“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.