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.