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.