“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!”