Threemonths later, in the early sweetness of May, Cosmo Livingstone stood upon an “outside stair,” one of those little flights of stone steps, clearing the half-cellar shops of the lowest story, which are not unfrequent in the High Street of Edinburgh, and which make a handy platform when any thing is to be seen, or place of refuge when any thing is to be escaped from. A little further down, opposite to him, was the Tron Church, with its tall steeple striking up into the sunny mid-day heavens; and above, at a little distance, the fleecy white clouds hung over the open crown of St. Giles’s, with the freshness of recent rain.Many bystanders stood on the other “stair-heads,” and groups of heads looked out from almost every window of the high houses on every side. The High Street of Edinburgh, lined with expectant lookers-on, darkening downwards towards the picturesque slope of the Canongate, with its two varied and noble lines of lofty old houses, black with time, between which the sunshine breaks down in a moted and streamy glory, as into a well, is no contemptible object among street sights; and the population of Edinburgh loves its streets as perhaps only the populations of places rich in natural beauty can love them. A man who has seen a crowd in the High Street might almost be tempted to doubt, indeed, whether the Scottish people were really so reserved and grave and self-restraining as common report pronounces them. The women on the landings of the stairs shrilly claiming here and there a Tam or a Sandy, or else discussing in chorus the event of the moment; the groups of men promenading up and down upon the pavement with firm-set mouth and gleaming eyes—the mutter of forcible popular sentiment saying rather more than it means, and saying that in the plainest and most emphatic words; and the stir of general excitement in a scene which has already various recollections of tumults which are historical, make altogether a picturesque and striking combination, which is neither like a Parisian mob nor a London one, yet is quite as characteristic as either. It was not, however, a mob on this day, when Cosmo Livingstone stood on the stair-head in front of a little bookseller’s shop, the owner of which, in high excitement, came every minute or two to the door, uttering vehement little sentences to the little crowd on his steps:—
“We’ll have it oot o’ them if we have to gang to St. Stephen’s very doors for’t!” cried the shopkeeper. “King William had better mind his crown than mind his wife. We’re no’ to lose the Bill for a German whimsey. Hey, laddies! dinna make so muckle clatter—they’re coming! do ye hear them?”
They were coming, as the increased hum and cluster of the bystanders told clearly enough—an extraordinary procession of its kind. Without a note of music, without a tint of color, with a tramp which was not the steady tramp of trained footsteps, but only the sound of a slowly advancingcrowd, to which immense excitement gave a kind of solemnity—a long line of men in their common dress, unornamented, unattended, keeping a mysterious silence, and carrying a few flags, black, and with ominous devices, which only the strain of a great climax of national feeling could have suffered to pass without that ridicule which is more fatal than state prosecutions. Nobody laughed, so far as we are aware, at the skulls and cross-bones of this voiceless procession; and the tramp of that multitude of men, timed and cheered by no music, broken by no shouts, lightened by no gleam of weapons, or glitter of emblems, or variety of color, and only accompanied by the agitated hum of the bystanders, had a very remarkable and somewhat “gruesome” impressiveness. The people who were looking on grew silent gradually, and held their breath as the long train went slowly past. It might not be a formidable band.Punch—ifPunchhad been in those days—might very likely have found a comfortable amount of laughter in the grim looks of the processionists, who were not likely to do much in justification of their deadly-looking flags. But the occasion was a remarkable occasion in the national history; the excitement was such—so general and overpowering—as no subsequent agitation has been able to equal. The real force of popular emotion in it covered even its own mock-heroics, which is no small thing to say; and there was something solemn in the unanimity of so many sober persons, who were not under the immediate sway and leadership of any demagogue, nor could be supposed to look for personal advantages, and whose extreme fervor and excitement at the same time were not revolutionary, but simply political. The “Bill,” on which the popular hope had fixed itself, had just met with one of its failures, and this was the exaggerated, yet expressive way in which the Edinburgh crowd demonstrated the popular sentiment of the day.
These things can not be judged in cold blood; at that time everybody was excited. Cosmo Livingstone, white with boyish fervor, watched and counted them as they passed, with irresistible exclamations—“twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred!” the boy cried aloud with triumph, as score after score went past; and the women on the lower steps of the stair began to share his calculations and exult in them. The very children beneath, who were looking on with restlessand excited curiosity, knew something about the “Bill,” which day by day, as the coach from the south, with the London mails, came in, they had been sent to learn tidings of; and the bookseller in the little shop could not restrain himself.
“There will be news of this!” he cried, as the last detachment passed; “when the men of Edinburgh take up a matter, nothing can stand before them. There ne’er was a march like it that I ever heard o’ in a’ my reading. Kings, Lords, and Commons—I defy them to stand against it—how many?—hurra for Auld Reekie! Our lads, when they do a thing, never make a fool o’t. Hark to the tramp of them! man, it’s grand!”
“I’ve seen the sodgers out for far less in my day,” said an old woman.
“A snuff for the sodgers!” cried the excited shopkeeper, snapping his fingers; “‘a wheen mercenaries, selling their bluid for a trade. They daur nae mair face a band like that than I dare face Munch Meg.”
“Oh, Cosmo—Cosmo Livingstone!” cried a voice from below; “it’s me—look this way!—do you no’ mind me?—I’m Joanna; come down this moment and tell us how we’re to get home.”
Cosmo looked down through the railings, close to the bottom of which the owner of the voice had been pressed by the crowd. She had a little silk umbrella in her hand, with the end of which, thrust between the rails, she was impatiently, and by no means lightly, beating upon his foot.
An elderly person, looking very much frightened, clung close to her arm, and a girl somewhat younger stood a little apart, looking with bright, vivacious eyes and parted lips after the disappearing procession.
The swarm of lads, of idle women and children, who followed in the wake of the Reformers, as of every other march, had overwhelmed for a moment this little group, which was not like them; and the tumult of voices, which rose when the sight was over, made it difficult to hear even Joanna, clear, loud, and unhesitating as her claim was.
“Miss Huntley!” cried Cosmo, with a momentary start—but it was not so much to witness his recognition as to save his foot from further chastisement.
“It’s no’ Miss Huntley—it’s me!” cried Joanna; “we’velost our road—come and tell us how we’re to go. Oh, madame, don’t hold so fast to my arm!”
Cosmo made haste to swing himself down over the railings, when Joanna’s elderly companion immediately addressed herself to him in a long and most animated speech, which, unfortunately, however, was in French, and entirely unintelligible to the poor boy. He blushed violently, and stood listening with a natural deference, but without the slightest hope of comprehending her—making now and then a faint attempt to interrupt the stream. Joanna in the meantime, who was not a great deal more enlightened than he was, vainly endeavored to stay the course of madame’s eloquence by pulling her shawl and elbow.
“He does not understand you! he canna understand you!” cried Joanna, in words which, the Frenchwoman comprehended as little as Cosmo didheraddress.
During this little episode, the other girl stood by with an evident impulse to laughter, and a sparkle of amusement in her black eyes. At last she started forward with a rapid motion, said something to madame which succeeded better than the remonstrances of Joanna, and addressed Cosmo in her turn.
“Madame says,” said the lively little stranger, “that she can not understand your countrymen—they are so grave, so impassionate, so sorrowful, she knows not if they march inle corétge funêbreor go to make the barricades. Madame says there is no music, no shouts, no voice. She demands what thejeune Monsieurthinks of a so grave procession.”
“The men are displeased,” said Cosmo, hastily; “they think that the government trifles with them, and they warn it how they feel. They don’t mean to make a riot, or break the peace—we call it a demonstration here.”
“A de-mon-stracion!” said the little Frenchwoman; “I shall look for it in my dictionary. They are angry with the king—eh bien!—why do not they fight?”
“Fight! they could fight the whole world if they liked!” cried Joanna; “but they would scorn to fight for every thing like people that have nothing else to do. Desirée and I wanted to see it, Cosmo, and madame did not know in the least where we were bringing her to—and so we got into the crowd, and I don’t know how to get back to Moray Place, unless you’ll show us the way.”
“Madame says,” said the other girl laughing, after receiving another vehement communication from the governess, “thatce jeune Monsieuris to go with us only to Princes Street—then we shall find our own way. He is not to go with you,belleJoanna; and madame demands to know what all the people say.”
“What all the people say!—they’re gossiping, and scolding, and speaking about the procession, and about us, and about their own concerns, and about every thing,” said Joanna; “and how can I tell her? Oh, Cosmo, I’ve looked everywhere for you! but you never walk where we walk; and I saw your mother at the church, and I saw Katie Logan, and I told Katie to write you word to come and see me—but everybody teazes us to death about being proper; however, come along, and I’ll tell you all about everybody—wasn’t it grand to see the procession? Papa’s a terrible Tory, and says it’ll destroy the country—so I hope they’ll get it. Are you for the Reform?”
“Yes,” said Cosmo, but the truth was, the boy felt considerably embarrassed walking onward by the side of Joanna, with the governess and the little Frenchwoman behind, talking in their own language with a rapidity which made Cosmo dizzy, interrupted by occasional bursts of laughter from the girl, which he, being still very young and inexperienced, and highly self-conscious, could not help suspecting to be excited by himself—an idea which made him excessively awkward. However, Joanna trudged along, with her umbrella in one hand, and with the other holding up the skirt of her dress, which, however, was neither very long nor very wide. Joanna’s tall figure might possibly be handsome some day—but it certainly wanted filling up and rounding in the meantime—and was not remarkably elegant at present, either in garb or gait.
But her young companion was of a very different aspect. She was little, graceful, light, with a step which, even in the High Street, reminded Cosmo of Jaacob’s bit of sentiment—“a foot that rang on the path like siller bells"—with sparkling black eyes, a piquant rosy mouth, and so bright and arch a look, that the boy forgave her for laughing at himself, as he supposed she was doing. Desirée!—there was a charm too in the strange foreign name which he could not help saying over to himself—and if Joanna had been lessentirely occupied with talking to him, she could not have failed to notice how little he answered, and how gravely he conducted the party to Princes Street, from whence the governess knew her way. Joanna shook hands with Cosmo heartily at parting, and told him she should write to Katie Logan to say she had seen him—while Desirée made him a pretty parting salutation, half a curtsey, with a mischievous glance out of her bright eyes, and madame made him thanks in excellent French, which the lad did not appreciate.
By that time, as he turned homeward, Cosmo had forgotten all about the procession, we are grieved to say, and was utterly indifferent to the fate of the “Bill.”
He was quite confused in his thoughts, poor boy, as he betook himself to his little room and his high window. This half frolic, half adventure, which gave the two girls a little private incident to talk of, such as girls delight in, buzzed about Cosmo’s brain with embarrassing pleasure. He felt half disposed to begin learning French on the instant—not that he might have a better chance of improving his acquaintance with Desirée—by no means—but only that he might never feel so awkward and so mortified again as he did to-day, when he found himself addressed in a language which he did not know.
Cosmosaw nothing more of Joanna Huntley, nor of her bright-eyed companion for a long time. He fell back into his old loneliness, with his high window, and his landlady, and the Highland student for society. Cameron, whom the boy made theories about, and wistfully contemplated on the uncomprehended heights of his maturer age, knew a good deal by this time of the history of the Livingstones, a great deal more than Cosmo was aware of having told him, and had heard all about the adventure in the High Street, about Desirée’s laugh and the old French grammar which Cosmo had secretly bought at a book-stall.
“If she had only taken to Latin, as the philosophers used to do at the Reformation time,” cried Cosmo, with a littlefun and a great deal of seriousness, “but women never learn Latin now-a-days. Why shouldn’t they?”
“Does it dousso much good?” said Cameron, brushing a little dust carefully from the sleeve of that black coat of his, which it went to his heart to see growing rustier every day, and casting a momentary glance of almost envy at the workmen in their comfortable fustian jackets. Cameron was on his way to knock the “Rudiments” into the heads of three little boys, in whose service the gaunt Highlander tasted the sweets of “private tuition,” so that at the moment he had less appreciation than usual of the learning after which he had toiled all his life.
“If any one loves scholarship, you should!” cried Cosmo, with a little enthusiasm.
“Why?” said the elder man, turning round upon him with a momentary gleam of proud offense in his eye. The Highlander wanted no applause for the martyrdoms of his life. On the contrary, it galled him to think that his privations should be taken into account by any one as proofs of his love of learning. His strong, absolute, self-denying temper wanted that last touch of frankness and candor which raises the character above detraction and above narrowness. He could not acknowledge his poverty, and take his stand upon it boldly. It was a necessity of his nature to conceal what he could manfully endure. But the glance which rested on Cosmo softened.
“Letters may be humane and humanizing, Cosmo,” said the Highland student, with a little humor; “but I doubt if men feel this particular influence of them in teaching little callants. I don’t think, in a general way, that either my genteel boys in Fette’s Row, or my little territorial villains in St. Mary’s Wynd, improvemyhumanity.”
“Yet the last, at least, is purely a voluntary office and labor of love,” said Cosmo, earnestly.
Cameron smiled.
“I’m but a limited man,” he said; “love takes but narrow bounds with the like of me. Two or three at the most are as many as my heart can hold. Are you horrified to hear it, Cosmo? I’ll do my neighbor a good turn if I can, and I’ll not think ill of him if I can help it; but love, laddie, love!—that’s for one friend—for a mother or—a wife—not for every common man or every bairn I see in the streetand have compassion on. No! Love is a different concern.”
“Is it duty, then?” said Cosmo, with a small shrug of his boyish shoulders.
“Hush! If I can not love every man I see, I can love Him who loves all!” said the Highlander, raising his high head with an unconscious loftiness and elevation of gesture. Cosmo made no answer and no comment—he was awed for the moment with the personal reality of that heavenly affection which made this limited earthly man, strong in his own characteristic individualities, and finding it impossible to abound in universal tenderness, still to do with fervor those works of the Evangelist which were for love of One who loved the all, whom he himself had not a heart expansive enough to love.
When Cameron arrived at the house of his pupils, Cosmo wandered back again toward the region of his friend’s unrewarded labors;—ah! those young champions of Maudlin and Trinity!—what a difference between this picture and that. Let us confess that the chances are that Cameron, at the height of his hardly-earned scholarship, would still be a world behind a double-first; and it is likely, unless sheer strength had done it, that nothing earthly could have made a stroke-oar of the Highlandman. If any one could have watched him through the course of one of his laborious days, getting up to eat his rude and scanty breakfast, going out to his lecture and classes, from thence to one quarter and another to his pupils—little boys in the “Rudiments;” from thence to St. Mary’s Wynd to do the rough pioneer evangelist work of a degraded district—work which perhaps his Divinity professor, perhaps the minister of his church urged upon him as the best preparation for his future office—then home to his garret to a meal which he would not have liked any one to see or share, to labor over his notes, to read, to get up his college work for the next day, to push forward, steadily, stoutly, silently, through almost every kind of self-denial possible to man.
Then, when the toilsome session was over, perhaps the weary man went home—not to Switzerland or Wales with a reading party—not to shoot, nor to fish, nor to travel, nor to give himself up to the pure delights of uninterrupted study—perhaps, instead, to return to weary days of manuallabor, to the toils of the field, or the trials of the schoolmaster; or perhaps finding the expense of the journey too much for him, or thinking it inexpedient to risk his present pupils, lingered through the summer in Edinburgh, teaching, reading, pinching, refreshing himself by his work in St. Mary’s Wynd. The result of all this was not an elegant divine, nor an accomplished man of the world—very possibly it might be an arbitrary optimist, a one-sided Christian—but it was neither an idle nor a useless man.
Some thoughts of this kind passed through the mind of Cosmo Livingstone as he went through the same St. Mary’s Wynd, pondering the occupations and motives of his friend—the only comparison which he made, thinking of Cameron, was with himself; forgetting the difference of their age entirely, as such a boy was likely to do, Cosmo could not be sufficiently disgusted and discontented with his own dependence and worthlessness. Then he had, at the present moment, no particular vocation for the church. St. Mary’s Wynd, so far from attracting him, even failed at this moment to convey to the visionary lad the sentiment which it wrote with words of fire upon the less sensitive mind of Cameron. Love for the inhabitants of those wretched closes—for the miserable squalid forms coming and going through those high, dark, narrow, winding stairs, down which sometimes a stray sunbeam, piercing through a dusty window, threw a violent glory into the darkness, like a Rembrandt or an indignant angel, seemed something impossible. He believed in the universal love of the Lord, but it only filled him with awe and wonder—he did not understand it as Cameron did—and Cosmo could not see how reaching ultimately into the position of teaching, preaching, laboring, wearing out, for the benefit of such a population, was worth the terrible struggle of preparation which at present taxed all the energies of his friend. He repeated to himself dutifully what he had heard—that to save a soul was better than to win a kingdom—but such words were still only of the letter, and not of the spirit, for Cosmo. And he was glad at last to escape from the subject, and hasten to the fresh and breezy solitude of the hill, which was not a mile from this den of misery, yet seemed as far away as another world.
It was spring, and the air was full of that invigorating hopefulness, which was none the worse to Cosmo for comingon a somewhat chilly breeze. The glory of the broad, blue Firth, with its islands and its bays, and the world of bright, keen, sunny air in which its few sails shone with a dazzling indescribable whiteness, like nothing but themselves—the round white clouds ranging themselves in lines and fantastic groups over the whole low varied line of the opposite coast—and the intoxication of that free, unbroken breeze, coming fresh over miles of country and leagues of sea, lifted Cosmo out of his former thoughts, only to rouse in him a vague heroical excitement—a longing after something, he knew not what, which any tangible shaping would but have vulgarized. The boy spread out his arms with an involuntary enthusiasm, drinking in that wine of youth. What would he do?—he stood upon the height of the hill like a young Mercury, ready to fly over all the world on the errands of the gods—but even the voice of Jupiter, speaking out of the clouds, would only have been prose and bathos to the unconscious, unexplainable poetic elevation of the lad, who neither knew himself nor the world.
A word of any kind, even the sublimest, would have brought him to his feet and to a vague sense of shame and self-ridicule in a moment—which consummation happened to him before he was aware.
The word was a name—a name which he had only heard once before—and the voice that spoke it was at some distance, for the sound came ringing to him, faint yet clear, brightened into a cry of pleasure by the breath of the hills on which it came. “Desirée!” The boy started, blushed at himself in the awaking of his dream, and pausing only a moment, rushed down the slope of Arthur’s Seat toward Duddingstone, where, on the first practicable road which he approached, he perceived a solemn procession of young ladies, two-and-two, duly officered and governed, and behaving themselves irreproachably. Cosmo did not make a rush down through their seemly and proper ranks, to find out Desirée or Joanna; instead, the lad watched them for a moment, and then turned round laughing, and went back to his lodging—laughing the shamefaced rosy laugh of his years, when one can feel one has been a little ridiculous without feeling one’s self much the worse for it, and when it strikes rather comically than painfully to find how different one’s high-flown fancies are, to all the sober arrangements of the every-day world.
Theend of the season arrived, Cosmo came home, leaving his fellow-student, who would not even accept an invitation to Norlaw, behind him in Edinburgh. Cameron thought it half a weakness on his part, the sudden affection to which the boy had moved him, but he would not yield so much to it as to lay himself under “an obligation,” nor suffer any one to suppose that any motive whatever, save pure liking, mingled in the unlikely friendship he had permitted himself to form. Inveterate poverty teaches its victims a strange suspiciousness; he was half afraid that some one might think he wanted to share the comforts of Cosmo’s home; so, as he was not going home himself, he remained in Edinburgh, working and sparing as usual, and once more expanding a little with the idea, so often proved vain hitherto, of getting so much additional work as to provide for his next session, leaving it free to its own proper studies; and Cosmo returned to rejoice the hearts of the women in Norlaw.
Who found him grown and altered, and “mair manlike,” and stronger, and every way improved, to their hearts’ content. The Mistress was not given to caresses or demonstrations of affection—but when the lad got home, and saw his mother’s eye brighten, and her brow clear every time she looked at him, he felt, with a compunction for his own discontented thoughts, of how much importance he was to the widow, and tried hard to restrain the instinct of wandering, which many circumstances had combined to strengthen in his mind, although he had never spoken of it. Discontent with his present destination for one thing; the example of Huntley and Patrick; the perpetual spur to his energy which had been before him during all his stay in Edinburgh, in the person of Cameron; his eager visionary desire to seek Mary of Melmar, whom the boy had a strong fancy thathewas destined to find; and, above and beyond all, a certain vague ambition, which he could not have described to any one, but which lured him with a hundred fanciful charms—moved him to the new world and the unknownplaces, which charmed chiefly because they were new and unknown. Cosmo had written verses secretly for a year or two, and lately had sent some to an Edinburgh paper, which, miracle of fortune! published them. He was not quite assured that he was a poet, but he thought he could be something if he might but reach that big, glorious world which all young fancies long for, and the locality of which dazzling impossible vision, is so oddly and so often placed in London. Cosmo was not sure that it was in London—but he rather thought it was not in Edinburgh, and he was very confident it could not be in Norlaw.
About the same time, Joanna Huntley came home for the long summer holidays. Joanna had persuaded her father into giving her a pony, on which she trotted about everywhere unattended, to the terror of her mother and the disgust of Patricia, who was too timid for any such impropriety. Pony and girl together, on their rambles, were perpetually falling in with Cosmo Livingstone, whom Joanna rather meant to make a friend of, and to whom she could speak on one subject which occupied, at the present time, two thirds of her disorderly thoughts, and deafened, with perpetual repetition, the indifferent household of Melmar.
This was Desirée. The first of first loves for a girl is generally another girl, or young woman, a little older than herself; and nothing can surpass the devotion of the worshiper.
Desirée was only a year older than Joanna, but she was almost every thing which Joanna was not; and she was French, and had been in Paris and London, and was of a womanly and orderly temper, which increased the difference in years. She was, for the time being, Joanna’s supreme mistress, queen, and lady-love.
“I’m very glad you saw her, Cosmo,” cried the girl, in one of their encounters, “because now you’ll know that what I say is true. They laugh at me at Melmar; and Patricia (she’s a cat!) goes on about her Clapham school, and says Desirée is only a little French governess—as if I did not know better than that!”
“Is she a governess?” asked Cosmo.
“She’s a lady!” said Joanna, reddening suddenly; “but she does not pay as much as we do; and she talks Frenchwith the girls, and sometimes she helps the little ones on with their music, and—but as for a governess like madame, or like Miss Trimmer, or even Mrs. Payne herself—she is no more like one of them than you are. Cosmo. I think Desirée would like you!”
“Do you think so?” said Cosmo, with a boyish blush and laugh.
Joanna, however, was far too much occupied to notice his shamefacedness.
“I’ll tell you just what I would like,” she said, as they went on together, the pony rambling along at its own will, with the reins lying on its neck, while Cosmo, half-attracted, half-reluctant, walked by its side. “I don’t think I should tell you either,” said Joanna, “for I don’t suppose you care about us. Cosmo Livingstone, I am sure, if I were you, I would hate papa; but you’ll no’ tell—I would like Desirée to come here and marry my brother Oswald, and be lady of Melmar. I would not care a bit what became ofme. Though she’s French, there’s nobody like her; and that’s just what I would choose, if I could choose for myself. Would it not be grand? But you don’t know Oswald—he’s been away nearly as long as I can mind; but he writes me letters sometimes, and I like him better than anybody else in the world.”
“Where is he?” said Cosmo.
“He’s in Italy. Whiles he writes about the places, whiles about Melmar; but he never seems to care for coming home,” said Joanna. “However, I mean to write him to tell him hemustcome this summer. Your Huntley is away too. Isn’t it strange to live at home always the same, and have so near a friend as a brother far, far away, and never, be able to know what he is doing? Oswald might be ill just now for any thing we know; but I mean to write and tell him he must come to see Desirée, for that is what I have set my heart upon since I knew her first.”
Joanna, for sheer want of breath, came to a pause; and Cosmo made no reply. He walked on, rather puzzled by the confidence she gave him, rather troubled by this other side of the picture—the young man in Italy, who very likely thought himself the unquestionable heir, perfectly entitled to marry and bring home a lady of Melmar. The whole matter embarrassed Cosmo. Even his acquaintance withJoanna, which was not of his seeking, seemed quite out of place and inappropriate. But the girl was as totally unconscious as the pony of the things called improprieties, and had taken a friendship for Cosmo as she had taken a love for Desirée—partly because the house of Norlaw bore a certain romance to her fancy—partly because “papa would be mad"—and partly because, in all honesty, she liked the boy, who was not much older, and was certainly more refined and gentle than herself. Joanna was not remarkably amiable in her present development, but she could appreciate excellence in others.
“And she’s beautiful, too—don’t you think so?” said Joanna; “not pretty, like Patricia, nor bonnie, like Katie Logan—but beautiful. I wish I could bring her to Melmar—I wish Oswald could see her—and I’ll do any thing in the world rather than let Desirée go to anybody’s house like any other governess. Isn’t it a shame? A delicate little lady like her has to go and teach little brats of children, and me that am strong and big, and could do lots of things—I never have any thing to do! I don’t understand it—they say it’s providence. I would not make things be like that if it was me. What do you think? You never say a word. I suppose you just listen, and laugh at me because I speak every thing out. What for do you not speak like a man?”
“A man sometimes has nothing to say, Miss Huntley,” said Cosmo, with a rather whimsical shyness, which he was half-inclined himself to laugh at.
“Miss Huntley!—I’m Joanna!” cried the girl, with contempt. “I would like to be friends with you, Cosmo, because papa behaved like a wretch to your father; and many a time I think I would like to come and help Mrs. Livingstone, or do any thing for any of you. I canna keep in Melmar in a corner, and never say a word to vex folk, like Patricia, and I canna be good, like Katie Logan. Do you want to go away and no’ to speak to me? You can if you like—I don’t care! I know I’m no’ like a lady in a ballad; but neither are you like one of the old knights of Norlaw!”
“Not if you think me rude, or dull, or ungrateful for your frankness!” cried Cosmo, touched by Joanna’s appeal, and eager to make amends; but the girl pulled up the pony’s reins, and darted away from him in mighty dudgeon,with the slightest touch of womanish mortification and shame heightening her childish wrath. Perhaps this was the first time it had really occurred to Joanna that, after all, there was a certain soul of truth in the proprieties which she hated, and that it might not be perfectly seemly to bestow her confidence, unasked, upon Cosmo—a confidence which was received so coldly.
She comforted herself by starting off at a pace as near a gallop as she and her steed were equal to, leaving Cosmo rather disconcerted in his turn, and not feeling particularly pleased with himself, but with many thoughts in his mind, which were not there when he left Norlaw.
Dayby day, the summer went over Cosmo’s head, leaving his thoughts in the same glow and tumult of uncertainty, for which, now and then, the lad blamed himself bitterly, but which, on the whole, he found very bearable. Every thing went on briskly at Norlaw. The Mistress, thoroughly occupied, and feeling herself, at last, after so many unprosperous years, really making some forward progress, daily recovered heart and spirit, and her constant supervision kept every thing alive and moving in the house. Here Cosmo filled the place of natural privilege accorded to him alike as the youngest child and the scholar-son. Though the Mistress’s heart yearned over the boys who were away, she expected to be most tenderly proud of Cosmo, whose kirk and manse she could already see in prospect.
It is not a very great thing to be a minister of the Church of Scotland, but, in former days, at least, when the Church was less divided than it is now, the people of Scotland regarded with a particular tenderness of imagination the parish pastor. He was less elevated above his flock than the English rector, and sprang very seldom from the higher classes; but even among wealthy yeomen families in the country, the manse was still a kind ofbeau idealof modest dignity andcomfort, the pride and favorite fancy of the people. It was essentially so to the Mistress, whose very highest desire it had been to move her boy in this direction, and whose project of romance now, in which her imagination amused itself, was, above all other things, the future home and establishment of Cosmo. She had no idea to what extent her favorite idea was threatened in secret.
For the moment, however, Melmar and their connection with that house seemed to have died out of everybody’s mind save Cosmo’s. It never could quite pass from his so long as he took his place at sunset in that vacant window of the old castle, where the ivy tendrils waved about him, and where the romance of Norlaw’s life seemed to have taken up its dwelling. The boy could not help wandering over the new ground which Joanna had opened to him—could not help associating that Mary of Melmar, long lost in some unknown country, with Oswald Huntley, a stranger from home for years; and the boy started with a jealous pang of pain to think how likely it was that these two might meet, and that another than his father’s son should restore the inheritance to its true heir. This idea was galling in the extreme to Cosmo. He had never sympathized much in the thought that Melmar was Huntley’s, nor been interested in any proceedings by which his brother’s rights were to be established; but he had always reserved for himself or for Huntley the prerogative of finding and reinstating the true lady of the land, and Cosmo was human enough to regard “the present Melmar” with any thing but amiable feelings. He could not bear the idea of being left out entirely in the management of the concern, or of one of the Huntleys exercising this champion’s office, and covering the old usurpation with a vail of new generosity. It was a most uncomfortable view of the subject to Cosmo, and when his cogitations came to that point, the lad generally swung himself down from his window-seat and went off somewhere in high excitement, scarcely able to repress the instant impulse to sling a bundle over his shoulder and set off upon his journey. But he never could rouse his courage to the point of reopening this subject with his mother, little witting, foolish boy, that this admirable idea of his about Oswald Huntley was the very inducement necessary to make the Mistress as anxious about the recovery of Mary of Melmar as he himselfwas—and the only thing in the world which could have done so.
It happened on one of these summer evenings, about this time, when his own mind was exceedingly restless and unsettled, that Cosmo, passing through Kirkbride as the evening fell, encountered bowed Jaacob just out of the village, on the Melrose road. The village street was full of little groups in earnest and eager discussion. It was still daylight, but the sun was down, and lights began to sparkle in some of the projecting gable windows of the Norlaw Arms, beneath which, in the corner where the glow of the smithy generally warmed the air, a little knot of men stood together, fringed round with smaller clusters of women. A little bit of a moon, scarcely so big as the evening star which led her, was already high in the scarcely shadowed skies. Every thing was still—save the roll of the widow’s mangle and the restless feet of the children, so many of them as at this hour were out of bed—and most of the cottage doors stood open, revealing each its red gleam of fire, and many their jugs of milk, and bowls set ready on the table for the porridge or potatoes which made the evening meal. On the opposite brae of Tyne was visible the minister, walking home with an indescribable consciousness and disapproval, not in his face, for it was impossible to see that in the darkness, but in his figure and bearing, as he turned his back upon his excited parishioners, which was irresistibly ludicrous when one knew what it meant. Beyond the village, at the opposite extremity, was Jaacob, in his evening trim, with a black coat and hat, which considerably changed the little dwarf’s appearance, without greatly improving it. He had his face to the south, and was pushing on steadily, clenching and opening, as he walked, the great brown fist which came so oddly out of the narrow cuff of his black coat. Cosmo, who was quite ready to give up his own vague fancies for the general excitement, came up to Jaacob quite eagerly, and fell into his pace without being aware of it.
“Are you going to Melrose for news? I’ll go with you,” said Cosmo.
The road was by no means lonely; there were already both men and boys before them on the way.
“We should hear to-night, as you ken without me tellingyou,” said Jaacob. “I’m gaun to meet the coach; you may come if you like—but what matter is’t to the like o’ you?”
“To me! as much as to any man in Scotland,” cried Cosmo, growing red; he thought the dignity of his years was impugned.
“Pish! you’re a blackcoat, going to be,” said Jaacob; “there’s your friend the minister there, gaun up the brae. I senthimhame wi’ a flea in his lug. What the deevil business has the like of him to meddle in our concerns? The country’s coming to ruin, forsooth! because the franchise is coming to a man like me! Get away with you, callant! as soon as you come to man’s estate you’ll be like a’ the rest! But ye may just as weel take an honest man’s, advice, Cosmo. If we dinna get it we’ll tak it, and that’ll be seen before the world afore mony days are past.”
“What do you think the news will be?” asked Cosmo.
“Think! I’m past thinking,” cried Jaacob, thrusting some imaginary person away; “haud your tongue—can a man think when he’s wound up the length of taking swurd in hand, if need should be? If we dinna get it, we’ll tak it—do ye hear?—that’s a’ I’m thinking in these days.”
And Jaacob swung along the road, working his long arms rather more than he did his feet, so that their action seemed part of his locomotive power. It was astonishing, too, to see how swiftly, how steadily, and with what a “way” upon him, the little giant strode onward, swinging the immense brown hands, knotted and sinewy, which it was hard to suppose could ever have been thrust through the narrow cuffs of his coat, like balancing weights on either side of him. Before them was the long line of dusty summer road disappearing down a slope, and cut off, not by the sky, but by the Eildons, which began to blacken in the fading light—behind them the lights of the village—above, in a pale, warm sky, the one big dilating star and the morsel of moon; but the thoughts of Jaacob, and even of Cosmo, were on a lesser luminary—the red lantern of the coach, which was not yet to be seen by the keenest eyes advancing through the summer dimness from the south.
“Hang the lairds and the ministers!” cried Jaacob, after a pause, “it’s easy to see what a puir grip they have, and how well they ken it. Free institutions dinna agree withthe like of primogeniture and thae inventions of the deevil. Let’s but hae a reformed Parliament, and we’ll learn them better manners. There’s your grand Me’mar setting up for a leader amang the crew, presenting an address, confound his impudence! as if he wasna next hand to a swindler himself.”
“Jacob, do you know any thing about his son?” asked Cosmo, eagerly.
“He’s a virtuoso—he’s a dilettawnti; I ken nae ill of him,” said Jaacob, who pronounced these titles with a little contempt, yet secretly had a respect for them; “he hasna been seen in this country, so far as I’ve heard tell of, for mony a day. A lad’s no aye to blame for his father and his mother; it’s a thing folk in general have nae choice in—but he’s useless to his ain race, either as friend or foe.”
“Is he a good fellow, then? or is he like Me’mar?” cried Cosmo.
“Tush! dinna afflict me about thae creatures in bad health,” said Jaacob; “what’s the use o’ them, lads or lasses, is mair than I can tell—can they no’ dee and be done wi’t? I tell you, a docken on the roadside is mair guid to a country than the like of Me’mar’s son!”
“Is he in bad health?” asked the persistent Cosmo.
“They’re a’ in bad health,” said Jaacob, contemptuously, “as any auld wife could tell you; a’ but that red-haired lassie, that Joan. Speak o’ your changelings! how do ye account to me, you that’s a philosopher, for the like of an honest spirit such as that, cast into the form of a lassie, and the midst of a hatching o’ sparrows like Me’mar? If she had but been a lad, she would have turned them a’ out like a cuckoo in the nest.”
“And Oswald Huntley is ill—an invalid?” said Cosmo, softly returning to the thread of his own thoughts.
Jaacob once more thrust with contempt some imaginary opponent out of the way.
“Get away with you down Tyne or into the woods wi’ your Oswald Huntleys!” cried Jaacob, indignantly—“do you think I’m heeding about ane of the name? Whisht! what’s that? Did you hear onything?—haud your tongue for your life!”
Cosmo grew almost as excited as Jaacob—he seized upon the lowest bough of a big ash tree, and swung himself up,with the facility of a country boy, among the fragrant dark foliage which rustled about him as he stood high among the branches as on a tower.
“D’ye see onything?” cried Jaacob, who could have cuffed the boy for the noise he made, even while he pushed him up from beneath.
“Hurra! here she comes—I can see the light!” shouted Cosmo.
The lad stood breathless among the rustling leaves, which hummed about him like a tremulous chorus. Far down at the foot of the slope, nothing else perceptible to mask its progress, came rushing on the fiery eye of light, red, fierce, and silent, like some mysterious giant of the night. It was impossible to hear either hoofs or wheels in the distance, still more to see the vehicle itself, for the evening by this time was considerably advanced, and the shadow of the three mystic hills lay heavy upon the road.
“She’s late,” said Jaacob, between his set teeth. The little Cyclops held tight by the great waving bough of the ash, and set his foot in a hollow of its trunk, crushing beneath him the crackling underwood. Here the boy and he kept together breathless, Cosmo standing high above, and his companion thrusting his weird, unshaven face over the great branch on which he leaned. “She’s up to Plover ha’—she’s at the toll—she’s stopped. What’s that! listen!” cried Cosmo, as some faint, far-off sound, which might have been the cry of a child, came on the soft evening air towards them.
Jaacob made an imperative gesture of silence with one hand, and grasped at the branch with the other till it shook under the pressure.
“She’s coming on again—she’s up to the Black ford—she’s over the bridge—another halt—hark again!—that’s not for passengers—they’re hurraing—hark, Jaacob! hurra! she’s coming—they’ve won the day!”
Jaacob, with the great branch swinging under his hands like a willow bough, bade the boy hold his peace, with a muttered oath through his set teeth. Now sounds became audible, the rattle of the hoofs upon the road, the ring of the wheels, the hum of exclamations and excited voices, under the influence of which the horses “took the brae” gallantly, with a half-human intoxication. As they drew graduallynearer, and the noise increased, and the faint moonlight fell upon the flags and ribbons and dusty branches, with which the coach was ornamented, Cosmo, unable to contain himself, came rolling down on his hands and feet over the top of Jaacob, and descended with a bold leap in the middle of the road. Jaacob, muttering fiercely, stumbled after him, just in time to drag the excited boy out of the way of the coach, which was making up for lost time by furious speed, and on which coachman, guard, and outside passengers, too much excited to be perfectly sober, kept up their unanimous murmurs of jubilee, with only a very secondary regard to the road or any obstructions which might be upon it.
“Wha’s there? get out o’ my road, every soul o’ ye! I’ll drive the gait blindfold, night or day, but I’ll no’ undertake the consequence if ye rin among my wheels,” cried the driver.
“Hurra! lads! the Bill’s passed—we’ve won! Hurra!” shouted another voice from the roof of the vehicle, accompanying the shout with a slightly unsteady wave of a flag, while, with a little swell of sympathetic cheers, and a triumphant flourish of trumpet from the guard, the jubilant vehicle dashed on, rejoicing as never mail-coach rejoiced before.
Jaacob took off his hat, tossed it into the air, crushed it between his hands as it came down, and broke into an extraordinary shout, bellow, or groan, which it was impossible to interpret; then, turning sharp round, pursued the coach with a fierce speed, like the run of a little tiger, setting all his energies to it, swinging his long arms on either side of him, and raising about as much dust as the mail which he followed. Cosmo, left behind, followed more gently, laughing in spite of himself, and in spite of the heroics of the day, which included every national benefit and necessity within the compass of “the Bill,” at the grotesque little figure disappearing before him, twisting its great feet, and swinging its arms in that extraordinary race. When the boy reached Kirkbride, the coach was just leaving the village amid a chorus of cheers and shouts of triumph. No one could think of any thing else, or speak of any thing else; everybody was shaking hands with everybody, and in the hum of amateur speechifying, half a dozen together, Cosmo had hard work to recall even that sober personage, the postmaster, who felthimself to some extent a representative of government and natural moderator of the general excitement, to some sense of his duties. Cosmo’s exertions, however, were rewarded by the sight of three letters, with which he hastened home.
“TheReform Bill’s passed, mother! we’ve won the day!” cried Cosmo, rushing into the Norlaw dining-parlor with an additional hurra! of exultation. After all the din and excitement out of doors, the summer twilight of the room, with one candle lighted and one unlit upon the table, and the widow seated by herself at work, the only one living object in the apartment, looked somewhat dreary—but she looked up with a brightening face, and lighted the second candle immediately on her son’s return.
“Eh, laddie, that’s news!” cried the Mistress; “are you sure it’s true? I didna think, for my part, the Lords had as much sense. Passed! come to be law!—eh, my Huntley! to think he’s at the other end of the world and canna hear.”
“He’ll hear in time,” said Cosmo, with a little agitation, producing his budget of letters. “Mother, I’ve more news than about the Bill. I’ve a letter here.”
His mother rose and advanced upon him with characteristic vehemence:—
“Do you dare to play with your mother, you silly bairn? Give it to me,” said the Mistress, whom Cosmo’s hurried, breathless, joyful face had already enlightened; “do you think I canna bear gladness, me that never fainted with sorrow? Eh Huntley, my bairn!”
And in spite of her indignation, Huntley’s mother sank into the nearest chair, and let her tears fall on his letter as she opened it. It did not, however, prove to be the intimation of his arrival, which they hoped for. It was written at sea, three months after his departure, when he was still not above half way on his journey; for it was a more serious business getting to Australia in those days than it is now. Huntley wrote out of his little berth in the middle of thebig ocean, with all the strange creaks of the ship and voices of his fellow-passengers to bear him company, with a heart which was still at Norlaw. The Mistress tried very hard to read his letter aloud; she drew first one and then the other candle close to her, exclaiming against the dimness of the light; she stopped in the middle of a sentence, with something very like a sob, to bid Cosmo sharply be quiet and no’ interrupt her, like a restless bairn, while she read his brother’s letter; but at last the Mistress broke down and tried no further. It was about ten months since she bade him farewell, and this was the first token of Huntley’s real person and existence which for all that lingering and weary time had come to his mother, who had never missed him out of her sight for a week at a time, all his life before.
There was not a very great deal in it even now, for letter-writing had been a science little practiced at Norlaw, and Huntley had still nothing to tell but the spare details of a long sea voyage; there was, however, in it, what there is not in all letters, nor in many—even much more affectionate and effusive epistles than this—Huntley himself. When the Mistress had come to the end, which was but slowly, in consideration of the dimness of the candles or her eyes, she gave it to Cosmo, and waited rather impatiently for his perusal of the precious letter. Then she went over it again, making hasty excuse, as she did so; for “one part I didna make out,” and finally, unable to refrain, got up and went to the kitchen, where Marget was still busy, to communicate the good news.
The kitchen door was open; there was neither blind nor shutter upon the kitchen-window, and the soft summer stars, now peeping out in half visible hosts like cherubs, might look in upon Marget, passing back and forward through the fire light, as much and as often as they pleased. From the open door a soft evening breath of wind, with the fragrance of new growth and vegetation upon it, which is almost as sweet as positive odors, came pleasantly into the ruddy apartment, where the light found a hundred bright points to sparkle in, from the “brass pan” and copper kettle on the shelf to the thick yolks of glass in one or two of the window-panes. It was not quite easy to tell what Marget was doing; she was generally busy, moving about with a little hum of song, setting every thing in order for the night.
“Marget, my woman, you’ll be pleased to hear—I’ve heard from my son,” said the Mistress, with unusual graciousness. She came and stood in front of the fire, waiting to be questioned, and the fire light still shone with a very prismatic radiance through the Mistress’s eyelashes, careful though she had been, before she entered, to remove the dew from her eyes.
“You’re no’ meaning Mr. Huntley? Eh! bless him! has he won there?” cried Marget, letting down her kilted gown, and hastening forward.
And then the Mistress was tempted to draw forth her letter, and read “a bit here and a bit there,” which the faithful servant received with sobs and exclamations.
“Bless the laddie, he minds every single thing at Norlaw—even the like of me!” cried Marget; upon which the Mistress rose again from the seat she had taken, with a little start of impatience:—
“Wherefore should he no’ mind you?—you’ve been about the house a’ his life; and I hope I’ll never live to see the day when a bairn of mine forgets his hame and auld friends! It’s time to bar the door, and put up the shutter. You should have had a’ done, and your fire gathered by this time; but it’s a bonnie night!”
“’Deed, ay!” said Marget to herself, when Huntley’s mother had once more joined Cosmo in the dining-room; “the bonniest night that’s been to her this mony a month, though she’ll no’ let on—as if I didna ken how her heart yearns to that laddie on the sea, blessings on him! Eh, sirs! to think o’ thae very stars shining on the auld castle and the young laird, though the world itsel’s between the twa—and the guid hand of Providence ower a’—God be thanked!—to bring the bairn hame!”
When the Mistress returned to the dining-parlor, she found Cosmo quite absorbed with another letter. The lad’s face was flushed with half-abashed pleasure, and a smile, shy, but triumphant, was on his lip. It was not Patie’s periodical letter, which still lay unopened before her own chair, where it had been left in the overpowering interest of Huntley’s. The Mistress was not perfectly pleased. To care for what anybody else might write—“one of his student lads, nae doubt, or some other fremd person,” in presenceof the first letter from Huntley, was almost a slight to her first-born.
“You’re strange creatures, you laddies,” said the Mistress. “I dinna understand you, for my part. There are you, Cosmo Livingstone, as pleased about your nonsense letter, whatever it may be, as if there was no such person as my Huntley in the world—him that aye made such a wark about you!”
“This is not a nonsense letter—will you read it, mother?” said Cosmo.
“Me!—I havena lookit at Patie’s letter yet!” cried the Mistress, indignantly. “Do you think I’m a person to be diverted with what one callant writes to another? Hold your peace, bairn, and let me see what my son says.”
The Mistress accordingly betook herself to Patrick’s letter with great seriousness and diligence, keeping her eyes steadily upon it, and away from Cosmo, whom, nevertheless, she could still perceive holdinghisletter, his own especial correspondence, with the same look of shy pleasure, in his hand. Patie’s epistle had nothing of remarkable interest in it, as it happened, and the Mistress could not quite resist a momentary and troubled speculation, Who was Cosmo’s correspondent, who pleased him so much, yet made him blush? Could it be a woman? The idea made her quite angry in spite of herself—at his age!
“Now, mother, read this,” said Cosmo, with the same smile.
“If it’s any kind of bairn’s nonsense, dinna offer it to me,” said the Mistress, impatiently. “Am I prying into wha writes you letters? I tell you I’ve had letters enough for ae night. Peter Todhunter!—wha in the world is he?”
“Read it, mother,” repeated Cosmo.
The Mistress read in much amazement; and the epistle was as follows: