourth day after his seizure, gazing at him;
the room was very still--the blinds were down--a little fire burned
cheerfully in the grate--her eyes were fixed upon his eyes, watching
them, and as she watched it seemed to Katie that her father’s look
turned towards a narrow, ruddy, golden arrow of sunshine, which streamed
in at the side of the window. She rose hastily and went up to the bed.
Then his lips began to move--she bent down breathlessly; God help
her!--he spoke, and she was close to his faltering lips; but all Katie’s
strained and agonizing senses could not tell a word of what he meant to
say. What matter? His eyes were not on her, but on the sunshine--the
gleam of God’s boundless light coming in to the chamber of
mortality--his thoughts were not with her in her sore youthful trouble.
He was as calm as an angel, lying there in the death of his old age and
the chill of his faculties. But she--she was young, she was desolate,
she was his child--her heart cried out in intolerable anguish, and would
not be satisfied. Could it be possible? Would he pass away with those
moving lips, with that faint movement of a smile, and she never know
what he meant to say?

With the restlessness of extreme and almost unbearable suffering, Katie
rang her bell--the doctor had desired to know whenever his patient
showed any signs of returning consciousness. Perhaps the sound came to
the ear of the dying man, perhaps only his thoughts changed. But when
she turned again, Katie found the reverent infantine calm gone from his
face, and his eyes bent upon her with a terrible struggle after speech,
which wrung her very heart. She cried aloud involuntarily with an echo
of the agony upon that ashen face. The sound of her voice, of her hasty
step and of the bell, brought the Mistress to the room, and the
terrified servants to the door. Katie did not see the Mistress; she saw
nothing in the world but the pitiful struggle of those palsied lips to
speak to her, the anguish of uncommunicable love in those opened eyes.
She bent over him, putting her very ear to his month; when that failed,
she tried, Heaven help her, to look as if she had heard him, to comfort
his heart in his dying. The old man’s eyes opened wider, dilating with
the last effort--at last came a burst of incoherent sound--he had
spoken--what was it? The Mistress turned her head away and bowed down
upon her knees at the door, with an involuntary awe and pity, too deep
for any expression, but Katie cried, “Yes, father, yes, I hear you!”
with a cry that might have rent the skies. If she did, Heaven knows; she
thought so--and so did he; the effort relaxed--the eyes closed--and word
of human language the good minister uttered never more.

It was all over. Four little orphans sat below crying under their
breath, unaware of what was their calamity--and Katie Logan above, at
nineteen, desolate and unsupported, and with more cares than a mother,
stood alone upon the threshold of the world.




CHAPTER XLVIII.


While the peaceful Manse of Kirkbride was turned into a house of
mourning, a strange little drama was being played at Melmar. The
household there seemed gradually clustering, a strange chorus of
observation, round Oswald and Desirée, the two principal figures in the
scene. Melmar himself watched the little Frenchwoman with cat-like
stealthiness, concentrating his regard upon her. Aunt Jean sat in her
chair apart, troubled and unenlightened, perpetually calling Desirée to
her, and inventing excuses to draw her out of the presence and society
of Oswald. Patricia, when she was present in the family circle, directed
a spiteful watch upon the two, with the vigilance of an ill-fairy; while
even Joanna, a little shocked and startled by the diversion of Desirée’s
regard from herself, a result which she had not quite looked for,
behaved very much like a jealous lover to the poor little governess,
tormenting her by alternate sulks and violent outbursts of fondness.
Oswald himself, though he was always at her side, though he gave her a
quite undue share of his time and attention, and made quite fantastical
exhibitions of devotion, was a lover, if lover he was, ill at ease,
capricious and overstrained. He knew her pretty, he felt that she was
full of mind, and spirit, and intelligence--but still she was a little
girl to Oswald Huntley, who was not old enough to find in her fresh
youth the charm which has subdued so many a man of the world--nor young
enough to meet her on equal ground. Why he sought her at all, unless he
had really “fallen in love” with her, it seemed very hard to find out.
Aunt Jean, looking on with her sharp black eyes, could only shake her
head in silent wonder, and doubt, and discomfort. He could have “nae
motive"--but Aunt Jean thought that lovers looked differently in her
days, and a vague suspicion disturbed the mind of the old woman. She
used to call Desirée to her own side, to keep her there talking of her
embroidery, or telling her old stories of which the girl began to tire,
being occupied by other thoughts. The hero himself was unaware of, and
totally indifferent to, Aunt Jean’s scrutiny, but Melmar himself
sometimes turned his fiery eyes to her corner, with a glance of doubt
and apprehension. She was the only spectator in the house of whose
inspection Mr. Huntley was at all afraid.

Meanwhile Desirée herself lived in a dream--the first dream of extreme
youth, of a tender heart and gentle imagination, brought for the first
time into personal contact with the grand enchantress and Armida of
life. Desirée was not learned in the looks of lover’s eyes--she had no
“experience,” poor child! to guide her in this early experiment and
trembling delight of unfamiliar emotion. She knew she was poor, young,
solitary, Joanna’s little French governess, yet that it was she, the
little dependent, whom Joanna’s graceful brother, everybody else’s
superior, singled out for his regard. Her humble little heart responded
with all a young girl’s natural flutter of pride, of gratitude, of
exquisite and tremulous pleasure. There could be but one reason in the
world to induce this unaccustomed homage and devotion. She could not
believe that Oswald admired or found any thing remarkable in herself,
only--strange mystery, not to be thought of save with the blush of that
profoundest humility which is born of affection!--only, by some
unexplainable, unbelievable wonder, it must be love. Desirée did not
enter into any questions on the subject; she yielded to the
fascination; it made her proud, it made her humble, it filled her with
the tenderest gratitude, it subdued her little fiery spirit like a
spell. She was very, very young, she knew nothing of life or of the
world, she lived in a little world of her own, where this grand figure
was the centre of every thing; and it was a grand figure in the dewy,
tender light of Desirée’s young eyes--in the perfect globe of Desirée’s
maiden fancy--but it was not Oswald Huntley, deeply though the poor
child believed it was.

So they all grouped around her, watching her, some of them perplexed,
some of them scheming; and Oswald played his part, sometimes loathing
it, but, for the most part, finding it quite agreeable to his vanity,
while poor little Desirée went on in her dream, thinking she had fallen
upon a charmed life, seeing every thing through the glamour in her own
eyes, believing every thing was true.

“Dr. Logan is ill,” said Melmar, on one of those fairy days, when they
all met round the table at lunch; all but Mrs. Huntley, who had relapsed
into her quiescent invalidism, and was made comfortable in her own
room--“very ill--so ill that I may as well mind my promise to old Gordon
of Ruchlaw for his minister-son.”

“Oh, papa, don’t be so hard-hearted!” cried Joanna--“he’ll maybe get
better yet. He’s no’ such a very old man, and he preached last
Sabbath-day. Oh, poor Katie! but he has not been a week ill yet, and
he’ll get better again.”

“Who is Gordon of Ruchlaw? and who is his minister-son?” asked Oswald.

Joanna made a volunteer answer.

“A nasty, snuffy, disagreeable man!” cried Joanna, with enthusiasm. “I
am sure I would never enter the church again if he was there; but it’s
very cruel and hard-hearted, and just like papa, to speak of him. Dr.
Logan is only ill. I would break my heart if I thought he was going to
die.”

“Gordon would be a very useful man to us,” said Melmar--“a great deal
more so than Logan ever was. I mean to write and ask him here, now that
his time’s coming. Be quiet, Joan, and let’s have no more nonsense. I’ll
tell Auntie Jean. If you play your cards well, you might have a good
chance of him yourself, you monkey, and with Aunt Jean’s fortune to
furnish the manse, you might do worse. Ha! ha! I wonder what Patricia
would say?”

“Patricia would say it was quite good enough for Joanna,” said that
amiable young lady. “A poor Scotch minister! I am thankful _I_ never had
such low tastes. Nobody would speak of such a thing to me.”

“Don’t quarrel about the new man till the old man is dead, at least,”
said Oswald, laughing. “Mademoiselle Desirée quite agrees with me, I
know. She is shocked to hear all this. Is it not so?”

“I thought of his daughter,” said Desirée, who was very much shocked,
and had tears in her eyes. “She will be an orphan now.”

“And Desirée was very fond of Katie,” said Joanna, looking half
jealously, half fondly at the little governess, “and so am I too; and
she has all the little ones to take care of. Oh, papa, I’ll never
believe that Dr. Logan is going to die.”

“Fhat is all this, Joan? tell me,” cried Aunt Jean, who had already
shown signs of curiosity and impatience. This was the signal for
breaking up the party. When Joanna put her lips close to the old woman’s
ear, and began to shout the required information, the others dispersed
rapidly. Desirée went to her room to get her cloak and bonnet. It was
her hour for walking with her pupil, and that walk was now an enchanted
progress, a fairy road, leading ever further and further into her fairy
land. As for Oswald, he stood in the window, looking out and shrugging
his shoulders at the cold. His blood was not warm enough to bear the
chill of the northern wind; the sight of the frost-bound paths and
whitened branches made him shiver before he went out. He meant to attend
the girls in their walk, in spite of his shiver; but the frosty path by
the side of Tyne was not a fairy road to him.

Joanna had left them on some erratic expedition among the trees; they
were alone together, Desirée walking by Oswald’s side, very quiet and
silent, with her eyes cast down, and a tremor at her heart. The poor
little girl did not expect any thing particular, for they were often
enough together thus--still she became silent in spite of herself, as
she wandered on in her dream by Oswald’s side, and, in spite of herself,
cast down her eyes, and felt the color wavering on her cheek. Perhaps he
saw it and was pleased--he liked such moments well enough. They had all
the amusing, tantalizing, dramatic pleasure of moments which might be
turned to admirable account, but never were so--moments full of
expectation and possibility, of which nothing ever came.

At this particular moment Oswald was, as it happened, very tenderly
gracious to Desirée. He was asking about her family, or rather her
mother, whom, it appeared, he had heard of without hearing of any other
relative, and Desirée, in answering, spoke of Marie--who was Marie? “Did
I never, then, tell you of my sister?” said Desirée with a blush and
smile.

“Your sister?--I was not aware--” stammered Oswald--and he looked at her
so closely and coldly, and with such a scrutinizing air of suspicion,
that Desirée stared at him, in return, with amazement and
half-terror--“Perhaps Mademoiselle Desirée has brothers also,” he said,
in the same tone, still looking at her keenly. What if she had brothers?
Would it have been wrong?

“No,” said Desirée, quietly. The poor child was subdued by the dread of
having wounded him. She thought it grieved him to have so little of her
confidence; it could be nothing but that which made him look so cold and
speak so harsh.

“Then Mademoiselle Marie is a little sister--a child?” said Oswald,
softening slightly.

Desirée clapped her hands and laughed with sudden glee. “Oh, no, no,”
she cried merrily, “she is my elder sister; she is not even
Mademoiselle; she is married! Poor Marie!” added the little girl,
softly. “I wish she were here.”

And for the moment Desirée did not see the look that regarded her. When
she lifted her eyes again, she started and could not comprehend the
change. Oswald’s lip was blue with cold, with dismay, with contempt,
with a mixture of feelings which his companion had no clue to, and could
not understand. “Mademoiselle has, no doubt, a number of little nephews
and nieces,” he said, with a sinister curl of that blue lip over his
white teeth. The look struck to Desirée’s heart with a pang of amazement
and terror--what did it mean?

“Oh, no, no, not any,” she said, with a deep blush. She was startled and
disturbed out of all her maiden fancies--was it a nervous, jealous
irritation, to find that she had friends more than he knew. It was very
strange--and when Joanna rejoined them shortly, Oswald made an excuse
for himself, and left them. The girls followed him slowly, after a time,
to the house; Desirée could scarcely answer Joanna’s questions, or
appear interested in her pupil’s interests. What was the reason? She
bewildered her poor little head asking this question; but no answer
came.




CHAPTER XLIX.


It was a kind of twilight in Aunt Jean’s room, though it was still
daylight out of doors; the sun, as it drew to the west, threw a ruddy
glory upon this side of the house of Melmar, and coming in at Aunt
Jean’s window, had thrown its full force upon the fire-place half an
hour ago. It was the old lady’s belief that the sun put out the fire, so
she had drawn down her blind, and the warm, domestic glimmer of the
firelight played upon the high bed, with those heavy, dull, moreen
curtains, which defied all brightness--upon the brighter toilet-glass on
the table, and upon the old lofty chest of drawers, polished and black
like ebony, which stood at the further side of the room. Aunt Jean
herself sat in a high-backed arm-chair by the fire, where she loved to
sit--and Desirée and Joanna, kneeling on the rug before her, were
turning out the contents of a great basket, full of such scraps as Aunt
Jean loved to accumulate, and girls have pleasure in turning over; there
were bits of silk, bits of splendid old ribbon, long enough for “bows,”
in some cases, but in some only fit for pin-cushions and needle-books of
unbelievable splendor, bits of lace, bits of old-fashioned embroidery,
bits of almost every costly material belonging to a lady’s wardrobe. It
was a pretty scene; the basket on the rug, with its many- stores,
the pretty little figure of Desirée, with the fire-light shining in her
hair, the less graceful form of Joanna, which still was youthful, and
honest, and eager, as she knelt opposite the fire, which flushed her
face and reddened her hair at its will; and calmly seated in her
elbow-chair, overseeing all, Aunt Jean, with her white neckerchief
pinned over her gown, and her white apron warm in the fire-light, and
the broad black ribbon bound round her old-fashioned cap, and the
vivacious sparkle of those black eyes, which were not “hard of hearing,”
though their owner was. The pale daylight came in behind the old lady,
faintly through the misty atmosphere and the closed blind--but the
ruddier domestic light within went flickering and sparkling over the
high-canopied bed, the old-fashioned furniture, and the group by the
hearth. When Joanna went away, the picture was even improved perhaps,
for Desirée still knelt half meditatively by the fire, turning over with
one hand the things in the basket, listening to what the old lady said,
and wistfully pondering upon her own thoughts.

“Some o’ the things were here when I came,” said Aunt Jean. “I was not
so auld then as I am now--I laid them a’ away, Deseery, for fear the
real daughter of the house should ever come hame; for this present
Melmar wasna heir by nature. If right had been right, there’s ane before
him in the succession to this house; but, poor misguided thing, fha was
gaun to seek her; but I laid by the bits o’ things; I thought they might
’mind her some time of the days o’ her youth.”

“Who was she?” said Desirée, softly: she did not ask so as to be heard
by her companion--she did not ask as if she cared for an answer--she
said it quietly, in a half whisper to herself; yet Aunt Jean heard
Desirée’s question with her lively eyes, which were fixed upon the
girl’s pretty figure, half kneeling, half reclining at her feet.

“Fha was she? She was the daughter of this house,” said Aunt Jean, “and
fhat’s mair, the mistress of this house, Deseery, if she should ever
come hame.”

The little Frenchwoman looked up sharply, keenly, with an alarmed
expression on her face. She did not ask any further question, but she
met Aunt Jean’s black eyes with eyes still brighter in their youthful
lustre, yet dimmed with an indefinable cloud of suspicion and fear.

What was in the old woman’s mind it was hard to tell. Whether she had
any definite ground to go upon, or merely proceeded on an impulse of the
vague anxiety in her mind.

“’Deed, ay,” said Aunt Jean, nodding her lively little head, “I’ll tell
you a’ her story, my dear, and you can tell me fhat you think when I’m
done. She was the only bairn and heir of that silly auld man that was
Laird of Melmar before this present lad, my niece’s good-man--she was
very bonnie, and muckle thought of, and she married and ran away, and
that’s all the folk ken of her, Deseery; but whisht, bairn, and I’ll
tell you mair.”

Desirée had sunk lower on her knees, leaning back, with her head turned
anxiously towards the story-teller. She was an interested listener at
least.

“It’s aye thought she was disinherited,” said Aunt Jean, “and at the
first, when she ran away, maybe so she was--but nature will speak. When
this silly auld man, as I’m saying, died, he left a will setting up her
rights, and left it in the hand of another silly haverel of a man, that
was a bit sma’ laird at Norlaw. This man was to be heir himsel’ if she
never was found--but he had a sma’ spirit, Deseery, and he never could
find her. She’s never been found from that day to this--but it’ll be a
sore day for Melmar when she comes hame.”

“Why?” said Desirée, somewhat sharply and shrilly, with a voice which
reached the old woman’s ears, distant though they were.

“Fhat for?--because they’ll have to give up all the lands, and all the
siller, and all their living into her hand--that’s fhat for,” said Aunt
Jean; “nae person in this country-side can tell if she’s living, or
fhaur she is; she’s been away langer than you’ve been in this life,
Deseery; and Melmar, the present laird--I canna blame him, he was the
next of the blood after hersel’, nae doubt he thought she was dead and
gane, as a’body else did when he took possession--and his heart rose
doubtless against the other person that was left heir, failing her,
being neither a Huntley nor nigh in blood; but if aught should befall to
bring her hame--ay, Deseery, it would be a sore day for this family, and
every person in this house.”

“Why?” asked Desirée again with a tremble--this time her voice did not
reach the ear of Aunt Jean, but her troubled, downcast eyes, her
disturbed look, touched the old woman’s heart.

“If it was a story I was telling out of a book,” said the old woman, “I
would say they were a’ in misery at keeping her out of her rights--or
that the man was a villain that held her place--but you’re no’ to think
that. I dinna doubt he heeds his ain business mair than he heeds
her--it’s but natural, fha would do otherwise? and then he takes comfort
to his mind that she must be dead, or she would have turned up before
now, and then he thinks upon his ain family, and considers his first
duty is for them; and then--’deed ay, my dear, memory fails--I wouldna
say but he often forgets that there was another person in the world but
himsel’ that had a right--that’s nature, Deseery, just nature--folk
learn to think the way it’s their profit to think, and believe what
suits them best, and they’re sincere, too, except maybe just at the
first; you may not think it, being a bairn, yet it’s true.”

“If it were me,” cried Desirée, with a vehemence which penetrated Aunt
Jean’s infirmity, “the money would burn me, would scorch me, till I
could give it back to the true heir!”

“Ay,” said Aunt Jean, shaking her head, “I wouldna say I could be easy
in my mind mysel’--but it’s wonderful how weel the like of you and me,
my dear, can settle ither folks’ concerns. Melmar, you see, he’s no’ an
ill man, he thinks otherwise, and I daur to say he’s begun to forget a’
about her, or just thinks she’s dead and gane, as most folk think. I
canna help aye an expectation to see her back before I die mysel’--but
that’s no’ to say Me’mar has ony thought of the kind. Folk that are away
for twenty years, and never seen, nor heard tell o’, canna expect to be
minded upon and waited upon. It’s very like, upon the whole, that she
_is_ dead many a year syne--and fhat for should Melmar, that kens
nothing about her--aye except that she could take his living away frae
him--fhat for, I’m asking, should Melmar gang away upon his travels
looking for her, like yon other haverel of a man?”

“What other man?” cried Desirée, eagerly.

“Oh, just Norlaw; he was aince a wooer himsel’, poor haverel,” said Aunt
Jean; “he gaed roaming about a’ the world, seeking after her, leaving
his wife and his bonny bairns at hame; but fhat good did he?--just
nought ava, Deseery, except waste his ain time, and lose his siller, and
gie his wife a sair heart. She’s made muckle mischief in her day, this
Mary of Melmar. They say she was very bonnie, though I never saw her
mysel’; and fhat for, think you, should the present lad, that kens
nought about her, take up his staff and gang traveling the world to
seek for her? Oh, fie, nae!--he has mair duty to his ain house and
bairns, than to a strange woman that he kens not where to seek, and that
would make him a beggar if he found her; I canna see she deserves ony
such thing at his hand.”

At first Desirée did not answer a word; her cheek was burning hot with
excitement, her face shadowed with an angry cloud, her little hand
clenched involuntarily, her brow knitted. She was thinking of something
private to herself, which roused a passion of resentment within the
breast of the girl. At last she started up and came close to Aunt Jean.

“But if you knew that she was living, and where she was?” cried Desirée,
“what would you do?”

“Me! Oh, my bairn!” cried Aunt Jean, in sudden dismay. “Me! what have I
to do with their concerns?--me! it’s nane of my business. The Lord keep
that and a’ evil out of a poor auld woman’s knowledge. I havena eaten
his bread--I never would be beholden that far to any mortal--but I’ve
sitten under his roof tree for mony a year. Me!--if I heard a word of
such awfu’ news, I would gang furth of this door this moment, that I
mightna be a traitor in the man’s very dwelling;--eh, the Lord help me,
the thought’s dreadful! for I behoved to let her ken!”

“And what if he knew?” asked Desirée, in a sharp whisper, gazing into
Aunt Jean’s eyes with a look that pierced like an arrow. The old woman’s
look fell, but it was not to escape this gaze of inquiry.

“The Lord help him!” said Aunt Jean, pitifully. “I can but hope he would
do right, Deseery; but human nature’s frail; I canna tell.”

This reply softened for the moment the vehement, angry look of the
little Frenchwoman. She came again to kneel before the fire, and was
silent, thinking her own thoughts; then another and a new fancy seemed
to rise like a mist over her face. She looked up dismayed to Aunt Jean,
with an unexplained and terrified question, which the old woman could
not interpret. Then she tried to command herself with an evident
effort--but it was useless. She sprang up, and came close, with a
shivering chill upon her, to put her lips to Aunt Jean’s ear.

“Do they all know of this story?” she asked, in the low, sharp voice,
strangely intent and passionate, which even deafness itself could not
refuse to hear; and Desirée fixed her gaze upon the old woman’s eyes,
holding her fast with an eager scrutiny, as though she trembled to be
put off with any thing less than the truth.

“Hout, no!” said Aunt Jean, disturbed a little, yet confident; “fha
would tell the like of Patricia or Joan--fuils and bairns! and as for
the like of my niece herself, she’s muckle taken up with her ain bits of
troubles; she might hear of it at the time, but she would forget the day
after; naebody minds but me.”

“And--Oswald?” cried Desirée, sharply, once again.

“Eh! ay--I wasna thinking upon him; he’s the heir,” said Aunt Jean,
turning her eyes sharp and keen upon her young questioner. “I canna tell
fhat for you ask me so earnest, bairn; you maunna think mair of Oswald
Huntley than becomes baith him and you; ay, doubtless, you’re right,
whatever learned ye--_he_ kens.”

Desirée did not say another word, but she clasped her hands tightly
together, sprang out of the room with the pace of a deer, and before
Aunt Jean had roused herself from her amazement, had thrown her cloak
over her shoulders, and rushed out into the gathering night.




CHAPTER L.


The sunset glory of this January evening still shone over the tops of
the trees upon the high bank of Tyne, leaving a red illumination among
the winter clouds; but low upon the path the evening was gathering
darkly and chilly, settling down upon the ice-cold branches, which
pricked the hasty passenger like thorns, in the black dryness of the
frost. The Kelpie itself was scarcely recognizable in the torpid and
tiny stream which trickled down its little ravine; only the sharp sound
of its monotone in the tingling air made you aware of its vicinity; and
frozen Tyne no longer added his voice to make the silence musical. The
silence was dry, hard, and harsh, the sounds were shrill, the air cut
like a knife. No creature that could find shelter was out of doors; yet
poor little Desirée, vehement, willful, and passionate, with her cloak
over her shoulders, and her pretty uncovered head, exposed to all the
chill of the unkindly air, went rushing out, with her light foot and
little fairy figure, straight as an arrow over Tyne, and came up the
frozen path, into the wood and the night.

One side of her face was still scorched and crimsoned with the fervor of
Aunt Jean’s fire, before which she had been bending; the other, in
comparison, was already chilled and white. She ran along up the icy,
chilly road, with the night-wind cutting her delicate little ears, and
her rapid footsteps sliding upon the knots of roots in the path,
straight up to that height where the Kelpie trickled, and the last red
cloud melted into gray behind the trees. The dubious, failing twilight
was wan among those branches, where never a bird stirred. There was not
a sound of life anywhere, save in the metallic tinkle of that drowsing
waterfall. Desirée rushed through the silence and the darkness, and
threw herself down upon the hard path, on one of the hard knots, beneath
a tree. She was not sorry, in her passionate _abandon_, to feel the air
prick her cheek, to see the darkness closing over her, to know that the
cold pierced to the bone, and that she was almost unprotected from its
rigor. All this desolation was in keeping with the tumult which moved
the willful heart of the little stranger. The prick of the wind
neutralized somewhat the fiery prick in her heart.

Poor little Desirée! She had, indeed, enough to think of--from her
morning’s flush of happiness and dawning love to plunge into a cold
profound of treachery, deceit, and falsehood like that which gaped at
her feet, ready to swallow her up. For the moment it was anger alone,
passionate and vivid as her nature, which burned within her. She, frank,
child-like, and unsuspicious, had been degraded by a pretended love, a
false friendship; had been warned, “for her own sake,” by the
treacherous host whom Desirée hated, in her passion, to say nothing of
her descent or of her mother. For her own sake! and not a syllable of
acknowledgment to confess how well the wily schemer knew who that mother
was. Yet, alas, if that had but been all!--if there had been nothing to
do but to confound Melmar, to renounce Joanna, to shake off the dust of
her indignant feet against the house where they would have kept her in
bondage!--if that had but been all! But Desirée clenched her little
hands with a pang of angry and bitter resentment far more overpowering.
To think that she should have been insulted with a false love! Bitter
shame, quick, passionate anger, even the impulse of revenge, came like a
flood over the breast of the girl, as she sat shivering with cold and
passion at the foot of that tree, with the dark winter night closing
over her. She could almost fancy she saw the curl of Oswald Huntley’s
lip as he heard to-day, on this very spot, that she had a sister; she
could almost suppose, if he stood there now, that she had both strength
and will to thrust him through the rustling bushes down to the
crackling, frozen Tyne, to sink like a stone beneath the ice, which was
less treacherous than himself. Poor little desolate, solitary stranger!
She sat in the darkness and the cold, with the tears freezing in her
eyes, but passion burning in her heart; she cried aloud in the silence
with an irrepressible cry of fury and anguish--the voice of a young
savage, the uncontrolled, unrestrained, absolute violence of a child.
She was half crazed with the sudden downfall, the sudden injury; she
could think of nothing but the sin that had been done against her, the
vengeance, sharp and sudden as her passion, which she would inflict if
she could.

But as poor little Desirée crouched beneath the tree, not even the
vehemence of her resentment could preserve her from the influences of
Nature. Her little feet seemed frozen to the path; her hands were numb
and powerless, and ice-cold as the frozen water beneath. The chill stole
to her heart with a sickening faintness, then a gradual languor crept
over her passion; by degrees she felt nothing but the cold, the sharp
rustle of the branches, the chill gloom of the night, the harsh wind
that blew in at her uncovered ears. Her hair fell down on her neck, and
her fingers were too powerless to put it up. She had no heart to return
to the house from which she fled in so violent an excess of insulted
feeling--it almost seemed that she had no place in the world to go to,
poor child, but this desolate winter woodland, which in its summer
beauty she had associated with her mother. The night blinded her, and so
did the growing sickness of extreme cold. Another moment, and poor
little Desirée sank against the tree, passionless and fainting--the
last thought in her heart a low outcry for her mother, who was hundreds
of miles away and could not hear.

The cold was still growing sharper and keener as the last glimmer of
daylight faded out of the skies. She might have slid down into the
frozen Tyne, as she had imagined her enemy, or she might have perished
in her favorite path, in the cold which was as sharp as an Arctic frost.
But Providence does not desert those poor, suffering, wicked children
who fly to death’s door at the impulse of passion as Desirée did. A
laborer, hastening home by the footpath through the Melmar woods,
wandered out of his way, by chance, and stumbled over the poor little
figure lying in the path. When the man had got over his first alarm, he
lifted her up and carried her like a child--she was not much more--to
Melmar, where he went to the side door and brought her in among the
servants to that great kitchen, which was the most cheerful apartment in
the house. The maids were kind-hearted, and liked the poor little
governess--they chafed her hands and bathed her feet, and wrapped her in
blankets, and, at last, brought Desirée to her senses. When she came
alive again, the poor, naughty child looked round her bewildered, and
did not know where she was--the place was strange to her--and it looked
so bright and homely that Desirée’s poor little heart was touched by a
vague contrasting sense of misery.

“I should like to go to bed,” she said, sadly, turning her face away
from the light to a kind housemaid, who stood by her, and who could not
tell what ailed “the French miss,” whom all the servants had thought
rather too well-used of late days, and whose look of misery seemed
unaccountable.

“Eh, Missie, but ye maun wait until the fire’s kindled,” said the maid.

Desirée did not want a fire--she had no desire to be comforted and
warmed, and made comfortable--she would almost rather have crept out
again into the cold and the night. Notwithstanding, they carried her up
stairs carefully, liking the stranger all the better for being sad and
in trouble and dependent on them--and undressed her like a child, and
laid her in bed in her little room, warm with firelight, and looking
bright with comfort and kindness. Then the pretty housemaid, whom
Patricia exercised her tempers on, brought Desirée a warm drink and
exhorted her to go to sleep.

“What made ye rin out into the cauld night, Missie, without a thing on
your head,” said Jenny Shaw, compassionately; “but lie still and keep
yoursel’ warm--naebody kens yet but us in the kitchen, or Miss Joan
would be here; but I thought you would like best to be quiet, and it
would do you mair good.”

“Oh, dear Jenny, don’t let any one know--don’t tell them--promise!”
cried Desirée, half starting from her bed.

The maid did not know what to make of it, but she promised, to compose
the poor little sufferer; and so Desirée was left by herself in the
little room, with the warm fire light flickering about the walls, and
her little hands and feet, which had been so cold, burning and prickling
with a feverish heat, her limbs aching, her thoughts wandering, her
heart lost in an ineffable, unspeakable melancholy. She could not return
to her passion, to the bitter hurry and tumult of resentful fancies
which had occupied her out of doors. She lay thinking, trying to think,
vainly endeavoring to confine the wandering crowd of thoughts, which
made her head ache, and which seemed to float over every subject under
heaven. She tried to say her prayers, poor child, but lost them in an
incoherent mist of fancy. She fell asleep, and awoke in a few minutes,
thinking she had slept for hours--worse than that, she fell half asleep
into a painful drowse, where waking thoughts and dreams mingled with and
confused each other. Years of silence and unendurable solitude seemed to
pass over her before Jenny Shaw came up stairs again to ask her how she
was, and the last thing clear in Desirée’s remembrance was that Jenny
promised once more not to tell any one. Desirée did not know that the
good-hearted Jenny half slept, half watched in her room all that night.
The poor child knew nothing next day but that her limbs ached, and her
head burned, and that a dull sense of pain was at her heart. She was
very ill with all her exposure and suffering--she was ill for some time,
making a strange commotion in the house. But no one had any idea of the
cause of her illness, save perhaps Aunt Jean, who did not say a word to
any one, but trotted about the sick-room, “cheering up” the little sick
stranger and finding out her wants with strange skill in spite of her
deafness. All the time of Desirée’s illness Aunt Jean took not the
slightest notice of Oswald Huntley--she was doubly deaf when he
addressed her--she lost even her sharp and lively eyesight when he
encountered her on the stair. Aunt Jean did not know what ailed Desirée
besides the severe cold and fever which the doctor decided on, but the
old woman remembered perfectly at what point of their conversation it
was that the little girl rushed from her side and fled out of the
house--and she guessed at many things with a keen and lively penetration
which came very near the truth. And so Desirée was very ill, and got
slowly well again, bringing with her out of her sickness a thing more
hard to cure than fever--a sick heart.




CHAPTER LI.


While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of
the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo
Livingstone wandered over classic ground with Cameron and his young
pupil, and sent now and then, with modest pride, his contribution to the
_Auld Reekie Magazine_ which had now been afloat for four months, and on
account of which Mr. Todhunter, in his turn, sent remittances--not
remarkably liberal, yet meant to be so, in letters full of a rude, yet
honest, vanity, which impressed the lad with great ideas of what the new
periodical was to do for the literary world. So far, all was
satisfactory with Cosmo. He was very well off also in his companions.
Cameron, who had been shy of undertaking a manner of life which was so
new to him, and whom all the innkeepers had fleeced unmercifully on the
first commencement of their travels--for the very pride which made him
starve in his garret at home, out of everybody’s ken, made him, unused
and inexperienced as he was, a lavish man abroad, where everybody was
looking on, and where the thought of “meanness” troubled his spirit. But
by this time, even Cameron had become used to the life of inns and
journeys, and was no longer awed by the idea that landlords and waiters
would suspect his former poverty, or that his pupil himself might
complain of undue restraint. The said pupil, whose name was Macgregor,
was good-natured and companionable, without being any thing more. They
had been in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Germany. They had all acquired
a traveler’s smattering of all the three tongues familiar on their
road--they had looked at churches, and pictures, and palaces, till those
eyes which were unguided by _Murray_, and knew just as much, or rather
as little, of art, as the bulk of their countrymen at the time, became
fairly bewildered, and no longer recollected which was which. They were
now in France, in chilly February weather, on their way home. Why they
pitched upon this town of St. Ouen for their halt it would have been
hard to explain. It was in Normandy, for one reason, and Cosmo felt
rather romantically interested in that old cradle of the conquering
race. It was within reach of various places, of historic interest.
Finally, young Macgregor had picked up somewhere a little archaic lore,
which was not a common accomplishment in those days, and St. Ouen was
rich in old architecture. Thus they lingered, slow to leave the shores
of France, which was not sunny France in that February, but had been the
beginning and was about to be the end of their pleasant wandering, and
where accordingly they were glad to rest for a little before returning
home.

Though, to tell the truth, Cosmo would a great deal rather have tarried
on the very edge of the country, at the little sea-port which bowed
Jaacob called “Deep,” and where that sentimental giant had seen, or
fancied he had seen, the lady of his imagination. Cosmo had enjoyed his
holiday heartily, as became his temperament and years, yet he was
returning disappointed, and even a little chagrined and ashamed of
himself. He had started with the full and strong idea that what his
father could not succeed in doing, and what advertisements and legal
search had failed in, he himself, by himself, could do--and he was now
going home somewhat enlightened as to this first fallacy of youth. He
had not succeeded, he had not had the merest gleam or prospect of
success; Mary of Melmar was as far off, as totally lost, as though Cosmo
Livingstone, who was to be her knight and champion, had never known the
story of her wrongs, and Time was gliding away with silent, inevitable
rapidity. A year and a half of the precious remaining interval was over.
Huntley had been at his solitary work in Australia for nearly a whole
year, and Huntley’s heart was bent on returning to claim Melmar, if he
could but make money enough to assert his right to it. This Cosmo knew
from his brother’s letters, those to himself, and those which his mother
forwarded to him (in copy). He loved Huntley, but Cosmo thought he loved
honor more--certainly he had more regard for the favorite dream of his
own imagination, which was to restore the lost lady to her inheritance.
But he had not found her, and now he was going home!

However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself
out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be
thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when
they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had
taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself
made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at
St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the _premier étage_ for Cameron and
his pupil, and one _au troisième_ for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room
in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common
stair-case--where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light,
went up the echoing flight above to the _mansarde_, and made jokes,
which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots,
standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though
Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to
the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly
extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden
fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with
the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed,
in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was
very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on
the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent
opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner,
overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off
from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the
sunshine. Up in the corner, _au troisième_, with the next door
neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would
not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s
window--yet it so happened that there was.

Not in the window itself, though that was near enough the clouds--but
Cosmo, looking down, looked, as his good fortune was, into another
window over the way, a pretty second floor, with white curtains and
flowers to garnish it, and sunshine that loved to steal in for half the
day. It was a pretty point of itself, with its little stand of
early-blooming plants, and its white curtains looped up with ribbon. The
plants were but early spring flowers, and did not at all screen the
bright little window which Cosmo looked at, as though it had been a
picture--and even when the evening lamp was lighted, no jealous blinds
were drawn across the cheerful light. The lad was not impertinent nor
curious, yet he sat in the dusk sometimes, looking down as into the
heart of a little sacred picture. There were only two people ever in the
room, and these were ladies, evidently a mother and daughter--one of
them an invalid. That there was a sofa near the fire, on which some one
nearly always lay--that once or twice in the day this recumbent figure
was raised from the couch, and the two together paced slowly through the
room--and that, perhaps once a week, a little carriage came to the door
to take the sick lady out for a drive, was all that Cosmo knew of the
second person in this interesting apartment; and the lad may have been
supposed to be sufficiently disinterested in his curiosity, when we say
that the only face which he ever fully saw at that bright window was the
face of an _old_ lady--a face as old as his mother’s. It was she who
watered the flowers and looped the curtains--it was she who worked
within their slight shadow, always visible--and it was she who,
sometimes looking up and catching his eye, smiled either at or to Cosmo,
causing him to retreat precipitately for the moment, yet leaving no
glance of reproach on his memory to forbid his return.

Beauty is not a common gift; it is especially rare to the fanciful,
young imagination, which is very hard to please, save where it loves.
This old lady, however, old though she was, caught Cosmo’s poetic eye
with all the glamour, somehow tenderer than if she had been young, of
real loveliness. She must have been beautiful in her youth. She had
soft, liquid, dark-blue eyes, full of a motherly and tender light
now-a-days, and beautiful light-brown hair, in which, at this distance,
it was not possible to see the silvery threads. She was tall, with a
natural bend in her still pliant form, which Cosmo could not help
comparing to the bend of a lily. He said to himself, as he sat at his
window, that he had seen many pretty girls, but never any one so
beautiful as this old lady. Her sweet eyes of age captivated Cosmo; he
was never weary of watching her. He could have looked down upon her for
an hour at a time, as she sat working with her white hands, while the
sun shone upon her white lace cap, and on the sweet old cheek, with its
lovely complexion, which was turned to the window; or when she half
disappeared within to minister to the other half visible figure upon the
sofa. Cosmo did not like to tell Cameron of his old lady, but he sat
many an hour by himself in this little room, to the extreme wonderment
of his friend, who supposed it was all for the benefit of the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_, and smiled a little within himself at the lad’s
literary enthusiasm. For his part, Cosmo dreamed about his opposite
neighbors, and made stories for them in his own secret imagination,
wondering if he ever could come to know them, or if he left St. Ouen,
whether they were ever likely to meet again. It certainly did not seem
probable, and there was no photography in those days to enable Cosmo to
take pictures of his beautiful old lady as she sat in the sunshine. He
took them on his own mind instead, and he made them into copies of
verses, which the beautiful old lady never would see, nor if she saw
could read--verses for the _Auld Reekie Magazine_ and the _North British
Courant_.




CHAPTER LII.


The house of Cosmo’s residence was not a great enough house to boast a
regular _portière_ or _concierge_. A little cobbler, who lived in an odd
little ever-open room, on the ground floor, was the real renter and
landlord of the much-divided dwelling place. He and his old wife lived
and labored without change or extension in this one apartment, which
answered for all purposes, and in which Baptiste’s scraps of leather
contended for preëminence of odor over Margot’s _pot au feu_; and it was
here that the lodgers hung up the keys of their respective chambers, and
where the letters and messages of the little community were left.
Cameron and Cosmo were both very friendly with Baptiste. They understood
him but imperfectly, and he, for his part, kept up a continual chuckle
behind his sleeve over the blunders of _les Anglais_. But as they
laughed at each other mutually, both were contented, and kept their
complacence. Cosmo had found out by guess or inference, he could not
quite tell how, that madame in the second floor opposite, with the
invalid daughter, was the owner of Baptiste’s house--a fact which made
the cobbler’s little room very attractive to the lad, as it was easy to
invent questions, direct or indirect, about the beautiful old lady. One
morning, Baptiste looked up, with a smirk, from his board, as he bid
good-day to his young lodger. He had news to tell.

“You shall now have your wish,” said Baptiste; “Madame has been asking
Margot about the young Englishman. Madame takes interest in _les
Anglais_. You shall go to present yourself, and make your homage when
her poor daughter is better. She loves your country. Madame is _Anglais_
herself.”

“Is she?” cried Cosmo, eagerly; “but I am not English, unfortunately,”
added the lad, with a jealous nationality. “I am a Scotsman, Baptiste;
madame will no longer wish to see me.”

“Eh, bien!” said Baptiste, “I know not much of your differences, you
islanders--but madame is _Ecossais_. Yes, I know it. It was so said when
Monsieur Jean brought home his bride. Ah, was she not beautiful? too
pretty for the peace of the young man and the ladies; they made poor
Monsieur Jean jealous, and he took her away.”

“Is that long ago?” asked Cosmo.

“It was the year that Margot’s cousin, Camille, was drawn in the
conscription,” said Baptiste, smiling to himself at his own private
recollections. “It is twenty years since. But madame was lovely! So poor
Monsieur Jean became jealous and carried her away. They went, I know not
where, to the end of the world. In the meantime the old gentleman died.
He was of the old _régime_--he was of good blood--but he was poor--he
had but this house here and that other to leave to his son--fragments,
monsieur, fragments, crumbs out of the hands of the Revolution; and
Monsieur Jean was gay and of a great spirit. He was not a _bourgeois_ to
go to become rich. The money dropped through his fine fingers. He came
back, let me see, but three years ago. He was a gentleman, he was a
noble, with but a thousand francs of rent. He did not do any thing.
Madame sat at the window and worked, with her pretty white hands. Eh,
bien! what shall you say then? she loved him--nothing was hard to her.
He was made to be loved, this poor Monsieur Jean.”

“It is easy to say so--but he could not have deserved such a wife,”
cried Cosmo, with a boy’s indignation; “he ought to have toiled for her
rather, night and day.”

“Ah, monsieur is young,” said Baptiste, with a half satirical smile and
shrug of his stooping French shoulders. “We know better when we have
been married twenty years. Monsieur Jean was not made to toil, neither
night nor day; but he loved madame still, and was jealous of her--he was
a _beau garçon_ himself to his last days.”

“Jealous!” Cosmo was horrified; “you speak very lightly, Baptiste,” said
the boy, angrily, “but that is worst of all--a lady so beautiful, so
good--it is enough to see her to know how good she is--the man deserved
to be shot!”

“Nay, nay,” cried Baptiste, laughing, “monsieur does not understand the
ways of women--it pleased madame--they love to know their power, and to
hear other people know it; all the women are so. Madame loved him all
the better for being a little--just a little afraid of her beauty. But
he did not live long--poor Monsieur Jean!”

“I hope she was very glad to be rid of such a fellow,” cried Cosmo, who
was highly indignant at the deficient husband of his beautiful old lady.
Baptiste rubbed the corner of his own eye rather hard with his knuckle.
The cobbler had a little sentiment lingering in his ancient bosom for
the admired of his youth.

“But he had an air noble--a great spirit,” cried Baptiste. “But madame
loved him! She wept--all St. Ouen wept, monsieur--and he was the last of
an old race. Now there are only the women, and madame herself is a
foreigner and a stranger, and knows not our traditions. Ah, it is a
great change for the house of Roche de St. Martin! If you will believe
it, monsieur, madame herself is called by the common people nothing but
Madame Roche!”

“And that is very sad, Baptiste,” said Cosmo, with a smile. Baptiste
smiled too; the cobbler was not particularly sincere in his
aristocratical regrets, but, with the mingled wit and sentiment of his
country, was sufficiently ready to perceive either the ludicrous or the
pathetic aspect of the decayed family.

Cosmo, however, changed his tone with the most capricious haste. Whether
she was a plain Madame Roche, or a noble lady, it did not matter much to
the stranger. She was at the present moment, in her lovely age and
motherhood, the lady of Cosmo’s dreams, and ridicule could not come near
her. She was sacred to every idea that was most reverential and full of
honor.

“And she is a widow, now, and has a sick daughter to take care of,” said
Cosmo, meditatively; “strange how some people in the world have always
some burden upon them. Had she no one to take care of _her_?”

“If monsieur means _that_,” said Baptiste, with a comical smile, “I do
not doubt madame might have married again.”

“Married--she! how dare you say so, Baptiste,” cried the lad, coloring
high in indignation; “it is profane!--it is sacrilege!--but she has only
this invalid daughter to watch and labor for--nothing more?”

“Yes--it is but a sad life,” said Baptiste; “many a laboring woman, as I
tell Margot, has less to do with her hard fingers than has madame with
those pretty white hands--one and another all her life to lean upon her,
and now, alas! poor Mademoiselle Marie!”

The cobbler looked as if something more than mere compassion for her
illness moved this last exclamation, but Cosmo was not very much
interested about Mademoiselle Marie, who lay always on the sofa, and,
hidden in the dimness of the chamber, looked older than her mother, as
the lad fancied. He went away from Baptiste, however, with his mind very
full of Madame Roche. For a homeborn youth like himself, so long
accustomed to the family roof and his mother’s rule and company, he had
been a long time now totally out of domestic usages and female
society--longer than he had ever been in his life before--he was
flattered to think that his beautiful old lady had noticed him, and an
affectionate chivalrous sentiment touched Cosmo’s mind with unusual
pleasure. He loved to imagine to himself the delicate womanly fireside,
lighted up by a smile which might remind him of his mother’s, yet would
be more refined and captivating than the familiar looks of the Mistress.
He thought of himself as something between a son and a champion,
tenderly reverent and full of affectionate admiration. No idea of
Mademoiselle Marie, nor of any other younger person with whom it might
be possible to fall in love, brought Cosmo’s imagination down to the
vulgar level. He felt as a lad feels who has been brought up under the
shadow of a mother heartily loved and honored. It was still a mother he
was dreaming about; but the delicate old beauty of his old lady added an
indefinable charm to the impulse of affectionate respect which animated
Cosmo. It made him a great deal more pleased and proud to think she had
noticed him, and to anticipate perhaps an invitation to her very
presence. It made him think as much about her to-day as though she had
been a girl, and he her lover. The sentiment warmed the lad’s heart.

He was wandering around the noble old cathedral later in the day, when
the February sun slanted upon all the fretted work of its pinnacles and
niches, and playing in, with an ineffectual effort, was lost in the
glorious gloom of the sculptured porch. Cosmo pleased himself straying
about this place, not that he knew any thing about it, or was at all
enlightened as to its peculiar beauties--but simply because it moved him
with a sense of perfectness and glory, such as, perhaps, few other human
works ever impress so deeply. As he went along, he came suddenly upon
the object of his thoughts. Madame Roche--as Baptiste lamented to think
the common people called her--was in an animated little discussion with
a market-woman, then returning home, about a certain little bundle of
sweet herbs which remained in her almost empty basket. Cosmo hurried
past, shyly afraid to be supposed listening; but he could hear that
there was something said about an omelette for Mademoiselle Marie, which
decided the inclinations of his old lady. He could not help standing at
the corner of the lane to watch her when she had passed. She put the
herbs into her own little light basket, and was moving away towards her
house, when something called her attention behind, and she looked back.
She could not but perceive Cosmo, lingering shy and conscious at the
corner, nor could she but guess that it was herself whom the lad had
been looking at. She smiled to him, and made him a little courtesy, and
waved her hand with a kindly, half-amused gesture of recognition, which
completed the confusion of Cosmo, who had scarcely self-possession
enough left to take off his hat. Then the old lady went on, and he
remained watching her. What a step she had!--so simple, so
straightforward, so unconscious, full of a natural grace which no
training could have given. It occurred to Cosmo for a moment, that he
had seen but one person walk like Madame Roche. Was it a gift universal
to French women?--but then she was not a Frenchwoman--she was
English--nay--hurrah! better still--she was his own countrywoman. Cosmo
had not taken time to think of this last particular before--his eye
brightened with a still more affectionate sentiment, his imagination
quickened with new ground to go upon. He could not help plunging into
the unknown story with quite a zest and fascination. Perhaps the little
romance which the lad wove incontinently, was not far from the truth.
The young heir of the house of Roche de St. Martin, whom the Revolution
left barely “lord of his presence and no land beside"--the stately old
French father, perhaps an _emigré_--the young man wandering about the
free British soil, captivated by the lovely Scottish face, bringing his
bride here, only to carry her away again, a gay, volatile, mercurial,
unreliable Frenchman. Then those wanderings over half the world, those
distresses, and labors, and cares which had not been able to take the
sweet bloom from her cheek, nor that elastic grace from her step--and
now here she was, a poor widow with a sick daughter, bargaining under
the shadow of St. Ouen for the sweet herbs for Marie’s omelette. Cosmo’s
young heart rose against the incongruities of fortune. She who should
have been a fairy princess, with all the world at her feet, how had she
carried that beautiful face unwithered and unfaded, that smile undimmed,
that step unburthened, through all the years and the sorrows of her
heavy life?

It seemed very hard to tell--a wonderful special provision of Providence
to keep fresh the bloom which it had made; and Cosmo went home, thinking
with enthusiasm that perhaps it was wrong to grudge all the poverty and
trials which doubtless she had made beautiful and lighted up by her
presence among them. Cosmo was very near writing some verses on the
subject. It was a very captivating subject to a poet of his years--but
blushed and restrained himself with a truer feeling, and only went to
rest that night wondering how poor Mademoiselle Marie liked her
omelette, and whether Madame Roche, the next time they met, would
recognize him again.




CHAPTER LIII.


The next day Cameron came up stairs to Cosmo’s room, where the lad was
writing by the window, with an open letter in his hand and rather a
comical expression on his face.

“Here is for you, Cosmo,” said Cameron. “The like of me does not
captivate ladies. Macgregor and I must make you our reverence. We never
would have got this invitation but for your sake.”

“What is it?” cried Cosmo, rising eagerly, with a sudden blush, and
already more than guessing, as he leaned forward to see it, what the
communication was. It was a note from Madame Roche, oddly, yet prettily,
worded, with a fragrance of French idiom in its English, which made it
quite captivating to Cosmo, who was highly fantastical, and would not
have been quite contented to find his beautiful old lady writing a
matter-of-fact epistle like other people. It was an invitation to “her
countrymen” to take a cup of tea with her on the following evening. She
had heard from Baptiste and his wife that they were English travelers,
and loved to hear the speech of her own country, though she had grown
unfamiliar with it, and therewith she signed her name, “Mary Roche de
St. Martin,” in a hand which was somewhat stiff and old-fashioned, yet
refined. Cosmo was greatly pleased. His face glowed with surprised
gratification; he was glad to have his old heroine come up so entirely
to his fancy, and delighted to think of seeing and knowing her, close at
hand in her own home.

“You will go?” he said, eagerly.

Cameron laughed--even, if truth must be told, the grave Highlander
blushed a little. He was totally unused to the society of women; he was
a little excited by the idea of making friends in this little foreign
town, and already looked forward with no small amount of expectation to
Madame Roche’s modest tea-drinking. But he did not like to betray his
pleasure; he turned half away, as he answered:--

“For your sake, you know, laddie--Macgregor and I would have had little
chance by ourselves--yes, we’ll go,” and went off to write a very stiff
and elaborate reply, in the concoction of which Cameron found it more
difficult to satisfy himself than he had ever been before all his life.
It was finished, how ever, and dispatched at last. That day ended, the
fated evening came. The Highland student never made nor attempted so
careful a toilette--he, too, had found time to catch a glimpse of
Cosmo’s beautiful old lady, and of the pale, fragile daughter, who went
out once a week to drive in the little carriage. Mademoiselle Marie,
whom Cosmo had scarcely noticed, looked to Cameron like one of the
tender virgin martyrs of those old pictures which had impressed his
uncommunicative imagination without much increasing his knowledge. He
had watched her, half lifted, half helped into the little carriage, with
pity and interest greater than any one knew of. He was a strong man,
unconscious in his own person of what illness was--a reserved, solitary,
self-contained hermit, totally ignorant of womankind, save such as his
old mother in her Highland cottage, or the kind, homely landlady in the
High Street whose anxiety for his comfort sometimes offended him as
curiosity. A lady, young, tender, and gentle--a woman of romance,
appealing unconsciously to all the protecting and supporting impulses of
his manhood, had never once been placed before in Cameron’s way.

So Cosmo and his friend, with an interest and excitement almost equal,
crossed the little street of St. Ouen, towards Madame Roche’s second
floor, in the early darkness of the February night, feeling more
reverence, respect, and enthusiasm than young courtiers going to be
presented to a queen. As for their companion, Cameron’s pupil, he was
the only unconcerned individual of the little party. _He_ was not
unaccustomed to the society of ladies--Madame Roche and her daughter
had no influence on his imagination; he went over the way with the most
entire complacency, and not a romantical sentiment within a hundred
miles of him; he was pleased enough to see new faces, and share his own
agreeable society with some one else for the evening, and he meant to
talk of Italy and pictures and astonish these humble people, by way of
practice when he should reach home--Macgregor was not going to any
enchanted palace--he only picked his steps over the causeway of the
little street of St. Ouen, directing his way towards Madame Roche’s
second floor.

This chamber of audience was a small room, partly French and party
English in its aspect; the gilded clock and mirror over the
mantel-piece--the marble table at the side of the room--the cold
polished edge of floor on which Cameron’s unwary footsteps almost
slid--the pretty lamp on the table, and the white maze of curtains
artistically disposed at the window, and looped with pink ribbons, were
all indigenous to the soil; but the square of thick Turkey carpet--the
little open fire-place, where a wood fire burned and crackled merrily,
the warm- cover on the table, where stood Madame Roche’s pretty
tea equipage, were home-like and “comfortable” as insular heart could
wish to see. On a sofa, drawn close to the fire-place, half sat, half
reclined, the invalid daughter. She was very pale, with eyes so blue,
and mild, and tender, that it was impossible to meet their gentle glance
without a rising sympathy, even though it might be impossible to tell
what that sympathy was for. She was dressed--the young men, of course,
could not tell how--in some invalid dress, so soft, so flowing, so
seemly, that Cameron, who was as ignorant as a savage of all the graces
of the toilette, could not sufficiently admire the perfect gracefulness
of those most delicate womanly robes, which seemed somehow to belong to,
and form part of, this fair, pale, fragile creature, whose whole
existence seemed to be one of patience and suffering. Madame Roche
herself sat on the other side of the table. She was not in widow’s
dress, though she had not been many years a widow. She wore a white lace
cap, with spotless, filmy white ribbons, under which her fair hair,
largely mixed with silver, was braided in soft bands, which had lost
nothing of their gloss or luxuriance. Her dress was black satin, soft
and glistening--there was no color at all about her habiliments,
nothing but soft white and black. She did not look younger than she was,
nor like any thing but herself. She was not a well-preserved, carefully
got-up beauty. There were wrinkles in her sweet old face, as well as
silver in her hair. Notwithstanding, she sat there triumphant, in the
real loveliness which she could not help and for which she made no
effort, with her beautiful blue eyes, her soft lips, her rose cheek,
which through its wrinkles was as sweet and velvety as an infant’s, her
pretty white hands and rosy finger tips. She was not unconscious either
of her rare gift--but bore it with a familiar grace as she had borne it
for fifty years. Madame Roche had been beautiful all her life--she did
not wonder nor feel confused to know that she was beautiful now.

And she received them, singular to say, in a manner which did not in the
slightest degree detract from Cosmo’s poetic admiration, asking familiar
questions about their names, and where, and how, and why they traveled,
with the kindly interest of an old lady, and with the same delightful
junction of English speech with an occasional French idiom, which had
charmed the lad in her note. Cameron dropped shyly into a chair by the
side of the couch, and inclined his ear, with a conscious color on his
face, to the low voice of the invalid, who, though a little surprised,
took polite pains to talk to him, while Cosmo as shyly, but not with
quite so much awkwardness, took up his position by the side of Madame
Roche. She made no remark, except a kindly smile and bow, when she heard
the names of Cameron and Macgregor, but when Cosmo’s was named to her
she turned round to him with a special and particular kindness of
regard.

“Ah! Livingstone!” she said; “I had a friend once called by that name,”
and Madame Roche made a little pause of remembrance, with a smile and a
half sigh, and that look of mingled amusement, complacence, gratitude,
and regret, with which an old lady like herself remembers the name of an
old lover. Then she returned quietly to her tea-making. She did not
notice Macgregor much, save as needful politeness demanded, and she
looked with a little smiling surprise into the shadow where Cameron had
placed himself by the side of her daughter, but her own attention was
principally given to Cosmo, who brightened under it, and grew shyly
confidential, as was to be looked for at his age.

“I have seen you at your window,” said Madame Roche. “I said to Marie,
this young man, so modest, so ingenuous, who steals back when we come to
the window, I think he must be my countryman. I knew it by your
looks--all of you, and this gentleman, your tutor--ah, he is not at all
like a Frenchman. He has a little forest on his cheeks and none on his
chin, my child--that is not like what we see at St. Ouen.”

The old lady’s laugh was so merry that Cosmo could not help joining in
it--“He is my dear friend,” said Cosmo, blushing to find himself use the
adjective, yet using it with shy enthusiasm; “but he is only Macgregor’s
tutor not mine.”

“Indeed! and who then takes care of you?” said the old lady. “Ah, you
are old enough--you can guard yourself--is it so? Yet I know you have a
good mother at home.”

“I have indeed; but, madame, how do you know?” cried Cosmo, in
amazement.

“Because her son’s face tells me so,” cried Madame Roche, with her
beautiful smile. “I know a mother’s son, my child. I know you would not
have looked down upon an old woman and her poor daughter so kindly but
for your mother at home; and your good friend, who goes to talk to my
poor Marie--has he then a sick sister, whom he thinks upon when he sees
my poor wounded dove?”

Cosmo was a little puzzled; he did not know what answer to make--he
could not quite understand, himself, this entirely new aspect of his
friend’s character. “Cameron is a very good fellow,” he said, with
perplexity; but Cosmo did not himself perceive how, to prove himself a
good fellow, it was needful for Cameron to pay such close reverential
regard to the invalid on her sofa, whom he seemed now endeavoring to
amuse by an account of their travels. The reserved and grave Highlander
warmed as he spoke. He was talking of Venice on her seas, and Rome on
her hills, while Marie leaned back on her pillows, with a faint flush
upon her delicate cheek, following his narrative with little assenting
gestures of her thin white hand, and motions of her head. She was not
beautiful like her mother, but she was so fragile, so tender, so
delicate, with a shadowy white vail on her head like a cap, fastened
with a soft pink ribbon, which somehow made her invalid delicacy of
complexion all the more noticeable, that Cosmo could not help smiling
and wondering at the contrast between her and the black, dark,
strong-featured face which bent towards her. No--Cameron had no sick
sister--perhaps the grave undemonstrative student might even have smiled
at Madame Roche’s pretty French sentiment about her wounded dove; yet
Cameron, who knew nothing about women, and had confessed to Cosmo long
ago how little of the universal benevolence of love he found himself
capable of, was exerting himself entirely out of his usual fashion, with
an awkward earnestness of sympathy which touched Cosmo’s heart, for the
amusement of the poor sick Marie.

“We, too, have wandered far, but not where you have been,” said Madame
Roche. “We do not know your beautiful Rome and Venice--we know only the
wilderness, I and my Marie. Ah, you would not suppose it, to find us
safe in St. Ouen; but we have been at--what do you call it?--the other
side of the world--down, down below here, where summer comes at
Christmas--ah! in the Antipodes.”

“And I would we were there now, mamma,” said Marie, with a sigh.

“Ah, my poor child!--yes, we were there, gentlemen,” said Madame Roche.
“We have been great travelers--we have been in America--we were savages
for a long time--we were lost to all the world; no one knew of us--they
forgot me in my country altogether; and even my poor Jean--they scarce
remembered _him_ in St. Ouen. When we came back, we were like people who
drop from the skies. Ah, it was strange! His father and his friends were
dead, and me--it was never but a place of strangers to me--this town. I
have not been in my country--not for twenty years; yet I sometimes think
I should wish to look at it ere I die, but for Marie.”

“But the change might be of use to her health,” said Cameron, eagerly.
“It often is so. Motion, and air, and novelty, of themselves do a great
deal. Should you not try?”

“Ah, I should travel with joy,” said Marie, clasping her white, thin
hand, “but not to Scotland, monsieur. Your fogs and your rains would
steal my little life that I have. I should go to the woods--to the great
plains--to the country that you call savage and a wilderness; and there,
mamma, if you would but go you should no longer have to say--‘Poor
Marie!’”

“And that is--where?” said Cameron, bending forward to the bright sick
eyes, with an extraordinary emotion and earnestness. His look startled
Cosmo. It was as if he had said, “Tell me but where, and I will carry
you away whosoever opposes!” The Highlandman almost turned his back upon
Madame Roche. This sick and weak Marie was oppressed and thwarted in her
fancy. Cameron looked at her in his strong, independent manhood, with an
unspeakable compassion and tenderness. It was in his heart to have
lifted her up with his strong arms and carried her to the place she
longed for, wherever it was--that was the immediate impulse upon him,
and it was so new and so strange that it seemed to refresh and expand
his whole heart. But Marie sank back upon her pillows with a little
movement of fatigue, perhaps of momentary pettishness, and only her
mother spoke in quite another strain.

“You do not know my country, my child,” said Madame Roche. “I have
another little daughter who loves it. Ah, I think some day we shall go
to see the old hills and the old trees; but every one forgets me there,
and to say truth, I also forget,” said the old lady, smiling. “I think I
shall scarcely know my own tongue presently. Will you come and teach me
English over again?”

“You should say Scotch, madam--it is all he knows,” said Cameron,
smiling at Cosmo, to whom she had turned. It was an affectionate look on
both sides, and the boy blushed as he met first the beautiful eyes of
his lovely old lady, and then the kind glance of his friend. He
stammered something about the pleasure of seeing them in Scotland, and
then blushed for the common-place. He was too young to remain unmoved
between two pair of eyes, both turned so kindly upon him.

“He is his mother’s son, is he not?” said Madame Roche, patting Cosmo’s
arm lightly with her pretty fingers. “I knew his name when I was young.
I had a friend called by it. You shall come and talk to me of all you
love--and you and I together, we will persuade Marie.”

Cameron glanced as she spoke, with a keen momentary jealous pang, from
the handsome lad opposite to him, to the invalid on the sofa. But Marie
was older than Cosmo--a whole world apart, out of his way, uninteresting
to the boy as she lay back on her cushions, with her half-shut eyes and
her delicate face. It was strange to think how strong and personal was
this compassion, the growth of a day, in the Highlander’s stern nature
and uncommunicating heart.




CHAPTER LIV.


The days glided on imperceptibly over the travelers as they rested in
St. Ouen--rested longer than there seemed any occasion for resting, and
with so little inducement that Macgregor began to grow restive, and even
Cosmo wondered; Cameron was no longer the same. The fiery heart of the
Highlander was moved within him beyond all power of self-restraint. He
was calm enough externally by the necessity of his nature, which forbade
demonstration--but within, the fountains were breaking, the ice melting,
a fiery and fervid activity taking the place of the long quiescence of
his mind. He neither understood it himself nor reasoned upon it. He
yielded because he could not help yielding. An arbitrary, imperious
impulse, had taken possession of him, strengthening itself in his own
strength and force, and taking into consideration no possibility of
obstacles. His big, strong heart yearned over the tender weakness which
could not help itself--he could think of nothing but of taking it up in
his powerful arms and carrying it into safety. It was the first
awakening of his native passionate fervor--he could acknowledge nothing,
perceive nothing to stand in the way. He was as unreasonable and
arbitrary as the merest boy--more so, indeed, for boys do not know
emotions so stormy and violent. It had an extraordinary effect
altogether upon this grave, reserved, toil-worn man; sometimes he was
capricious, impatient, and fitful in his temper--at other times more
tender than a woman--often half ashamed of himself--and only clear
about one thing as it seemed, which was, that he would not go away.

Another point he was angrily jealous upon; he neither lingered in
Baptiste’s room himself, nor, if he could possibly prevent it, permitted
Cosmo to do so. He would have no questions asked, no gossiping entered
into about Madame Roche. “These ladies should be sacred to us--what they
wish us to know they will tell us,” said Cameron almost haughtily, on
one occasion, when he interrupted a conversation between the cobbler and
his young companion. Cosmo was half disposed to resent at once the
interference, and the supposition that he himself would gossip about any
one, or acquire information by such undignified means--but the serious
feeling in his friend’s face, almost stern in its earnestness, impressed
the lad. It was evidently of tenfold importance to Cameron more than to
himself, much as he was interested in his beautiful old lady. Cosmo
yielded with but little demonstration of impatience and wonder,
half-guessing, yet wholly unable to comprehend what this could mean.

Another day, when Cosmo sat by his little window in the corner, to which
he had been shy of going since he knew Madame Roche, but which had still
a great attraction for him, Cameron entered his room hurriedly and found
him at his post. The Highlandman laid his powerful hand roughly on the
lad’s shoulder, and drew him away, almost in violence. “How dare ye pry
upon them?” he cried, with excitement; “should not their _home_ be
sacred, at least?” Almost a quarrel ensued, for Cosmo struggled in this
strong grasp, and asserted his independence indignantly. He pry upon any
one! The lad was furious at the accusation, and ready to abjure forever
and in a moment the friend who judged him so unjustly; and had it not
been that Cameron himself melted into an incomprehensible caprice of
softness, there must have been an open breach and separation. Even then,
Cosmo could scarcely get over it; he kept away from his window proudly,
was haughty to his companions, passed Baptiste without the civility of a
recognition, and even, in the strength of his ill-used and injured
condition, would not go to see Madame Roche. Out of this sullen fit the
lad was awakened by seeing Cameron secretly selecting with his uncouth
hands such early flowers as were to be found in the market of St. Ouen,
and giving shy, private orders about others, more rare and delicate,
which were to be sent to Madame Roche, in her second floor. Cosmo was
very much perplexed, and did not comprehend it, any more than he
comprehended why it was that the Highlandman, without motive or object,
and in face of the protestations of his pupil, persisted in lingering
here in St. Ouen.

Thus a week passed--a fortnight, and no period was yet assigned for
their stay. They became familiar with that pretty, little, half French,
half English apartment, where poor Marie lay on the sofa, and her mother
sat working by the window. Madame Roche was always kind, and had a smile
for them all. Marie was sometimes vivacious, sometimes fatigued,
sometimes broke forth in little outbursts of opposition to mamma, who
was always tender and forbearing to her! sometimes Cosmo thought the
gentle invalid was even peevish, lying back among her cushions, with her
half closed eyes, taking no notice of any one. This poor Marie was not
only weak in frame--she was unsatisfied, discontented, and had
“something on her mind.” She started into sudden effusions of longing
and weariness, with eager wishes to go away somewhere, and anticipations
of being well, if mamma would but consent, which Madame Roche quietly
evaded, and, during which, Cameron sat gazing at her with all his heart
inquiring in his eyes, where? But Marie showed no inclination to make a
confidant of her mother’s countryman. She listened to him with a languid
interest, gave him a partial attention, smiled faintly when her mother
thanked him for the flowers he sent, but treated all these marks of
Cameron’s “interest” in herself with a fatal and total indifference,
which the Highlandman alone either did not or would not perceive. It did
not even appear that Marie contemplated the possibility of any special
reference to herself in the stranger’s courtesies. She treated them all
alike; paying no great regard to any of the three. She was amiable,
gentle, mild in her manners, and pleasant in her speech; but throughout
all, it was herself and her own burdens, whatever these might be, that
Marie was thinking of. Perhaps they were enough to occupy the poor
tender spirit so closely confined within those four walls. Cosmo did not
know--but _his_ sympathies were with the bright old mother, whose
beautiful eyes always smiled, who seemed to have no time to spend in
impatience or discontent, and whose perpetual care was lavished on her
daughter, whether Marie was pleased or no.

Madame Roche, it would appear, was not too sensitive--her husband, who
loved and was jealous of her, and who died and left her a widow, had not
broken her heart; neither could her child, though she was ill and
peevish, and not very grateful. Perhaps Cosmo would rather, in his
secret spirit, have preferred to see his beautiful old lady, after all
her hard life and troubles, and with still so many cares surrounding
her, show greater symptoms of heart-break, but Madame Roche only went on
working and smiling, and saying kind words, with an invincible patience,
which was the patience of a natural temper, and not of exalted
principle. She could not help her sweetness and affectionate disposition
any more than she could help the beauty which was as faithful to her in
age as in youth. She was kind even to Macgregor, who was totally
indifferent to her kindness; perhaps she might be as kind to the next
wandering party of travelers who were thrown in her way. Cosmo would not
allow himself to believe so, yet, perhaps, it was true.

And in the meantime Macgregor grumbled, and wrote discontented letters
home; and even Cosmo could give no reason to himself for their stay in
St. Ouen, save Madame Roche and her daughter--a reason which he
certainly would not state to the Mistress, who began to be impatient for
her boy’s return. Cameron had no letters to write--no thoughts to
distract him from the one overpowering thought which had taken
possession of his mind. The arbitrary fancy, absolute and not to be
questioned, that his own errand in the little Norman town was to restore
liberty, health, content, and comfort to Marie Roche de St. Martin. He
felt he could do it, as his big heart expanded over Madame Roche’s
“wounded dove"--and Cameron, on the verge of middle age, experienced by
privations and hardships, fell into the very absoluteness of a boy’s
delusion. He did not even take into account that, upon another
capricious, willful, human heart depended all his power over the future
he dreamed of--he only knew that he could do it, and therefore would,
though all the world stood in his way. Alas, poor dreamer! the world
gave itself no trouble whatever on the subject, and had no malice
against him, nor doom of evil for Marie. So he went on with his
imperious determination, little witting of any obstacle before him which
could be still more imperious and absolute than he.




CHAPTER LV.


On one of these days Cameron came again to Cosmo with a letter in his
hand. His look was very different now--it was grave, resolute,
determined, as of a man on the verge of a new life. He showed the letter
to his young companion. It was from Macgregor’s father, intimating his
wish that they should return immediately, and expressing a little
surprise to hear that they should have remained so long in St. Ouen.
Cameron crushed it up in his hand when it was returned to him; a gesture
not so much of anger as of high excitement powerfully restrained.

“We must go, then, I suppose?” said Cosmo; but the lad looked up rather
doubtfully and anxiously in his friend’s face--for Cameron did not look
like a man obedient, who was ready to submit to a recall.

“I will tell you to-morrow,” said the Highlander; “yes--it is time--I
don’t resent what this man says--he is perfectly right. I will go or I
will not go to-morrow.”

What did this mean? for the “will not go” was a great deal more than a
passive negative. It meant--not a continued dallying in St. Ouen--it
meant all that Cameron imagined in that great new torrent of hopes, and
loves, and purposes, which he now called life. Then he went to Cosmo’s
window and glanced out for a moment; then he returned with a deep,
almost angry flush on his face, muttering something about “never
alone,"--then he thrust his arm into Cosmo’s, and bade him come along.

“I am going to see Madame Roche,” cried Cameron, with a certain
recklessness of tone. “Come--you’re always welcome there--and four is
better company than three.”

It was no little risk to put Cosmo’s temper to--but he yielded, though
he was somewhat piqued by the address, feeling an interest and anxiety
for something about to happen, which he could not perfectly define.
They found Madame Roche alone, seated by the window working, as
usual--but Marie was not there. The old lady received them graciously
and kindly, as was her wont. She answered to Cameron’s inquiries that
Marie’s headache was more violent than usual, and that she was lying
down. Poor Marie! she was very delicate; she suffered a great deal, the
dear child!

“Invalids have sometimes a kind of inspiration as to what will cure
them,” said Cameron, steadily fixing his eyes upon Madame Roche, “why
will you not let her go where she wishes to go? Where is it? I should
think the trial worth more than fatigue, more than labor, ay--if man had
more to give--more even than life!”

Madame Roche looked up at him suddenly, with a strange surprise in her
eyes--a painful, anxious, terrified wonder, which was quite inexplicable
to Cosmo.

“Alas, poor child!” she said hurriedly, and in a low voice. “I would
grudge neither fatigue nor labor for my Marie; but it is vain. So you
are going away from St. Ouen? ah, yes, I know--I hear every thing. I saw
your young Monsieur Macgregor half an hour ago; he said letters had
come, and you were going. We shall grieve when you are gone, and we
shall not forget you, neither I nor my Marie.”

Cameron’s face changed; a sweetness, an elevation, a tender emotion,
quite unusual to those strong features, came over them.

“It is by no means certain that I shall go,” he said, in a low and
strangely softened voice.

“Does Mademoiselle Marie know?”

And once more he glanced round the room, and at her vacant sofa, with a
tender reverence and respect which touched Cosmo to the heart, and
filled the lad with understanding at once and pity. Could he suppose
that it was hearing of this that aggravated Marie’s headache? could he
delude himself with the thought that she was moved by the prospect of
his departure? Poor Cameron! Madame Roche was looking at him too with a
strange anxiety, trying to read his softened and eloquent face. The old
lady paused with an embarrassed and hesitating perplexity, looking from
Cosmo to Cameron, from Cameron back again to Cosmo. The lad thought she
asked an explanation from him with her eyes, but Cosmo had no
explanation to give.

“My friend,” said Madame Roche, at last, trying to recover her smile,
but speaking with an evident distress which she endeavored in vain to
conceal--“you must not say _Mademoiselle_ Marie. The people do so, for
they have known her as a girl; but they all know her story, poor child!
I fancied you must have heard it from Baptiste or Margot, who love to
talk. Ah! have they been so prudent?--it is strange.”

Madame Roche paused again, as if to take breath. Cosmo instinctively and
silently moved his chair further away, and only looked on, a
deeply-moved spectator, not an actor in the scene. Cameron did not say a
word, but he grasped the little marble table with a hand as cold as
itself, and looked at Madame Roche with the face of a man whose tongue
clove to his mouth, and who could not have spoken for his life. She,
trembling a little, afraid to show her emotion, half frightened at the
look of the person she addressed, proceeded, after her pause, with a
rapid, interrupted voice.

“My poor, tender Marie--poor child!” said the mother. “Alas! she is no
more mademoiselle--she is married; she was married years ago, when she
was too young. Ah, it has wrung my heart!” cried the old lady, speaking
more freely when her great announcement was made; “for her husband loves
her no longer; yet my poor child would seek him over the world if she
might. Strange--strange, is it not? that there should be one most dear
to her who does not love Marie?”

But Cameron took no notice of this appeal. He still sat gazing at her,
with his blank, dark face, and lips that were parched and motionless.
She was full of pity, of distress, of anxiety for him; she went on
speaking words which only echoed idly on his ear, and which even Cosmo
could not attend to, expatiating in a breathless, agitated way, to cover
his emotion and to gain a little time, upon the troubles of Marie’s lot,
upon the desertion of her husband, her broken health and broken heart.
In the midst of it, Cameron rose and held out his hand to her. The
trembling mother of Marie took it, rising up to receive his farewell.
She would have made a hundred anxious apologies for the involuntary and
unconscious deceit from which he had suffered, but dared not. He shook
hands with her hastily, with an air which could not endure speaking to.

“I shall leave St. Ouen so soon, that I may not be able to see you
again,” said Cameron, with a forcible and forced steadiness which put
all her trembling compassion to flight; and he looked full in her eyes,
as if to dare her suspicions. “If I can not, farewell, and thank you for
your kindness. I can but leave my best wishes for--Mademoiselle Marie.”

Before Cosmo could follow him--before another word could be said,
Cameron was gone. They could hear him descending the stair, with an
echoing footstep, as they stood together, the old lady and the lad, in
mutual distress and embarrassment. Then Madame Roche turned to Cosmo,
took his hand, and burst into tears.

“Could I tell?” cried Marie’s mother--“alas, my child! could I think
that your tutor, so grave, so wise, would be thus moved? I am beside
myself! I am grieved beyond measure! Alas, what shall I do?--a good man
is in distress, and I am the cause!”

“Nay, it is not your fault, madame,” said Cosmo; “it’s no one’s fault--a
mistake, a blunder, an accident; poor Cameron!” and the lad had enough
ado to preserve his manhood and keep in his own tears.

Then Madame Roche made him sit down by her and tell her all about his
friend. Cosmo would rather have gone away to follow Cameron, and know
his wishes immediately about leaving St. Ouen, but was persuaded,
without much difficulty, that it was kinder to leave the Highlander
alone in the first shock of the discovery he had made. And Madame Roche
was much interested in the story of the student, whose holiday had ended
so sadly. She wished, with tears in her eyes, that she could do any
thing to comfort, any thing to help him on. And in turn she told the
story of her own family to Cosmo; how Marie’s husband had turned out a
vagabond, and worthless; how he had deserted his girlish wife in the
beginning of her illness, leaving her alone and unattended, at a
distance even from her mother; how they had heard nothing of him for
three years--yet how, notwithstanding all, the poor Marie wept for him
constantly, and tried to persuade her mother to set out on the hopeless
enterprise of finding him again.

“My poor child!” said Madame Roche; “she forgets every thing, my friend,
but that she loves him. Ah, it is natural to us women; we remember that,
and we remember nothing more.”

Cosmo could not help a momentary spark of indignation. He thought Marie
very selfish and cold-hearted, and could not forgive her his friend’s
heart-break:--

“Mademoiselle Marie should not forget _you_,” he said.

Though he dealt with such phenomena occasionally in his verses, and made
good sport with them, like other young poets, Cosmo was,
notwithstanding, too natural and sensible, not to pause with a momentary
wonder over this strange paradox and contradiction of events. To think
of such a man as Cameron losing his wits and his heart for love of this
weak and perverse woman, who vexed her mother’s heart with perpetual
pining for the husband who had ill-used and deserted her! How strange it
was!

“Marie does not forget me, my child; she is not to blame,” said Madame
Roche; “it is nature; do not I also know it? Ah, I was undutiful myself!
I loved my poor Jean better than my father; but I have a little one who
is very fond of me; she is too young for lovers; she thinks of nothing
but to make a home in my own country for Marie and me. My poor Marie!
she can not bear to go away from St. Ouen, lest he should come back to
seek her; she will either go to seek _him_, or stay; and so I can not go
to Desirée nor to my own country. Yet, perhaps, if Marie would but be
persuaded! My little Desirée is in Scotland. They think much of her
where she is. It is all very strange; she is in a house which once was
home to me when I was young. I think it strange my child should be
there.”

“Desirée?” repeated Cosmo, gazing at his beautiful old lady with
awakened curiosity. He remembered so well the pretty little figure whose
bearing, different as they were otherwise, was like that of Madame
Roche. He looked in her face, anxious, but unable, to trace any
resemblance. Desirée! Could it be Joanna’s Desirée--the heroine of the
broken windows--she who was at Melmar? The lad grew excited as he
repeated the name--he felt as though he held in his hand the clue to
some secret--what could it be?

“Do you know the name? Ah, my little one was a true Desirée,” said
Madame Roche; “she came when the others were taken away--she was my
comforter. Nay, my friend--she wrote to me of one of your name! One--ah,
look at me!--one who was son of my old friend. My child, let me see your
face--can it be you who are son of Patrick, my good cousin? What!--is
it then possible? Are you the young Livingstone of Norlaw?”

Cosmo rose up in great excitement, withdrawing from the half embrace
into which Madame Roche seemed disposed to take him; the lad’s heart
bounded with an audible throb, rising to his throat:--

“Do you know me? Did you know my father? Was he your cousin?” he cried,
with an increasing emotion. “He was Patrick Livingstone, of Norlaw, a
kinsman of the old Huntleys; and you--you--tell me! You are Mary of
Melmar! I know it! I have found you! Oh, father! I have done my work at
last.”

The lad’s voice broke into a hoarse cry--he had no words to express
himself further, as he stood before her with burning cheeks and a
beating heart, holding out his hands in appeal and in triumph. He had
found her! he could not doubt, he could not hesitate--gazing into that
beautiful old face, the whole country-side seemed to throng about him
with a clamorous testimony. All those unanimous witnesses who had told
him of her beauty, the little giant at the smithy to whom her foot rung
“like siller bells,” the old woman who remembered her face “like a May
morning,” rushed into Cosmo’s memory as though they had been present by
his side. He cried out again with a vehement self-assurance and
certainty, “You are Mary of Melmar!” He kissed her hand as if it had
been the hand of a queen--he forgot all his previous trouble and
sympathy--he had found her! _his_ search had not been made in vain.

“I am Mary Huntley, the daughter of Melmar,” said the old lady, with her
beautiful smile. “Yes, my child, it is true--I left my father and my
home for the sake of my poor Jean. Ah, he was very fond of me! I am not
sorry; but you sought me?--did you seek me?--that is strange, that is
kind; I know not why you should seek me. My child, do not bring me into
any more trouble--tell me why you sought for _me_?”

“I sought you as my father sought you!” cried Cosmo; “as he charged us
all to seek you when he died. I sought you, because you have been
wronged. Come home with me, madame. I thank God for Huntley that he
never had it!--I knew I should find you! It is not for any trouble. It
is because Melmar--Melmar itself--your father’s house--is yours!”

“Melmar--my father’s house--where my Desirée is now?--nay, my friend,
you dream,” said the old lady, trying to smile, yet growing pale; she
did not comprehend it--she returned upon what he said about his father;
she was touched to tears to think that Norlaw had sought for her--that
she had not been forgotten--that he himself, a young champion, had come
even here with the thought of finding her;--but Melmar, Melmar, her
father’s house! The old Mary of Melmar, who had fled from that house and
been disinherited, could not receive this strange idea--Melmar! the word
died on her lip as the voice of Marie called her from an inner chamber.
She rose with the promptness of habit, resuming her tender mother-smile,
and answering without a pause. She only waved her hand to Cosmo as the
boy left her to her immediate duties. It was not wonderful that she
found it difficult to take up the thread of connection between that life
in which she herself had been an only child, and this in which she was
Marie’s nursing Mother. They were strangely unlike indeed.




CHAPTER LVI.


Cosmo ran down the stairs, and out of the gate of Madame Roche’s house,
much too greatly excited to think of returning to his little room. The
discovery was so sudden and so extraordinary that the lad was quite
unable to compose his excitement or collect his thoughts. Strange
enough, though Mary of Melmar had been so much in his mind, he had never
once, until this day, associated her in the smallest degree with the
beautiful old lady of St. Ouen. When he began to think of all the
circumstances, he could not account to himself for his extraordinary
slowness of perception. At, least a score of other people, totally
unlikely and dissimilar, had roused Cosmo’s hopes upon his journey.
Scarcely a place they had been in which did not afford the imaginative
youth a glimpse somewhere of some one who might be the heroine; yet here
he had been living almost by her side without a suspicion, until a
sudden confidence, given in the simplest and most natural manner,
disclosed her in a moment--Mary of Melmar! He had known she must be
old--he had supposed she must have children--but it was strange,
overpowering, a wild and sudden bewilderment, to find in her the mother
of Desirée and Marie.

Cosmo did not go home to his little room--he hurried along the narrow
streets of St. Ouen, carried on by the stress and urgency of his own
thoughts. Then he emerged upon the river side, where even the
picturesque and various scene before him failed to beguile his own
crowding fancies. He saw without seeing the river boats, moored by the
quay, the Norman fishermen and market-women, the high-gabled houses,
which corresponded so pleasantly with those high caps and characteristic
dresses, the whole bright animation and foreign coloring of the scene.
In the midst of it all he saw but one figure, a figure which somehow
belonged to it, and took individuality and tone from this
surrounding;--Mary of Melmar! but not the pensive, tender Mary of that
sweet Scottish country-side, with all its streams and woodlands--not a
Mary to be dreamt of any longer on the leafy banks of Tyne, or amid
those roofless savage walls of the old Strength of Norlaw. With an
unexpressed cry of triumph, yet an untellable thrill of disappointment,
the lad hurried along those sun-bright banks of Seine. It was this scene
she belonged to; the quaint, gray Norman town, with its irregular roofs
and gables, its cathedral piling upward to a fairy apex those marvelous
pinnacles and towers, its bright provincial costume and foreign tints of
color, its river, bright with heavy picturesque boats, and floating
baths, and all the lively life of a French urban stream. It was not that
meditative breadth of country, glorious with the purple Eildons and
brown waters, sweet with unseen birds and burns, where the summer
silences and sounds were alike sacred, and where the old strongholds lay
at rest like old warriors, watching the peace of the land. No--she was
not Mary of Melmar--she was Madame Roche de St. Martin, the beautiful
old lady of St. Ouen.

When Cosmo’s thoughts had reached this point, they were suddenly
arrested by the sight of Cameron, standing close to the edge of the
quay, looking steadily down. His remarkable figure, black among the
other figures on that picturesque river-side--his fixed, dark face,
looking stern and authoritative as a face in profile is apt to look--his
intense, yet idle gaze down the weather-stained, timber-bound face of
the river-pier, startled his young companion at first into sudden
terror. Cosmo had, till this moment, forgotten Cameron. His friendship
and sympathy woke again, with a touch of alarm and dread, which made him
sick. Cameron!--religious, enthusiastic, a servant of God as he was,
what was the disappointed man, in the shock of his personal suffering,
about to do? Cosmo stood behind, unseen, watching him. The lad did not
know what he feared, and knew that his terror was irrational and
foolish, but still could not perceive without a pang that immovable
figure, gazing down into the running river, and could not imagine but
with trembling what might be in Cameron’s thoughts. He was of a race to
which great despairs and calamities were congenial. His blood was fiery
Celtic blood, the tumultuous pulses of the mountaineer. Cosmo felt his
heart beat loud in his ears as he stood watching. Just then one of the
women he had been in the habit of buying flowers from, perceived Cameron
and went up to him with her basket. He spoke to her, listened to her,
with a reckless air, which aggravated Cosmo’s unreasonable alarm; the
lad even heard him laugh as he received a pretty bouquet of spring
flowers, which he had doubtless ordered for Marie. The woman went away
after receiving payment, with a somewhat doubtful and surprised face.
Then Cameron began to pull the pretty, delicate blossoms asunder, and
let them fall one by one into the river--one by one--then as the number
lessened, leaf by leaf, scattering them out of his fingers with an
apparent determination of destroying the whole, quite unconscious of the
wistful eyes of two little children standing by. When the last petal had
fallen into the river, and was swept down under the dark keel of one of
the boats, the Highlander turned suddenly away--so suddenly, indeed,
that Cosmo did not discover his disappearance till he had passed into
the little crowd which hung about a newly-arrived vessel lower down the
quay;--his step was quick, resolute, and straightforward--he was going
home.

And then Cosmo, brought by this means to real ground, once more began to
think, as it was impossible to forbear thinking, over all the strange
possibilities of the new events which had startled him so greatly. If
Marie had not been married--if Cameron had wooed her and won her--if,
strangest chance of all, it had thus happened that the poor Highland
student, all unwitting of his fortune had come to be master of Melmar!
As he speculated, Cosmo held his breath, with a sudden and natural
misgiving. He thought of Huntley in Australia--his own generous,
tender-hearted brother. Huntley, who meant to come home and win Melmar,
and who already looked upon himself as its real master--Huntley, whose
hopes must be put to an absolute and instant conclusion, and were
already vain as the fancies of a child. He thought of his mother at home
in Norlaw, thinking of the future which waited her son, and refusing to
think of the woman who had inflicted upon her the greatest sufferings of
her life--he thought of Patie, who, though much less concerned, had
still built something upon the heirship of Melmar. He thought of the
sudden change to the whole family, who, more or less unconsciously, had
reckoned upon this background of possible enrichment, and had borne
their real poverty all the more magnanimously, in consideration of the
wealth which was about to come--and a sudden chill came to the lad’s
heart. Strange perversity! Cosmo had scorned the most distant idea of
Huntley’s heirship, so long as it was possible; but now that it was no
longer possible, a compunction struck him. This prospect, which cheered
Huntley in his exile, and put spirit into his labor--this, which
encouraged the Mistress, for her son’s sake, to spare and to toil--this,
which even furthered the aims of Patie in his Glasgow foundery--this it
was _his_ ungracious task to turn into vanity and foolishness. His step
slackened unconsciously, his spirit fell, a natural revulsion seized
him. Madame Roche de St. Martin--the poor sick Marie, who loved only
herself and her worthless French husband, who doubtless now would find
his way back to her, and make himself the real Lord of Melmar! Alas,
what a change from Cosmo’s picturesque and generous dreams among the old
walls of Norlaw! When he thought of the vagabond Frenchman, whose
unknown existence had made Cameron miserable, Cosmo made an involuntary
exclamation of opposition and disgust. He forgot _that_ Mary of Melmar
who was now an imaginary and unsubstantial phantom; he even forgot the
beautiful old lady who had charmed him unawares--he thought only of the
French Marie and her French husband, the selfish invalid and the
worthless wanderer who had deserted her. Beautiful Melmar, among its
woods and waters, to think it should be bestowed thus!

Then Cosmo went on, in the natural current of his changed thoughts, to
think of the present family, the frank and friendly Joanna, the unknown
brother whom bowed Jaacob respected as a virtuoso, and who, doubtless,
firmly believed himself the heir--the father who, though an enemy, was
still a homeborn and familiar countryman. Well, _that_ household must
fall suddenly out of prosperity and wealth into ruin--his own must
forego at once a well-warranted and honorable hope--all to enrich a
family of St. Ouen, who knew neither Melmar nor Scotland, and perhaps
scorned them both! And it was all Cosmo’s doing!--a matter deliberately
undertaken--a heroical pursuit for which he had quite stepped out of his
way! The lad was quite as high-minded, generous, even romantic, in the
streets of St. Ouen as he had been in his favorite seat of meditation
among the ruins of Norlaw; but somehow, at this moment, when he had just
succeeded in his enterprise, he could not manage to raise within his own
heart all the elevated sentiments which had inspired it. On the
contrary, he went slowly along to his lodgings, where he should have to
communicate the news to Cameron, feeling rather crest-fallen and
discomfited--not the St. George restoring a disinherited Una, but rather
the intermeddler in other men’s matters, who gets no thanks on any hand.
To tell Cameron, who had spent the whole fiery torrent of that love
which it was his nature to bestow, with a passionate individual fervor,
on one person and no more--upon the capricious little French Marie, who
could not even listen, to its tale! Cosmo grew bitter in his thoughts as
he took down the key of his chamber from the wall in Baptiste’s room and
received a little note which the cobbler handed him, and went very
softly up stairs. The note was from Madame Roche, but Cosmo was
misanthropical, and did not care about it. He thought no longer of
Madame Roche--he thought only of Marie, who was to be the real Mary of
Melmar, and of poor Cameron heart-broken, and Huntley disappointed, and
the French vagabond of a husband, who was sure to come home.




CHAPTER LVII.


Cameron was not visible until the evening, when he sent for Cosmo to his
own room. The lad obeyed the summons instantly; the room was rather a
large one, very barely furnished, without any carpet on the floor, and
with no fire in the stove. It was dimly lighted by one candle, which
threw the apartment into a general twilight, and made a speck of
particular illumination on the table where it stood, and by which sat
Cameron, with his pocket-book and Baptiste’s bill before him. He was
very pale, and somehow it seemed impossible to see his face otherwise
than in profile, where it looked stern, rigid, and immoveable as an old
Roman’s; but his manner, if perhaps a little graver, was otherwise
exactly as usual. Cosmo was at a loss how to speak to him; he did not
even like to look at his friend, who, however, showed no such
embarrassment in his own person.

“We go to-morrow, Cosmo,” said Cameron, rather rapidly; “here is
Baptiste’s bill to be settled, and some other things. We’ll go over to
Dieppe the first thing in the morning--every thing had better be done to
night.”

“The first thing in the morning! but I am afraid I--I can not go,” said
Cosmo, hesitating a little.

“Why?” Cameron looked up at him imperiously--he was not in a humor to be
thwarted.

“Because--not that I don’t wish to go, for I had rather be with you,”
said Cosmo--“but because I made a discovery, and a very important one,
to-day.”

“Ah?” said Cameron, with a smile and a tone of dreary satire; “this must
have been a day for discoveries--what was yours?”

“It was about Madame Roche,” said Cosmo, with hesitation--he was afraid
to broach the subject, in his anxiety for his friend, and yet it must be
told.

“Just so,” said Cameron, with the same smile; “I knew it must be about
Madame Roche--what then? I suppose it is no secret? nothing more than
everybody knew?”

“Don’t speak so coldly,” entreated Cosmo, with irrestrainable feeling;
“indeed it is something which no one could have dreamed of; Cameron, she
is Mary. I never guessed or supposed it until to-day.”

Something like a groan burst from Cameron in spite of himself. “Ay,
she’s Mary!” cried the Highlander, with a cry of fierce despair and
anguish not to be described, “but laddie, what is that to you?”

They were a world apart as they sat together on either side of that
little table, with the pale little light between them--the boy in the
awe of his concern and sympathy--the man in the fiery struggle and
humiliation of his manhood wrung to the heart. Cosmo did not venture to
look up, lest the very glance--the water in his eyes, might irritate the
excited mind of his friend. He answered softly, almost humbly, with the
deep imaginative respect of youth.

“She is Mary of Melmar, Cameron--the old lady; my father’s kinswoman
whom he was--fond of--who ran away to marry a Frenchman--who is the heir
of Melmar--Melmar which was to be Huntley’s, if I had not found her. It
can not be Huntley’s now; and I must stay behind to complete the
discovery I have made.”

Perhaps Cosmo’s tone was not remarkably cheerful; the Highlander looked
at him with an impatient and indignant glance.

“Why should it be Huntley’s when it is hers?” he said, almost angrily.
“Would you grudge her rights to a helpless woman? you, boy! are even
_you_ beguiled when yourself is concerned?”

“You are unjust,” said Cosmo. “I do not hesitate a moment--I have done
nothing to make any one doubt me--nor ever will.”

The lad was indignant in proportion to his uneasiness and discomfort in
his discovery, but Cameron was not sufficiently at rest himself to see
through the natural contradictions of his young companion. He turned
away from him with the half-conscious gesture of a sick heart.

“I am unjust--I believe it,” he said, with a strange humility; “lands
and silver are but names to me. I am like other folk--I can be liberal
with what I have not--ay, more! I can even throw away my own,”
continued Cameron, his strong voice trembling between real emotion and a
bitter self-sarcasm, “so that nobody should be the better for the waste;
that’s _my_ fortune. Your estate will be of use to somebody--take
comfort, callant; if you are disappointed, there’s still some benefit in
the gift. But ye might give all and no mortal be a gainer--waste,
lavish, pour forth every thing ye have, and them the gift was for, if
ever they knew, be the worse and not the better! Ay! that’s some men’s
portion in this life.”

Cosmo did not venture to say a word--that bitter sense of waste and
prodigality, the whole treasure of a man’s heart poured forth in vain,
and worse than in vain, startled the lad with a momentary vision of
depths into which he could not penetrate. For Cameron was not a boy,
struggling with a boy’s passion of disappointment and mortification. He
was a strong, tenacious, self-concentrated man. He had made a useless,
vain, unprofitable holocaust, which could not give even a moment’s
pleasure to the beloved of his imagination, for whom he had designed to
do every thing, and the unacceptable gift returned in a bitterness
unspeakable upon the giver’s heart. Other emotions, even more heavy and
grievous, struggled also within him. His old scruples against leaving
his garret and studies, his old feelings of guilt in deferring
voluntarily, for his own pleasure and comfort, the beginning of his
chosen “work,” came back upon his silent Celtic soul in a torrent of
remorse and compunction, which he could not and would not confide to any
one. If he had not forsaken the labors to which God had called him,
could he have been left to cast his own heart away after this desperate
and useless fashion? With these thoughts his fiery spirit consumed
itself. Bitter at all times must be the revulsion of love which is in
vain, but this was bitterer than bitterness--a useless, unlovely,
unprofitable sacrifice, producing nothing save humiliation and shame.

“I see, Cosmo,” he said, after a little pause, “I see that you can not
leave St. Ouen to-morrow. Do your duty. You were fain to find her, and
you have found her. It might be but a boy’s impulse of generosity, and
it may bring some disappointment with it; but it’s right, my lad! and
it’s something to succeed in what you attempt, even though you do get a
dinnle thereby in some corner of your own heart. Never fear for
Huntley--if he’s such as you say, the inheritance of the widow would be
sacred to your brother. Now, laddie, fare you well. I’m going back to
_my_ duty that I have forsaken. Henceforth you’re too tender a companion
for the like of me. I’ve lost--time, and such matters that you have and
to spare; you and I are on different levels, Cosmo; and now, my boy,
fare ye well.”

“Farewell? you don’t blame _me_, Cameron?” cried Cosmo, scarcely knowing
what he said.

“_Blame_ you--for what?” said the other, harshly, and with a momentary
haughtiness; then he rose and laid his hand with an extreme and touching
kindness, which was almost tender, upon Cosmo’s shoulder. “You’ve been
like my youth to me, laddie,” said the Highlandman; “like a morning’s
dew in the midst of drouth; when I say fare ye well I mean not to say
that we’re parted; but I must not mint any more at the pathways of your
life--mine is among the rocks, and in the teeth of the wind. I have no
footing by nature among your primroses. That is why I say--not to-morrow
in the daylight, and the eyes of strangers, but now when you and me and
this night are by ourselves--fare ye well, laddie! We’re ever friends,
but we’re no more comrades--that is what I mean.”

“And that is hard, Cameron, to me,” said Cosmo, whose eyes were full.

Cameron made no answer at all to the boy; he went to the door of the dim
room with him, wrung his hand, and said, “Good night!” Then, while the
lad went sadly up the noisy stair-case, the man turned back to his
twilight apartment, bare and solitary, where there was nothing familiar
and belonging to himself, save his pocket-book and passport upon the
table, and Baptiste’s bill. He smiled as he took that up, and began to
count out the money for its payment; vulgar, needful business, the very
elements of daily necessity--these are the best immediate styptics for
thrusts in the heart.

Cosmo, to whom nothing had happened, went to his apartment perhaps more
restlessly miserable than Cameron, thinking over all his friend’s words,
and aggravating in imagination the sadness of their meaning. The lad did
not care to read, much less to obey the call of Madame Roche’s pretty
note, which bade him come and tell her further what his morning’s
communication meant. For this night, at least, he was sick of Madame
Roche, and every thing connected with her name.




CHAPTER LVIII.


The morning brought feelings a little more endurable, yet still, very
far from pleasant. Very early, while it was still dark, Cosmo saw his
companions set off on their journey home, and was left to the cold
dismal consciousness of a solitary day just beginning, as he watched the
lights put out, and the chill gray dawn stealing over the high houses.
The first ray of sunshine glimmered upon the attic windows and burned
red in the vane over the dwelling-place of Madame Roche. This gleam
recalled the lad’s imagination from a musing fit of vague depression and
uneasiness. He must now think no more of Cameron--no more of those
strange breakings off and partings which are in life. On the contrary,
his old caprice of boyish generosity laid upon him now the claim of an
urgent--almost an irksome--duty, and he, who went upon his travels to
seek Mary of Melmar with all the fervor of a knight-errant, turned upon
his heel this cold spring dawn with an inexpressible reluctance and
impatience, to go to her, in obedience to her own summons. He would
rather have been with Cameron in his silent and rapid journey--but his
duty was here.

When Cosmo went to Madame Roche, which he did at as early an hour as he
thought decorous, he found her alone, waiting for him. She came forward
to receive him with rather an anxious welcome. “I almost feared you were
gone,” said the old lady, with a smile which was less tranquil than
usual. “When I saw your friends go, I said to myself, this boy is but a
fairy messenger, who tells of a strange hope, and then is gone and one
hears no more of it. I am glad you have not gone away; but your poor
friend, he has left us? I thought it best, my child, to say nothing to
Marie.”

Cosmo’s heart swelled a little in spite of himself; he could not bear
the idea of the two women gossiping together over his friend’s
heart-break, which was the first thought that occurred to him as Madame
Roche spoke, and which, though it was certainly unjust, was still partly
justified by the mysterious and compassionate tone in which the old lady
mentioned Cameron’s name.

“I am not aware that there is any occasion for saying any thing,
madame,” said Cosmo, with a little abruptness. Madame Roche was not
remarkably quick-sighted, yet she saw through the lad’s irritation--the
least smile in the world came to the corner of her lip. She did not
think of the great pang in the Highlander’s heart--she knew very little
indeed of Cameron--she only smiled with a momentary amusement at Cosmo’s
displeasure, and a momentary sense of womanish triumph over the
subjugated creature, man, represented in the person of this departed
traveler, who, had just gone sadly away.

“Do not quarrel with me, my child,” she said, her smile subsiding into
its usual sweetness; “the fault was not with me; but tell me once more
this strange news you told me last night. Melmar, which was my father’s,
I was born heiress of it--did you say it was mine--_mine_? for I think I
must have mistaken what the words mean.”

“It is quite true,” said Cosmo, who had not yet quite recovered his
temper, “your father left it to you if you were ever found, and if you
were not found, to _my_ father, and to Huntley Livingstone, his heir and
eldest son. My father sought you in vain all his life; he never would
put in his own claim lest it should injure you. When he died, Huntley
was not rich enough to go to law for his rights, but he and everybody
believed that you never would be found, and that he was the heir. He
thinks so now; he is in Australia working hard for the money to maintain
his plea, and believing that Melmar will be his; but I have found you,
and you are the lady of Melmar; it is true.”

“You tell me a romance--a drama,” cried Madame Roche, with tears in her
eyes. “Your father sought me all his life--_me_? though I was cruel to
him. Ah, how touching! how beautiful!--and you, my young hero!--and this
Huntley, this one who thinks himself the heir--he, too, is generous,
noble, without selfishness--I know it! Oh, my child, what shall I do
for him? Alas, Marie! She is my eldest child, and she is married
already--I never grieved for it enough till now.”

“There is no need, madame,” said Cosmo, to whom these little sentences
came like so many little shooting arrows, pricking him into a
disappointed and vexed resentment. “Huntley needs nothing to make him
amends for what is simply justice. Melmar is not his, but yours.”

This speech, however, which was somewhat heroical in tone, expressed a
most uncomfortable state of mind in Cosmo. He was angry at the idea of
rewarding Huntley with the hand of Marie, if that had not been given
away already. It was a highly romantic suggestion, the very embodiment
of poetic justice, had it been practicable; but somehow it did not
please Cosmo. Then another suggestion, made by his own fancy, came
dancing unsolicited into the lad’s mind. Desirée, perhaps, who was not
married, might not _she_ be compensation sufficient for Huntley? But
Cosmo grew very red and felt exceedingly indignant as he thought of it;
this second reward was rather more distasteful than the first. He paid
very little attention, indeed, to Madame Roche, who, much excited,
smiled and shed tears, and exclaimed upon her good fortune, upon the
kindness of her friends, upon the goodness of God. Cosmo put his hands
in his pockets and did not listen to her. He was no longer a young poet,
full of youthful fervor and generosity. The temper of the British lion
began to develop itself in Cosmo. He turned away from Madame Roche’s
pretty effusion of sentiment and joy, in a _huff_ of disenchantment,
discontented with her, and himself, and all the world.

Perhaps some delicate spirit whispered as much in the old lady’s ear.
She came to him when her first excitement was over, with tender tears in
her beautiful old eyes.

“My child, you have found a fortune and a home for me,” said Madame
Roche, “but it is to take them away from your brother. What will your
mother say at home?”

“She will say it is right and just, madame, and I have done my duty,”
said Cosmo, briefly enough.

Then Madame Roche bent forward and kissed his young cheek, like a
mother, as she was.

“We are widow and orphans,” she said, softly. “God will bless you--He is
the guardian of such; and He will not let Huntley suffer when He sees
how all of you do justice out of a free heart.”

Cosmo was melted; he turned away his head to conceal the moisture in his
own eyes--was it out of a free heart? He felt rebuked and humbled when
he asked himself the question; but Madame Roche gave him no time to
think of his own feelings. She wanted to know every thing about all that
had occurred. She was full of curiosity and interest, natural and
womanly, about not only the leading points of the story, but all its
details, and as Marie did not appear, Cosmo by himself, with his
beautiful old lady, was soon reconciled to the new circumstances, and
restored to his first triumph. He had done what his father failed to
do--what his father’s agents had never been able to accomplish--what
newspaper advertisements had attempted in vain. He had justified his own
hope, and realized his own expectation. He had restored home and fortune
to the lost Mary of Melmar. A night and a morning were long enough for
the sway of uncomfortable and discontented feelings. He gave himself up,
once more, to his old enthusiasm, forgetting Huntley’s loss and
Cameron’s heart-break, and his mother’s disappointment, in the
inspiration of his old dreams, all of which were now coming true. The
end of this conversation was, that Cosmo--charged with Madame Roche’s
entire confidence, and acting as her representative--was to follow his
former companions and return to Edinburgh as speedily as possible, and
there to instruct his old acquaintance, Cassilis, to take steps
immediately for the recovery of Melmar. He parted with the old lady, who
was, and yet was not, the Mary of his fancy, that same evening--did not
see Marie, who was fortunately kept in her room by an access of illness
or peevishness, took leave of Baptiste and the old streets of St. Ouen
with great content and exhilaration, and on the very next morning, at an
hour as early, as chilly, and as dark as that of Cameron’s departure,
began his journey home.




CHAPTER LIX.


The streets of Edinburgh looked strange and unfamiliar to Cosmo
Livingstone when he stood in them once more--a very _boy_ still in heart
and experience, yet feeling himself a traveled and instructed man. He no
longer dreamed of turning his steps towards Mrs. Purdy’s in the High
Street; he took his carpet bag to a hotel instead, half wondering at
himself for his changed ideas. Cameron’s ideas too, probably, were
equally changed. Where was he, or how had he managed to reconcile the
present with the past? But Cosmo had no time to inquire. He could not
pause in Edinburgh for any thing but his needful business, which was to
see Mr. Cassilis, and to place in his hands the interests of Madame
Roche.

The young lawyer received him with a careless kindness not very
flattering to Cosmo’s dignity, but was greatly startled by the news he
brought. Once only he paused in taking down all the facts of the case
which Cosmo could give him, to say:--

“This discovery will be a serious loss to your brother;” but Cosmo made
no reply, and with that the comment ceased. Huntley and his heirship
melted away out of sight in the strangest manner while this conversation
went on. Cosmo had never realized before how entirely it separated him
and his from all real connection with Melmar. The sensation was not
quite satisfactory, for Melmar, one way or another, had borne a most
strong and personal connection with all the thoughts and projects of the
family of Norlaw for a year or two past; but that was all over. Cosmo
alone now had any interest in the matter, and that solely as the
representative of Madame Roche.

When he had fully informed the young lawyer of all the needful points in
the matter, and formally left the cause in his hands, Cosmo left him to
secure a place in the first coach, and to hasten home with all the speed
he could make. He could scarcely have felt more strange, or perceived a
greater change upon every thing, if he had dropped from the skies into
Kirkbride; yet every thing was precisely the same, so clearly and
broadly recognizable, that Cosmo could not understand what difference
had passed upon them, and still less could understand that the
difference was in himself. His mother stood waiting for him at the door
of the Norlaw Arms. It was cold March weather, and the Mistress had been
sitting by the fire, waiting the arrival of the coach. She was flushed a
little with the frosty air and the fire, and looked disturbed and
uneasy. Cosmo thought he could fancy she turned a jealous eye upon
himself as he sprang from the coach to meet her, which fancy was
perfectly true, for the Mistress was half afraid that her son who had
been abroad might be “led away” by his experiences of travel, and might
have become indifferent or contemptuous about his home. She was a little
displeased, too, that he had lingered behind Cameron. She was not like
Madame Roche--all-enduring sweetness was not in this old-fashioned
Scottish mother. She could not help making a strong personal claim of
that arbitrary love which stinted nothing in bestowing upon those who
were her own, and opened her heart only slowly and secondarily to the
rest of the world.

“So you’re hame at last!” was the Mistress’s salutation; though her eye
was jealous, there was moisture in it, as she looked at her boy. Cosmo
had grown in stature for one thing; he was brown with exposure, and
looked manly and strong; and, not least, his smooth cheeks began to show
evidence of those symptoms of manhood which boys adore. There was even a
something not to be described or defined upon Cosmo’s upper lip, which
caught his mother’s eye in a moment, and gave a tangible ground for her
little outburst of half-angry fondness.

“You’re no’ to bring any of your outlandish fashions here!” said the
Mistress, “though you have been in foreign parts. I’ll have no person in
my house bearded like a Frenchman. Can you no’ carry your bag in your
ain hand, laddie? Come away, then; you can shake hands with other folk
another time.”

As the Mistress spoke, a figure strange to Kirkbride stalked through the
circle of lookers-on. Nothing like that bearded face and wide cloak had
been known to Cosmo’s memory in the village or the district. He turned
unconsciously to look after the stranger. Further down on the road
before were two girls whom Cosmo recognized with a start; one was
Joanna Huntley, the other there was no possibility of mistaking. Cosmo
gazed after her wistfully--a blush of recollection, of embarrassment,
almost of guilt, suddenly rising to his face. Bowed Jaacob stood at his
smithy door, with the fiery glow of the big fire behind him, a swart
little demon gazing after her too. Desirée! Was she the desired of this
unknown figure in the cloak, who went languidly along to join her? Cosmo
stood silent for a moment, altogether absorbed by the junction of old
and new thus strangely presented to him. Familiar Kirkbride, with Jaacob
at the smithy door, and that graceful little figure of romance, whose
story no one but Cosmo knew, followed by the other stranger figure which
he was entirely unacquainted with. He started when his mother repeated
her imperative summons--the color on his cheeks looked guilty and
troubled; he had his secret on his heart, and knew beforehand that it
would not be agreeable to the Mistress. So he did the very worst thing
he could have done--postponed the telling of it to a more convenient
season, and so went uncomfortably, and with a visible restraint, which
vexed his mother’s soul within her, home to Norlaw.

Patie, as it happened, had come home a few days before on a brief visit;
and when they met round the fire that first evening, every one’s thought
instinctively was of Huntley. When Marget came in, disturbing the
gloamin quietness with lights, her long-drawn sigh and involuntary
exclamation:--

“Eh, sirs! if Master Huntley were but here!” startled the little family
group into open discussion of the subject which was in all their hearts.

“Huntley’s been further than you, Cosmo,” said the Mistress, “and maybe
seen mair; but I wouldna wonder if Huntley thinks yet, as he thought
when he left Norlaw, that there’s no place equal to hame.”

“Huntley’s in the bush; there’s not very much to make him change his
opinion there, mother,” said Patrick.

“Ay, but Huntley’s heart is ever at hame,” said the Mistress, finding
the one who was absent always the dearest.

“Mother,” said Cosmo, his courage failing him a little, “I have
something to tell you--and it concerns Huntley, too, mother. Mother, I
have found the lady, the heir--she whom we have all heard so much about;
Patie, _you_ know?”

“What lady? what heir? and how does Patie know?” asked the Mistress;
then she paused, and her countenance changed. A guess at the truth
occurred to her, and its first effect was an angry flush, which
gradually stole over her face. “Patie is no a romancer, to have to do
with heirs and ladies,” she added, quickly; “nor to have strange folk in
his thoughts the first hour he’s at home. I canna tell wherefore any one
of you should have such wandering fancies; it’s no’ like a bairn of
mine.”

“Mother, I’ve learnt something by it,” said Cosmo; “before I went away,
I thought it worth hunting over all the world to find her--for no reason
that I can tell, except that she was wronged, and that we might be the
better if she never came back; but now I have found her--I know where
Mary of Melmar is, and she knows she’s the heir; but ever since my
thought has been of Huntley. Huntley could have had no pleasure in
Melmar, mother, if it were not justly his own.”

The Mistress raised her head high as Cosmo spoke. Anger, great
disappointment, of which she was half ashamed, and a pride which was
resolute to show no sign of disappointment, contended in her face with
that bitter dislike and repugnance to the lost Mary which she had never
been able--perhaps had seldom tried to conquer. “I have heard plenty of
Mary of Melmar,” said the Mistress, hastily; “ae time and another she’s
been the plague of my life. What, laddie! do you mean to say you left
me, and your hame, and your ain business, to seek this woman? What was
she to you? And you come back and tell me you’ve found her, as if I was
to rejoice at the news. You ken where she is, and she kens she’s the
heir; and I crave ye to tell me what is that to me? Be silent, Patie! Am
I her mother, or her sister, or her near friend, that this lad shall
come to bring the news to me?”

“It’s poor news,” said Patie, who did not hesitate to look gravely
annoyed and disappointed, as he was; “very poor news for all of us,
mother; but at least it’s better that Cosmo found her than a
stranger--if found she was to be.”

The Mistress paused a moment, subdued by this suggestion. “Poor news! I
kenna what you both mean,” she said, with pride; “what concern is it of
ours? Would my Huntley ever put hand or touch upon another person’s
gear? Let her come back the morn, and what the waur are we? Do you think
I envied her Melmar, or her land? Do you think I would have made my son
rich at _her_ cost, that never was a friend to me? You may ken many
things, laddies, but you dinna ken your mother. Me!--I wouldna take
blade o’ grass or drop of water belonging to her, if you asked me; and
I’m thankful to tell ye baith my Huntley is Huntley Livingstone of
Norlaw, and needs to be indebted to no person in this whole
country-side.”

The Mistress rose up in the fervor of her indignant disappointment;
vexation and mortified feeling brought the water to her eyes. She felt
aggrieved and wronged, not only in this setting aside of Huntley, but in
the very fact that Mary of Melmar was about to return. This Mary, for
whose unthankful sake her husband had neglected _her_ honest love and
faithful heart, had at last lured even her son, her youngest and best
beloved, away from her, and was coming back triumphant to the
inheritance which might have been Huntley’s. The Mistress’s heart rose
in a tumult of pride, love, indignation, and bitterness. She said “_my_
son,” and “_my_ Huntley,” with a proud and tender emphasis, an
involuntary, anxious impulse to make amends to him for the hope he had
lost--yet with an equally natural feeling rejected indignantly all
sympathy for him, and would not permit even his brothers to speak of
disappointment or loss to Huntley in this new event. She went away
across the room, breaking up the fireside circle by the hasty movement,
to seek out in her basket the stocking which she was knitting--for the
Mistress’s eyes began to fail her in candlelight with all her more
delicate industries--and coming back to the table, began to knit with
absorbed attention, counting the loops in the heel as if she had no care
for the further particulars which Cosmo, encouraged by Patie, proceeded
to tell. Yet she did hear them notwithstanding. But for the presence of
Patie’s practical good sense, Cosmo and his mother might have had
painful recollections of that night; but his brother’s steady look and
sober attention kept Cosmo from indulging the irritation and wounded
feeling which he might have felt otherwise. He went on with his story,
gradually growing interested in it, and watching--as a dramatist might
watch his first audience--the figure of the Mistress, who sat almost
with her back to him, knitting assiduously, the light of the candle
throwing a great shadow of her cap upon the wall, and her elbow moving
slightly with the movement of her wires. Cosmo watched how the elbow
moved irregularly at certain points of his tale, how it was still for an
instant now and then, as the interest grew, and the boy-poet was pleased
and forgave his mother. At last the stocking fell from the Mistress’s
hand--she pushed back her chair, and turned round upon him with a
half-scream.

“Desirée!” cried the Mistress, as she might have exclaimed at the crisis
of a highly interesting novel, “it’s her that’s at
Melmar--whisht!--dinna speak to me--I’m just as sure as that we’re a’
here--it’s her ain very bairn!”

After this, Cosmo’s tale ended with a great success; he had excited his
mother--and the truth began to glide into her unwilling heart, that Mary
of Melmar was, like herself, the mother of fatherless children, a widow,
and poor. She heard all the rest without a word of displeasure; she
became grave, and said nothing, when her sons discussed the matter; she
nodded her head approvingly when Patie repeated rather more strongly
than before his satisfaction that Cosmo had found the lost Mary, since
she was to be found. The Mistress was thinking of something--but it was
only after she had said good night to them that the youths discovered
what it was.

“Bairns,” said the Mistress then, abruptly pausing upon the stair, with
her candle in her hand, “that bit lassie at Melmar is in the dwelling of
the enemy--and if it were not so, the mother canna make war on the house
where her bairn has shelter. You’re her nearest kinsmen that I ken of,
to be friends as well--she’ll have to come here.”

“Mother!” cried Cosmo, in delight and surprise, and compunction, “can
you ask her here?”

“Ay, laddie--I can do mony things, mair than the like of you ken of,”
said the Mistress; and, saying so, she went slowly up stairs, with the
light in her hand, and her shadow climbing the wall after her, leaving
no unkindness in the echo of her motherly good night.




CHAPTER LX.


During all these months Desirée had led a strange life at Melmar. She
had never told any one of the revelation, painful and undesired, the
miserable enlightenment which Aunt Jean’s story had brought. What Cosmo
told Madame Roche months after, Madame Roche’s little daughter knew on
that winter night by the Kelpie, when the tale of Aunt Jean, and all its
confirming circumstances, stung her poor little heart with its first
consciousness of falsehood and social treachery. After that she was ill,
and they were kind to her at Melmar, and when she recovered Desirée
still did not tell her mother. People did not write so many letters then
as they do now, in these corresponding days--Madame Roche certainly did
not hear oftener than once a fortnight, sometimes not more than once a
month from her daughter, for Melmar was nearly as far from St. Ouen in
_those_ days as India is now. Many a painful thought it cost poor
Desirée as she stole out by herself, avoiding every one, to the side of
Tyne. Oswald Huntley, after her recovery, had resumed his manner of
devotion toward her--but Desirée’s eyes were no longer touched with the
fairy glamour of her first dream. She had not been “in love,” though the
poor child imagined she had--she had only been amused by that dream of
romantic fancy to which seventeen is subject, and touched into gratitude
and pleasure by the supposed love she had won--yet, even while she
scorned his false pretense of tenderness, that very disdain made Desirée
shrink from the thought of injuring Oswald. She was sadly troubled
between the two sentiments, this poor little girl, who was French, and
Madame Roche’s child, and who consequently was much tempted by the
dangerous intoxications of feeling. What was barely, simply,
straightforwardly _right_ might have satisfied Joanna; but Desirée could
not help thinking of self-sacrifice and suffering for others, and all
the girlish heroics common to her age. She could not live in their house
and betray the family who had sheltered and were kind to her. She seemed
to be tempted to avenge herself on Oswald by righting her mother at his
expense; so for feeling’s sake Desirée kept herself very unhappy,
saying nothing to her mother of the discovery she had made, unable to
resume her old cordiality with the Huntleys, ill at ease in her own
mind, and sadly solitary and alone. If it had been any mere piece of
information--or had the injury to be done been her own, Desirée would
have seen what was right, plainly enough--but as it was, she only
thought of the cruel difference to the family of Melmar, which a word of
hers might make, and of the selfish advantage to herself; and feeling
conscious of the sacrifice she made for them--a sacrifice which nobody
knew or appreciated, and which her conscience told her was even
wrong--Desirée’s mind grew embittered against them and all the world;
and her poor little heart, uneasy, cross, and restless, consumed itself.
As the struggle continued it made her ill and pale, as well as disturbed
in mind; nobody could tell what ailed her--and even Aunt Jean, with her
keen black eyes, could not read Desirée. She had “something on her
mind.”

When one day she was startled by the arrival of a visitor, who asked to
see _her_, and was put into a little waiting-room--a cold little room,
without a fire, into which the March sunshine came chill, with no power
of warmth in it--to wait for the little governess. Desirée was much
amazed when she entered here to see the ruddy and comely face of the
Mistress looking down upon her, out of that black bonnet and widow’s
cap. It was a face full of faults, like its owner, but it was warm,
bright, kind, full of an unsubduable spirit and intelligence, which had
long ago attracted the eye of the vivacious little Frenchwoman, who,
however, did not know Mrs. Livingstone, except by sight. They looked at
each other in silence for the first moment--one amazed, and the other
thoughtful--at last the Mistress spoke.

“Maybe I may not name you right,” she said; “I have nae knowledge of
your tongue, and no’ much of strangers, whatever place they come from;
but my son Cosmo has seen your mother, in foreign parts, and that is the
reason that brings me here.”

Desirée started violently; for the moment it seemed to her that this was
her true and fit punishment. Her mother, whom she might have been
with--who might have been here had Desirée but spoken--was sick, was
dying, and a stranger brought her the news! She grew very pale and
clasped her little French hands in a passion of grief and
self-upbraiding.

“She is ill!” cried Desirée, “ill, and I am here!”

“Na--no’ that I ken of,” said the Mistress; “stranger news than that; do
you know of any bond between your mother and this house of Melmar? for
that is what I am come to tell you of now, as maybe she has done herself
before this time by hand of write.”

From pale, Desirée’s cheeks became burning red--her eyes sank beneath
the look of the Mistress, her heart beat loud and wildly. Who had found
her out? but she only turned her head aside with an uneasy movement and
did not speak.

“I may guess you’ve heard tell of it by your face,” said the Mistress;
“Melmar was left by will to my family--to my Huntley, the eldest and the
heir--failing your mother, that was thought to be lost. When he heard
tell of that, my Cosmo would not rest till he was away on his travels
seeking her. He’s been through France and Italy, and I ken not what
unlikely places a’ to look for your mother, and at last he’s found her;
and she’s coming home with little mair delay to be enfeoffed in her ain
lands and prove herself the heir.”

Bitter tears, which still had a certain relief in them, fell heavy from
Desirée’s eyes--_she_ had known it all, but had not been the means of
bringing this fortune to her mother. Her first impulse was not the
delighted surprise which the Mistress expected, but she threw herself
forward, after a moment’s pause, at her visitor’s feet, and seized her
hand and cried--“Is it true?” with a vehemence which almost scandalized
the Mistress. Cosmo’s mother took her hand away involuntarily, but moved
by the girl’s tears laid it on her head, with a hasty but kindly motion.

“It’s true,” said the Mistress; “but being true do you no’ see you canna
stay here? It is your mother’s house--but though I hold this Me’mar for
little better than a knave, yet I would not deceive him. You canna
remain here when your mother’s plea against him is begun. You should not
stay another day without letting him ken who you are--and that is why
I’m here to bid you come back with me to Norlaw.”

“To Norlaw!” cried Desirée, faintly; she had no words to express her
amazement at the invitation--her shame for the deceit which she had
practiced, and which was worse than any thing the Mistress supposed
possible--her strange humiliation in comparing herself, Oswald Huntley,
every one here, with Cosmo; somehow when this sudden burst of honest
daylight fell upon her, Desirée felt herself as great a culprit as
Melmar. Her place seemed with him and with his son, who knew the truth
and concealed it--not with the generous and true hearts who relinquished
their own expectations to do justice to the wronged. In an agony of
shame and self-disgust, Desirée hid her face in her hands--she was like
Oswald Huntley whom she despised--she was not like Cosmo Livingstone nor
Cosmo’s mother.

“Ay--to Norlaw,” said the Mistress, ignorant of all this complication of
feeling and with a softening in her voice; “Norlaw himself, that’s gane,
was near of kin to your mother; your grandfather, auld Melmar, was good
to us and ours; my sons are your nearest kinsmen in these parts, and I’m
their mother. It’s mair for your honor and credit, and for your
mother’s, now when you ken, to be there than here. Come hame with
me--you’ll be kindly welcome at Norlaw.”

“And yet,” said Desirée, lifting her tearful eyes, and her face flushed
with painful emotion; “and yet but for us, all this fortune would have
gone to your son. Why are you kind to me? you ought to hate me.”

“Na!” said the Mistress, with proud love and triumph; “my Huntley is
nane the waur--bairn, do you think the like of you could harm my son,
that I should hate you? Na! he would work his fingers to the bone, and
eat dry bread a’ his days before he would touch the inheritance of the
widow--loss of land or loss of gear is no such loss to my Huntley that I
should think ill of any person for its sake and you’re my son’s
kinswoman, and I’m his mother. Come hame with me till your ain mother is
here.”

Without a word Desirée rose, dried her eyes, and held out her little
hand to the Mistress, who took it doubtfully.

“I will be your daughter, your servant!” cried the little Frenchwoman,
with enthusiasm; “I will come to learn what truth means. Wait but till I
tell them. I will stay here no longer--I will do all that you say!”

In another moment she darted out of the room to prepare, afraid to
linger. The Mistress looked after her, shaking her head.

“My daughter!” said the Mistress to herself, with a “humph!” after the
words--and therewith she thought of Katie Logan; where was Katie now?




CHAPTER LXI.


The Melmar family had just concluded their luncheon, and were still
assembled in the dining-room--all but Mrs. Huntley, who had not yet come
down stairs--when Desirée, flushed and excited from her interview with
the Mistress, who waited for her in the little room, came hastily in
upon the party; without noticing any of the others Desirée went up at
once to the head of the house, who glared at her from behind his
newspaper with his stealthy look of suspicion and watchfulness, as she
advanced. Something in her look roused the suspicions of Mr. Huntley; he
gave a quick, angry glance aside at Oswald, as if inquiring the cause of
the girl’s excitement, which his son replied to with a side-look of
sullen resentment and mortification--an unspoken angry dialogue which
often passed between the father and son, for Melmar had imposed upon the
young man the task of keeping Desirée in ignorance and happiness, a
charge which Oswald, who had lost even the first novelty of amusing
himself with her found unspeakably galling, a constant humiliation. The
little Frenchwoman came up rapidly to her host and employer--her cheek
glowing, her eye shining, her small foot in her stout little winter-shoe
sounding lightly yet distinctly on the carpet. They all looked at her
with involuntary expectation. Something newly-discovered and strange
shone in Desirée’s face.

“Sir,” she said, quickly, “I come to thank you for being kind to me. I
come because it is honest to tell you--I am going away.”

“Going away? What’s wrong?” said Melmar, with a little alarm; “come into
my study, mademoiselle, and we will put all right, never fear; that
little deevil Patricia has been at her again!”

Desirée did not wait for the burst of shrewish tears and exclamations
which even Patricia’s extreme curiosity could not restrain. She answered
quickly and with eagerness,

“No, no, it is not Patricia--it is no one--it is news from home; _you_
know it already--you know it!” cried the girl. “My mother! She is poor;
I have had to come away from her to be a governess; and you, alas, knew
who she was, but said nothing of it to me!”

And involuntarily Desirée’s eyes sought, with a momentary indignant
glance, the face of Oswald. He sat perfectly upright in his chair
staring at her, growing red and white by turns; red with a fierce,
selfish anger, white with a baffled, ungenerous shame, the ignominy, not
of doing wrong, but of being found out. But even in that moment, in the
mortifying consciousness that this little girl had discovered and
despised him--the revenge, or rather, for it was smaller--the spite of a
mean mind, relieved itself at least in the false wooer’s face. He turned
to her with the bitterest sneer poor Desirée had ever seen. It seemed to
say, “what cause but this could have induced me to notice _you_?” She
did not care for him, but she thought she once had cared, and the sneer
galled the poor little Frenchwoman to the heart.

“You are ungenerous--you!” she exclaimed, with a fiery vehemence and
passion, “you delude me, and then you sneer. Shall I sneer at you, you
sordid, you who wrong the widow? But no! If you had not known me I
should have thanked you, and my mother would never, never have injured
one who was good to Desirée; but now it is war, and I go. Farewell,
Monsieur! you did not mean to be kind, but only to blind me--ah, I was
wrong to speak of thanks--farewell!”

“What do you mean? who has deceived you?” cried Joanna, stepping forward
and shaking Desirée somewhat roughly by the arm; “tell us all plain out
what it is. I’m as sure as I can be that it’s him that’s wrong--and I
think shame of Oswald to see him sit there, holding his tongue when he
should speak; but you shanna look so at papa!”

And Joanna stood between Melmar and her excited little friend, thrusting
the latter away, and yet holding her fast at arm’s length. Melmar put
his arm on his daughter’s shoulder and set her quietly aside.

“Let us hear what this discovery is,” said Mr. Huntley; “who is your
mother, mademoiselle?”

At which cool question Desirée blazed for an instant into a flush of
fury, but immediately shrunk with a cool dread of having been wrong and
foolish. Perhaps, after all, they did not know--perhaps it was she who
was about to heighten the misfortune of their loss and ruin by
ungenerous insinuations. Desirée paused and looked doubtfully in
Melmar’s face. He was watching her with his usual stealthy vigilance,
looking, as usual, heated and fiery, curving his bushy, grizzled
eyebrows over those keen cat-like eyes. She gazed at him with a
doubtful, almost imploring, look--was she injuring him?--had he not
known?

“Come, mademoiselle,” said Melmar, gaining confidence as he saw the girl
was a little daunted, “I have but a small acquaintance in your country.
Who was your mother? It does not concern us much, so far as I can see,
but still, let’s hear. Oswald, my lad, can’t you use your influence?--we
are all waiting to hear.”

Oswald, however, had given up the whole business. He was pleased to be
able to annoy his father and affront Desirée at last. Perhaps the rage
and disappointment in his heart were in some sort a relief to him. He
was at least free now to express his real sentiments. He got up hastily
from his chair, thrust it aside so roughly that it fell, and with a
suppressed but audible oath, left the room. Then Desirée stood alone,
with Melmar watching her, with Patricia crying spitefully close at hand,
and even Joanna, her own friend, menacing and unfriendly. The poor girl
did not know where to turn or what to do.

“Perhaps I am wrong,” she said, with a momentary falter. “There was no
reason, it is true, why you should know mamma. And perhaps it is unkind
and ungenerous of me. But--ah, Joanna, you guessed it when I did not
know!--you said she must have been here--you are honest and knew no
harm! My mother was born at Melmar; it is hers, though she is poor--and
she is coming home.”

“Coming home! this is but a poor story, mademoiselle,” said Melmar.
“_That_ person died abroad long ago, and was mother to nobody; but it’s
clever, by George! uncommonly clever. Her mother’s coming home, and my
land belongs to her! cool, that, I must say. Will you take Patricia for
your lady’s maid, mademoiselle?”

“Ah, you sneer, you all sneer!” cried Desirée. “I could sneer too, if I
were as guilty; but it is true, and you know it is true; you, who are
our kinsman and should have cared for us--you, who have planned to
deceive a poor stranger girl--you know it is true!”

“If he does,” cried Joanna, “_you’re_ no’ to stand there and tell him.
He has been as kind to you as if you belonged to us--you don’t belong to
us--go--go away this moment. I will not let you stay here!”

And Joanna stamped her foot in the excess of her indignation and
sympathy with her father, who looked on, through all this side-play of
feelings, entirely unmoved. Poor little Desirée, on the contrary, was
stung and wounded beyond measure by Joanna’s violence. She gave her one
terrified, passionate look, half reproachful, half defiant, had hard ado
to restrain a burst of girlish, half-weeping recrimination, and then
turned round with one sob out of her poor little heart, which felt as
though it would burst, and went away with a forlorn, heroical dignity
out of the room. Poor Desirée would not have looked back for a kingdom,
but she hoped to have been called back, for all that, and could almost
have fallen down on the threshold with mortification and disappointment,
when she found that no one interfered to prevent her withdrawal. The
poor child was full of sentiment, but had a tender heart withal. She
could not bear to leave a house where she had lived so long after this
fashion, and but for her pride, Desirée would have rushed back to fall
into Joanna’s arms, and beg everybody’s pardon; but her pride sustained
her in the struggle, and at length vanquished her “feelings". Instead of
rushing into Joanna’s arms, she went to the Mistress, who still waited
for her in the little room, and who had already been edified by hearing
the fall of Oswald’s chair, and seeing that gentleman, as he went
furiously forth, kicking Patricia’s lap-dog out of his way in the hall.
The Mistress was human. She listened to those sounds and witnessed that
sight with a natural, but not very amiable sentiment. She was rather
pleased than otherwise to be so informed that she had brought a
thunderbolt to Melmar.

“Let them bear it as they dow,” said the Mistress, with an angry
triumph; “neither comfort nor help to any mortal has come out of Me’mar
for mony a day;” and she received the unfortunate little cause of all
this commotion with more favor than before. Poor little Desirée came in
with a quivering lip and a full eye, scarcely able to speak, but
determined not to cry, which was no small trial of resolution. The
family of Melmar were her mother’s enemies--some of them had tried to
delude, and some had been unkind to herself--yet she knew them; and the
Mistress, who came to take her away, was a stranger. It was like going
out once more into the unknown world.

So Desirée left Melmar, with a heart which fluttered with pain, anger,
indignation, and a strange fear of the future, and the Mistress guided
to Norlaw almost with tenderness the child of that Mary who had been a
lifelong vexation to herself. They left behind them no small amount of
dismay and anxiety, all the house vaguely finding out that something was
wrong, while Joanna alone stood by her father’s side, angry, rude, and
careless of every one, bestowing her whole impatient regards upon him.




CHAPTER LXII.


“Happened!” said bowed Jaacob, with a little scorn; “what should have
happened?--you dinna ca’ this place in the world--naething, so far as I
can tell, ever happens here except births and deaths and marriages; no
muckle food for the intelleck in the like of them, though I wouldna say
but they are necessary evils--na, laddie, there’s little to tell you
here.”

“Not even about the Bill?” said Cosmo; “don’t forget I’ve been abroad
and know nothing of what you’ve all been doing at home.”

“The Bill--humph! it’s a’ very weel for the present,” said Jaacob, with
a twinkle of excitement in his one eye, “but as for thae politicians
that ca’ it a final measure, I wouldna gie that for them,” and Jaacob
snapped his fingers energetically. “It hasna made just a’ that
difference in the world ane would have expected, either,” he added,
after a moment, a certain grim humor stealing into his grotesque face;
“we’re a’ as nigh as possible just where we were. I’m no’ what you would
ca’ a sanguine philosopher mysel’. I ken human nature gey weel; and I
canna say I ever limited my ain faith to men that pay rent and taxes at
so muckle a year; but it doesna make that difference ane might have
looked for. A man’s just the same man, callant--especially if he’s a
poor creature with nae nobility in him--though you do gie him a vote.”

“Yet it’s all the difference,” cried Cosmo, with a little burst of
boyish enthusiasm, “between the freeman and the slave!”

Jaacob eyed him grimly with his one eye. “It’s a’ the like of you ken,”
said the cynic, with a little contempt, and a great deal of superiority;
“but you’ll learn better if ye have the gift. There’s a certain
slave-class in ilka community--that’s my conviction--and I wouldna say
but we’ve just had the good fortune to licht upon them in thae ten-pound
householders; oh, ay, laddie! let the aristocrats alane--they’re as
cunning as auld Nick where their ain interest’s concerned, though nae
better than as mony school-boys in a’ greater concerns. Catch them
extending the suffrage to the real _men_, the backbane of the country!
Would you say a coof in the town here, that marries some fool of a wife
and gets a house of his ain, was a mair responsible person than _me_!
Take it in ony class you please--yoursel’ when you’re aulder--na,
Me’mar’s son even, that’s nearer my age than yours--ony Willie A’ thing
of a shopkeeper gets his vote--set him up! and his voice in the
country--but there’s nae voice for you, my lad, if ye were
ane-and-twenty the morn--nor for the young laird.”

The mention of this name instantly arrested Cosmo’s indignation at his
own political disabilities. “You say nothing has happened, Jacob,” said
Cosmo, “and yet here is this same young laird--what of him?--is he
nothing?--he ought to rank high in Kirkbride.”

“Kirkbride and me are seldom of the same opinion,” said the little
Cyclops, pushing his red cowl off his brow, and proceeding carelessly to
his work, which had been suspended during the more exciting
conversation. “I canna be fashed with weakly folk, women or men, though
it’s more natural in a woman. There’s that bit thing of a sister of his
with the pink e’en--he’s ower like her to please me--but he’s a
virtuoso. I’ve been ca’ed one mysel. I’ve mair sympathy with a traveled
man than thae savages here. You see I wouldna say but I might think
better of baith him and his father if I’m right in a guess o’ mine; and
I maun admit I’m seldom wrang when I take a thing into my mind.”

“What is it?” said Cosmo, eagerly.

“There’s a young lass there, a governess,” said Jaacob; “I couldna tell,
if I was on my aith, what’s out of the way about her. She’s no’ to ca’
very bonnie, and as for wut, that’s no’ to be looked for in woman--and
she’s French, though I’m above prejudice on that score; but there’s just
something about her reminds me whiles of another person--though no mair
to be compared in ae way than a gowan to a rose. I’m no’ very easy
attractit, which is plain to view, seeing, for a’ I’ve met with, I’m no’
a married man, and like enough never will be--but I maun admit I was
taken with her mysel’.”

Cosmo’s face was crimson with suppressed anger and laughter both
combined.

“How dare you?” he cried at last, with a violent and sudden burst of the
latter impulse. Bowed Jaacob turned round upon him, swelling to his
fullest stature, and settling his red cowl on his head with an air of
defiance, yet with a remote and grim consciousness of fun in the corner
of his eye.

“Daur!” exclaimed the gallant hunchback. “Mind what you say, my lad!
Women hae ae gift--they aye ken merit when they see it. I’ve kent a
hantle in my day; but the bonniest of them a’ never said ‘How daur ye’
to me.”

“Very well, Jacob,” said Cosmo, laughing; “I had forgotten your
successes. But what of this young lady at Melmar, and your guess about
Oswald Huntley? I know her, and I am curious to hear.”

“Just the lad yonder, if you will ken, is taken with her like me--that’s
a’. I advise you to say ‘you daur’ to him,” said Jaacob, shortly, ending
his words with a prolonged chorus of hammering.

An involuntary and unconscious exclamation burst from Cosmo’s lips. He
felt a burning color rise over his face. Why, he could not tell; but his
sudden shock of consternation and indignant resentment quite overpowered
his composure for the moment--a thrill of passionate displeasure tingled
through his heart. He was violently impatient of the thought, yet could
not tell why.

“Whatfor no?” said Jaacob. “I’m nane of your romantic men mysel’--but
I’ve just this ae thing to say, I despise a lad that thinks on the penny
siller when a woman’s in the question. I wouldna tak a wife into the
bargain with a wheen lands or a pickle gear, no’ if she was a king’s
daughter--though she might be that, and yet be nae great things. Na,
laddie, a man that has the heart to be real downricht in love has aye
something in him, take my word for’t; and even auld Me’mar himsel’--”

“The old villain!” cried Cosmo, violently; “the mean old rascal! That is
what he meant by bringing her here. It was not enough to wrong the
mother, but he must delude the child! Be quiet, Jaacob! you don’t know
the old gray-haired villain! They ought to be tried for conspiracy,
every one of them. Love!--it is profanation to name the name!”

“Eh, what’s a’ this?” cried Jaacob. “What does the callant mean by
conspiracy?--what’s about this lassie? She’s gey bonnie--no’ to say
very, but gey--and she’s just a governess. I respect the auld rascal, as
you ca’ him--and I wouldna say you’re far wrang--for respecting his
son’s fancy. The maist o’ thae moneyed men, I can tell ye, are as mean
as an auld miser; therefore ye may say what ye like, my lad. I’m friends
with Me’mar and his son the noo.”

Jaacob went on accordingly with his hammering, professing no notice of
Cosmo, who, busy with his own indignant thoughts, did not even observe
the vigilant, sidelong regards of the blacksmith’s one eye. He scarcely
even heard what Jaacob said, as the village philosopher resumed his
monologue, keeping always that solitary orb of vision intent upon his
visitor. Jaacob, with all his enlightenment, was not above curiosity,
and took a very lively interest in the human character and the concerns
of his fellow-men.

“And the minister’s dead,” said Jaacob. “For a man that had nae
experience of life, he wasna such a fuil as he might have been. I’ve
seen waur priests. The vulgar gave him honor, and it’s aye desirable to
have a man in that capacity that can impose upon the vulgar;--and the
bairns are away. I miss Katie Logan’s face about the town mysel’. She
wasna in my style; but I canna deny her merits. Mair folks’ taste than
mine has to be consulted. As for me, I have rather a notion of that
French governess at Melmar. If there’s onything wrang there, gie a man a
hint, Cosmo, lad. I’ve nae objection to cut Oswald Huntley out mysel’.”

“Find some other subject for your jests,” cried Cosmo, haughtily;
“Mademoiselle Desirée’s name is not to be used in village gossip. I will
not permit it while I am here.”

Jaacob turned round upon him with his eye on fire.

“Wha the deevil made you a judge?” said Jaacob; “what’s your
madame-oiselle, or you either, that you’re ower guid for an honest man’s
mouth? Confound your impidence! a slip of a callant that makes verses,
do ye set up your face to me?”

At this point of the conversation Cosmo began to have a glimmering
perception that Desirée’s name was quite as unsuitable in a quarrel with
Jaacob as in any supposed village gossip; and that the dispute between
himself and the blacksmith was on the whole somewhat ridiculous. He
evaded Jaacob’s angry interrogatory with a half laugh of annoyance and
embarrassment.

“You know as well as I do, Jacob, that one should not speak so of young
ladies,” said Cosmo, who did not know what to say.

“Do I?” said Jaacob; “what would ye hae a man to talk about? they’re no
muckle to crack o’ in the way o’ wisdom, but they’re bonnie objecks in
creation, as a’body maun allow. I would just like to ken, though, my
lad, what’s a’ your particular interest in this madame-oiselle?”

“Hush,” said Cosmo, whose cheeks began to burn; “she is my kinswoman; by
this time perhaps she is with my mother in Norlaw; she is the child
of--”

Cosmo paused, thinking to stop at that half-confidence. Jaacob stood
staring at him, with his red cowl on one side, and his eye gleaming
through the haze. As he gazed, a certain strange consciousness came to
the hunchback’s face. His dwarf figure, which you could plainly see had
the strength of a giant’s, his face swart and grotesque, his one
gleaming eye and puckered forehead, became suddenly softened by a kind
of homely pathos which stole over them like a breath of summer wind.
When he had gazed his full gaze of inquiry into Cosmo’s face, Jaacob
turned his head aside hurriedly.

“So you’ve found her!” said the blacksmith, with a low intensity of
voice which made Cosmo respectful by its force and emotion; and when he
had spoken he fell to upon his anvil with a rough and loud succession of
blows which left no time for an answer. Cosmo stood beside him, during
this assault, with a grave face, looking on at the exploits of the
hammer as if they were something serious and important. The introduction
of this new subject changed their tone in a moment.

When Jaacob paused to take breath he resumed the conversation, still in
a somewhat subdued tone, though briskly enough.

“So she’s aye living,” said Jaacob; “and this is her daughter? A very
little mair insight and I would have found it out mysel’. I aye thought
she was like. And what have you done with her now you’ve found her? Is
she to come hame?”

“Immediately,” said Cosmo.

“She’s auld by this time, nae doubt,” said Jaacob, carelessly; “women
are such tender gear, a’thing tells upon them. It’s _their_ beauty
that’s like a moth--the like of me wears langer; and so she’s aye to the
fore?--ay! I doubt she’ll mind little about Me’mar, or the folk here
about. I’m above prejudices mysel’, and maybe the French are mair
enlightened in twa three points than we are--I’ll no’ say--but I wouldna
bring up youngsters to be natives of a strange country. So you found her
out with your ain hand, callant, did you? You’re a clever chield! and
what’s to be done when she comes hame?”

“She is the Lady of Melmar, as she always was,” said Cosmo, with a
little pride.

“And what’s to become of the auld family--father and son--no’ to say of
the twa sisters and the auld auntie,” said Jaacob, with a grim smile.
“So that’s the story! Confound them a’! I’m no’ a man to be cheated out
of my sympathies. And I’m seldom wrang--so if you’ve ony thoughts that
way, callant, I advise ye to relinquish them. Ye may be half-a-hunder’
poets if ye like, and as mony mair to the back o’ that, but if the
Huntley lad liket her she’ll stick to him.”

“That is neither your concern nor mine!” cried Cosmo, loftily. But, as
Jaacob laughed and went on, the lad began to feel unaccountably
aggravated, to lose his temper, and make angry answers, which made his
discomfiture capital fun to the little giant. At length, Cosmo hurried
away. It was the same day on which the Mistress paid her visit to
Desirée, and Cosmo could not help feeling excited and curious about the
issue of his mother’s invitation. Thoughts which made the lad blush came
into his mind as he went slowly over Tyne, looking up at that high bank,
from which the evening sunshine, chill, yet bright, was slowly
disappearing--where the trees began to bud round the cottages, and where
the white gable of the manse still crowned the peaceful summit--that
manse where Katie Logan, with her elder-sister smile, was no longer
mistress. Somehow, there occurred to him a wandering thought about
Katie, who was away--he did not know where--and Huntley, who was at the
ends of the earth. Huntley had not actually lost any thing, Cosmo said
to himself, yet Huntley seemed disinherited and impoverished to the
obstinate eyes of fancy. Cosmo could not have told, either, why he
associated his brother with Katie Logan, now an orphan and absent, yet
he did so involuntarily. He thought of Huntley and Katie, both poor, far
separated, and perhaps never to meet again; he thought of Cameron in his
sudden trouble; and then his thoughts glided off with a little
bitterness, to that perverse woman’s love, which always seemed to cling
to the wrong object. Madame Roche herself, perhaps, first of all, though
the very fancy seemed somehow a wrong to his mother, Marie fretting
peevishly for her French husband, Desirée giving her heart to Oswald
Huntley. The lad turned upon his heel with a bitter impatience, and set
off for a long walk in the opposite direction as these things glided
into his mind. To be sure, he had nothing to do with it; but still it
was all wrong--a distortion of nature--and it galled him in his
thoughts.




CHAPTER LXIII.


The presence of Desirée made no small sensation in the house of Norlaw,
which did not quite know what to make of her. The Mistress herself,
after that first strange impulse of kin and kindness which prompted her
to bring the young stranger home, relapsed into her usual ways, and did
not conceal from either son or servant that she expected to be “fashed”
by the little Frenchwoman; while Marget, rather displeased that so
important a step should be taken without her sanction, and mightily
curious to know the reason, was highly impatient at first of Desirée’s
name and nation, and discontented with her presence here.

“I canna faddom the Mistress,” said Marget, angrily; “what she’s
thinking upon, to bring a young flirt of a Frenchwoman into this decent
house, and ane of our lads at home is just beyond me. Do I think her
bonnie? No’ me! She’s French, and I daur to say, a papisher to the boot;
but the lads will, take my word for it--callants are aye keen about a
thing that’s outray. I’m just as thankfu’ as I can be that Huntley’s at
the other end of the world--there’s nae fears of our Patie--and Cosmo,
you see, he’s ower young.”

This latter proposition Marget repeated to herself as she went about her
dairy. It did not seem an entirely satisfactory statement of the case,
for if Cosmo was too young to be injured, Desirée was also a couple of
years his junior, and could scarcely be supposed old enough to do any
great harm.

“Ay, but it’s in them frae their cradle,” said the uncharitable Marget,
as she rinsed her great wooden bowls and set them ready for the milk.
The honest retainer of the family was quite disturbed by this new
arrival. She could not “get her mouth about the like of thae outlandish
names,” so she never called Desirée any thing but Miss, which title in
Marget’s lips, unassociated with a Christian name, was by no means a
title of high respect, and she grumbled as she was quite unwont to
grumble, over the additional trouble of another inmate. Altogether
Marget was totally dissatisfied.

While Desirée, suddenly dropped into this strange house, every custom of
which was strange to her, and where girlhood and its occupations were
unknown, felt somewhat forlorn and desolate, it must be confessed, and
sometimes even longed to be back again in Melmar, where there were many
women, and where her pretty needle-works and graceful accomplishments
were not reckoned frivolous, the Mistress was busy all day long, and
when she had ended her household employments, sat down with her
work-basket to mend shirts or stockings with a steadiness which did not
care to accept any assistance.

“Thank you, they’re for my son, Huntley; I like to do them a’ mysel’,”
she would answer to Desirée’s offer of aid. “Much obliged to you, but
Cosmo’s stockings, poor callant, are no work for the like of you.” In
like manner, Desirée was debarred from the most trifling assistance in
the house. Marget was furious when she ventured to wash the Mistress’s
best tea-service, or to sweep the hearth on occasion.

“Na, miss, we’re no’ come to that pass in Norlaw that a stranger visitor
needs to file her fingers,” said Marget, taking the brush from Desirée’s
hand; so that, condemned to an uncomfortable idleness in the midst of
busy people, and aware that the Mistress’s “Humph!” on one occasion, at
least, referred to her pretty embroideries, poor little Desirée found
little better for it than to wander round and round the old castle of
Norlaw, and up the banks of Tyne, where, to say truth, Cosmo liked
nothing better than to wander along with her, talking about her mother,
about St. Ouen, about his travels, about every thing in earth and
heaven.

And whether Cosmo was “ower young” remains to be seen.

But Desirée had not been long in Norlaw when letters came from Madame
Roche, one to the Mistress, brief yet effusive, thanking that reserved
Scottish woman for her kindness to “my little one;” another to Cosmo, in
which he was called my child and my friend so often, that though he was
pleased, he was yet half ashamed to show the epistle to his mother; and
a third to Desirée herself. This was the most important of the three,
and contained Madame Roche’s scheme of poetic justice. This is what the
Scotch-French mother said to little Desirée:--

“My child, we, who have been so poor, are coming to a great fortune. It
is as strange as a romance, and we can never forget how it has come to
us. Ay, my Desirée, what noble hearts! what princely young men! Despite
of our good fortune, my heart bleeds for the generous Huntley, for it is
he who is disinherited. Must this be, my child? He is far away, he knows
not we are found; he will return to find his inheritance gone. But I
have trained my Desirée to love honor and virtue, and to be generous as
the Livingstones. Shall I say to you, my child, what would glad my heart
most to see? Our poor Marie has thrown away her happiness and her
liberty; she can not reward any man, however noble; she can not make any
compensation to those whom we must supplant, and her heart wanders after
that vagabond, that abandoned one! But my Desirée is young, only a
child, and has not begun to think of lovers. My love, keep your little
heart safe till Huntley returns--your mother bids you, Desirée. Look not
at any one, think not of any one, till you have seen this noble Huntley;
it is the only return you can give--nay, my little one! it is all _I_
can do to prove that I am not ungrateful. This Melmar, which I had lost
and won without knowing it, will be between Marie and you when I die.
You can not give it all back to your kinsman, but he will think that
half which your sister has doubly made up, my child, when I put into his
hand the hand of my Desirée; and we shall all love each other, and be
good and happy, like a fairy tale.

“This is your mamma’s fondest wish, my pretty one: you must keep your
heart safe, you must love Huntley, you must give him back half of the
inheritance. My poor Marie and I shall live together, and you shall be
near us; and then no one will be injured, but all shall have justice. I
would I had another little daughter for the good Cosmo, who found me out
in St. Ouen. I love the boy, and he shall be with us when he pleases,
and we will do for him all we can. But keep your heart safe, my Desirée,
for Huntley, and thus let us reward him when he comes home.”

Poor Madame Roche! she little knew what a fever of displeasure and
indignation this pretty sentimental letter of hers would rouse in her
little daughter’s heart. Desirée tore the envelope in pieces in her
first burst of vexation, which was meant to express by similitude that
she would have torn the letter, and blotted out its injunctions, if she
dared. She threw the epistle itself out of her hands as if it had stung
her. Not that Desirée’s mind was above those sublime arrangements of
poetic justice, which in this inconsequent world are always so futile;
but, somehow, a plan which might have looked pretty enough had it
concerned another, filled Madame Roche’s independent little daughter
with the utmost shame and mortification when she herself was the
heroine.

“Let him take it all!” she cried out half aloud to herself, in her
little chamber. “Do I care for it? I will work--I will be a governess;
but I will not sell myself to this Huntley--no, not if I should die!”

And having so recorded her determination, poor little Desirée sat down
on the floor and had a hearty cry, and after that thought, with a
girlish effusion of sympathy, of poor Cosmo, who, after all, had done it
all, yet whom no one thought of compensating. When straightway there
came into Desirée’s heart some such bitter thoughts of justice and
injustice as once had filled the mind of Cosmo Livingstone.
Huntley!--what had Huntley done that Madame Roche should dedicate
her--_her_, an unwilling Andromeda, to compensate this unknown monster;
and Desirée sprang up and stamped her little foot, and clapped her
hands, and vowed that no force in the world, not even her mother’s
commands, should compel her to show her mother’s gratitude by becoming
Huntley’s wife.

A most unnecessary passion; for there was Katie Logan all the time,
unpledged and unbetrothed, it is true, but thinking her own thoughts of
some one far away, who might possibly break in some day upon those cares
of elder-sisterhood, which made her as important as a many-childed
mother, even in those grave days of her orphan youth; and there was
Huntley in his hut in the bush, not thriving over well, poor fellow,
thinking very little of Melmar, but thinking a great deal of that manse
parlor, where the sun shone, and Katie darned her children’s
stockings--a scene which always would shine, and never could dim out of
the young man’s recollection. Poor Madame Roche, with her pretty plan of
compensation, and poor Desirée, rebelliously resistant to it, how much
trouble they might both have saved themselves, could some kind fairy
have shown to them a single peep of Huntley Livingstone’s solitary
thoughts.




CHAPTER LXIV.


Five years had made countless revolutions in human affairs, and changed
the order of things in more houses than Melmar, but had not altered the
fair face of the country, when, late upon a lovely June evening, two
travelers alighted from the coach at the door of the Norlaw Arms. They
were not anglers, nor tourists, though they were both bronzed and
bearded. The younger of the two looked round him with eager looks of
recognition, directing his glances to particular points--a look very
different from the stranger’s vague gaze at every thing, which latter
was in the eyes of his companion. At the manse, where the white gable
was scarcely visible through the thick foliage of the great
pear-tree--at the glimmering twilight path through the fields to
Norlaw--even deep into the corner of the village street, where bowed
Jaacob, with his red cowl pushed up from his bullet head behind, stood,
strongly relieved against the glow within, at the smithy door. To all
these familiar features of the scene, the new-comer turned repeated and
eager glances. There was an individual recognition in every look he gave
as he sprang down from the top of the coach, and stood by with a certain
friendly, happy impatience and restlessness, not easy to describe, while
the luggage was being unpacked from the heavy-laden public conveyance;
that was a work of time. Even now, in railway days, it is not so easy a
matter to get one’s portmanteau embarked or disembarked at Kirkbride
station as one might suppose; and the helpers at the Norlaw Arms were
innocent of the stimulus and external pressure of an express train. They
made a quantity of bustle, but did their business at their leisure,
while this new arrival, whom none of them knew, kept looking at them all
with their names upon his lips, and laughter and kindness in his eyes.
He had “seen the world,” since he last saw these leisurely proceedings
at the Norlaw Arms--he had been on the other side of this big globe
since he last stood in the street of Kirkbride; and the young man could
not help feeling himself a more important person now than when he set
out by this same conveyance some seven years ago, to make his fortune
and his way in the world.

Huntley Livingstone, however, had not made his fortune; but he had made
what he thought as much of--a thousand pounds; and having long ago, with
a tingle of disappointment and a flush of pride, renounced all hopes of
the Melmar which belonged to Madame Roche, had decided, when this modest
amount of prosperity came to him, that he could not do better than
return to his homely little patrimony, and lay out his Australian gains
upon the land at home. It is true we might have told all this much more
dramatically by bringing home the adventurer unexpectedly to his mother,
and leaving him to announce his riches by word of mouth. But Huntley was
too good a son to make dramatic surprises. When he made his thousand
pounds, he wrote the Mistress word of it instantly--and he was not
unexpected. The best room in Norlaw was prepared a week ago. It was only
the day and hour of his return which the Mistress did not know.

So Huntley stood before the Norlaw Arms, while the gray twilight, which
threw no shadows, fell over that leaf-covered gable of the manse; and
gradually the young man’s thoughts fell into reverie even in the moment
and excitement of arrival. Katie Logan! she was not bound to him by the
faintest far-away implication of a promise. It was seven years now since
Huntley bade her farewell. Where was the orphan elder-sister, with her
little group of orphan children now?

Huntley’s companion was as much unlike himself as one human creature
could be unlike another. He was a Frenchman, with shaved cheeks and a
black moustache, lank, long locks of black hair falling into one of his
eyes, and a thin, long, oval face. He was in short--except that he had
no _habit de bal_, no white waistcoat, no bouquet in his buttonhole--a
perfect type of the ordinary Frenchman whom one sees in every British
concert-room as the conductor of an orchestra or the player of a fiddle.
This kind of man does not look a very fine specimen of humanity in
traveler’s dress, and with the dust of a journey upon him. Huntley was
covered with dust, but Huntley did not look dirty; Huntley was roughly
attired, had a beard, and was somewhat savage in his appearance, but,
notwithstanding, was a well-complexioned, pure-skinned Briton, who bore
the soil of travel upon his surface only, which was not at all the case
with his neighbor. This stranger, however, was sufficiently familiar
with his traveling-companion to strike him on the shoulder and dispel
his thoughts about Katie.

“Where am I to go? to this meeserable little place?” asked the
Frenchman, speaking perfectly good English, but dwelling upon the
adjective by way of giving it emphasis, and pointing at the moment with
his dirty forefinger, on which he wore a ring, to the Norlaw Arms.

Huntley was a Scotsman, strong in the instinct of hospitality, but he
was at the same time the son of a reserved mother, and hated the
intrusion of strangers at the moment of his return.

“It’s a very good inn of its kind,” said Huntley, uneasily, turning
round to look at it. The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, and eyed the
respectable little house with contempt.

“Ah! bah! of its kind--I believe it,” said the stranger, kicking away a
poor little dog which stood looking on with serious interest, and
waiting for the fresh start of the coach; “I perceive your house is a
chateau, an estate, my friend,” he continued; “is there no little room
you can spare a comrade? I come on a good errand, the most virtuous, the
most honest! Madame, your mother, will give me her blessing--I go to
seek my wife.”

Huntley turned away to look after his trunks, but the stranger followed
with a pertinacity which prevailed over Huntley. He gave a reluctant
invitation at last, was restored to better humor by a sudden recognition
from the landlord of the Norlaw Arms, and after pausing to receive the
greetings and congratulations of everybody within hearing, set off,
hastily accompanied by the Frenchman. Huntley endured his companion with
great impatience, especially as they came within sight of home, and all
the emotions connected with that familiar place rushed to the young
man’s heart and to his eyes. The Frenchman’s voice ran on, an
impertinent babble, while the gray old castle, the quiet house, with its
pale vane pointing to the north, and the low hill-side, rustling to its
summit with green corn, lay once more before the eyes which loved them
better than any other landscape in the world. Then a figure became
visible going in and out at the kitchen-door, a tall, angular form, with
the “kilted” gown, the cap with its string pinned back, the little
shawl over the shoulders, all of which homely details Huntley remembered
so well. The young man quickened his pace, and held out his hands
unconsciously. And then Marget saw him; she threw down her milk-pail,
arched her hand over her eyes for a moment to gaze at him and assure
herself and then with a loud, wild exclamation, rushed into the house.
Huntley remembered no more, either guest or hospitality; he rushed down
the little bank which intervened, splashed through the shallow Tyne, too
much excited to take the bridge, and reached the door of Norlaw, as the
Mistress, with her trembling hands, flung it unsteadily open to look for
herself, and see that Marget was wrong. Too much joy almost fainted the
heart of the Mistress within her; she could not speak to him--she could
only sob out big, slow sobs, which fell echoing through the still air
with the strangest pathos of thanksgiving. Huntley had come home.

“So you werna wrang, as it happened,” said the Mistress, with dignity,
when she had at last become familiar with the idea of Huntley’s return,
and had contented her eye with gazing on him; “you werna wrang after a’;
but I certainly thought that myself, and me only, would be the person to
get the first sight of my bairn. He minded you too, very well, Marget,
which was less wonder than you minding him, and him such a grown man
with such a black beard. I didna believe ye, it’s true, but it was a’
because I thought no person could mind upon him to ken him at a
distance, but only me.”

“Mind!” cried Marget, moved beyond ordinary patience; “did I no’ carry
the bairn in my arms when he was just in coats and put his first breeks
upon him! Mind!--me that have been about Norlaw House seven-and-twenty
years come Martinmas--wha should mind if it wasna me?”

But though this speech was almost concluded before the Mistress left the
kitchen, it was not resented. The mother’s mind was too full of Huntley
to think of any thing else. She returned to the dining-parlor, where, in
the first effusion of her joy, she had placed her first-born in his
father’s chair, and began to spread the table with her own hands for his
refreshment. As yet she had scarcely taken any notice of the Frenchman.
Now his voice startled her; she looked at him angrily, and then at her
son. He was not quite such a person as fathers and mothers love to see
in the company of their children.

“No doubt, Huntley,” said the Mistress, at last, with a little impatient
movement of her head--“no doubt this gentleman is some great friend of
yours, to come hame with you the very first day, and you been seven
years from home.”

“Ah! my good friend Huntley is troubled, madame,” interposed the subject
of her speech; “I have come to seek my wife. I have heard she is in
Scotland--she is near; and I did ask for one little room in his castle
rather than go to the inn in the village. For I must ask you for my
wife.”

“Your wife? what should I know about strange men’s wives?” said the
Mistress; “Huntley’s friends have a good right to be welcome at Norlaw;
but to tell the truth he’s new come home and I’m little accustomed to
strangers. You used to ken that, Huntley, laddie, though you’ve maybe
forgotten now; seven years is a long time.”

“My wife,” resumed the Frenchman, “came to possess a great fortune in
this country. I have been a traveler, madame. I have come with your son
from the other side of the world. I have been _bon camarade_. But see! I
have lost my wife. Since I am gone she has found a fortune, she has left
her country, she is here, if I knew where to find her. Madame Pierrot,
my wife.”

“I’m little acquaint with French ladies,” said the Mistress, briefly;
but as she spoke she turned from her occupation to look full at her
strange visitor with eyes a little curious and even disquieted. The end
of her investigation was a “humph,” which was sufficiently significant.
After that she turned her back upon him and went on with her
preparations, looking somewhat stormy at Huntley. Then her impatience
displayed itself under other disguises. In the first place she set
another chair for him at the table.

“Take you this seat, Huntley, my man,” said the Mistress; “and the foot
of the table, like the master of the house; for doubtless Norlaw is
yours for any person it’s your pleasure to bring into it. Sit in to the
table, and eat your supper like a man; and I’ll put _this_ back out of
the way.”

Accordingly, when Huntley rose, his mother wheeled back the sacred chair
which she had given him in her joy. Knowing how innocent he was of all
friendship with his companion, Huntley almost smiled at this sign of
her displeasure, but, when she left the room, followed her to explain
how it was.

“I asked him most ungraciously and unwillingly,” said poor Huntley;
“don’t be displeased on account of that fellow; he came home with me
from Australia, and I lost sight of him in London, only to find him
again coming here by the same coach. I actually know nothing about him
except his name.”

“But I do,” said the Mistress.

“You, mother?”

“Ay, just me, mother; and a vagabond he is, as ony person may well see,”
said the Mistress; “I ken mair than folk think; and now go back for a
foolish bairn as you are, in spite of your black beard. Though I never
saw the blackguard before, a’ my days, I’ll tell you his haill story
this very night.”




CHAPTER LXV.


It was Saturday night, and in little more than an hour after Huntley’s
return, Cosmo had joined the little family circle. Cosmo was five years
older by this time, three-and-twenty years old, a man and not a boy;
such at least was his own opinion--but his mother and he were not quite
so cordial and united as they had been. Perhaps, indeed, it was only
while her sons were young, that a spirit so hasty and arbitrary as that
of the Mistress could keep in harmony with so many independent minds;
but her youngest son had disappointed and grieved her. Cosmo had
relinquished those studies which for a year or two flattered his mother
with the hope of seeing her son a minister and pillar of the Church. The
Mistress thought, with some bitterness, that his travels had permanently
unsettled her boy; even his verses began to flag by this time, and it
was only once in three or four months that Mrs. Livingstone received,
with any thing like satisfaction, her copy of the _Auld Reekie
Magazine_. She did not know what he was to be, or how he was to live;
at present he held “a situation"--of which his mother was bitterly
contemptuous--in the office of Mr. Todhunter, and exercised the caprices
of his more fastidious taste in a partial editorship of the little
magazine, which had already lost its first breath of popularity. And
though he came out from Edinburgh dutifully every Saturday to spend the
day of rest with his mother, that exacting and impatient household ruler
was very far from being satisfied. She received him with a certain
angry, displeased affectionateness, and even in the presence of her
newly-arrived son, kept a jealous watch upon the looks and words of
Cosmo. Huntley could not help watching the scene with some wonder and
curiosity. Sitting in that well-remembered room, which the two candles
on the table lighted imperfectly, with the soft night air blowing in
through the open window in the corner, from which the Mistress had been
used to watch the kitchen door, and at which now her son sat looking out
upon the old castle and the calm sky above it, where the stars blossomed
out one by one--Huntley watched his mother, placing, from mere use and
wont, her work-basket on the table, and seating herself to the work
which she was much too impatient to make any progress with--launching
now and then a satirical and utterly incomprehensible remark at the
Frenchman, who yawned openly, and repented his contempt for the Norlaw
Arms--sometimes asking hasty questions of Cosmo, which he answered not
without a little kindred impatience--often rising to seek something or
lay something by, and pausing as she passed by Huntley’s chair to linger
over him with a half expressed, yet inexpressible tenderness. There was
change, yet there was no change in the Mistress. She had a tangible
reason for some of the old impatience which was natural to her
character, but that was all.

At length the evening came to an end. Huntley’s uncomfortable companion
sauntered out to smoke his cigar, and coming back again was conducted up
stairs to his room, with a rather imperative politeness. Then the
Mistress, coming back, stood at the door of the dining-parlor, looking
in upon her sons. The shadows melted from her face, and her heart
swelled, as she looked at them. Pride, joy, tenderness contended with
her, and got the better for a moment.

“God send you be as well in your hearts as you are to look upon,
laddies!” she said, hurriedly; and then came in to sit down at the
table and call them nearer for their first precious family hour of
mutual confidence and reunion.

“Seven years, Huntley? I canna think it’s seven years--though they’ve
been long enough and slow enough, every one; but we’ve thriven at
Norlaw,” said the Mistress, proudly. “There’s guid honest siller at the
bank, and better than siller in the byre, and no’ a mortal man to call
this house his debtor, Huntley Livingstone! which is a change from the
time you gaed away.”

“Thanks to your cares and labors, mother,” said Huntley.

“Thanks to no such thing. Am I a hired servant that ye say such words to
me? but thanks to Him that gives the increase,” said the Mistress;
“though we’re no’ like to show our gratitude as I once thought,” and she
threw a quick side-glance at Cosmo; “but Huntley, my man, have ye
naething to tell of yourself?”

“Much more to ask than to tell,” said Huntley, growing red and anxious,
but making an effort to control himself, “for you know all of the little
that has happened to me already, mother. Thankless years enough they
have been. To think of working hard so long and gaining nothing, and to
make all that I have at last by what looks like a mere chance!”

“So long! What does the laddie call long?--many a man works a lifetime,”
said the Mistress, “and even then never gets the chance; and it’s only
the like of you at your time of life that’s aye looking for something to
happen. For them that’s out of their youth, life’s far canniest when
naething happens--though it is hard to tell how that can be either where
there’s bairns. There’s been little out of the way here since this
callant, Cosmo, gaed out on his travels, and brought his French lady and
a’ her family hame. Me’mar’s in new hands now, Huntley; and you’ll have
to gang to see them, no doubt, and they’ll make plenty wark about you.
It’s their fashion. I’m no much heeding about their ways mysel’, but
Cosmo has little else in his head, night or day.”

Cosmo blushed in answer to this sudden assault; but the blush was angry
and painful, and his brother eagerly interposed to cover it.

“The ladies that took Melmar from us!--let us hear about them, mother,”
said Huntley.

The Mistress turned round suddenly to the door to make sure it was
closed.

“Take my word for it,” she said, solemnly, and with emphasis, “yon’s the
man, that’s married upon Marie.”

“Who?” cried Cosmo, starting to his feet, with eager interest.

The Mistress eyed him severely for a moment.

“When you’re done making antics, Cosmo Livingstone, I’ll say my say,”
said his offended mother--“you may be fond enough of French folk,
without copying their very fashion. I would have mair pride if it was
me.”

With an exclamation of impatience, which was not merely impatience, but
covered deeply wounded feelings, Cosmo once more resumed the seat which
he thrust hastily from the table. His mother glanced at him once more.
If she had a favorite among her children, it was this her youngest son,
yet she had a perverse momentary satisfaction in perceiving how much
annoyed he was.

“You’s the man!” said the Mistress, with a certain triumphant contempt
in her voice; “just the very same dirty Frenchman that Huntley brought
to the house this day. I’m no mista’en. He’s wanting his wife, and he’ll
find her, and I wish her muckle joy of her bonnie bargain. That’s just
the ill-doing vagabond of a husband that’s run away from Marie!”

“Mother,” said Cosmo, eagerly, “you know quite well how little
friendship I have for Marie--”

When he had got so far he stopped suddenly. His suggestion to the
contrary was almost enough to make his mother inform the stranger at
once of the near neighborhood of his wife, and Cosmo paused only in
time.

“The mair shame to you,” said the Mistress, indignantly, “she’s a
suffering woman, ill and neglected; and I warn you baith I’m no’ gaun to
send this blackguard to Melmar to fright the little life there is out of
a puir dying creature. He shall find out his wife for his ain hand; he
shanna be indebted to me.”

“It is like yourself, mother, to determine so,” said Cosmo, gratefully.
“Though, if she had the choice, I daresay she would decide otherwise,
and perhaps Madame Roche too. You say I am always thinking of them, but
certainly I would not trust to their wisdom--neither Madame Roche nor
Marie.”

“But really--have some pity upon my curiosity--who is Marie, mother?”
cried Huntley, “and who is her husband, and what is it about altogether?
I know nothing of Pierrot, and I don’t believe much good of him; but how
do _you_ know?”

“Marie is the French lady’s eldest daughter--madame would have married
her upon you, Huntley, my man, if she had been free,” said the Mistress,
“and I woudna say but she’s keeping the little one in her hand for you
to make up for your loss, as she says. But Marie, she settled for
hersel’ lang before our Cosmo took news of their land to them; and it
just shows what kind of folk they were when she took up with the like of
this lad. I’ve little skill in Frenchmen, that’s true; if he’s not a
common person, and a blackguard to the boot, I’m very sair deceived in
my e’en; but whatever else he is, he’s her man, and that I’m just as
sure of as mortal person can be. But she’s a poor suffering thing that
will never be well in this world, and I’ll no’ send a wandering vagabond
to startle her out of her life.”

“What do you say, madame,” screamed a voice at the door; “you know my
wife--you know her--Madame Pierrot?--and you will keep her husband from
her? What! you would take my Marie?--you would marry her to your son
because she is rich? but I heard you--oh, I heard you! I go to fly to my
dear wife.”

The Mistress rose, holding back Huntley, who was advancing
indignantly:--

“Fly away, Mounseer,” said Mrs. Livingstone, “you’ll find little but
closed doors this night; and dinna stand there swearing and screaming at
me; you may gang just when you please, and welcome; but we’ll have none
of your passions here; be quiet, Huntley--he’s no’ a person to touch
with clean fingers--are you hearing me man? Gang up to your bed, if you
please this moment. I give you a night’s shelter because you came with
my son; or if you’ll no’ go up the stairs go forth out of my doors, and
dinna say another word to me--do you hear?”

Pierrot stood at the door, muttering French curses as fast as he could
utter them; but he did hear notwithstanding. After a little parley with
Huntley, he went up stairs, three steps at a time, and locked himself
into his chamber.

“He’s just as wise,” said the Mistress, “but it’s no’ very safe sleeping
with such a villain in the house;” which was so far true that, excited
and restless, she herself did not sleep, but lay broad awake all night
thinking of Huntley and Cosmo--- thinking of all the old grief and all
the new vexations which Mary of Melmar had brought to her own life.




CHAPTER LXVI.


For these five years had not been so peaceful as their predecessors--the
face of this home country was much changed to some of the old dwellers
here. Dr. Logan, old and well-beloved, was in his quiet grave, and Katie
and her orphans, far out of the knowledge of the parish which once had
taken so entire an interest in them, were succeeded by a new minister’s
new wife, who had no children yet to gladden the manse so long
accustomed to young voices; and the great excitement of the revolution
at Melmar had scarcely yet subsided in this quiet place;--least of all,
had it subsided with the Mistress, who, spite of a lurking fondness for
little Desirée, could not help finding in the presence of Mary of Melmar
a perpetual vexation. Their French habits, their language, their
sentiments and effusiveness--the peevish invalid condition of Marie, and
even the sweet temper of Madame Roche, aggravated with a perennial
agitation, the hasty spirit of Mrs. Livingstone. She could not help
hearing every thing that everybody said of them, could not help watching
with a rather unamiable interest the failings and shortcomings of the
family of women who had dispossessed her son. And then her other
son--her Cosmo, of whom she had been so proud--could see nothing that
did not fascinate and attract him in this little French household. So,
at least, his mother thought. She could have borne an honest falling in
love, and “put up with” the object of it, but she could not tolerate the
idea of her son paying tender court to another mother, or of sharing
with any one the divided honors of her maternal place. This fancy was
gall and bitterness to the Mistress, and had an unconscious influence
upon almost every thing she did or said, especially on those two days in
every week which Cosmo spent at Norlaw.

“It’s but little share his mother has in his coming,” she said to
herself, bitterly; and even Marget found the temper of the Mistress
rather trying upon the Sundays and Mondays; while between Cosmo and
herself there rose a cloud of mutual offense and exasperation, which had
no cause in reality, but seemed almost beyond the reach of either
explanation or peace-making now.

The Sabbath morning rose bright and calm over Norlaw. When Huntley woke,
the birds were singing in that special, sacred, sweetest festival of
theirs, which is held when most of us are sleeping, and seems somehow
all the tenderer for being to themselves and God; and when Huntley rose
to look out, his heart sang like the birds. There stood the Strength of
Norlaw, all aglist with early morning dews and sunshine, wall-flowers
tufting its old walls, sweet wild-roses looking out, like adventurous
children, from the vacant windows, and the green turf mantling up upon
its feet. There ran Tyne, a glimmer of silver among the grass and the
trees. Yonder stretched forth the lovely country-side, with all its
wealthy undulations, concealing the hidden house of Melmar among its
woods. And to the south, the mystic Eildons, pale with the ecstacy of
the night, stood silent under the morning light, which hung no purple
shadows on their shoulders. Huntley gazed out of his window till his
eyes filled. He was too young to know, like his mother, that it was best
when nothing happened; and this event of his return recalled to him all
the events of his life. He thought of his father, and that solemn
midnight burial of his among the ruins; he thought of his own
wanderings, his hope and loss of wealth, his present modest
expectations; and then a brighter light and a more wistful gaze came to
Huntley’s face. He, too, was no longer to be content with home and
mother; but a sober tenderness subdued the young man’s ardor when he
thought of Katie Logan among her children.

Seven years! It was a long trial for an unpledged love. Had no other
thoughts come into her good heart in the meantime? or, indeed, did she
ever think of Huntley save in her elder-sisterly kindness as she
thought of everybody? When this oft-discussed question returned to him,
Huntley could no longer remain quiet at his window. He hastily finished
his toilette and went down stairs, smiling to himself as he unbolted and
unlocked the familiar door--those very same bolts and locks which had so
often yielded to his restless fingers in those days when Huntley was
never still. Now, by this time, he had learned to keep himself quiet
occasionally; but the old times flashed back upon him strangely, full of
smiles and tears, in the unfastening of that door.

Thinking certainly that at so early an hour he himself was the first
person astir in Norlaw, Huntley was greatly amazed to find Cosmo--no
longer choosing his boyish seat of meditation in the window of the old
castle--wandering restlessly about the ruins. And Cosmo did not seem
quite pleased to see _him_; that was still more remarkable. The elder
brother could not help seeing again, as in a picture, the delicate fair
boy, with his long arms thrust out of the jacket which was too small for
him, with his bursts of boyish vehemence and enthusiasm, his old
chivalrous championship of the unknown Mary, his tenacious love for the
hereditary Norlaw. Huntley had not seen the boy grow up into the man--he
had not learned to moderate his protecting love for the youngest child
into the steady brotherly affection which should now acknowledge the man
as an equal. Cosmo was still “my father’s son,” the youngest, the
dearest, the one to be shielded from trouble, in the fancy of the elder
brother. Yet, there he stood, as tall as Huntley, his childish delicacy
of complexion gone, his fair hair crisp and curled, his dark eyes stormy
and full of personal emotions, his foot impatient and restless, the step
of a man already burdened with cares of his own. And, reluctant to meet
his brother, his closest friend, and once his natural guardian! Huntley
thrust his arm into Cosmo’s, and drew him round the other side of the
ruins.

“Do you really wish to avoid me?” said the elder brother, with a pang.
“What is wrong, Cosmo?--can you not tell _me_?”

“Nothing is wrong, so far as I am aware,” said Cosmo, with some
haughtiness. His first impulse seemed to be to draw away his arm from
his brother’s, but, if it was so, he restrained himself, and, instead,
walked on with a cold, averted face, which was almost more painful than
any act to the frank spirit of Huntley.

“I will ask no more questions then,” said Huntley, with some impatience;
“I ought to remember how long I have been gone, and how little you know
of me. What is to be done about this Pierrot? So far as I can glean from
what my mother says, he will be an unwelcome guest at Melmar. What
ground has my mother for supposing him connected with Madame Roche? What
sort of a person is Madame Roche? What have you all been doing with
yourselves? I have a hundred questions to ask about everybody. Even
Patie no one speaks of; if nothing is wrong you are all strangely
changed since I went away.”

“I suppose the _all_ means myself; I am changed since you went away,”
said Cosmo, moodily.

“Yes, you are changed, Cosmo; I don’t understand it; however, never
mind, you can tell the reason why when you know me better,” said
Huntley, “but, in the meantime, how is Patie, and where? And what about
this Madame Roche?”

“Madame Roche is very well,” said Cosmo, with assumed indifference, “her
eldest daughter is married, and has long been deserted by her husband;
but I don’t know his name--they never mention it. Madame Roche is
ashamed of him; they were people of very good family, in spite of what
my mother says--Roche de St. Martin--but I sent you word of all this
long ago. It is little use repeating it now.”

“Why should Pierrot be _her_ husband, of all men in the world?” said
Huntley; “but if he’s not wanted at Melmar, you had better send the
ladies word of your suspicions, and put them on their guard.”

“I have been there this morning,” said Cosmo, slightly confused by his
own admission.

“This morning? you certainly have not lost any time,” said Huntley,
laughing. “Never mind, Cosmo, I said I should ask nothing you did not
want to tell me; though why you should be so anxious to keep her husband
away from the poor woman--How have they got on at Melmar? Have they many
friends? Are they people to make friends? They seem at least to be
people of astonishing importance in Norlaw.”

“My mother,” said Cosmo, angrily, “dislikes Madame Roche, and
consequently every thing said and done at Melmar takes an evil aspect in
her eyes.”

“My boy, that is not a tone in which to speak of my mother,” said
Huntley, with gravity.

“I know it!” cried the younger brother, “but how can I help it? it is
true they are my friends. I confess to that; why should they not be my
friends? why should I reject kindness when I find it? As for Marie, she
is a selfish, peevish invalid, I have no patience with her--but--Madame
Roche--”

Cosmo made a full stop before he said Madame Roche, and pronounced that
name at last so evidently as a substitute for some other name, that
Huntley’s curiosity was roused; which curiosity, however, he thought it
best to satisfy diplomatically, and by a round-about course.

“I must see her to-morrow,” he said; “but what of our old friend,
Melmar, who loved us all so well? I should not like to rejoice in any
man’s downfall, but _he_ deserved it, surely. What has become of them
all?”

“He is a poor writer again,” said Cosmo, shortly, “and Joanna--it was
Joanna who brought Desirée here.”

“Who is Desirée?” asked Huntley.

“I ought to say Miss Roche,” said Cosmo, blushing to his hair. “Joanna
Huntley and she were great friends at school, and after the change she
was very anxious that Joanna should stay. _She_ is the youngest, and an
awkward, strange girl--but, why I can not tell, she clings to her
father, and is a governess or school-mistress now, I believe. Yes,
things change strangely. They were together when I saw them first.”

“They--them! you are rather mysterious, Cosmo. What is the story?” asked
his brother.

“Oh, nothing very remarkable; only Des--Miss Roche, you know, came to
Melmar first of all as governess to Joanna, and it was while she was
there that I found Madame Roche at St. Ouen. When I returned, my
mother,” said Cosmo, with a softening in his voice, “brought Desirée to
Norlaw, as you must have heard; and it was from our house that she went
home.”

“And, except this unfortunate sick one, she is the only child?” said
Huntley. “I understand it now.”

Cosmo gave him a hurried jealous glance, as if to ask what it was he
understood, but after that relapsed into uncomfortable silence. They
went on for some time so, Cosmo with anger and impatience supposing his
elder brother’s mind to be occupied with what he had just told him; and
it was with amazement, relief, but almost contempt for Huntley’s
extraordinary want of interest in matters so deeply interesting to
himself, that Cosmo heard and answered the next question addressed to
him.

“And Dr. Logan is dead,” said Huntley, with a quiet sorrow in his voice,
which trembled too with another emotion. “I wonder where Katie and her
bairns are now?”

“Not very far off; somewhere near Edinburgh. I think Lasswade. Mr.
Cassilis’ mother lives there,” said Cosmo.

“Mr. Cassilis! I had forgotten him,” said Huntley, “but he does not live
at Lasswade?”

“They say he would be glad enough to have Katie Logan in Edinburgh,”
said Cosmo, indifferently; “they are cousins--I suppose they are likely
to be married;--how do I know? Well, only by some one telling me,
Huntley! I did not know you cared.”

“Who said I cared?” cried Huntley, with sudden passion. “How should any
one know any thing about the matter--eh? I only asked, of course, from
curiosity, because we know her so well--used to know her so well. Not
you, who were a child, but we two elder ones. My brother Patie--I hear
nothing of Patie. Where is _he_ then? You must surely know.”

“He is to come to meet you to-morrow,” said Cosmo, who was really
grieved for his own carelessness. “Don’t let me vex you, Huntley. I am
vexed myself, and troubled; but I never thought of that, and may be
quite wrong, as I am often,” he added, with momentary humility, for
Cosmo was deeply mortified by the sudden idea that he had been selfishly
mindful of his own concerns, and indifferent to those of his brother.
For the time, it filled him with self-reproach and penitence.

“Never mind; every thing comes right in time,” said Huntley; but this
piece of philosophy was said mechanically--the first common-place which
occurred to Huntley to vail the perturbation of his thoughts.

Just then some sounds from the house called their attention there. The
Mistress herself stood at the open door of Norlaw, contemplating the
exit of the Frenchman, who stood before her, hat in hand, making
satirical bows and thanking her for his night’s lodging. In the morning
sunshine this personage looked dirtier and more disreputable than on the
previous night. He had not been at all particular about his toilette,
and curled up his moustache over his white teeth, the only thing white
about him, with a most sinister sneer, while he addressed his hostess;
while she, in the meantime, in her morning cap and heavy black gown, and
clear, ruddy face, stood watching him, as perfect a contrast as could be
conceived.

“I have the satisfaction of making my adieux, madame,” cried Pierrot;
“receive the assurance of my distinguished regard. I shall bring my wife
to thank you. I shall tell my wife what compliments you paid her, to
free her from her unworthy spouse and bestow your son. She will thank
you--I will thank you. Madame, from my heart I make you my adieux!”

“It’s Sabbath morning,” said the Mistress, quietly; “and if you find
your wife--I dinna envy her, poor woman! you can tell her just whatever
you please, and I’ll no’ cross you; though it’s weel to see you dinna
ken, you puir, misguided heathen, that you’re in another kind of country
frae your ain. You puir Pagan creature! do you think I would ware my
Huntley on a woman that had been another man’s wife? or do you think
that marriage can be broken _here_? but it’s no’ worth my while
parleying with the like of you. Gang your ways and find your wife, and
be good to her, if it’s in you. She’s maybe a silly woman that likes ye
still, vagabone though ye be--she’s maybe near the end of her days, for
onything you ken. Go away and get some kindness in your heart if ye
can--and every single word I’ve said to you you can tell ower again to
your wife.”

Which would have been rather hard, however, though the Mistress did not
know it. The wanderer knew English better than a Frenchman often does,
but his education had been neglected--he did not know Scotch--a fact
which did not enter into the calculations of Mrs. Livingstone.

“Adieu, comrade!” cried Pierrot, waving his hand to Huntley; “when I see
you again you shall behold a milor, a nobleman; be happy with your
amiable parent. I go to my wife, who adores me. Adieu.”

“And it’s true,” said the Mistress, drawing a long breath as the strange
guest disappeared on the road to Kirkbride. “Eh, sire, but this world’s
a mystery! it’s just true, so far as I hear; she does adore him, and him
baith a mountebank and a vagabone! it passes the like of me!”

And Cosmo, looking after him too, thought of Cameron. Could that be the
husband for whom Marie had pined away her life?




CHAPTER LXVII.


It was Sabbath morning, but it was not a morning of rest; though it was
Huntley’s first day at home, and though it did his heart good to see his
mother, the young man’s heart was already astray and pre-occupied with
his own thoughts; and Cosmo, full of subdued but unrecoverable
excitement, which his mother’s jealous eye only too plainly perceived,
covered the face of the Mistress with clouds. Yet a spectator might have
supposed that breakfast-table a very centre of family love and harmony.
The snow-white cloth, the basket of brown oat-cakes and white flour
scones, of Marget’s most delicate manufacture, the great jug full of
rich red June roses, which made a glory in the midst, and the mother at
the head of her table, with those two sons in the bloom of their young
manhood, on either side of her, and the dress of her widowhood throwing
a certain, tender, pathetic suggestion into her joy and their love. It
was a picture had it been a picture, which no one could have seen
without a touching consciousness of one of the most touching sides of
human life. A family which at its happiest must always recall and
commemorate a perpetual lack and vacancy, and where all the affections
were the deeper and tenderer for that sorrow which overshadowed them;
the sons of their mother, and she was a widow! But, alas, for human
pictures and ideals! The mother was restless and dissatisfied, feeling
strange interests crowding in to the very hour which should be
peculiarly her own; the young men were stirred with the personal and
undisclosed troubles of their early life. They sat together at their
early meal, speaking of common matters, eating daily bread, united yet
separate, the peace of the morning only vailing over a surface of
commotion, and Sabbath in every thing around save in their hearts.

“It’s a strange minister--you’ll miss the old man, Huntley,” said the
Mistress; “but you’ll write down your thanksgiving like a good bairn,
and put an offering in the plate; put your name, say, ‘Huntley
Livingstone returns thanks to God for his safe home-coming.’ There would
have been nae need for that if Dr. Logan had been to the fore; he aye
minded baith thanks and supplications; and I’ll never forget what
petitions he made in his prayer the last Sabbath you were at hame.
You’re early stirring, Cosmo--it’s no’ time yet for the kirk.”

“I am going to Melmar, mother,” said Cosmo, in a low voice.

The Mistress made no answer; a flush came over her face, and her brow
contracted, but she only said, as if to herself:--

“It’s the Sabbath day.”

“I went there this morning, to warn them of this man’s arrival,” said
Cosmo, with excitement, “saying what _you_ thought. I did not see any of
them; but Marie has one of her illnesses. They have no one to support
them in any emergency. I must see that he does not break in upon them
to-day.”

The Mistress still made no answer. After a little struggle with herself,
she nodded hastily.

“If ye’re a’ done, I’ll rise from the table. I have things to do before
kirk-time,” she said at length, pushing back her chair and turning away.
She had nothing to say against Cosmo’s resolution, but she was deeply
offended by it--deeply, unreasonably, and she knew it--but could not
restrain the bitter emotion. To be absent from the kirk at all, save by
some overpowering necessity, was an offense to all her strong Scottish
prejudices--but it was an especial breach of family decorum, and all the
acknowledged sentiment and punctilio of love, to be absent to-day.

“Keep us a’ patient!” cried Marget, in an indignant undertone, when Mrs.
Livingstone was out of hearing; for Marget, on one pretense or other,
kept going and coming into the dining-parlor the whole morning, to
rejoice her eyes with the sight of Huntley. “Some women come into this
world for nae good reason but to make trouble. To speak to the Mistress
about an emergency! Whaever supported her in _her_ troubles but the
Almighty himsel’ and her ain stout heart? I dinna wonder it’s hard to
bear! Some gang through the fire for their ain hand, and no’ a mortal
nigh them--some maun have a haill houseful to bear them up. Weel, weel,
I’m no’ saying any thing against it--it’s kind o’ you, Mr. Cosmo--but
you should think, laddie, before you speak.”

“_She_ is not like my mother,” said Cosmo, somewhat sullenly.

“Like your mother!” cried Marget, with the utmost contempt. “She would
smile a hantle mair, and ca’ ye mair dears in a day than _my_ Mistress
in a twelvemonth; but would _she_ have fought and struggled through her
life for a thankless man and thankless bairns--I trow no! Like your
mother! She was bonnie when she was young, and she’s maybe, bonnie now,
for onything I ken; but she never was wordy to tie the shoe upon the
foot of the Mistress of Norlaw!”

“Be silent!” cried Cosmo, angrily; and before Marget’s indignation at
this reproof could find itself words, the young man had hurried out from
the room and from the house, boiling with resentment and a sense of
injury. He saw exactly the other side of the question--his mother’s
jealous temper, and hard-heartedness and dislike to the gentle and
tender Madame Roche--but he could not see how hard it was, after all,
for the honest, faithful heart, which grudged no pain nor hardship for
its own, to find their love beguiled away again and again--or even to
suppose it was beguiled--by one who had never done any thing to deserve
such affection.

And Cosmo hurried on through the narrow paths to Melmar, his heart
a-flame with a young man’s resentment, and impatience, and love. He
scarcely could tell what it was which excited him so entirely. Not,
certainly, the vagabond Pierrot, or any fears for Marie; not even the
displeasure of his mother. He would not acknowledge to himself the
eager, jealous fears which hurried him through those flowery bye-ways
where the blossoms of the hawthorn had fallen in showers like summer
snow, and the wild roses were rich in the hedgerows. Huntley!--why did
he fear Huntley? What was the impulse of unfraternal impatience which
made him turn with indignant offense from every thought of his brother?
Had he put it into words, he would have despised himself; but he only
rushed on in silence through the silent Sabbath fields and bye-ways to
the house of Madame Roche.

It is early, early yet, and there is still no church bell ringing
through the silence of the skies to rouse the farms and cottages. The
whole bright summer world was as silent as a dream--the corn growing,
the flowers opening, the sun shining, without a whisper to tell that
dutiful Nature carried on her pious work through all the day of rest.
The Tyne ran softly beneath his banks, the Kelpie rushed foaming white
down its little ravine, and all the cool burns from among the trees
dropped down into Tyne with a sound like silver bells. Something white
shone upon the path on the very spot where Desirée once lay, proud and
desolate, in the chill of the winter night, brooding over false
friendship and pretended love. Desirée now is sitting on the same stone,
musing once more in her maiden meditation. The universal human trouble
broods even on these thoughts--not heavily--only like the shadow that
flits along the trees of Tyne--a something ruffling the white woman’s
forehead, which is more serious than the girl’s was, and disquieting the
depths of those eyes which Cosmo Livingstone had called stars. Stars do
not mist themselves with tender dew about the perversities of human kind
as these eyes do; yet let nobody suppose that these sweet drops,
lingering bright within the young eyelids, should be called tears.

Tears! words have so many meanings in this world! it is all the same
syllable that describes the child’s passion, the honey-dew of youth, and
that heavy rain of grief which is able sometimes to blot out both the
earth and the skies.

So, after a fashion, there are tears in Desirée’s eyes, and a great many
intermingled thoughts floating in her mind--thoughts troubled by a
little indignation, some fear, and a good deal of that fanciful
exaggeration which is in all youthful trials. She thinks she is very sad
just now as she sits half in the shade and half in the sunshine, leaning
her head upon her hand, while the playful wind occasionally sprinkles
over her those snowy drops of spray from the Kelpie which shine on her
hair; but the truth is that nothing just now could make Desirée sad,
save sudden trouble, change, or danger falling upon one person--that one
person is he who devours the way with eager, flying steps, and who,
still more disturbed than she is, still knows no trouble in the presence
of Desirée; and that is Cosmo Livingstone.

No; there is no love-tale to tell but that which has been told already;
all those preliminaries are over; the Kelpie saw them pledge their faith
to each other, while there still were but a sprinkling of spring leaves
on those trees of June. Desirée; the name that caught the boy’s fancy
when he _was_ a boy, and she unknown to him--the heroine of his dreams
ever since then, the distressed princess to whom his chivalry had
brought fortune--how could the young romance end otherwise? but why,
while all was so natural and suitable, did the young betrothed meet
here?

“I must tell your mother! I must speak to her to-day! I owe it both to
myself and Huntley,” cried Cosmo. “I can not go away again with this
jealous terror of my brother in my heart; I dare not, Desirée! I must
speak to her to-day.”

“Terror? and jealous? Ah, then, you do not trust me,” said Desirée, with
a smile. Her heart beat quicker, but she was not anxious; she held up
her hand to the wind till it was all gemmed with the spray of the
waterfall, and then shook it over the head of Cosmo, as he half sat,
half knelt by her side. He, however, was too much excited to be amused;
he seized upon the wet hand and held it fast in his own.

“I did not think it possible,” said Cosmo. “Huntley, whom I supposed I
could have died for, my kind brother! but it makes me frantic when I
think what your mother has said--what she _intends_. Heaven! if he
himself should think of _you_!”

“Go, you are rude,” said Desirée; “if I am so good as you say, he must
think of me; but am _I_ nothing then,” she cried, suddenly springing up,
and stamping her little firm foot, half in sport, half in anger; “how do
you dare speak of me so? Do you think mamma can give me away like a
ring, or a jewel? Do you think it will be different to me whether he
thinks or does not think of Desirée? You make me angry, Monsieur Cosmo;
if that is all you come to tell me, go away!”

“What can I tell you else?” cried Cosmo. “I must and will be satisfied.
I can not go on with this hanging over me. Do you remember what you told
me, Desirée, that Madame Roche meant to offer you--_you_! to my brother?
and you expect me to have patience! No, I am going to her now.”

“Then it is all over,” cried Desirée, “all these sunny days--all these
dreams! She will say no, no. She will say it must not be--she will
forbid me meeting you; but if you do not care, why should I?” exclaimed
the little Frenchwoman, rapidly. “Nay, you must do what you will--you
must be satisfied. Why should you care for what _I_ say? and as for me I
shall be alone.”

So Desirée dropped again upon her stone seat, and put her face down into
her hands, and shed a few tears; and Cosmo, half beside himself, drew
away the hands from her face, and remonstrated, pleaded, urged his
claim.

“Why should not you acknowledge me?” said the young lover. “Desirée,
long before I ventured to speak it you knew where my heart was--and now
I have your own word and promise. Your mother will not deny you. Come
with me, and say to Madame Roche--”

“What?” said Madame Roche’s daughter, glancing up at him as he paused.

But Cosmo was in earnest now:--

“What is in your heart!” he said breathlessly. “You turn away from me,
and I can not look into it. What is in your heart, whether it is joy, or
destruction, I care not,” cried the young man suddenly, “I must know my
fate.”

Desirée raised her head and looked at him with some surprise and a quick
flush of anger:--

“What have I done that you dare doubt me?” she cried, clapping her hands
together with natural petulance. “You are impatient--you are angry--you
are jealous--but does all that change me?”

“Then come with me to Madame Roche,” said the pertinacious lover.

Desirée had the greatest mind in the world to make a quarrel and leave
him. She was not much averse now and then to a quarrel with Cosmo, for
she was a most faulty and imperfect little heroine, as has been already
confessed in these pages; but in good time another caprice seized her,
and she changed her mind.

“Marie is ill,” she said softly, in a tone which melted Cosmo; “let us
not go now to trouble poor mamma.”

“Marie! I came this morning to warn her, or rather to warn Madame
Roche,” said Cosmo, recalled to the ostensible cause of his visit. “A
Frenchman, called Pierrot, came home with Huntley--”

But before he could finish his sentence, Desirée started up with a
scream at the name, and seizing his arm, in her French impatience
overwhelmed him with terrified questions:--

“Pierrot? quick! speak! where is he? does he seek Marie? is he here?
quick, quick, quick, tell me where he is! he must never come to poor
Marie! he must not find us--tell me, Cosmo! do you hear?”

“He spent last night at Norlaw--he seeks his wife,” said Cosmo, when she
was out of breath; at which word Desirée sprang up the path with excited
haste:--

“I go to tell mamma,” she said, beckoning Cosmo to follow, and in a few
minutes more disappeared breathless within the open door of Melmar,
leaving him still behind.




CHAPTER LXVIII.


Madame Roche sat by herself in the drawing-room of Melmar--the same
beautiful old lady who used to sit working behind the flowers and white
curtains of the little second floor window in St. Ouen. The room itself
was changed from the fine disorderly room in which Mrs. Huntley had
indulged her invalid tastes, and Patricia read her poetry-books. There
was no longer a loose crumb-cloth to trip unwary feet, nor rumpled
chintz covers to conceal the glory of the damask; and there was a
wilderness of gilding, mirrors, cornices, chairs, and picture-frames,
which changed the sober aspect of Melmar, and threw a somewhat fanciful
and foreign character upon the grave Scotch apartment, looking out
through its three windows upon the solemn evergreens and homely
grass-plot, which had undergone no change. One of the windows was open,
and _that_ was garlanded round, like a cottage window, with a
luxuriance of honey suckle and roses, which the “former family” would
have supposed totally unsuited to the “best room in the house.” It was
before this open window, with the sweet morning breeze waving the white
curtains over her, and the roses leaning in in little crowds, that
Madame Roche sat. She was reading--at least she had a book in her hand,
among the leaves of which the sweet air rustled playfully; it was a
pious, pretty book of meditations, which suited both the time and the
reader, and she sat sometimes looking into it, sometime suffering her
eyes and mind to stray, with a sweet pensive gravity on her fair old
face, and tender, subdued thoughts in her heart. Madame Roche was not
profound in any thing; perhaps there was not very much depth in those
pious thoughts, or even in the sadness which just overshadowed them.
Perhaps she had even a far-off consciousness that Cosmo Livingstone saw
a very touching little picture, when he saw the mother by the window
reading the Sabbath book in that Sabbath calm, and saying prayers in her
heart for poor Marie. But do not blame Madame Roche--she still did say
the prayers, and out of an honest heart.

When Desirée flew into the room, flushed and out of breath, and threw
herself upon her mother so suddenly, that Madame Roche’s composure was
quite overthrown:--

“Mamma, mamma!” cried Desirée, in what was almost a scream, though it
was under her breath, “listen--Pierrot is here; he has found us out.”

“What, child? Pierrot? It is impossible!” cried Madame Roche.

“Things that are impossible are always true!” exclaimed the breathless
Desirée; “he is here--Cosmo has seen him; he has come to seek Marie.”

“Cosmo? is _he_ here?” said Madame Roche, rising. The old lady had
become quite agitated, and her voice trembled. The book had fallen out
of the hands which she clasped tightly together, in her fright and
astonishment. “But he is mistaken, Desirée; he does not know Pierrot.”

When Cosmo, however, came forward to tell his own story, Madame Roche
became still more disturbed and troubled:--

“To come now!” she exclaimed to herself with another expressive French
pressure of her hands--“to come now! Had he come in St. Ouen, when we
were poor, I could have borne it; but now, perceive you what will
happen, Desirée? He will place himself here, and squander our goods and
make us despised. He will call my poor Marie by his mean name--she, a
Roche de St. Martin! and she will be glad to have it so. Alas, my poor
deluded child!”

“Still though he is so near, he has not found you yet; and if he does
find you, the house is yours, you can refuse him admission; let me
remain, in case you should want me,” said Cosmo eagerly; “I have been
your representative ere now.”

Madame Roche was walking softly about the room, preserving through all
her trouble, even now when she had been five years in this great house,
the old habit of restraining her voice and step, which had been
necessary when Marie lay in the little back chamber at St. Ouen, within
constant hearing of her mother. She stopped for an instant to smile upon
her young advocate and supporter, as a queen might smile upon a partisan
whose zeal was more than his wisdom; and then went on hurriedly
addressing her daughter.

“For Marie, poor soul, would be crazed with joy. Ah, my Desirée! who can
tell me what to do? For my own pleasure, my own comfort, a selfish
mother, must I sacrifice my child?”

“Mamma,” cried Desirée, with breathless vehemence, “I love Marie--I
would give my life for her; but if Pierrot comes to Melmar, I will go.
It is true--I remember him--I will not live with Pierrot in one house.”

Madame Roche clasped her hands once more, and cast up her eyes with a
gesture of despair. “What can I do--what am I to do? I am a woman
alone--I have no one to advise me,” she cried, pacing softly about the
room, with her clasped hands and eyes full of trouble. Cosmo’s heart was
quite moved with her distress.

“Let me remain with you to-day,” said Cosmo, “and if he comes, permit me
to see him. You can trust _me_. If you authorize me to deny him
admission, he certainly shall not enter here.”

“Ah, my friend!” cried Madame Roche. “Ah, my child! what can I say to
you? Marie loves him.”

“And he has made her miserable,” cried Desirée, with passion. “But,
because she loves him, you will let him come here to make us all
wretched. I knew it would be so. She loves him--it is enough! He will
make her frantic--he will break her heart--he will insult you, me, every
one! But Marie loves him! and so, though he is misery, he must come. I
knew it would be so; but I will not stay to see it all--I can not! I
will never stand by and watch while he kills Marie. Mamma! mamma! will
you be so cruel? But I can not speak--I am angry--wretched! I will go to
Marie and nurse her, and be calm; but if Pierrot comes, Desirée will
stay no longer. For you know it is true!”

And so speaking Desirée went, lingering and turning back to deliver
herself always of a new exclamation, to the door, out of which she
disappeared at last, still protesting her determination with violence
and passion. Madame Roche stood still, looking after her. There was
great distress in the mother’s face, but it did not take that lofty form
of pain which her child’s half-defiance might have produced. She was not
wounded by what Desirée said. She turned round sighing to where Cosmo
stood, not perfectly satisfied, it must be confessed, with the bearing
of his betrothed.

“Poor child! she feels it!” said Madame Roche, “and, indeed, it is true,
and she is right; but what must I do, my friend? Marie loves him. To see
him once more might restore Marie.”

“Mademoiselle Desirée says he will break her heart,” said Cosmo, feeling
himself bound to defend the lady of his love, even though he did not
quite approve of her.

“Do not say mademoiselle. She is of this country; she is not a
stranger,” said Madame Roche with her bright, usual smile; “and he
_will_ break her heart if he is not changed; do I not know it? But
then--ah, my friend, you are young and impatient, and so is Desirée.
Would you not rather have your wish and your love, though it killed you
to have it, than to live year after year in a blank peacefulness? It is
thus with Marie; she lives, but her life does not make her glad. She
loves him--she longs for him; and shall I know how her heart pines, and
be able to give her joy, yet keep silence, as though I knew nothing? It
might be most wise; but I am not wise--I am but her mother--what must I
do?”

“You will not give her a momentary pleasure, at the risk of more serious
suffering,” said Cosmo, with great gravity.

But the tears came to Madame Roche’s eyes. She sank into a chair, and
covered her face with her hand. “It would be joy!--can I deny her joy?
for she loves him,” faltered Marie’s mother. As he looked at her with
impatient, yet tender eyes, the young man forgave Desirée for her
impatience. How was it possible to deal calmly with the impracticable
sentiment and “feelings” of Madame Roche?

“I came to speak to you of myself,” said Cosmo. “I can not speak of
myself in the midst of this trouble; but I beg you to think better of
it. If he is all that you say, do not admit him here.”

“Of yourself?” said Madame Roche, removing her hand from her face, and
stretching out to him that tender white hand which was still as soft and
fair as if it had been young instead of old. “My child, I am not so
selfish as to forget you who have been so good to us. Tell me what it is
about yourself?”

And as she smiled and bent towards him, Cosmo’s heart beat high, half
with hope half with shame, for he felt guilty when he remembered that
neither himself nor Desirée had confessed their secret betrothal to
Desirée’s mother. In spite of himself, he could not help feeling a
shadow of blame thrown upon Desirée, and the thought wounded him. He was
full of the unreasonable, romantic love of youth. He could not bear, by
the merest instinctive secret action of his mind, to acknowledge a
defect in her.

“You say, ‘Marie loves him’--that is reason enough for a great sacrifice
from you,” cried Cosmo, growing out of breath with anxiety and
agitation; “and Desirée--and I,--what will you say to us? Oh, madame,
you are kind, you are very kind. Be more than my friend, and give
Desirée to me!”

“Desirée!"--Madame Roche rose up, supporting herself by her
chair--“Desirée! but she knows she is destined otherwise--_you_
know--Desirée!” cried Madame Roche, clasping her pretty hands in
despair. “She is dedicated--she is under a vow--she has to do justice!
My friend Cosmo--my son--my young deliverer!--do not--do not ask this!
It breaks my heart to say no to you; but I can never, never give you
Desirée!”

“Why?” said Cosmo, almost sternly. “You talk of love--will you deny its
claim? Desirée does not say no. I ask you again, give her to me! My love
will never wound her nor break her heart. I do not want the half of your
estate, and neither does my brother! Give me Desirée--I can work for
her, and she would be content to share my fortune. She _is_ content--I
have her own word for it. I demand it of you for true love’s sake,
madame--you, who speak of love! Give her to me!”

“Alas!” cried Madame Roche, wringing her hands--“alas! my child! I speak
of love because Marie is his wife; but a young girl is different! She
must obey her destiny! You are young--you will forget it. A year hence,
you will smile when you think of your passion. No--my friend Cosmo, hear
me! No, no, you must not have Desirée--I will give you any thing else in
this world that you wish, if I can procure it, but Desirée is destined
otherwise. No, no, I can not change--you can not have Desirée!”

And on this point the tender and soft Madame Roche was inexorable--no
intreaty, no remonstrance, no argument could move her! She stood her
ground with a gentle iteration which drove Cosmo wild. No, no, no; any
thing but Desirée. She was grieved for him--ready to take him into her
arms and weep over him--but perfectly impenetrable in her tender and
tearful obstinacy. And when, at last, Cosmo rushed from the house, half
mad with love, disappointment, and mortification, forgetting all about
Pierrot and everybody else save the Desirée who was never to be his,
Madame Roche sat down, wiping her eyes and full of grief, but without
the faintest idea of relinquishing the plans by which her daughter was
to compensate Huntley Livingstone for the loss of Melmar.




CHAPTER LXIX.


When Cosmo rushed forth from Melmar with his heart a-flame, and made his
way out through the trees to the unsheltered and dusty highway, the
sound of the Sabbath bells was just beginning to fall through the soft
summer air, so bright with the sunshine of the morning. Somehow, the
sound seemed to recall him, in a moment, to the sober home life out of
which he had rushed into this feverish episode and crisis of his own
existence. His heart was angry, and sore, and wounded. To think of the
usual familiar routine of life disgusted him--his impulse was to fly out
of everybody’s reach, and separate himself from a world where everybody
was ready to sacrifice the happiness of others to the merest freak or
crochet of his own. But the far off tinkle of the Kirkbride bell, though
it was no wonder of harmony, dropped into Cosmo’s ear and heart like the
voice of an angel. Just then, his mother, proudly leaning upon Huntley’s
arm, was going up the bank of Tyne to thank God for her son’s return.
Just then, Desirée, who had left Melmar before him, was walking softly,
in her white summer robes, to the Sabbath service, little doubting to
see Cosmo there; and out of all the country round, the rural families,
in little groups, were coming up every path, all tending toward the same
place. Cosmo sprang impatiently over a stile, and made his way through a
corn field, where the rustling green corn on either side of the path,
just bursting from the blade, was almost as tall as himself. He did not
care to meet the church goers, who would not have been slow to remark
upon his heated and uneasy looks, or even upon the novel circumstance of
his being here instead of at “the kirk.” This same fact of itself
communicated an additional discomfort to Cosmo. He felt in his
conscience, which was young and tender, the unsabbatical and agitating
manner in which he had spent the Sabbath morning, and the bell seemed
ringing reproaches into his ear as he hastened through the rustling
corn. Perhaps not half a dozen times before in his life, save during the
time of his travels, had Cosmo voluntarily occupied the Sabbath morning
with uses of his own. He had dreamed through its sacred hours many a
time, for he was “in love”, and a poet; but his dreams had gone on to
the cadence of the new minister’s sermon, and taken a sweeter echo out
of the rural psalms and thanksgivings; and he felt as a Scottish youth
of religious training was like to feel under such circumstances--his
want of success and present unhappiness increased by the consciousness
that he was using the weekly rest for his own purposes, thinking his own
thoughts, doing his own business, and filling, with all the human
agitation of fears and hopes, selfish and individual, the holy quiet of
the Sabbath day.

And when Cosmo reached Norlaw, which was solitary and quiet like a house
deserted, and when the little girl who helped Marget in the dairy rose
from her seat at the clean table in the kitchen, where, with her Bible
open before her, she was seeking out “proofs” for her “questions,” to
let him in, not without a wondering air of disapproval, the feeling grew
even stronger. He threw himself into his mother’s easy-chair, in the
dining-parlor, feeling the silence grow upon him like a fascination.
Even the Mistress’s work-basket was put out of the way, and there was no
open book here to be ruffled by the soft air from the open window. Upon
the table was the big Bible, the great jug full of red roses, and that
volume of _Hervey’s Meditations_, which the Mistress had certainly not
been reading--and the deep, unbroken Sabbath stillness brooded over him
as if it were something positive and actual, and not a mere absence of
sound. And as he thought of it, the French household at Melmar, with its
fancies, its agitations, its romantic plans and troubles of feeling,
looked more and more to Cosmo discordant and inharmonious with the time;
and he himself jarred like a chord out of tune upon this calm of the
house and the Sabbath; jarred strangely, possessed as he was by an
irritated and injured self-consciousness--that bitter sensation of wrong
and disappointment, which somehow seemed to separate Cosmo from every
thing innocent and peaceful in the world.

For why was it always so--always a perennial conspiracy, some hard,
arbitrary will laying its bar upon the course of nature? Cosmo’s heart
was sore within him with something more than a vexed contemplation of
the anomaly, with an immediate, pursuing, hard mortification of his own.
He was bitterly impatient of Madame Roche in this new and strange phase
of her character, and strangely perplexed how to meet it. For Cosmo had
a poetic jealousy of the honor and spirit of his best beloved. He felt
that he could not bear it, if Desirée for his sake defied her mother--he
could not tolerate the idea that she was like to do so, yet longed, and
feared, and doubted, full of the most contradictory and unreasonable
feelings, and sure only of being grieved and displeased whatever might
happen. So he felt as he sat by himself, with his eyes vacantly fixed
upon the red roses and the big Bible, wondering, impatient, anxious
beyond measure, to know what Desirée would do.

But that whole silent day passed over him unenlightened; he got through
the inevitable meals he could scarcely tell how--replied or did not
reply to his mother’s remarks, which he scarcely noticed were spoken
_at_, and not to him, wandered out in the afternoon to Tyneside and the
Kelpie, without finding any one there--and finally, with a pang of
almost unbearable rebellion, submitted to the night and sleep which he
could not avoid. To-morrow he had to return to Edinburgh, to go away,
leaving his brother in possession of the field--his brother, to whom
Madame Roche meant to _give_ Desirée, in compensation for his lost
fortune. Cosmo had forgotten all about Katie Logan by this time; it was
not difficult, for he knew scarcely any thing; and with a young lover’s
natural pride and vanity, could not doubt that any man in the world
would be but too eager to contend with him for such a prize as Desirée
Roche.

And to-morrow he had to go away!--to return to Mr. Todhunter’s office,
to read all the trashy stories, all the lamentable criticisms, all the
correspondence, making small things great, which belonged to the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_. Cosmo had not hitherto during his life been under much
compulsion of the _must_, and accordingly found it all the harder to
consent to it now. And he was growing very weary of his occupation
besides. He had got a stage beyond his youthful facility of rhyme, and
was, to say the truth, a little ashamed now of his verses, and of those
flowery prose papers, which the Mistress still read with delight. He
began to suspect that literature, after all, was not his vocation, and
at this moment would rather have carried a laborer’s hod; or followed
the plow, than gone to that merchandise of words which awaited him in
Edinburgh. So he rose, sullen and discontented, ready to quarrel with
any or every one who thwarted him, and feeling toward Huntley rather
more like an enemy than like a brother.

And Cosmo had but just risen from the early breakfast table when a note
was put into his hand. Marget brought it to him, with rather an
ostentation of showing what she brought, and Cosmo had to read it under
the eyes of his mother and Huntley, neither of whom could help casting
many glances at the young man’s disturbed face. It was the first letter
he had ever received from Desirée--no wonder that he hurried out when he
had glanced at it, and did not hear that the Mistress called him back;
for it was a very tantalizing, unsatisfactory communication. This is
what Desirée said:--

     “I knew it would be so. Why are you so restless, so impatient--why
     do you not be calm and wait like me? Mamma has set her heart upon
     what she says. She will not yield if you pray to her forever. She
     loves me, she loves you; it would make her happy; but, alas, poor
     mamma! She has set her thoughts upon the other, and will not
     change. Why do you vex her, you, me, every one? Be silent, and all
     will be well.

     “For I am not in haste, Monsieur Cosmo, if you are. I am able to
     wait--me! I know you went away in great anger, and did not come to
     church, and were cross all day, and your mother will think I am to
     blame. But if you _will_ be impatient, am I to blame? I tell you to
     wait, as I shall, to be good and silent, and see what will happen;
     but you do not regard me.

     “Farewell, then, for a week. I write to you because I can not help
     it this time, but I will not write again. Be content, then,
     restless boy; _au revoir_!

“DESIRÉE.”




Cosmo turned it round and round, and over and over, but nothing more was
to be made of it. Desirée had not contemplated the serious discontent of
her lover. She thought he would understand and be satisfied with her
playful letter, and required nothing more serious. Perhaps, had she
thought he required something more serious, the capricious little
Frenchwoman would have closed her heart and refused it. But, however
that may be, it is certain that Cosmo was by no means so much pleased as
he expected to be when he saw the note first, and prepared himself to
leave home with feelings scarcely at all ameliorated, shaking hands
abruptly with Huntley, and having a very cold parting with his mother.
He carried a discontented heart away with him, and left discontent and
vexation behind, and so trudged into Kirkbride, and drove away to
Edinburgh on the top of the coach, troubled with the people behind and
the things before him, and in the most unamiable humor in the world.




CHAPTER LXX.


“Well, Huntley, and what’s your opinion of our grand new neighbors?”
said the Mistress. They were returning together on that same Monday from
a formal call at Melmar; perhaps the first time on which the Mistress’s
visit to Madame Roche had been made with any pleasure. Mrs. Livingstone
came proudly through the Melmar grounds, leaning upon Huntley’s arm. She
had gone to exhibit her son; half consciously to exult over her richer
neighbor, who had no sons, and to see with her own eyes how Huntley was
pleased with his new friends.

“I think,” said Huntley, warmly, “that it is no wonder people raved
about Mary of Melmar. She is beautiful now.”

“So she is,” said the Mistress, rather shortly. “I canna say I am ony
great judge mysel’. She’s taen good care of her looks--oh ay, I dinna
doubt she is.”

“But her daughters don’t seem to inherit it,” added Huntley.

“Ay, lad--would ye say no’?--no’ the little one?” said the Mistress,
looking up jealously in his face. She was the very reverse of a
matchmaker, but perhaps it is true that women instinctively occupy
themselves with this interesting subject. The Mistress had not forgotten
Katie Logan, but in the depths of her heart she thought it just possible
that Huntley might cast a favorable eye upon Desirée.

“No, not the little one,” said Huntley, laughing; “though I like her
best of the two; and was it that invalid whom you supposed the wife of
Pierrot? Impossible!--any thing so fragile and delicate would never have
married such a fellow.”

“She’s delicate, no doubt,” said the Mistress, “but to be weakly in body
is no’ to be tender in the mind. Eh, what’s that among the trees?--black
and ill favored, and a muckle cloak about him--it’s just the villain’s
sel’!”

“Hush, he sees us,” said Huntley; “let us meet him and hear if he is
going to Melmar. It seems unbelievable that so gentle an invalid should
be his wife.”

The Mistress only said “Humph!” She was sorry for Marie, but not very
favorable to her--though at sight of the Frenchman all her sympathies
were immediately enlisted on behalf of his devoted wife. Pierrot would
have avoided them if he could, but as that was impossible, he came
forward with a swaggering air, throwing his cloak loose, and exhibiting
a morning toilette worthy of an ambitious tailor or a gentleman’s
gentleman. He took off his hat with elaborate politeness, and made the
Mistress a very fine bow, finer than any thing which she had seen in
these parts for many a day.

“Let me trust you found Madame Pierrot, my charming wife, well and
visible,” said the adventurer, with a second ironical obeisance, “and my
gracious lady, her mamma, and pretty Desirée? I go to make myself known
to them, and receive their embraces. I am excited, overjoyed--can you
wonder? I have not seen my wife for ten years.”

“And might have suffered that trial still, if it had not been for the
siller,” said the Mistress; “eh, man, to think of a woman in her senses
taking up with the like of you!”

Fortunately the Mistress’s idiomatic expressions, which might not have
been over agreeable had they been understood, were not quite
comprehensible to Monsieur Pierrot. He only knew that they meant
offense, and smiled and showed his white teeth in admiration of the
malice which he only guessed at.

“I go to my castle, my chateau, my fortune,” he said; “where I shall
have pleasure in repaying your hospitality. I shall be a good host. I
shall make myself popular. Pierrot of Melmar will be known
everywhere--it is not often that your dull coteries are refreshed by the
coming of a gentleman from my country. But I am too impatient to linger
longer than politeness demands. I have the honor to bid you very good
morning. I go to my Marie.”

Saying which, he swaggered past with his cloak hanging over his
shoulders--a romantic piece of drapery which was more picturesque than
comfortable on this summer day. The Mistress paused to look after him,
clasping with rather an urgent pressure her son’s arm, and with an
impulse of impatient pity moving her heart.

“I could never bear a stranger nigh in _my_ troubles,” she cried, at
last, “but yon woman’s no’ like me. She’s used to lean upon other folk.
What can she do, with that poor failing creature at one side of her and
this villain at the other? Huntley, my man! she’s nae friend of mine,
but she’s a lone woman, and you’re her kinsman. Go back and give her
your countenance to send the vagabone away!”

“Mother, I am a stranger,” cried Huntley, with surprise and
embarrassment; “what could I do for her? how could I venture indeed to
intrude myself into their private affairs? Cosmo might have done it who
knows them well, but I--I can not see a chance of serving them, perhaps
quite the reverse. If you are right, this man belongs to the family, and
blood is thicker than water. No, no; of course I will do what you wish,
if you wish it; but I do not think it is an office for me.”

And the Mistress, whose heart had been moved with compassion for the
other widow who had no son, and who had suggested voluntarily that
Huntley should help her, could not help feeling pleased nor being
ashamed of her pleasure, when he declined the office. He, at least, was
not “carried away” by the fascinations of Mary of Melmar. She took a
secret pleasure in his disobedience. It soothed the feelings which
Cosmo’s divided love had aggrieved.

“Weel, maybe it’s wisest; they ken best themselves how their ain hearts
are moved--and a strange person’s a great hindrance in trouble. _I_
couldna thole it mysel’,” said the Mistress; “I canna help them, it’s
plain enough--so we’ll do little good thinking upon it. But, Huntley, my
man, what’s your first beginning to be, now that you are hame?”

At this question, Huntley looked his mother full in the face, with a
startled, anxious glance, and grew crimson, but said not a word; to
which the Mistress replied by a look, also somewhat startled, and almost
for the moment resentful. She did not save him from his embarrassment by
introducing then the subject nearest to his heart. She knew, and could
not doubt what it was, but she kept silent, watching him keenly, and
waiting for his first words. Madame Roche would have thrown herself into
his arms and wept with an effusion of tenderness and sympathy, but this
was the Mistress, who was long out of practice of love-matters, and who
felt her sons more deeply dear to her own heart than ever lover was in
the world. So it was with a little faltering that Huntley spoke.

“It is seven years since I went away, and she was only a girl then--only
a girl, though like a mother. I wonder what change they have made upon
Katie Logan, these seven years?”

“She’s a good lassie,” said the Mistress; “eh, Huntley, I’m ower
proud!--I think naebody like my sons; but she’s a very good lassie. I
havena a word to say against her, no’ me! I canna take strangers easy
into my heart, but Katie Logan’s above blame. You ken best yoursel’ what
you’ve said to one another, her and you--but I canna blame ye thinking
upon her--na,” said the Mistress, clearing her throat, “I am thankful to
the Almighty for putting such a good bairn into your thoughts. I’m a
hard woman in my ain heart, Huntley. I’ll just say it out once for a’.
You’ve a’ been so precious to me, that at the first dinnle I canna bide
to think that nane of you soon will belong to your mother. That’s
a’--for you see I never had a daughter of my ain.”

The Mistress ended this speech, which was a long speech for her, with
great abruptness, and put up her hand hurriedly to wipe something from
her eye. She could be angry with Cosmo, who confided nothing to her, but
her loving, impatient heart could not stand against the frankness of his
brother. She made her confession hurriedly, and with a certain obstinate
determination--hastily wiped the unwilling tear out of the corner of her
eye, and the next moment lifted her head with all her inalienable
spirit, ready, if the smallest advantage was taken of her confession, to
gird on her armor on the moment, and resist all concessions to the
death.

But Huntley was wise. “We have said nothing to each other,” he answered
quickly, “but I would fain see Katie first of all.”

This was about the sum of the whole matter--neither mother nor son cared
to add much to this simple understanding. Katie had been absent from
Kirkbride between four and five years, and during all that time the
Mistress had only seen her once, and not a syllable of correspondence
had passed between her and Huntley. It might be that she had long ago
forgotten Huntley; it might be that Katie never cared for him, save with
that calm regard of friendship which Huntley did not desire from her. It
was true that the Mistress remembered Katie’s eyes and Katie’s face on
that night, long ago, when a certain subtle consciousness of the one
love which was in the hearts of both, gave the minister’s daughter a
sudden entrance into the regard of Huntley’s mother. But the Mistress
did not tell Huntley of that night. “It’s no for me to do,” said the
Mistress to herself, when she had reached home, with a momentary quiver
of her proud lip. “Na, if she minds upon my Huntley still--and wha could
forget him?--I’ve nae right to take the words out of Katie’s mouth; and
he’ll be all the happier, my puir laddie, to hear it from hersel’.”

It was a magnanimous thought; and somehow this self-denial and
abnegation--this reluctant willingness to relinquish now at last that
first place in her son’s heart, which had been so precious to the
Mistress, shed an insensible brightness that day over Norlaw. One could
not have told whence it came; yet it brightened over the house, a secret
sunshine, and Huntley and his mother were closer friends than, perhaps,
they had ever been before. If Cosmo could but have found this secret
out!




CHAPTER LXXI.


In the meantime, Cosmo, angry with himself and everybody else, went into
Edinburgh to his weekly labor. It was such lovely summer weather, that
even Edinburgh, being a town, was less agreeable than it is easy to
suppose that fairest of cities; for though the green hill heights were
always there to refresh everybody’s eyes, clouds of dust blew up and
down the hilly streets of the new town, which had even still less
acquaintance then than now with the benevolent sprinkling of the
water-carts. If one could choose the easiest season for one’s troubles,
one would not choose June, when all the world is gay, and when Nature
looks most pitiless to sad hearts. Sad hearts! Let every one who reads
forgive a natural selfishness--it is the writer of this story, who has
nothing to do with its events, who yet can not choose but make her
sorrowful outcry against the sunshine, sweet sunshine, smiling out of
the heart of heaven! which makes the soul of the sorrowful sick within
them. It is not the young hero in the agitation of his young
troubles--warm discontents and contests of life--the struggles of the
morning. Yet Cosmo was vexed and aggravated by the light, and heat, and
brightness of the fair listless day, which did not seem made for working
in. He could not take his seat at Mr. Todhunter’s writing-table, laden
with scraps of cut-up newspapers, with bundles of “copy,” black from the
fingers of the printers, and heaps of proof sheets. He could not sit
down to read through silly romances, or prune the injudicious exuberance
of young contributors. Unfortunately, the contributors to the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_ were almost all young; it had not turned out such an
astounding “start” as the _Edinburgh Review_; it had fallen into the
hands of young men at college, who, indisputably, in that period of
their development, however great they may become eventually, are not apt
to distinguish themselves in literature; and Cosmo, who had just
outgrown the happy complacence of that period, was proportionately
intolerant of its mistakes and arrogances, and complained (within
himself) of his uncongenial vocation and unfortunate fate. He was not
fit to be editor of the _Auld Reekie_. He was not able for the labor
dire and weary woe of revising the papers which were printed, and
glancing over those which were not--in short, he was totally
dissatisfied with himself, his position and his prospects, very
probably, but for his love-dream, Cosmo would have launched himself upon
the bigger sea in London, another forlorn journeyman of literature, half
conscious that literature was not the profession to which he was born;
but the thought of Desirée held him back like a chain of gold. He could
see her every week while he remained here, and beyond that office of Mr.
Todhunter’s in which perseverance and assiduity, and those other sober
virtues which are not too interesting generally to young men, might some
time make him a partner, Cosmo could not for his life have told any one
what he would do.

After he had endured his work as long as he could in this quiet little
den, which Mr. Todhunter shared with him, and where that gentleman was
busy, as usual, with paste and scissors, Cosmo at last tossed an
unreadable story into the waste-paper basket, and starting up, got his
hat. His companion only glanced up at him with an indignant reproof.

“What! tired? Are they so _awful_ bad?” said Mr. Todhunter; but this
model of a bookseller said no more when his young deputy sallied out
with a nod and a shrug of his shoulders. The proprietor of the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_ was one of those rare and delightful persons--Heaven
bless their simple souls!--who have an inalienable reverence for
“genius,” and believe in its moods and vagaries with the devoutness of a
saint.

“Of course I would exact common hours from a common young man,” said Mr.
Todhunter, “but a lad of genius is another matter. When he’s in the
vein, he’ll get through with his work like a giant. I’ve seen him write
four papers with his own hand after the twenty-third of the month, and
the magazine as sharp to its time, notwithstanding, as if he had been a
year preparing. He’s not a common lad, my sub-editor;"--and Cosmo quite
took credit with his employer on the score of his fits of varying energy
and his irregular hours.

Cosmo, however, sauntered away through the bright and busy streets
without giving himself so much credit. The young man was thoroughly
uncomfortable, self-displeased, and aggravated. He knew well enough that
it was not the impatience of genius, but only a restless and disturbed
mind, which made his work intolerable on that long summer afternoon. He
was thinking of Desirée, who would not bear thinking of, and whom he
supposed himself to have bitterly and proudly relinquished--of Madame
Roche, with her ridiculous fancy in respect to Huntley--and of Huntley
himself, who it was just possible might accept it, and take Desirée’s
reluctant hand. It seemed to Cosmo the strangest, miserable perversion
of everybody’s happiness; and he could not help concluding upon all this
wrong and foolishness coming to pass, with all the misanthropical
certainty of disappointed youth. Cosmo even remembered to think of Katie
Logan, by way of exaggerating his own discontent--Katie, who quite
possibly had been faithful to Huntley’s memory all these seven long
years.

He was thus pondering on, with quick impatient step, when he caught a
glimpse of some one at a distance whose appearance roused him. The
figure disappeared down the Canongate, which Cosmo was crossing, and the
young man hastened to follow, though this famous old street is by no
means a savory promenade on a hot summer afternoon. He pushed down,
notwithstanding, along the dusty burning pavement, amid evil smells and
evil sounds, and passengers not the most agreeable. Women on the outside
stairs, with dirty babies in their arms, loud in gossip, and unlovely in
apparel--ragged groups at the high windows, where noble ladies once
looked out upon the noble highway, but where now some poor housemother’s
washing, thrust out upon a stick, dallied with the smoky air, and was
dried and soiled at the same moment--hopeless, ill-favored lads and
girls, the saddest feature of all, throwing coarse jokes at each other,
and, indeed, all the usual symptoms of the most degraded class of town
population, which is much alike everywhere. Cosmo threaded his way among
them with disgust, remembering how he had once done so before with
Cameron, whom he was now pursuing, and at a time when his own
anticipations, as well as his friend’s, pointed to the sacred profession
in which the Highlandman now toiled. That day, and that conversation,
rose vividly before Cosmo. It sickened his sensitive heart to realize
the work in which Cameron was employed; but when his mind returned to
himself, who had no profession, and to whose eyes no steady aim or
purpose presented itself anywhere, Cosmo felt no pleasure in the
contrast. This was not the sphere in which a romantic imagination could
follow the footsteps of the evangelist. Yet, what an overpowering
difference between those steps and the wanderings of this disturbed
trifler with his own fortune and youth.

But Cameron still did not reappear. Somewhat reluctantly Cosmo entered
after him at the narrow door, with some forgotten noble’s sculptured
shield upon its keystone, and went up the stair where his friend had
gone. It was a winding stair, dark, close, and dirty, but lighted in the
middle of each flight by a rounded window, through which--an
extraordinary contrast--the blue sky, the June sunshine, and a far-off
glimpse of hills and sea, glanced in upon the passenger with a splendor
only heightened by the dark and narrow frame through which the picture
shone. Cosmo paused by one of these windows with an involuntary
fascination. Just above him, on the dusky landing, were two doors of
rooms, tenanted each by poverty and labor, and many children, miserable
versions of home, in which the imagination could take no pleasure. In
his fastidious distaste for the painful and unlovely realities, the
young man paused by the window;--all the wealth of nature glowing in
that golden sunshine--how strange that _it_ should make its willing
entrance here!

He was arrested by a voice he knew--subdued, but not soft by nature, and
sounding audibly enough down the stairs.

“_I_ don’t know if he can do them harm--very likely no’--I only tell you
I heard somebody speak of him, and that he was going to Melmar. Perhaps
you don’t care about the family at Melmar? I am sure, neither do I; but,
if you like, you can tell Cosmo Livingstone. It’s nothing to me!”

“I’ll tell him,” said Cameron. “Who was the man? Do you know?”

“He was French; and I’m sure a vagabond--I am sure a vagabond!” cried
the other. “I don’t know if _you_ can mind me, but Cosmo will--I’m
Joanna Huntley. I care for none of them but Desirée. Her mother and her
sister may take care of themselves. But we were great friends, and I
like her; though I need not like her unless I please,” added Joanna,
angrily; “it’s no’ for her sake, but because I canna help it.
There--just tell Cosmo Livingstone! Perhaps it’s nothing, but he might
as well know.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Cameron, once more.

Then there came a sound of a step upon the stair--not a light step, but
a prompt and active one--and Joanna herself, grown very tall, tolerably
trim, rather shabby, and with hair of undiminished redness, came rapidly
down the narrow side of the spiral stair, with her hand upon its rib of
stone. She started and stopped when she had reached almost as far as
Cosmo’s window--made as though she would pass him for the first moment,
but finally drew up with considerable hauteur, a step or two above him.
Joanna could not help a little offense at her father’s conqueror, though
she applauded him in her heart.

“I’ve been in London,” said Joanna, abruptly, entering upon her
statement without any preface. “I saw a man there who was inquiring
about Melmar--at least about the eldest daughter, for he did not know
the house--and Oswald directed him every step of the way. I’ll no’ say
he was right and I’ll no’ say he was wrong, but I tell _you_; the man
was a rascal, that’s all I know about him--and you can do what you like
now.”

“But stop, Miss Huntley; did you seek Cameron out to tell him?” said
Cosmo, with gratitude and kindness.

“I _am_ Miss Huntley now,” said Joanna, with an odd smile. “Patricia’s
married to an officer, and away, and Oswald’s in London. My brother has
great friends there. Did I seek Mr. Cameron out? No. I was here on my
own business, and met him. I might have sought you out, but not him,
that scarcely knows them. But it was not worth while seeking you out
either,” added Joanna, with a slight toss of her head. “Very likely the
man is a friend of theirs--they were but small people, I suppose, before
they came to Melmar. Very likely they’ll be glad to see him. But Oswald
was so particular telling him where they were, and the man had such an
ill look,” added Joanna, slowly, after a pause, “that I can not think
but that he wanted to do them an ill turn.”

“Thank you for warning them. He had come yesterday, and I fear he will
do Marie a very ill turn,” said Cosmo; “but nobody has any right to
interfere--he is a--a relation. But may I tell Desirée--I mean Miss
Roche--any thing of yourself? I know she often speaks, and still oftener
thinks, of you.”

“She has nothing to do with us that I know of,” said Joanna, sharply;
“good day to you; that was all I had to say,” and she rushed past him,
passing perilously down the narrow edge of the stair. But when she had
descended a few steps, Joanna’s honest heart smote her. She turned back,
looking up to him with eyes which looked so straightforward and sincere,
in spite of their irascible sparkle, that Joanna’s plain face became
almost pretty under their light. “I am sure I need not quarrel with
you,” she said with a little burst of her natural frankness, “nor with
Desirée either. It was not her fault--but I was very fond of Desirée.
Tell her I teach in a school now, and am very happy--they even say I’m
clever,” continued the girl, with a laugh, “which I never was at Melmar;
and mamma is stronger, and we’re all as well as we can be. You need not
laugh, Cosmo Livingstone, it’s true!” cried Joanna, with sudden
vehemence, growing offended once more; “papa may have done wrong whiles,
but he’s very good to us; and no one shall dare throw a stone at him
while I’m living. You can tell Desirée.”

“I will tell Desirée you were very fond of her--she will like that
best,” said Cosmo.

Whereupon the vail, which had been hanging about her bonnet, suddenly
dropped over Joanna’s face; it is to be supposed from the suppressed and
momentary sound that followed, that, partly in anger, partly in sorrow,
partly in old friendship and tenderness, she broke down for the instant,
and cried--but all that could clearly be known was, that she put out her
hand most unexpectedly, shook Cosmo’s hand, and immediately started down
the stair with great haste and agitation. Cosmo could not try to detain
or follow her; he knew very well that no such proceeding would have
found favor in the eyes of Joanna; and Cameron at that moment came in
sight from the upper floor.

Cosmo never could tell by what sudden impulse it was that he begged his
old friend to return with him to his lodgings and dine; he had no
previous intention of doing so--but the idea seized him so strongly,
that he urged, and almost forced the half reluctant Highlandman into
compliance. Perhaps the listless loveliness of the day affected Cameron,
in a less degree, somewhat as it affected his more imaginative
companion--for, at length, after consulting his note-book, he put his
strong arm within Cosmo’s, and went with him. Cameron, like everybody
else, had changed in these five years. He was now what is called a
licentiate in the Church of Scotland--authorized to preach, but not to
administer the sacraments, an office corresponding somewhat with the
deacon’s orders of the English Church. And like other people, too,
Cameron had not got his ideal fortune. The poor student had no
patronage, and the Gaelic-speaking parish among his own hills, to which
his fancy had once aspired, was still as distant as ever from the humble
evangelist. Perhaps Cameron did not even wish it now--perhaps he had
never forgotten that hard lesson which he learned in St. Ouen--perhaps
had never so entirely recovered that throwing away of his heart, as to
be able to content himself among the solitudes of the hills. But, at
least, he had not reached to this desired end--and was now working hard
among the wynds and closes of old Edinburgh, preaching in a public room
in that sad quarter, and doing all that Christian man could do to awaken
its inhabitants to a better life.

“It is good, right, best! I confess it!” cried Cosmo, in a sudden
_accés_ of natural feeling, “but how can you do it, Cameron?--how is it
possible to visit, to interest, to woo, such miserable groups as these?
Look at them!” exclaimed the young man. “Mean, coarse, brutal, degraded,
luxuriating in their own wretchedness, knowing nothing better--unable to
comprehend a single refined idea, a single great thought. Love your
neighbor--love _them_?--is it in the power of man?”

Cameron looked round upon them, too; though with a different glance.

“Cosmo,” said the Highlandman, with that deep voice of his, to which
additional years and personal experience had given a sweeter tone than
of old, “do you forget that you once before asked me that same question?
Love is ill to bind, and hard to draw. I love few in this world, and
will to the end; but first among them is One whose love kens no caprice
like to ours. I tell you again, laddie, what I tell them forever. Can
_I_ comprehend it?--it’s just the mystery of mysteries--_He_ loves them
all. I have room in my goodwill, if not in my heart, for them that _you_
love, Cosmo; and what should I have for them that He loved, and loved to
the death? That is the secret. My boy, I would rather than gear and
lands that you found it out for yourself.”

“I can understand it, at least,” said Cosmo, grasping his friend’s hand;
“but I blush for myself when I look at your work and at mine. They are
different, Cameron.”

“A lad may leave the plow in mid-furrow for a flower on the brae or a
fish in the water,” said Cameron, with a smile; “but a man returns to
the work he’s put his hand to. Come back, my boy, to your first
beginning--there’s time.”

And Cosmo was almost persuaded, as they went on discussing and
remonstrating to the young man’s lodging, where other thoughts and other
purposes were waiting for them both.




CHAPTER LXXII.


For on Cosmo’s table lay a letter, newly arrived, and marked
_immediate_. Cosmo felt himself forewarned by the sudden tremor which
moved him, as he sprang forward to take it up, that it was from Madame
Roche. Perhaps some strange instinct suggested the same to Cameron, for
he withdrew immediately from his friend’s side, and went away to Cosmo’s
book-shelf in the corner without a word. Then, perhaps, for the first
time, any unconcerned spectator looking on might have perceived that
Cameron looked weary, and that, besides the dust upon his boots and
black coat, the lines in his face were deeper drawn than his years and
strength warranted, and told of a forlorn fatigue somewhere which no one
tried to comfort. But he did not say any thing--he only stood quietly
before the book-shelf, looking over Cosmo’s books.

Cosmo, on the contrary, his face flushed with excitement and
expectation, and his heart beating high, opened the letter. As he ran
over it, in his haste and anxiety, the flush faded from his face. Then
he read it seriously a second time--then he looked at his friend.

“Cameron!” said Cosmo.

But it seemed that Cameron did not hear him till he was called a second
time, when he looked round slowly; and, seeing Cosmo holding towards him
the letter which he had just read so eagerly, looked at it with a
strange confusion, anxiety, and embarrassment, half-lifting his hand to
take it, and saying “Eh?” with a surprised and reluctant inquiry.

“It concerns you as well as me. Look at it, Cameron,” said the young
man.

It was from Madame Roche; and this is what Cameron read:--

     “Cosmo--my son, my friend! come back and help us! Pierrot--he of
     whom you warned us--has come; and I, in my folly--in my madness,
     could not deny to Marie to see him. You will ask me why? Alas! he
     is her husband, and she loves him! I thought, in my blindness, it
     might make her well; but we have known her illness so long, we have
     forgotten how great it is; and the shock has killed her--ah, me!
     unhappy mother!--has stricken my child! She was very joyful, the
     poor soul!--she was too happy!--and he who is so little deserving
     of it! But it has been more than she could bear, and she is dying!
     Come!--sustain us, comfort us, Cosmo, my friend! We are but women
     alone, and we have no one who will be so tender to us as you! It
     was but Monday when he came, and already she is dying!

     “I have another thing to say. My poor Marie spoke to me this
     morning. I could not tell my child how ill, how very ill she
     was--I, her mother! but she has learned from our sad looks, or,
     perhaps, alas, from the wretch, Pierrot, that she is in danger. She
     spoke to me this morning. She said, ‘Mamma, will no one speak to me
     of heaven? Alas, I know not heaven. How shall I know the way? Send
     for the Englishman--the Scottishman--the traveler who came with
     Cosmo to our old house. I remember how he spoke--he spoke of God as
     one might who loved Him. None but he ever spoke so to me. Send
     mother--if he loves God he will come.’ Alas, my friend! could I say
     to her on her sick bed, ‘My child, this good Monsieur Cameron loved
     _you_. I can not break his heart over again, and ask him to come.’
     No! I could not say it. I can but write to you, Cosmo. Speak to
     this good Cameron--this man who loves God. Ah, my friend, can you
     not think how I feel now that I am ignorant, that I am a
     sinner--that I, who am her mother, have never taught my Marie? Tell
     it to your friend--tell him what she has said--she knows not, my
     poor child, what thoughts might once have been in his heart. Let
     him come, for the love of God.”

Cosmo scarcely ventured to look at his friend while he read this letter;
and as for Cameron himself, he raised it in his hands so as to shade his
face, and held it so with strong yet trembling fingers, that nobody
might see the storm of passionate emotions there. Never before in his
life, save once, had the vehement and fiery nature of the Highlandman
been subject to so violent a trial, and even that once was not like
this. A great sob rose in his throat--his whole passionate heart, which
had been strained then in desperate self-preservation, melted now in a
flood of sudden grief and tenderness, ineffable and beyond description.
Marie, upon whom he had wasted his heart and love--Marie, whose weakness
had filled him with a man’s impulse of protection, sustenance, and
comfort--Marie! Now at last should it be his, in solemnwise, to carry
out that love-dream--to bring her in his arms to the feet of the Lord
whom he loved--to show the fainting spirit where to find those wings of
a dove, by which she might fly away and be at rest. Great over-brimming
tears, big as an ocean of lighter drops, made his eyes blind, but did
not fall. He sat gazing at the conclusion of the letter long after he
had read it, not reading it over again like Cosmo--once had been enough
to fix the words beyond possibility of forgetting upon Cameron’s
heart--but only looking at it with his full eyes, seeing the name, “Mary
Roche de St. Martin,” glimmering and trembling on the page, now
partially visible, now altogether lost. When Cosmo ventured at last to
glance at his friend, he was still sitting in the same position, leaning
both his elbows upon the table, and holding up the letter in his hands
to screen his face. Cosmo was aware of something strangely touching in
the forced, strained, spasmodic attitude, but he could not see the big
silent sob that heaved in his friend’s strong heart, nor the tears that
almost brimmed over but did not fall out of Cameron’s eyes.

Presently the Highlandman folded up the letter with care and
elaboration, seemed to hesitate a moment whether he would keep it, and
finally gave it over with some abruptness to Cosmo. “Relics are not for
me,” he said, hastily. “Now, when you are ready, let us go.”

“Go?--to Melmar!” said Cosmo, faltering a little.

“Where else?” asked Cameron, sternly--“is that a summons to say no to?
_I_ am going without delay. We can get there to-night.”

“The coach will not leave for an hour--take some refreshment first,”
said Cosmo; “you have been at work all day--you will be faint before we
get there.”

Cameron turned towards him with a strange smile:--

“I will not faint before we get there,” he said slowly, and then rose up
and lifted his hat. “You can meet me at the coach, Cosmo, in an hour--I
shall be quite ready; but in the first place I must go home; make haste,
my boy; _I_ will go, whether you are there or not.”

Cosmo gazed after him with something like awe; it was rather beyond
romance, this strange errand--and Cameron, in spite of the fervid
Highland heart within him did not look a very fit subject for romance;
but somehow Cosmo could not think what personal hopes of his own might
be involved in this relenting of Madame Roche--could not think even of
Desirée, whose name was not once mentioned in the letter, could think of
nothing but Cameron, called of all men in the world to _that_ bedside to
tell the dying Marie where to find her Lord.

They left Edinburgh accordingly within the hour. Cameron had entirely
recovered his usual composure, but scarcely spoke during the whole
journey, in which time Cosmo had leisure to return to his own fortune,
with all its perplexities. Even Marie’s illness was not likely to form
reason enough in the eyes of the Mistress for his abrupt and unexpected
return, and he could hardly himself see what good his presence could do
Madame Roche, with dangerous illness, perhaps death, and a disagreeable
son-in-law in her house. Take him at his worst, Pierrot, who was Marie’s
husband, had a more natural place there than Cosmo, who was only
Desirée’s lover--a lover rejected by Madame Roche; and Desirée herself
had not intimated by word or sign any desire for his presence. The whole
aspect of things did not conduce to make Cosmo comfortable. It seemed
almost a necessity to go to Melmar, instantly, instead of going to
Norlaw; but what would the Mistress think of so strange a proceeding?
And Huntley and Patie now, it was to be presumed, were both at home.
What a strange, disturbing influence had come among the brothers! Cosmo
began to contemplate his own position with a certain despair; he knew
well enough by this time the unreasoning sentiment of Madame Roche; he
knew very well that though she relieved herself in her trouble by
writing to him, and made a solemn appeal for his services, that it by no
means followed when this emergency was past, that she would confirm his
sonship by giving him her daughter, or relinquish her past idea for the
sake of the hopes she might have excited; and in the second place Cosmo
could not tell for his life what use he was likely to be to Madame
Roche, or how he could sustain her in her trouble--while the idea of
being so near home without going there, and without the knowledge of his
mother, aggravated all his other difficulties. He went on, however,
with resignation, got down with the calmness of despair and bewilderment
at Kirkbride, walked silently towards Melmar, guiding Cameron along the
silent leafy ways, and yielding himself, whatever that might be, to his
fate.




CHAPTER LXXIII.


And there stood the house of Melmar, resting among its trees, in the
soft sweet darkness of the June night.

Perhaps Cameron’s heart failed him as he came so near--at least Cosmo
reached the house first. The foliage was so thick around that the
darkness seemed double in this circle round the house. You could only
see the colorless, dark woods, stretching back into the night, and the
gleam of blue sky over head, and the lighted windows in the house
itself--lights which suggested no happy household meeting, but were
astray among different windows in the upper story, telling their own
silent tale of illness and anxiety. Cosmo, standing before the door
which he knew so well, could only tell that Tyne was near by the low,
sweet tinkle of the water among the sighing leaves, and was aware of all
the summer flush of roses covering that side of the house by nothing
save the fragrance. He stood there gazing up for a moment at one light
which moved about from window to window with a strange restlessness, and
at another which burned steadily in Marie’s bed-chamber. He knew it to
be Marie’s chamber by instinct. A watch-light, a death-light, a low,
motionless flame, so sadly different from the wavering and brightening
of that other, which some anxious watcher carried about. Cosmo’s heart
grew sad within him as he thought of this great solemn death which was
coming on Marie. Poor Marie, with her invalid irritability, her little
feverish weakness, her ill-bestowed love! To think that one so tender
and wayward, from whom even reason and sober thought were not to be
expected, should, notwithstanding, go forth alone like every other soul
to stand by herself before her God, and that love and pity could no
longer help her, let them strain and struggle as they would! The
thought made Cosmo’s heart ache, he could not tell why.

Madame Roche met them at the door. She was not violently affected as
Cosmo feared--she only kept wiping from her eyes the tears which
perpetually returned to fill them, as he had seen his own mother do in
her trouble--and perhaps it is the common weeping of age which has no
longer hasty floods of youthful tears to spend upon any thing. She gave
a cry of joy when she saw Cameron.

“Ah, my friend, it is kind--God will reward you!” said Madame Roche,
“and you must come to her--there is little time--my child is dying.”

Cameron did not answer a word--he only threw down his hat and followed
her, restraining his step with a painful start when he heard it ring
against the pavement. Cosmo followed, not knowing what else to do, to
the door of the sick room. He did not enter, but as the door opened he
saw who and what was there. And strange to her son sounded the voice
which came out of that sad apartment--the voice of the Mistress reading
with her strong Scottish accent and old fashioned intonation, so
different from the silvery lady’s voice of Madame Roche, and the sweet
tones of Desirée. Spread out before her was the big Bible, the family
book of old Huntley of Melmar, and she was seated close by the bedside
of the sufferer, who lay pallid and wasted, with her thin hands crossed
upon the coverlet, and her whole soul in an agony of _listening_ not to
be described. Close by the Mistress, Desirée was kneeling watching her
sister. This scene, which he saw only in a momentary glance before the
door was closed, overpowered Cosmo. He threw himself down upon a
window-seat in the long corridor which led to this room, and covered his
face with his hands. The sudden and unexpected appearance of his mother
brought the young man’s excitement to a climax. How unjust, unkind,
ungenerous now seemed his own fears!

Madame Roche was one of those women who fear to meet any great emergency
alone. In the first shock of dismay with which she heard that Marie’s
life was fast hastening to its end, she wrote to Cosmo; and before it
was time for Cosmo to arrive--while indeed it was impossible that he
could even have received her letter--the poor mother, with an instinct
of her dependent nature, which she was not aware of and could not
subdue, hastened to send for the Mistress to help her to bear that
intolerable agony in which flesh and heart faint and fail--the anguish
of beholding the dying of her child. The Mistress, who under similar
circumstances would have closed her doors against all the world, came,
gravely and soberly to the call of this undeniable sorrow. In face of
that all the bitterness died out of her honest heart. Madame Roche had
already lost many children. “And I have all mine--God forgive me--I ken
nothing of _that_ grief,” cried Mrs. Livingstone, with a sob of mingled
thankfulness and terror. It was not her vocation to minister at
sick-beds, or support the weak; yet she went without hesitation, though
leaving Huntley to do both. And even before Madame Roche sent for her,
Desirée, who understood her character, had run over by herself early in
the morning, when, after watching all night, she was supposed asleep, to
tell the Mistress that her mother had written to Cosmo. So there was
neither cause nor intention of offense between the sad family at Melmar
and that of Norlaw. When she came to Marie’s sick-bed, the Mistress
found that poor sufferer pathetically imploring some one to tell her of
the unknown world to which she was fast approaching--while Madame Roche,
passionately reproaching herself for leaving her daughter uninstructed,
mingled with her self-accusations, vague words about heaven and
descriptions of its blessedness which fell dull upon the longing ears of
the anxious invalid. The harps and the white robes, the gates of pearl
and the streets of gold were nothing to Marie--what are they to any one
who does not see there the only presence which makes heaven a reality?
The Mistress had no words to add to the poor mother’s anxious eager
repetition of all the disjointed words, describing heaven, which abode
in her memory--but instead, went softly down stairs and returned with
the big Bible, the old, well remembered book, which never failed to
produce a certain awe in Madame Roche--and this was how it happened that
Cosmo found his mother reading to Marie.

When Cameron entered the room, the Mistress, who had not paused,
continued steadily with the reading of her gospel. He, for his part, did
not interrupt her--he went to the other side of the bed and sat down
there, looking at the white face which he had never seen since he saw it
in St. Ouen, scarcely less pale, yet bright enough to appear to his
deluded fancy a star which might light his life. That was not an hour or
place to think of those vain human dreams. Sure as the evening was
sinking into midnight, this troubled shadow of existence was gliding on
toward the unspeakable perfection of the other life. A little while, and
words would no more vail the face of things to this uninstructed soul--a
little while--but as he sat by Marie’s death-bed the whole scene swam
and glimmered before Cameron’s eyes--“A little while and ye shall not
see me--and again a little while and ye shall see me.” Oh these
ineffable, pathetic, heart breaking words! They wandered out and in
through Cameron’s mind in an agony of consolation and of tears. He heard
the impatient anxious mother stop the reading--he felt her finger tap
upon his arm urging him to speak--he saw Marie turn her tender, dying
eyes toward him--he tried to say something but his voice failed him--and
when at last he found utterance, with a tearless sob, which it was
impossible to restrain, the words which burst from his lips with a
vehement outcry, which sounded loud though it was nearer a whisper, were
only these:--“Jesus! Jesus! our Lord!”

Only these!--only that everlasting open secret of God’s grace by which
He brings heaven and earth together! The gentle, blue eyes, which were
no longer peevish, brightened with a wistful hope. There was comfort in
the very name; and then this man--who labored for the wretched--whom
himself could not force his human heart to love, because his Master
loved them--this man, whom poor Marie never suspected to have loved her
in _her_ selfish weakness with the lavish love of a prodigal, who throws
away all--this man stood up by the bedside with his gospel. He himself
did not know what he said--perhaps neither did she, who was too far upon
her way to think of words--but the others stood round with awe to hear.
Heaven? No, it was not heaven he was speaking of--there was no time for
those celestial glories, which are but a secondary blessing; and Cameron
had not a thought in his heart save for this dying creature and his
Lord.

Was it darker out of doors under the skies? No; there was a soft young
moon silvering over the dark outline of the trees, and throwing down a
pale glory over this house of Melmar, on the roof, which glimmered like
a silver shield; and, in the hush, the tinkling voice of Tyne and the
breath of the roses, and a sweet white arrow of moonlight, came in, all
mingled and together, into the chamber of death. Yet, somehow, it is
darker--darker. This pale figure, which is still Marie, feels it so, but
does not wonder--does not ask--is, indeed, sinking into so deep a quiet,
that it does not trouble her with any fears.

“I go to sleep,” she says faintly, with the sweetest smile that ever
shone upon Marie’s lips, “I am so well. Do not cry, mamma; when I wake,
I shall be better. I go to sleep.”

And so she would, and thus have reached heaven unawares, but for the
careless foot which pushed the door open, and the excited figure which
came recklessly in. At sight of him, Cameron instantly left the
bedside--instantly without a word, quitted the room--and began to walk
up and down the corridor, where Cosmo stood waiting. Pierrot began
immediately to address his wife:--His wife!--his life!--his angel! was
it by her orders that strangers came to the house, that his commands
were disobeyed, that he himself was kept from her side? He begged his
adored one to shake off her illness, to have a brave spirit, to get up
and rouse herself for his sake.

“What, my Marie! it is but courage!” cried her husband. “A man does not
die who will not die! Up, my child! Courage! I will forsake you no
more--you have your adored husband--you will live for him. We shall be
happy as the day. Your hand, my angel! Have courage, and rise up, and
live for your Emile’s sake!”

And all the peace that had been upon it fled from Marie’s face. The
troubled eagerness of her life came back to her. “Yes Emile!” she
whispered, with breathless lips, and made the last dying effort to rise
up at his bidding and follow him. Madame Roche threw herself between,
with cries of real and terrified agony; and the Mistress, almost glad to
exchange her choking sympathy for the violent, sudden passion which now
came upon her, went round the bed with the silence and speed of a ghost,
seized his arm with a grip of imperative fury not to be resisted, and,
before he was aware, had thrust him before her to the door. When she had
drawn it close behind her, she shook him like a child with both her
hands. “You devil!” cried the Mistress, transported out of all decorum
of speech by a passion of indignation which the scene almost warranted.
“You dirty, miserable hound! how daur you come there? If you do not
begone to your own place this instant--Cosmo, here! She’s gone, the poor
bairn. He has nae mair right in this house, if he ever had ony--take him
away.”

But while this violent scene disturbed the death calm of the house, it
did not disturb Marie. She had seen for herself by that time, better
than any one could have told her, what robes they wore and what harps
they played in the other world.




CHAPTER LXXIV.


That same night, while they watched their dead at Melmar, the young moon
shone kindly into the open parlor window of a pretty cottage, where some
anxiety, but no sorrow was. This little house stood upon a high bank of
the river Esk, just after that pretty stream had passed through the
pretty village of Lasswade. The front of the house was on the summit of
the height, and only one story high, while the rapid <DW72> behind
procured for it the advantage of two stories at the back. It was a
perfectly simple little cottage, rich in flowers, but nothing else,
furnished with old, well-preserved furniture, as dainty, as bright, and
as comfortable as you could imagine, and looking all the better for
having already answered the wants of two or three generations. The
window was open, and here, too, came in the tinkle of running water, and
the odor of roses, along with the moonlight. Candles stood on the table,
but they had not been lighted; and two ladies sat by the window,
enjoying the cool breeze, the sweet light, the “holy time” of
evening--or, perhaps, not aware of enjoying anything, busy with their
own troubles and their own thoughts.

“I doubt if I should advise,” said the elder of the two, “but though I’m
an old maid myself, I am not prejudiced either one way or another, my
dear. I’ve lived too long, Katie, to say this or that manner of life’s
the happiest; it does not matter much whether you are married or not
married, happiness lies aye in yourself. It’s common to think a single
woman very lone and dreary when she comes to be old; but I’m not afraid
for you. Somebody else will have bairns for you, Katie, if you do not
have them for yourself. Solitude is not in your cup, my dear--I’m
prophet enough to read that.”

Her companion made no answer; and in the little pause which ensued, the
Esk, and the roses, and the moonlight came in as a sweet unconscious
chorus, but a chorus full of whispers which struck deeper than those
quiet words of quiet age.

“But on the other side,” continued the old lady, “Charlie is as good a
fellow as ever lived--the best son, the kindest heart! I would not trust
myself praising him any more than praising you, my dear. You are both a
comfort and a credit to us all, and maybe that is why we should like to
make the two of you one. We’re no’ so very romantic, Katie, in our
family--that is to say,” continued the speaker, with sudden animation,
“the women of us--for if Charlie, or any lad belonging to the house, was
to offer himself without his whole heart and love, he had better never
show his face to me.”

“But, auntie,” said the younger lady, with a smile, “would it be right
to take a whole heart and love, and only have kindness to give in
exchange?”

“Women are different, my dear,” said Katie Logan’s maiden aunt; “I will
confess I do not like myself to hear young girls speaking about love--I
would never advise a _man_ to marry without it--nay, the very thought
makes me angry; but--perhaps you’ll think it no compliment to us,
Katie--women are different; I have no fears of a good woman liking her
husband, no’ even if she was married against her will, as sometimes
happens. I would advise you not to be timid, so far as that is
concerned. Charlie’s very fond of you, and he’s a good lad. To be
married is natural at your age, to have a house of your own, and your
own place in this world; and then there are the bairns. Colin will soon
be off your hands, but the other three are young. Do you think it would
not be best for them if you married a _friend_?”

Katie did not reply; but perhaps it was this last argument which moved
her to a long low sigh of unwelcome conviction. The old lady’s emphatic
_friend_ was Scotch for a relative. Would it indeed be better for them
that Katie’s husband should be her cousin?

“Unless,” said her aunt, rising up to light the candles, yet pausing to
give effect to this last precaution; “unless, my dear, there should be a
single thought of any other man resting in your mind. If there is,
Katie, think no more of Charlie Cassilis. I’m willing you should marry
him first and grow fond of him after; but, my dear, stop and think--do
you like any other person better than him?”

“Maybe I do, auntie,” said the low voice, softly; and Katie shook her
head thoughtfully in the darkness, with a half melancholy, half pleased
motion; “maybe I do.”

“Then, for pity’s sake, not another word!” cried the old lady; and that
kindest of aunts rustled out of the pretty parlor, taking one of the
candlesticks in her hand, with a commotion and haste which showed that
Katie’s quiet half confession had by no means pleased her, in spite of
her avowed impartiality. Lucifer, son of the morning, had not fallen at
that time into such degrading familiarity with housekeepers and
housemaids as has chanced now to that unhappy spirit. Matches were none
in all the village of Lasswade, nor throughout the kingdom, save slender
slips of wood anointed with brimstone, and bearing the emphatic name of
_spunk_ in all the regions north of the Tweed. So Katie’s respectable
aunt, who was kind to her servants, rustled along the passage to the
kitchen to light the candle, and on the way there and the way back
recovered her temper--which was all the better for Katie; and by-and-bye
the quiet maiden household shut itself up and went to sleep.

And perhaps when Katie knelt by her bedside that night to say her
prayers--by the white bed where little Isabel slept the deep sleep which
all the children sleep, thank Heaven, when we are awake with our
troubles--a little weariness of heart made a sigh among her prayers. She
was not romantic--the women of her family were otherwise disposed, as
good Auntie Isabel said, who had not a single selfish impulse in her
composition; and Katie was grieved to disappoint Cousin Charlie, and
perhaps feared, as women always do, with an unconscious vanity, for the
consequences of his disappointment; was she right to damage his
happiness, to refuse a supporter for herself, a protector for her
children, all for the sake of Huntley, who might perhaps have forgotten
her years ago? Katie could not answer her own question, but she did what
was the wisest course under the circumstances--laid her head resolutely
down, on her pillow and fell asleep, leaving time and the hour to solve
the question for her, and only sure of one thing--that her impulse was
right.

But the question returned to her when she opened her eyes, in the
morning, in those first waking moments, when, as Béranger says, all our
cares awake before us, assault afresh, and, as if the first time, the
soul which has escaped them in the night. Was she right? All through her
early morning duties this oft-repeated question beset the mind of Katie;
and it needs only to see what these duties were, to acknowledge how
pertinacious it was. The cottage belonged to Aunt Isabel, who had
received gladly her orphan nieces and nephews after the death of Dr.
Logan. Aunt Isabel’s spare income was just enough for herself and her
maid, who, heretofore, had been sole occupants of the pretty little
house, and Katie and her orphans managed to live upon theirs, which was
also a very small income, but marvelously taken care of--and pleasantly
backed by the gooseberry-bushes and vegetable beds of the cottage
garden, which riches their mistress made common property. On Katie’s
advent, Aunt Isabel retired from the severe duties of housekeeping in
her own person. It was Katie who made the tea and cut the bread and
butter, and washed with her own hands the delicate cups and saucers
which Aunt Isabel would not trust to a servant. Then the elder sister
had to see that the boys were ready, with all their books strapped on
their shoulder, and their midday “piece” in their pocket, for school.
Then Isabel’s daintier toilet had to be superintended; and if Katie had
a weakness, it was to see her sister prettily dressed, and “in the
fashion"--and that little maiden sent forth fair and neat to the ladies’
seminary which illustrated the healthful village of Lasswade; and then
Katie went to the kitchen, to determine what should be had for dinner,
and sometimes to lend her own delicate skill to the making of a pudding
or the crimping of a frill. When all was done, there was an unfailing
supply of needlework to keep her hands employed. On this particular
morning, Aunt Isabel meditated a call upon Miss Hogg, in Lasswade, and
Katie had been so much persecuted by that question which some malicious
imp kept always addressing to her, that she felt heated and out of
breath in the pretty parlor. So she took up her work, put her thread and
scissors in her pocket, and went out to the garden to sit on a low
garden seat, with the grass under her feet, and the trees over her, and
sweet Esk singing close at hand, thinking it might be easier to pursue
her occupation there.

Perhaps that was a mistake. It is not easy to sew, nor to read, nor even
to think, out of doors on a June morning, with a sweet river drowsing
by, and the leaves, and the roses, and the birds, and the breeze making
among them that delightful babble of sound and motion which people call
the quiet of the country. Still Katie _did_ work; she was making shirts
for Colin, who had just gone into Edinburgh to Cousin Charlie’s
office;--stitching wristbands! and in spite of the sunshine and her
perplexed thoughts, Katie’s button-holes were worth going ten miles to
see.

But was she right? Search through all the three kingdoms and you could
not have found a better fellow than Cousin Charlie, who was very fond of
Katie Logan, and had been for years. The elder sister liked him
heartily, knew that he would be kind to her orphans, believed him every
thing that was good in man; but while she reasoned with herself, the
color wavered upon her cheek, and somewhere in heart a voice, which
might have been the Esk river, so closely its whisper ran with her
thoughts, kept saying, “Dinna forget me, Katie!” till, by dint of
persistence, all the other meditations yielded, and this, with a
triumphant shout, kept the field. Oh, Huntley Livingstone! who had, just
as like as no’, forgotten Katie--was she right?

He could not have come at a better time--he came quite unannounced,
unintroduced, so suddenly that Katie made an outcry almost of
terror--one moment, nobody with her but the Esk, and the roses, and her
own thoughts--not a shadow on the grass, not a step on the road. The
next moment, Huntley, standing there between her and the sky, between
her and home, shutting out every thing but himself, who had to be first
attended to. If she had only seen him a moment sooner, she might have
received him quite calmly, with the old smile of the elder-sister; but
because of the start, Katie getting up, dropping her work, and holding
out her hands, looked about as agitated, as glad, as tearful, as out of
herself, as even Huntley was.

“I have come home--to Norlaw--to remain,” said Huntley, when he began to
know what he was saying, which was not just the first moment; “and you
are not an old Katie in a cap, as you threatened to be; but first I’ve
come to say out what I dared not say in the manse parlor--and you know
what that is. Katie, if you have forgotten me--Heaven knows I never will
blame you!--it’s seven weary years since then--if you have forgotten me,
Katie, tell me I am not to speak!”

Katie had two or three impulses for the moment--to tell the truth, she
was quite happy, rejoiced to be justified in the unsolicited affection
she had given, and entirely contented in standing by this sudden
Œdipus, who was to resolve all her doubts. Being so, she could almost
have run away from the embarrassment and gravity of the moment, and made
a little natural sport of the solemnity of the lover, who stood before
her as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it was the only coquettish
thought which Katie Logan ever was guilty of. But she conquered it--she
looked up at him with her old smile.

“Speak, Huntley!” she said; and having said so much, there was not, to
tell the truth, a great deal more necessary. Huntley spoke, you may be
sure, and Katie listened; and the very roses on the cottage wall were
not less troubled about Cousin Charlie for the next hour than she was.
And when Aunt Isabel returned, and Katie went in with a blush, holding
Huntley’s arm, to introduce him simply as “Huntley Livingstone,” with a
tone and a look which needed no interpretation, there was no longer a
doubt in Katie’s mind as to whether she was right.

But she did not think it needful to tell Huntley what question she was
considering when his sudden appearance startled her out of all her
perplexities; and it is very likely that in that, at least, Katie was
perfectly right.




CHAPTER LXXV.


A very sadly different scene; no young hopes blossoming towards
perfection--no young lives beginning--no joy--has called together this
company, or makes this room bright; a dark house, shrouded still in its
closed curtains and shutters, a wan light in the apartment, a breathless
air of death throughout the place. Outside, the tawdry Frenchman, with a
long crape hatband, knotted up in funeral bows, as is the custom in
Scotland, walking up and down smoking his cigar, angry at finding
himself excluded, yet tired of the brief decorum into which even he has
been awed, and much disposed to amuse himself with any kitchenmaid whom
he may chance to see as he peers about their quarters, keeping at the
back of the house. But the maids are horrified and defiant, and the
affair is rather dull, after all, for Monsieur Pierrot.

The company are all assembled in the drawing-room, as they have returned
from the funeral. The minister, the doctor, a lawyer from Melrose,
Cameron, and the three brothers Livingstone. Madame Roche, her black
gown covered with crape, and every thing about her of the deepest sable,
save her cap; the white ribbons of which are crape ribbons too, sits,
with her handkerchief in her hand, in an easy chair. The Mistress is
there, too, rather wondering and disapproving, giving her chief
attention to Desirée, who sits behind her mother quietly crying, and
supposing this solemn assembly is some necessary formality which must be
gone through.

“Is it to read the will?” asks the minister, who suggests that her
husband had better be present; but no, there is no will--for poor Marie
had nothing and could leave nothing. When they have been all seated for
a few minutes, Madame Roche herself rises from her chair. Though the
tears are in her eyes, and grief in her face, she is still the beautiful
old lady whom Cosmo Livingstone loved to watch from his window in St.
Ouen. Time himself, the universal conqueror, can never take from Mary of
Melmar that gift which surrounded her with love in her youth, and which
has lighted all her troubled life like a fairy lamp. The sweet soft
cheek where even wrinkles are lovely, the beautiful old eyes which even
in their tears can not choose but smile, the footstep so light, yet so
firm, which still might ring “like siller bells,” though its way is
heavy. Every one was looking at her, and as they looked, every one
acknowledged the unchanging fascination of this beautiful face.

“Gentlemen,” said Madame Roche with a little tremor in her voice, “I
would speak to you all--I would do my justice before the world; you have
heard what I was in my youth. Mary Huntley of Melmar, my father’s
heiress. I was disobedient--I went away from him--I knew he disowned me,
and knew no more than an infant that he relented in his heart when he
died. I was poor all my life--my Marie, my dear child!” and here Madame
Roche paused to sob aloud, and Desirée laid her head upon the knee of
the Mistress and clutched at her dress in silent self-control; “it was
then she married this man--married him to break her heart--yet still
loved him to the last. Ah, my friends, I was thus a widow with my sick
child in my husband’s town. My Jean was dead, and she was forsaken--and
my Desirée was gone from me to serve strangers--it was then that one
came to my house like an angel from heaven. Cosmo, my friend, do you
blush that I should name your name?

“And what a tale he told me!” cried poor Madame Roche, whose tears now
filled her eyes, and whose lips quivered so that she had to pause from
moment to moment; “I, who thought me a lonely woman, whom no one cared
for;--my father had thought upon me--my kinsman, Patrick Livingstone,
had sought me to give me back my lands--my young hero was seeking me
then; and his brother, yes, Huntley, his noble brother, was ready to
renounce his right--and all for the widow and her children. I weep, ah,
my friends, you weep!--was it not noble? was it not above praise? When I
heard it I made a vow--I said in my heart I should repay this excellent
Huntley. I had planned it in my mind--I said in my thoughts, my Marie,
my blessed child, must have half of this great fortune. She is married,
she can not make compensation--but the rest is for Desirée, and Desirée
shall give it back to Huntley Livingstone.”

Every one of her auditors by this time gazed upon Madame Roche. Desirée,
sitting behind her, lifted her face from the lap of the Mistress; she
was perfectly pale, and her eyes were heavy with crying. She sat
leaning forward, holding the Mistress’s gown with one hand, with sudden
dismay and terror in her white face. Just opposite her Cameron sat,
clenching his hand. What _he_ was thinking no one could say--but as
Madame Roche spoke of Marie he still clenched his hand. Then came the
strangers, surprised and sympathetic, Patrick Livingstone among them.
Then Huntley, much startled and wondering, and Cosmo, with a face which
reflected Desirée’s, dismayed and full of anxiety, and the attitude of a
man about to spring up to defy, or denounce, or contradict the speaker.
The Mistress behind sat upright in her chair, with a face like a psalm
of battle and triumph, her nostril dilating, her eyes shining. For the
first time in her life, the Mistress’s heart warmed to Mary of Melmar.
She alone wanted no explanation of this speech--she alone showed no
surprise or alarm--it was but a just and fit acknowledgment--a glory due
to the sons of Norlaw.

“But, alas,” cried Madame Roche; “God has looked upon it, and it has not
been enough. He has broken my heart and made my way clear; pity me, my
friends, my Marie is in heaven and her mother here! And now there is but
one heir. My Desirée is my only child--there is none to share her
inheritance. Huntley Livingstone, come to me! I have thought and I have
dreamed of the time when I should give you my child--but, alas! did I
think it should be only when Marie was in her grave? Huntley
Livingstone! you gave up your right to me, and I restore it to you. I
give you my child, and Melmar is for Desirée. There is no one to share
it with you, my daughter and my son!”

Huntley had risen and approached to Madame Roche, though with
reluctance, when she called him. Now she held his hand in one of hers,
and stretched out the other for that of Desirée--while Huntley,
confounded, confused, and amazed beyond expression, had not yet
recovered himself sufficiently to speak. Before he could speak Cosmo had
sprung to the side of Desirée, who stood holding back and meeting her
mother’s appeal with a look of dumb defiance and exasperation, which
might be very wrong, but was certainly very natural. Every one rose. But
for the grief of the principal actors, and the painful embarrassment of
all, the scene might almost have been ludicrous. Cosmo, who had grasped
at Desirée’s hand, did not obtain it any more than her mother. The girl
stood up, but kept her hold of the Mistress’s gown, as if for
protection.

“No, no, no, no!” said Desirée, in a low, hurried, ashamed voice;
“mother, no--no--no! I will not do it! Mamma, will you shame me? Oh,
pity us! Is it thus we are to weep for Marie?”

“My child, it is justice,” cried Madame Roche, through her tears; “give
him your hand--it is that Huntley may have his own.”

“But there is some strange mistake here,” said Huntley, whose brow
burned with a painful flush; “Melmar was never mine, nor had I any real
right to it. Years ago I have even forgotten that it once was possible.
Be silent for a moment, Cosmo, I beg of you, and you, Mademoiselle
Desirée, do not fear. Madame Roche, I thank you for your generous
meaning, but it is an entire mistake in every way--let me explain it
privately. Let us be alone first;--nay, nay, let me speak, then! I am my
father’s heir, and our house is older than Melmar; and nothing in the
world, were it the hand of a queen, could tempt me to call myself any
thing but Livingstone of Norlaw!”

The Mistress had been standing up, like everybody else, an excited
spectator. When Huntley said these words she sat down suddenly, with a
glow and flush of triumph not to be described--the name of her husband
and her son ringing in her ears like a burst of music; and then, for the
first time, Desirée relinquished her hold, and held out her hand to
Huntley, while Cosmo grasped his other hand and wrung it in both his
with a violent pressure. The three did not think for that moment of
Madame Roche, who had been looking in Huntley’s face all the time he
spoke to her, and who, when he ended, dropped his hand silently and sank
into her chair. She was leaning back now, with her white handkerchief
over her face--and the hand that held it trembled. Poor Madame Roche!
this was all her long thought of scheme had come to--she could only
cover her face and forget the pang of failure in the bigger pang of
grief--she did not say another word; she comprehended--for she was not
slow of understanding--that Huntley’s little effusion of family pride
was but a rapid and generous expedient to save him from a direct
rejection of Desirée. And poor Madame Roche’s heart grew sick with the
quick discouragement of grief. She closed her eyes, and heavier tears
came from them than even those she had shed for Marie. She had tried her
best to make them happy, she had failed; and now they for whose sake
alone she had made all this exertion neglected and forgot her. It was
too much for Madame Roche.

“Mamma, listen,” whispered Desirée, soothingly. “Ah, mamma, you might
force mine--I should always obey you--but you can not force Huntley’s
heart--he does not care for _me_; bah, that is nothing!--but there _is_
one whom he cares for--one whom he has come home for--Katie, whom they
all love! Mamma, you were right! he is noble, he is generous; but what
is Melmar to Huntley? He has come back for Katie and his own home.”

“Katie?--some one else? My darling, does he love her?” said Madame
Roche. “Then it is God who has undone all, Desirée, and I am content.
Let him come to me, and I will bless him. I will bless you all, my
children,” she said, raising herself up, and stretching her hands toward
them. “Ah, friends, do you see them--so young and so like each other!
and it was _he_ who sought us, and not Huntley; and it is I who am
wrong--and God is right!”

Saying which, Madame Roche kissed Huntley’s cheek, dismissing him so,
and took Cosmo into her arms instead. Her sweet temper and facile mind
forgot even her own failure. She put back Cosmo’s hair tenderly from his
forehead and called him her hero. He was her son at least; and Desirée
and Melmar, the two dreams of his fancy, between which, when he saw the
girl first, he suspected no possible connection, came at once, a double
gift, the one eagerly sought, the other totally unthought of, into the
Benjamin’s portion of Cosmo Livingstone.




CHAPTER LXXVI.


“There’s aye plenty fools in this world,” said bowed Jaaoob; “a’thing
else that’s human fails; but that commodity’s aye ready. I had my hopes
of that laddie Livingstone. He has nae discrimination, and hasna seen
the world, like some other folk, but for a’ that I thought I could
perceive a ring of the right metal in him, and I’m no’ often wrang. And
so Cosmo’s to be marriet! I dinna disapprove of his taste--that’s a
different matter. I even had a great notion of _her_ mysel’; but when
the lad’s married there’s an end of him. Wha ever heard tell of a man
coming to distinction with a wife at his tail?--na! I wash my hands of
Cosmo--he shall never mair be officer of mine.”

Jaacob did not address himself to any one in particular. The news with
which Kirkbride was ringing was great news in its way, and a little
crowd had collected in the corner, close by the smithy, to discuss it, a
crowd composed chiefly of women, chief among whom, in a flush of triumph
and importance, stood Marget of Norlaw. Jaacob did not often concern his
lofty intelligence with the babble of women, but the little giant was
interested in spite of himself, and had a warm corner in his heart for
both the heroes who were under present discussion. A lusty blacksmith
apprentice puffed at the great bellows within that ruddy cavern, and
Jaacob stood at the door, with one or two male gossips lingering near
him, which was a salve to his dignity; but Jaacob’s words were not
addressed even to his own cronies; they were a spontaneous effusion of
observant wisdom, mingled with benevolent regret.

“The man’s in a creel!” cried the indignant Marget--“an officer of
yours, Jaacob Bell?--_yours_, ye objeck! and I would just like to ken
wha gave the like of you ony right to ca’ _our_ son by his christened
name? Na, sirs, ye’re a’ wrang--it just shows how little folk ken about
onything out of their ain road; and canna haud their peace either, or
let them speak that have the knowledge. The auld lady--her that was Mary
of Melmar--would have given our Huntley baith the land and the bonnie
lass, if it had been _her_ will, for she’s a real sensible woman, as
it’s turned out, and kens the value of lads like ours. But Huntley
Livingstone, he said no. He’s no’ the lad, our Huntley, to be ony wife’s
man--and he has his awn yestate, and an aulder name and fame than
Melmar. There’s no’ an auld relick in the whole country-side like our
auld castle. I’ve heard it from them that ken; and our Huntley would no
mair part with the name than wi’ his right hand. Eh! if auld Norlaw,
puir man, had but lived to see this day! Our Cosmo is very like his
father. He’s just as like to be kent far and near for his poems and his
stories as Walter Scott ower yonder at Abbotsford. It’s just like a
story in a book itsel’. When he was but a laddie--no’ muckle bigger than
bowed Jaacob--he fell in with a bonnie bit wee French lady, in
Edinburgh. I mind him telling me--there’s never ony pride about our
sons--just as well as if it was yesterday. The callant’s head ran upon
naething else--and wha was this but just Miss Deseera! and he’s courted
her this mony a year, whaever might oppose; and now he’s won and
conquered, and there’s twa weddings to be in Kirkbride, baith in the
very same day!”

“In Kirkbride? but, dear woman, Miss Logan’s no’ here,” suggested one of
the bystanders.

“Wha’s heeding!” cried Marget, in her triumph, “if ane’s in Kirkbride,
and ane in anither kirk, is that onything against the truth I am
telling? Sirs, haud a’ your tongues--I’ve carried them a’ in my arms,
and told them stories. I’ve stood by them and their mother, just me and
no other person, when they were in their sorest trouble; and I would
like to hear wha daur say a word, if Norlaw Marget is just wild and out
of her wits for aince in her life to see their joy!”

“I never look for discretion at a woman’s hand mysel’,” said bowed
Jaacob, though even Jaacob paused a little before he brought the shadow
of his cynicism over Marget’s enthusiasm; “they’re easy pleased, puir
things, and easy cast down--a man of sense has aye a compassion for the
sex--it’s waste o’ time arguing with them. Maybe that’s a reason for
lamenting this lad Livingstone. A man, if he’s no’ a’ the stronger, is
awfu’ apt to fall to the level of his company--and to think of a
promising lad, no’ five-and-twenty, lost amang a haill tribe--wife,
mother, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and gude kens how mony friends
forbye--it’s grievous--that’s just what it is; a man goes down, a man
comes to the calibre of the woman. For which cause,” said bowed Jaacob,
thrusting his cowl on one side of his head, twisting still higher his
high shoulder, and fixing a defiant gaze upon the admiring crowd with
his one eye; “in spite of mony temptations--for I’ll say that for the
women, that they ken a man of sense when they see him--I’m no’, and
never will be, a marrying man mysel’!”

“Eh, but Jaacob,” cried a saucy voice, “if you could have gotten her,
you might have put up with Miss Roche.”

“Humph--I had a great notion of the lassie,” said Jaacob, loftily; “men
at my years get above the delusion of looking for a woman as a
companion. It makes nae muckle matter whether she’s ca’ed a foolish
woman or a sensible ane; its naething but a question of degree; and when
a man finds that out, he has a right to please his e’e. When you hear of
me married, it’s a wife of sixteen, that’s what I’ll have gotten; but
you see, as for Miss Deeseera, puir thing, she may be breaking her
heart, for onything I ken. I’m a man of honor, and Cosmo’s a great
friend of mine--I wouldna, for twenty Melmars, come between my friend
and his love.”

And amid the laughter which echoed this magnanimous speech, bowed Jaacob
retired into the ruddy gloom of the smithy and resumed his hammer, which
he played with such manful might and intention upon the glowing iron,
that the red light illuminated his whole swarthy face and person, and
the red sparks flashed round him like the rays round a saint in an old
picture. He was not in the least a saintly individual, but Rembrandt
himself could not have found a better study for light and shade.

A little time sufficed to accomplish these momentous changes. The
Mistress gave up her trust of Norlaw, the cows and dairies which were
the pride of her heart, the bank-book, with its respectable balance, and
all the rural wealth of the farmsteading, to her son. And Huntley warned
the tenants to whom his mother had let the land that he should resume
the farming of it himself at the end of the year, when their terms were
out. Every thing about Norlaw began to wear signs of preparation. The
Mistress spoke vaguely of going with Patie, the only one of her sons who
still “belonged to his mother"--and making a home for him in Glasgow.
But Patie was an engineer, involved over head and ears in the Herculean
work of the new railways; he was scarcely three months in the year, take
them altogether, at the lodging which he called his head quarters--and
perhaps, on the whole, he rather discouraged the idea.

“At least, mother, you must wait to welcome Katie,” said this astute and
long-headed adviser of the family--and the Mistress, with her strong
sense of country breeding and decorum, would not have done less, had it
broken her heart. But she rather longed for the interval to be over, and
the matter concluded. The Mistress, somehow, could not understand or
recognize herself adrift from Norlaw.

“But I dinna doubt it would be best--it’s natural,” said the
Mistress--“they should have their good beginning to themselves,” and
with that she sighed, and grew red with shame to think it was a sigh,
and spoke sharply to Marget, and put the old easy chair which had been
“their father’s!” away into a corner, with a little momentary ebullition
of half resentful tears. But she never lost her temper to Huntley--it
was only Nature, and not her son who was to blame.

It was early in August when Katie came home. The Mistress stood at the
door waiting to receive her, on a night which was worthy such a
homecoming. Just sunset, the field-laborers going home, the purple flush
folded over the Eildons like a regal mantle, the last tender ray
catching the roofless wall of the Strength of Norlaw, and the soft hill
rising behind, with yellow corn waving rich to its summit, soon to be
ripe for the harvest. Tears were in the Mistress’s heart, but smiles in
her face; she led her new daughter in before even Huntley, brought her
to the dining-parlor, and set her in her own chair.

“This is where I sat first myself the day I came home,” said the
Mistress, with a sob, “and sit you there; and God bless my bairns, and
build up Norlaw--amen!”

But Katie said the amen too, and rose again, holding the Mistress fast
and looking up in her face.

“I have not said mother for ten years,” said Katie. “Mother! do you
think dispeace can ever rise between you and me, that you should think
once of going away?”

The Mistress paused.

“No dispeace, Katie--no, God forbid!” said Huntley’s mother, “but I’m a
hasty woman in my speech, and ever was.”

“But not to me,” said the Katie who was no more Katie Logan--“never to
me! and Huntley will be a lonely man if his mother goes from Norlaw, for
where thou goest I will go, and where thou dwellest I will dwell.
Mother, tell me! is it Patie or poor Huntley who is to have you and
me?”

The Mistress did not say a word. She suffered herself to be placed in
the chair where she had placed Katie, and then put her apron over her
face and wept, thinking strangely, all at once, not of a new
daughter-in-law and a changed place, but of him who lay sleeping among
the solemn ruins at Dryburgh, and all the sacred chain of years that
made dear this house of Norlaw.

The other marriage took place after that, with much greater glory and
distinction, to the pride of the Mistress’s heart. It was a great
festival when it came--which was not till the season of mourning was
over--to all of whom Madame Roche could reach. Even Joanna Huntley and
Aunt Jean were persuaded to come to gladden the wedding of Desirée and
Cosmo; and it is even said that Joanna, who is of a very scientific turn
of mind, and has a little private laboratory of her own, where she burns
her pupils’ fingers, was the finder of that strange little heap of dust
and cinders which revealed to Huntley the mineral wealth in the corner
of the Norlaw lands, which now has made him rich enough to buy three
Norlaws. At any rate, Joanna was put into perfect good humor by her
visit, and thenceforward, with the chivalry of a knight-errant,
worshiped above all loveliness the beautiful old face of Madame Roche.

This is about all there is to tell of the Livingstone family. They had
their troubles, and are having them, like all of us; but, like all of
us, have great joy-cordials now and then to make them strong; and always
Providence to work a clear web out of the tangled exertions which we
make without witting, and which God sorts into His appointed lot.

THE END.

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End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story, by 
Margaret Oliphant

*** 