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 colored 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!”