The streets of Edinburgh looked strange and unfamiliar to Cosmo
Livingstone when he stood in them once more--a very _boy_ still in heart
and experience, yet feeling himself a traveled and instructed man. He no
longer dreamed of turning his steps towards Mrs. Purdy’s in the High
Street; he took his carpet bag to a hotel instead, half wondering at
himself for his changed ideas. Cameron’s ideas too, probably, were
equally changed. Where was he, or how had he managed to reconcile the
present with the past? But Cosmo had no time to inquire. He could not
pause in Edinburgh for any thing but his needful business, which was to
see Mr. Cassilis, and to place in his hands the interests of Madame
Roche.
The young lawyer received him with a careless kindness not very
flattering to Cosmo’s dignity, but was greatly startled by the news he
brought. Once only he paused in taking down all the facts of the case
which Cosmo could give him, to say:--
“This discovery will be a serious loss to your brother;” but Cosmo made
no reply, and with that the comment ceased. Huntley and his heirship
melted away out of sight in the strangest manner while this conversation
went on. Cosmo had never realized before how entirely it separated him
and his from all real connection with Melmar. The sensation was not
quite satisfactory, for Melmar, one way or another, had borne a most
strong and personal connection with all the thoughts and projects of the
family of Norlaw for a year or two past; but that was all over. Cosmo
alone now had any interest in the matter, and that solely as the
representative of Madame Roche.
When he had fully informed the young lawyer of all the needful points in
the matter, and formally left the cause in his hands, Cosmo left him to
secure a place in the first coach, and to hasten home with all the speed
he could make. He could scarcely have felt more strange, or perceived a
greater change upon every thing, if he had dropped from the skies into
Kirkbride; yet every thing was precisely the same, so clearly and
broadly recognizable, that Cosmo could not understand what difference
had passed upon them, and still less could understand that the
difference was in himself. His mother stood waiting for him at the door
of the Norlaw Arms. It was cold March weather, and the Mistress had been
sitting by the fire, waiting the arrival of the coach. She was flushed a
little with the frosty air and the fire, and looked disturbed and
uneasy. Cosmo thought he could fancy she turned a jealous eye upon
himself as he sprang from the coach to meet her, which fancy was
perfectly true, for the Mistress was half afraid that her son who had
been abroad might be “led away” by his experiences of travel, and might
have become indifferent or contemptuous about his home. She was a little
displeased, too, that he had lingered behind Cameron. She was not like
Madame Roche--all-enduring sweetness was not in this old-fashioned
Scottish mother. She could not help making a strong personal claim of
that arbitrary love which stinted nothing in bestowing upon those who
were her own, and opened her heart only slowly and secondarily to the
rest of the world.
“So you’re hame at last!” was the Mistress’s salutation; though her eye
was jealous, there was moisture in it, as she looked at her boy. Cosmo
had grown in stature for one thing; he was brown with exposure, and
looked manly and strong; and, not least, his smooth cheeks began to show
evidence of those symptoms of manhood which boys adore. There was even a
something not to be described or defined upon Cosmo’s upper lip, which
caught his mother’s eye in a moment, and gave a tangible ground for her
little outburst of half-angry fondness.
“You’re no’ to bring any of your outlandish fashions here!” said the
Mistress, “though you have been in foreign parts. I’ll have no person in
my house bearded like a Frenchman. Can you no’ carry your bag in your
ain hand, laddie? Come away, then; you can shake hands with other folk
another time.”
As the Mistress spoke, a figure strange to Kirkbride stalked through the
circle of lookers-on. Nothing like that bearded face and wide cloak had
been known to Cosmo’s memory in the village or the district. He turned
unconsciously to look after the stranger. Further down on the road
before were two girls whom Cosmo recognized with a start; one was
Joanna Huntley, the other there was no possibility of mistaking. Cosmo
gazed after her wistfully--a blush of recollection, of embarrassment,
almost of guilt, suddenly rising to his face. Bowed Jaacob stood at his
smithy door, with the fiery glow of the big fire behind him, a swart
little demon gazing after her too. Desirée! Was she the desired of this
unknown figure in the cloak, who went languidly along to join her? Cosmo
stood silent for a moment, altogether absorbed by the junction of old
and new thus strangely presented to him. Familiar Kirkbride, with Jaacob
at the smithy door, and that graceful little figure of romance, whose
story no one but Cosmo knew, followed by the other stranger figure which
he was entirely unacquainted with. He started when his mother repeated
her imperative summons--the color on his cheeks looked guilty and
troubled; he had his secret on his heart, and knew beforehand that it
would not be agreeable to the Mistress. So he did the very worst thing
he could have done--postponed the telling of it to a more convenient
season, and so went uncomfortably, and with a visible restraint, which
vexed his mother’s soul within her, home to Norlaw.
Patie, as it happened, had come home a few days before on a brief visit;
and when they met round the fire that first evening, every one’s thought
instinctively was of Huntley. When Marget came in, disturbing the
gloamin quietness with lights, her long-drawn sigh and involuntary
exclamation:--
“Eh, sirs! if Master Huntley were but here!” startled the little family
group into open discussion of the subject which was in all their hearts.
“Huntley’s been further than you, Cosmo,” said the Mistress, “and maybe
seen mair; but I wouldna wonder if Huntley thinks yet, as he thought
when he left Norlaw, that there’s no place equal to hame.”
“Huntley’s in the bush; there’s not very much to make him change his
opinion there, mother,” said Patrick.
“Ay, but Huntley’s heart is ever at hame,” said the Mistress, finding
the one who was absent always the dearest.
“Mother,” said Cosmo, his courage failing him a little, “I have
something to tell you--and it concerns Huntley, too, mother. Mother, I
have found the lady, the heir--she whom we have all heard so much about;
Patie, _you_ know?”
“What lady? what heir? and how does Patie know?” asked the Mistress;
then she paused, and her countenance changed. A guess at the truth
occurred to her, and its first effect was an angry flush, which
gradually stole over her face. “Patie is no a romancer, to have to do
with heirs and ladies,” she added, quickly; “nor to have strange folk in
his thoughts the first hour he’s at home. I canna tell wherefore any one
of you should have such wandering fancies; it’s no’ like a bairn of
mine.”
“Mother, I’ve learnt something by it,” said Cosmo; “before I went away,
I thought it worth hunting over all the world to find her--for no reason
that I can tell, except that she was wronged, and that we might be the
better if she never came back; but now I have found her--I know where
Mary of Melmar is, and she knows she’s the heir; but ever since my
thought has been of Huntley. Huntley could have had no pleasure in
Melmar, mother, if it were not justly his own.”
The Mistress raised her head high as Cosmo spoke. Anger, great
disappointment, of which she was half ashamed, and a pride which was
resolute to show no sign of disappointment, contended in her face with
that bitter dislike and repugnance to the lost Mary which she had never
been able--perhaps had seldom tried to conquer. “I have heard plenty of
Mary of Melmar,” said the Mistress, hastily; “ae time and another she’s
been the plague of my life. What, laddie! do you mean to say you left
me, and your hame, and your ain business, to seek this woman? What was
she to you? And you come back and tell me you’ve found her, as if I was
to rejoice at the news. You ken where she is, and she kens she’s the
heir; and I crave ye to tell me what is that to me? Be silent, Patie! Am
I her mother, or her sister, or her near friend, that this lad shall
come to bring the news to me?”
“It’s poor news,” said Patie, who did not hesitate to look gravely
annoyed and disappointed, as he was; “very poor news for all of us,
mother; but at least it’s better that Cosmo found her than a
stranger--if found she was to be.”
The Mistress paused a moment, subdued by this suggestion. “Poor news! I
kenna what you both mean,” she said, with pride; “what concern is it of
ours? Would my Huntley ever put hand or touch upon another person’s
gear? Let her come back the morn, and what the waur are we? Do you think
I envied her Melmar, or her land? Do you think I would have made my son
rich at _her_ cost, that never was a friend to me? You may ken many
things, laddies, but you dinna ken your mother. Me!--I wouldna take
blade o’ grass or drop of water belonging to her, if you asked me; and
I’m thankful to tell ye baith my Huntley is Huntley Livingstone of
Norlaw, and needs to be indebted to no person in this whole
country-side.”
The Mistress rose up in the fervor of her indignant disappointment;
vexation and mortified feeling brought the water to her eyes. She felt
aggrieved and wronged, not only in this setting aside of Huntley, but in
the very fact that Mary of Melmar was about to return. This Mary, for
whose unthankful sake her husband had neglected _her_ honest love and
faithful heart, had at last lured even her son, her youngest and best
beloved, away from her, and was coming back triumphant to the
inheritance which might have been Huntley’s. The Mistress’s heart rose
in a tumult of pride, love, indignation, and bitterness. She said “_my_
son,” and “_my_ Huntley,” with a proud and tender emphasis, an
involuntary, anxious impulse to make amends to him for the hope he had
lost--yet with an equally natural feeling rejected indignantly all
sympathy for him, and would not permit even his brothers to speak of
disappointment or loss to Huntley in this new event. She went away
across the room, breaking up the fireside circle by the hasty movement,
to seek out in her basket the stocking which she was knitting--for the
Mistress’s eyes began to fail her in candlelight with all her more
delicate industries--and coming back to the table, began to knit with
absorbed attention, counting the loops in the heel as if she had no care
for the further particulars which Cosmo, encouraged by Patie, proceeded
to tell. Yet she did hear them notwithstanding. But for the presence of
Patie’s practical good sense, Cosmo and his mother might have had
painful recollections of that night; but his brother’s steady look and
sober attention kept Cosmo from indulging the irritation and wounded
feeling which he might have felt otherwise. He went on with his story,
gradually growing interested in it, and watching--as a dramatist might
watch his first audience--the figure of the Mistress, who sat almost
with her back to him, knitting assiduously, the light of the candle
throwing a great shadow of her cap upon the wall, and her elbow moving
slightly with the movement of her wires. Cosmo watched how the elbow
moved irregularly at certain points of his tale, how it was still for an
instant now and then, as the interest grew, and the boy-poet was pleased
and forgave his mother. At last the stocking fell from the Mistress’s
hand--she pushed back her chair, and turned round upon him with a
half-scream.
“Desirée!” cried the Mistress, as she might have exclaimed at the crisis
of a highly interesting novel, “it’s her that’s at
Melmar--whisht!--dinna speak to me--I’m just as sure as that we’re a’
here--it’s her ain very bairn!”
After this, Cosmo’s tale ended with a great success; he had excited his
mother--and the truth began to glide into her unwilling heart, that Mary
of Melmar was, like herself, the mother of fatherless children, a widow,
and poor. She heard all the rest without a word of displeasure; she
became grave, and said nothing, when her sons discussed the matter; she
nodded her head approvingly when Patie repeated rather more strongly
than before his satisfaction that Cosmo had found the lost Mary, since
she was to be found. The Mistress was thinking of something--but it was
only after she had said good night to them that the youths discovered
what it was.
“Bairns,” said the Mistress then, abruptly pausing upon the stair, with
her candle in her hand, “that bit lassie at Melmar is in the dwelling of
the enemy--and if it were not so, the mother canna make war on the house
where her bairn has shelter. You’re her nearest kinsmen that I ken of,
to be friends as well--she’ll have to come here.”
“Mother!” cried Cosmo, in delight and surprise, and compunction, “can
you ask her here?”
“Ay, laddie--I can do mony things, mair than the like of you ken of,”
said the Mistress; and, saying so, she went slowly up stairs, with the
light in her hand, and her shadow climbing the wall after her, leaving
no unkindness in the echo of her motherly good night.