Cameron was not visible until the evening, when he sent for Cosmo to his
own room. The lad obeyed the summons instantly; the room was rather a
large one, very barely furnished, without any carpet on the floor, and
with no fire in the stove. It was dimly lighted by one candle, which
threw the apartment into a general twilight, and made a speck of
particular illumination on the table where it stood, and by which sat
Cameron, with his pocket-book and Baptiste’s bill before him. He was
very pale, and somehow it seemed impossible to see his face otherwise
than in profile, where it looked stern, rigid, and immoveable as an old
Roman’s; but his manner, if perhaps a little graver, was otherwise
exactly as usual. Cosmo was at a loss how to speak to him; he did not
even like to look at his friend, who, however, showed no such
embarrassment in his own person.
“We go to-morrow, Cosmo,” said Cameron, rather rapidly; “here is
Baptiste’s bill to be settled, and some other things. We’ll go over to
Dieppe the first thing in the morning--every thing had better be done to
night.”
“The first thing in the morning! but I am afraid I--I can not go,” said
Cosmo, hesitating a little.
“Why?” Cameron looked up at him imperiously--he was not in a humor to be
thwarted.
“Because--not that I don’t wish to go, for I had rather be with you,”
said Cosmo--“but because I made a discovery, and a very important one,
to-day.”
“Ah?” said Cameron, with a smile and a tone of dreary satire; “this must
have been a day for discoveries--what was yours?”
“It was about Madame Roche,” said Cosmo, with hesitation--he was afraid
to broach the subject, in his anxiety for his friend, and yet it must be
told.
“Just so,” said Cameron, with the same smile; “I knew it must be about
Madame Roche--what then? I suppose it is no secret? nothing more than
everybody knew?”
“Don’t speak so coldly,” entreated Cosmo, with irrestrainable feeling;
“indeed it is something which no one could have dreamed of; Cameron, she
is Mary. I never guessed or supposed it until to-day.”
Something like a groan burst from Cameron in spite of himself. “Ay,
she’s Mary!” cried the Highlander, with a cry of fierce despair and
anguish not to be described, “but laddie, what is that to you?”
They were a world apart as they sat together on either side of that
little table, with the pale little light between them--the boy in the
awe of his concern and sympathy--the man in the fiery struggle and
humiliation of his manhood wrung to the heart. Cosmo did not venture to
look up, lest the very glance--the water in his eyes, might irritate the
excited mind of his friend. He answered softly, almost humbly, with the
deep imaginative respect of youth.
“She is Mary of Melmar, Cameron--the old lady; my father’s kinswoman
whom he was--fond of--who ran away to marry a Frenchman--who is the heir
of Melmar--Melmar which was to be Huntley’s, if I had not found her. It
can not be Huntley’s now; and I must stay behind to complete the
discovery I have made.”
Perhaps Cosmo’s tone was not remarkably cheerful; the Highlander looked
at him with an impatient and indignant glance.
“Why should it be Huntley’s when it is hers?” he said, almost angrily.
“Would you grudge her rights to a helpless woman? you, boy! are even
_you_ beguiled when yourself is concerned?”
“You are unjust,” said Cosmo. “I do not hesitate a moment--I have done
nothing to make any one doubt me--nor ever will.”
The lad was indignant in proportion to his uneasiness and discomfort in
his discovery, but Cameron was not sufficiently at rest himself to see
through the natural contradictions of his young companion. He turned
away from him with the half-conscious gesture of a sick heart.
“I am unjust--I believe it,” he said, with a strange humility; “lands
and silver are but names to me. I am like other folk--I can be liberal
with what I have not--ay, more! I can even throw away my own,”
continued Cameron, his strong voice trembling between real emotion and a
bitter self-sarcasm, “so that nobody should be the better for the waste;
that’s _my_ fortune. Your estate will be of use to somebody--take
comfort, callant; if you are disappointed, there’s still some benefit in
the gift. But ye might give all and no mortal be a gainer--waste,
lavish, pour forth every thing ye have, and them the gift was for, if
ever they knew, be the worse and not the better! Ay! that’s some men’s
portion in this life.”
Cosmo did not venture to say a word--that bitter sense of waste and
prodigality, the whole treasure of a man’s heart poured forth in vain,
and worse than in vain, startled the lad with a momentary vision of
depths into which he could not penetrate. For Cameron was not a boy,
struggling with a boy’s passion of disappointment and mortification. He
was a strong, tenacious, self-concentrated man. He had made a useless,
vain, unprofitable holocaust, which could not give even a moment’s
pleasure to the beloved of his imagination, for whom he had designed to
do every thing, and the unacceptable gift returned in a bitterness
unspeakable upon the giver’s heart. Other emotions, even more heavy and
grievous, struggled also within him. His old scruples against leaving
his garret and studies, his old feelings of guilt in deferring
voluntarily, for his own pleasure and comfort, the beginning of his
chosen “work,” came back upon his silent Celtic soul in a torrent of
remorse and compunction, which he could not and would not confide to any
one. If he had not forsaken the labors to which God had called him,
could he have been left to cast his own heart away after this desperate
and useless fashion? With these thoughts his fiery spirit consumed
itself. Bitter at all times must be the revulsion of love which is in
vain, but this was bitterer than bitterness--a useless, unlovely,
unprofitable sacrifice, producing nothing save humiliation and shame.
“I see, Cosmo,” he said, after a little pause, “I see that you can not
leave St. Ouen to-morrow. Do your duty. You were fain to find her, and
you have found her. It might be but a boy’s impulse of generosity, and
it may bring some disappointment with it; but it’s right, my lad! and
it’s something to succeed in what you attempt, even though you do get a
dinnle thereby in some corner of your own heart. Never fear for
Huntley--if he’s such as you say, the inheritance of the widow would be
sacred to your brother. Now, laddie, fare you well. I’m going back to
_my_ duty that I have forsaken. Henceforth you’re too tender a companion
for the like of me. I’ve lost--time, and such matters that you have and
to spare; you and I are on different levels, Cosmo; and now, my boy,
fare ye well.”
“Farewell? you don’t blame _me_, Cameron?” cried Cosmo, scarcely knowing
what he said.
“_Blame_ you--for what?” said the other, harshly, and with a momentary
haughtiness; then he rose and laid his hand with an extreme and touching
kindness, which was almost tender, upon Cosmo’s shoulder. “You’ve been
like my youth to me, laddie,” said the Highlandman; “like a morning’s
dew in the midst of drouth; when I say fare ye well I mean not to say
that we’re parted; but I must not mint any more at the pathways of your
life--mine is among the rocks, and in the teeth of the wind. I have no
footing by nature among your primroses. That is why I say--not to-morrow
in the daylight, and the eyes of strangers, but now when you and me and
this night are by ourselves--fare ye well, laddie! We’re ever friends,
but we’re no more comrades--that is what I mean.”
“And that is hard, Cameron, to me,” said Cosmo, whose eyes were full.
Cameron made no answer at all to the boy; he went to the door of the dim
room with him, wrung his hand, and said, “Good night!” Then, while the
lad went sadly up the noisy stair-case, the man turned back to his
twilight apartment, bare and solitary, where there was nothing familiar
and belonging to himself, save his pocket-book and passport upon the
table, and Baptiste’s bill. He smiled as he took that up, and began to
count out the money for its payment; vulgar, needful business, the very
elements of daily necessity--these are the best immediate styptics for
thrusts in the heart.
Cosmo, to whom nothing had happened, went to his apartment perhaps more
restlessly miserable than Cameron, thinking over all his friend’s words,
and aggravating in imagination the sadness of their meaning. The lad did
not care to read, much less to obey the call of Madame Roche’s pretty
note, which bade him come and tell her further what his morning’s
communication meant. For this night, at least, he was sick of Madame
Roche, and every thing connected with her name.