When Cosmo rushed forth from Melmar with his heart a-flame, and made his
way out through the trees to the unsheltered and dusty highway, the
sound of the Sabbath bells was just beginning to fall through the soft
summer air, so bright with the sunshine of the morning. Somehow, the
sound seemed to recall him, in a moment, to the sober home life out of
which he had rushed into this feverish episode and crisis of his own
existence. His heart was angry, and sore, and wounded. To think of the
usual familiar routine of life disgusted him--his impulse was to fly out
of everybody’s reach, and separate himself from a world where everybody
was ready to sacrifice the happiness of others to the merest freak or
crochet of his own. But the far off tinkle of the Kirkbride bell, though
it was no wonder of harmony, dropped into Cosmo’s ear and heart like the
voice of an angel. Just then, his mother, proudly leaning upon Huntley’s
arm, was going up the bank of Tyne to thank God for her son’s return.
Just then, Desirée, who had left Melmar before him, was walking softly,
in her white summer robes, to the Sabbath service, little doubting to
see Cosmo there; and out of all the country round, the rural families,
in little groups, were coming up every path, all tending toward the same
place. Cosmo sprang impatiently over a stile, and made his way through a
corn field, where the rustling green corn on either side of the path,
just bursting from the blade, was almost as tall as himself. He did not
care to meet the church goers, who would not have been slow to remark
upon his heated and uneasy looks, or even upon the novel circumstance of
his being here instead of at “the kirk.” This same fact of itself
communicated an additional discomfort to Cosmo. He felt in his
conscience, which was young and tender, the unsabbatical and agitating
manner in which he had spent the Sabbath morning, and the bell seemed
ringing reproaches into his ear as he hastened through the rustling
corn. Perhaps not half a dozen times before in his life, save during the
time of his travels, had Cosmo voluntarily occupied the Sabbath morning
with uses of his own. He had dreamed through its sacred hours many a
time, for he was “in love”, and a poet; but his dreams had gone on to
the cadence of the new minister’s sermon, and taken a sweeter echo out
of the rural psalms and thanksgivings; and he felt as a Scottish youth
of religious training was like to feel under such circumstances--his
want of success and present unhappiness increased by the consciousness
that he was using the weekly rest for his own purposes, thinking his own
thoughts, doing his own business, and filling, with all the human
agitation of fears and hopes, selfish and individual, the holy quiet of
the Sabbath day.
And when Cosmo reached Norlaw, which was solitary and quiet like a house
deserted, and when the little girl who helped Marget in the dairy rose
from her seat at the clean table in the kitchen, where, with her Bible
open before her, she was seeking out “proofs” for her “questions,” to
let him in, not without a wondering air of disapproval, the feeling grew
even stronger. He threw himself into his mother’s easy-chair, in the
dining-parlor, feeling the silence grow upon him like a fascination.
Even the Mistress’s work-basket was put out of the way, and there was no
open book here to be ruffled by the soft air from the open window. Upon
the table was the big Bible, the great jug full of red roses, and that
volume of _Hervey’s Meditations_, which the Mistress had certainly not
been reading--and the deep, unbroken Sabbath stillness brooded over him
as if it were something positive and actual, and not a mere absence of
sound. And as he thought of it, the French household at Melmar, with its
fancies, its agitations, its romantic plans and troubles of feeling,
looked more and more to Cosmo discordant and inharmonious with the time;
and he himself jarred like a chord out of tune upon this calm of the
house and the Sabbath; jarred strangely, possessed as he was by an
irritated and injured self-consciousness--that bitter sensation of wrong
and disappointment, which somehow seemed to separate Cosmo from every
thing innocent and peaceful in the world.
For why was it always so--always a perennial conspiracy, some hard,
arbitrary will laying its bar upon the course of nature? Cosmo’s heart
was sore within him with something more than a vexed contemplation of
the anomaly, with an immediate, pursuing, hard mortification of his own.
He was bitterly impatient of Madame Roche in this new and strange phase
of her character, and strangely perplexed how to meet it. For Cosmo had
a poetic jealousy of the honor and spirit of his best beloved. He felt
that he could not bear it, if Desirée for his sake defied her mother--he
could not tolerate the idea that she was like to do so, yet longed, and
feared, and doubted, full of the most contradictory and unreasonable
feelings, and sure only of being grieved and displeased whatever might
happen. So he felt as he sat by himself, with his eyes vacantly fixed
upon the red roses and the big Bible, wondering, impatient, anxious
beyond measure, to know what Desirée would do.
But that whole silent day passed over him unenlightened; he got through
the inevitable meals he could scarcely tell how--replied or did not
reply to his mother’s remarks, which he scarcely noticed were spoken
_at_, and not to him, wandered out in the afternoon to Tyneside and the
Kelpie, without finding any one there--and finally, with a pang of
almost unbearable rebellion, submitted to the night and sleep which he
could not avoid. To-morrow he had to return to Edinburgh, to go away,
leaving his brother in possession of the field--his brother, to whom
Madame Roche meant to _give_ Desirée, in compensation for his lost
fortune. Cosmo had forgotten all about Katie Logan by this time; it was
not difficult, for he knew scarcely any thing; and with a young lover’s
natural pride and vanity, could not doubt that any man in the world
would be but too eager to contend with him for such a prize as Desirée
Roche.
And to-morrow he had to go away!--to return to Mr. Todhunter’s office,
to read all the trashy stories, all the lamentable criticisms, all the
correspondence, making small things great, which belonged to the _Auld
Reekie Magazine_. Cosmo had not hitherto during his life been under much
compulsion of the _must_, and accordingly found it all the harder to
consent to it now. And he was growing very weary of his occupation
besides. He had got a stage beyond his youthful facility of rhyme, and
was, to say the truth, a little ashamed now of his verses, and of those
flowery prose papers, which the Mistress still read with delight. He
began to suspect that literature, after all, was not his vocation, and
at this moment would rather have carried a laborer’s hod; or followed
the plow, than gone to that merchandise of words which awaited him in
Edinburgh. So he rose, sullen and discontented, ready to quarrel with
any or every one who thwarted him, and feeling toward Huntley rather
more like an enemy than like a brother.
And Cosmo had but just risen from the early breakfast table when a note
was put into his hand. Marget brought it to him, with rather an
ostentation of showing what she brought, and Cosmo had to read it under
the eyes of his mother and Huntley, neither of whom could help casting
many glances at the young man’s disturbed face. It was the first letter
he had ever received from Desirée--no wonder that he hurried out when he
had glanced at it, and did not hear that the Mistress called him back;
for it was a very tantalizing, unsatisfactory communication. This is
what Desirée said:--
“I knew it would be so. Why are you so restless, so impatient--why
do you not be calm and wait like me? Mamma has set her heart upon
what she says. She will not yield if you pray to her forever. She
loves me, she loves you; it would make her happy; but, alas, poor
mamma! She has set her thoughts upon the other, and will not
change. Why do you vex her, you, me, every one? Be silent, and all
will be well.
“For I am not in haste, Monsieur Cosmo, if you are. I am able to
wait--me! I know you went away in great anger, and did not come to
church, and were cross all day, and your mother will think I am to
blame. But if you _will_ be impatient, am I to blame? I tell you to
wait, as I shall, to be good and silent, and see what will happen;
but you do not regard me.
“Farewell, then, for a week. I write to you because I can not help
it this time, but I will not write again. Be content, then,
restless boy; _au revoir_!
“DESIRÉE.”
Cosmo turned it round and round, and over and over, but nothing more was
to be made of it. Desirée had not contemplated the serious discontent of
her lover. She thought he would understand and be satisfied with her
playful letter, and required nothing more serious. Perhaps, had she
thought he required something more serious, the capricious little
Frenchwoman would have closed her heart and refused it. But, however
that may be, it is certain that Cosmo was by no means so much pleased as
he expected to be when he saw the note first, and prepared himself to
leave home with feelings scarcely at all ameliorated, shaking hands
abruptly with Huntley, and having a very cold parting with his mother.
He carried a discontented heart away with him, and left discontent and
vexation behind, and so trudged into Kirkbride, and drove away to
Edinburgh on the top of the coach, troubled with the people behind and
the things before him, and in the most unamiable humor in the world.