While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of
the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo
Livingstone wandered over classic ground with Cameron and his young
pupil, and sent now and then, with modest pride, his contribution to the
_Auld Reekie Magazine_ which had now been afloat for four months, and on
account of which Mr. Todhunter, in his turn, sent remittances--not
remarkably liberal, yet meant to be so, in letters full of a rude, yet
honest, vanity, which impressed the lad with great ideas of what the new
periodical was to do for the literary world. So far, all was
satisfactory with Cosmo. He was very well off also in his companions.
Cameron, who had been shy of undertaking a manner of life which was so
new to him, and whom all the innkeepers had fleeced unmercifully on the
first commencement of their travels--for the very pride which made him
starve in his garret at home, out of everybody’s ken, made him, unused
and inexperienced as he was, a lavish man abroad, where everybody was
looking on, and where the thought of “meanness” troubled his spirit. But
by this time, even Cameron had become used to the life of inns and
journeys, and was no longer awed by the idea that landlords and waiters
would suspect his former poverty, or that his pupil himself might
complain of undue restraint. The said pupil, whose name was Macgregor,
was good-natured and companionable, without being any thing more. They
had been in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Germany. They had all acquired
a traveler’s smattering of all the three tongues familiar on their
road--they had looked at churches, and pictures, and palaces, till those
eyes which were unguided by _Murray_, and knew just as much, or rather
as little, of art, as the bulk of their countrymen at the time, became
fairly bewildered, and no longer recollected which was which. They were
now in France, in chilly February weather, on their way home. Why they
pitched upon this town of St. Ouen for their halt it would have been
hard to explain. It was in Normandy, for one reason, and Cosmo felt
rather romantically interested in that old cradle of the conquering
race. It was within reach of various places, of historic interest.
Finally, young Macgregor had picked up somewhere a little archaic lore,
which was not a common accomplishment in those days, and St. Ouen was
rich in old architecture. Thus they lingered, slow to leave the shores
of France, which was not sunny France in that February, but had been the
beginning and was about to be the end of their pleasant wandering, and
where accordingly they were glad to rest for a little before returning
home.
Though, to tell the truth, Cosmo would a great deal rather have tarried
on the very edge of the country, at the little sea-port which bowed
Jaacob called “Deep,” and where that sentimental giant had seen, or
fancied he had seen, the lady of his imagination. Cosmo had enjoyed his
holiday heartily, as became his temperament and years, yet he was
returning disappointed, and even a little chagrined and ashamed of
himself. He had started with the full and strong idea that what his
father could not succeed in doing, and what advertisements and legal
search had failed in, he himself, by himself, could do--and he was now
going home somewhat enlightened as to this first fallacy of youth. He
had not succeeded, he had not had the merest gleam or prospect of
success; Mary of Melmar was as far off, as totally lost, as though Cosmo
Livingstone, who was to be her knight and champion, had never known the
story of her wrongs, and Time was gliding away with silent, inevitable
rapidity. A year and a half of the precious remaining interval was over.
Huntley had been at his solitary work in Australia for nearly a whole
year, and Huntley’s heart was bent on returning to claim Melmar, if he
could but make money enough to assert his right to it. This Cosmo knew
from his brother’s letters, those to himself, and those which his mother
forwarded to him (in copy). He loved Huntley, but Cosmo thought he loved
honor more--certainly he had more regard for the favorite dream of his
own imagination, which was to restore the lost lady to her inheritance.
But he had not found her, and now he was going home!
However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself
out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be
thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when
they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had
taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself
made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at
St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the _premier étage_ for Cameron and
his pupil, and one _au troisième_ for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room
in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common
stair-case--where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light,
went up the echoing flight above to the _mansarde_, and made jokes,
which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots,
standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though
Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to
the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly
extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden
fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with
the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed,
in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was
very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on
the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent
opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner,
overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off
from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the
sunshine. Up in the corner, _au troisième_, with the next door
neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would
not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s
window--yet it so happened that there was.
Not in the window itself, though that was near enough the clouds--but
Cosmo, looking down, looked, as his good fortune was, into another
window over the way, a pretty second floor, with white curtains and
flowers to garnish it, and sunshine that loved to steal in for half the
day. It was a pretty point of itself, with its little stand of
early-blooming plants, and its white curtains looped up with ribbon. The
plants were but early spring flowers, and did not at all screen the
bright little window which Cosmo looked at, as though it had been a
picture--and even when the evening lamp was lighted, no jealous blinds
were drawn across the cheerful light. The lad was not impertinent nor
curious, yet he sat in the dusk sometimes, looking down as into the
heart of a little sacred picture. There were only two people ever in the
room, and these were ladies, evidently a mother and daughter--one of
them an invalid. That there was a sofa near the fire, on which some one
nearly always lay--that once or twice in the day this recumbent figure
was raised from the couch, and the two together paced slowly through the
room--and that, perhaps once a week, a little carriage came to the door
to take the sick lady out for a drive, was all that Cosmo knew of the
second person in this interesting apartment; and the lad may have been
supposed to be sufficiently disinterested in his curiosity, when we say
that the only face which he ever fully saw at that bright window was the
face of an _old_ lady--a face as old as his mother’s. It was she who
watered the flowers and looped the curtains--it was she who worked
within their slight shadow, always visible--and it was she who,
sometimes looking up and catching his eye, smiled either at or to Cosmo,
causing him to retreat precipitately for the moment, yet leaving no
glance of reproach on his memory to forbid his return.
Beauty is not a common gift; it is especially rare to the fanciful,
young imagination, which is very hard to please, save where it loves.
This old lady, however, old though she was, caught Cosmo’s poetic eye
with all the glamour, somehow tenderer than if she had been young, of
real loveliness. She must have been beautiful in her youth. She had
soft, liquid, dark-blue eyes, full of a motherly and tender light
now-a-days, and beautiful light-brown hair, in which, at this distance,
it was not possible to see the silvery threads. She was tall, with a
natural bend in her still pliant form, which Cosmo could not help
comparing to the bend of a lily. He said to himself, as he sat at his
window, that he had seen many pretty girls, but never any one so
beautiful as this old lady. Her sweet eyes of age captivated Cosmo; he
was never weary of watching her. He could have looked down upon her for
an hour at a time, as she sat working with her white hands, while the
sun shone upon her white lace cap, and on the sweet old cheek, with its
lovely complexion, which was turned to the window; or when she half
disappeared within to minister to the other half visible figure upon the
sofa. Cosmo did not like to tell Cameron of his old lady, but he sat
many an hour by himself in this little room, to the extreme wonderment
of his friend, who supposed it was all for the benefit of the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_, and smiled a little within himself at the lad’s
literary enthusiasm. For his part, Cosmo dreamed about his opposite
neighbors, and made stories for them in his own secret imagination,
wondering if he ever could come to know them, or if he left St. Ouen,
whether they were ever likely to meet again. It certainly did not seem
probable, and there was no photography in those days to enable Cosmo to
take pictures of his beautiful old lady as she sat in the sunshine. He
took them on his own mind instead, and he made them into copies of
verses, which the beautiful old lady never would see, nor if she saw
could read--verses for the _Auld Reekie Magazine_ and the _North British
Courant_.