CHAPTER XX
On the afternoon of the same day the young lawyer dropped in quietly, with a smile on his lace, to Norlaw.
Huntley was busy in the out-buildings of the farm. He was taking an inventory of all their stock and belongings, and making such an estimate as he could, which was a very correct one on the whole, of the value of this primitive property. Every thing about the house was going on very much as usual. The Mistress was seated at the end window of the dining-room, in a position which not only commanded the kitchen door and all its comings and goings, but was likewise a good post of observation for the farm-yard in which Huntley was. The stillness and heat of summer brooded over the old castle walls, and even over the farm-yard, where the very poultry drowsed in their afternoon siesta. The apples were growing ruddy on the Norlaw trees, and the slope of the hill brightened in russet gold towards the harvest. An Irish “shearer,” with his sickle over his shoulder, waited at a humble distance, till the young master was ready to hear his application for work; the weather was unusually favorable and the season early. In another week or ten days everybody prophesied the harvest would begin.
Huntley Livingstone, however, was not thinking of the harvest. His mind was busy with thoughts of the wild bush far away, the savage young colonies then but little advanced in their progress, and the long years of solitary labor which lay before him. He was not by any means in high spirits. Melmar had faded out of his fancy like a dream. He thought he perceived just what degree of probability there was in that vision of fortune, and turning his back upon it, he set his face towards the sober, homely, real future which must begin by the serious and solitary toil of so many years.
So that Huntley was by no means delighted to be interrupted in the midst of his task by the salutation of the young lawyer. He turned round immediately and put down his memorandum-book, but not with much cordiality. Cassilis was smiling—he always smiled; on the whole, this rather aggravated Huntley.
“I’ve got something for you,” said the lawyer, holding up the same pocket-book into which he had put Norlaw’s memoranda. He spoke with real glee and triumph. Independent altogether of the interests of the family, he felt he had made quite a professional success, and enjoyed it accordingly.
“What?” said Huntley—he was half unwilling to perceive that this was some advantage gained over the enemy. He had made up his mind in a different direction, and did not want to be moved back again by any new shift of fortune. But when the pocket-book was opened and its contents disclosed—when Huntley saw before him, safe and certain, those old yellow bonds and obligations signed with his father’s name, the young man was startled—and the first idea of his unfriendliness was, that they had been purchased by some concession.
“You have given up our interests in the more important matter!” cried Huntley; “I warn you I will not adopt any such bargain; better ruin now than any sacrifice either of right or of honor.”
“For what do you take me, Mr. Livingstone?” said the other, coldly; but as he was too good-natured and much too triumphant to keep malice, he continued, after a moment, in his usual tone:—“Don’t be foolish; take these affairs and burn them—they’re better out of harm’s way; and go in, gather the family together, and hold a council of war. Now I’ve seen the man and understand the question, I’m ready to fight it out. We can but take our chance. You have every thing in your favor—he nothing but blood and possession. You are not ruined, Livingstone, you have enough to begin with—I am inclined to change my advice; if I were you, I should wait no longer, but put it to the touch. The chances are ten to one in your favor.”
“This is quite different from your former opinion,” said Huntley, in amazement.
“Not opinion, say advice,” said Cassilis, who was now somewhat excited; “I believed, begging your pardon, Livingstone, that you were likely to need for your own immediate uses every penny you could scrape together; I thought your father had seriously injured your cause by taking no steps in the matter, and that the other side might think themselves justified in saying that he knew this will either to be unfairly got or invalid. But my visit to Melmar has dispelled these doubts. I think the course is quite clear if you choose to try.”
This sudden suggestion took away Huntley’s breath; the color mounted in his cheek in spite of himself—it was impossible to think of such a prospect unmoved—for Melmar, with its moderate rank and easy fortune, was very much more agreeable to think of than the bush and all its peradventures of hardship and solitude. He listened with only a half-attention while Cassilis explained to him how Mr. Huntley had been induced to relinquish these valuable scraps of paper. The whole sum represented by them was not very considerable, but it made all the difference between bare, absolute stripped poverty, and the enough which would satisfy everybody’s demands, and leave a little over for themselves. There were still heavy mortgages upon the little property of Norlaw, but when Huntley took his father’s canceled bonds in his hand, he knew there was no longer cause to apprehend a forced and ruinous sale of all their stock and crop and little possessions. He heard the lawyer speak of Melmar’s fears, his proposal about the will—his gradual and growing apprehensions; but all that appeared visible to Huntley was the fact of their changed circumstances, and the new position in which the family stood. His companion perceived after a while that the young man was absorbed in his own thoughts, and paid no attention to what he said, and Cassilis wisely left him, once more bidding him hold a council of war. When he was alone, Huntley put aside his memorandum-book, drew his cap over his eyes, and set off on a rapid walk to the top of the hill. He scarcely drew breath till he had reached the summit of that fertile slope from whence he could just see in the distance the gray towers of Melrose and the silvery gleam of Tweed shining in the hazy golden sunshine beyond the purple Eildons. The broad country shone before him in all its tints of color and glow of summer light, wide, great, and silent as the life upon whose brink he stood—and at his feet lay Norlaw, with its humble homestead and its ruined castle, where sat this lad’s mother, who was a widow. He stood there perfectly silent, full of thought, turning over half unconsciously in his mind the words of his adviser.
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all.”
Somehow these lines floated in upon Huntley’s mind as he stood gazing upon the summer landscape. To win Melmar with all its wealth and influence, or to lose what remained of Norlaw, with all the associations and hereditary bonds that belonged to that home of his race—should he put it to the touch? A conflict, not less stormy that it was entirely unexpressed, rose within the young, ambitious, eager mind, gazing over those fields and hills. A certain personification and individuality came to the struggling powers within him. On either side stood a woman, one a pale, unknown shadow, hovering upon the chances of his triumph, ready to take the prize, when it was won, out of his hands—the other his own well-beloved, home-dwelling mother, whose comfort and certain habitation it was in Huntley’s power at once to secure. Should he put it to the touch? should he risk all that he might win all?—and the tempters that assailed Huntley suddenly vailed over to his eyes all that sunny home landscape, and spread before him the savage solitudes of the far country, the flocks and the herds which should be his sole companions—the hut in the strange woods; oh beautiful home valleys, glorious hills, dear gleams of water-springs! oh, love hiding sweet among the trees, whispering ere it comes!—oh tender friends and bonds of youth!—shall he put it to the touch? The council of war held its debate among the dust and din of battle, though the summer sunshine shone all the time in an undisturbed and peaceful glory upon the slope of Norlaw.
CHAPTER XXI
“Do you think I could bear the thought—me!” cried the Mistress energetically; “have ye kent me all your days, Huntley Livingstone, and do ye dare to think your mother would baulk your fortune for ease to hersel’? is it like me? would any mortal even me with the like, but your ainsel’?”
The Mistress stood by herself in the middle of the room, with her hand on the table—her eyes shone with a mortified and grieved fire through unshed tears—her heightened color—her frame, which seemed to vibrate with a visible pang—the pain of unappreciated love, which looked like anger in her face—showed how little congenial to her mind was Huntley’s self-abnegation. There was no sacrifice in the world which she herself could not and would not have made for her children; but to feel herself the person for whom a sacrifice was needed, a hindrance to her son’s prospects, a person to be provided for, struck with intense and bitter mortification the high spirit of the Mistress. She could not be content with this subordinate and passive position. Poverty, labor, want itself, would have come easier to her proud, tender motherhood, than thus to feel herself a bar upon the prospects of her boy.
When Huntley looked into his mother’s face, he thanked God silently within himself, that he had held his council of war upon the hill-side, and not in the Norlaw dining-parlor. It was the first time in his life that the young man had made an arbitrary personal decision, taking counsel with none; he had been naturally somewhat doubtful in his statement of it, being unused to such independent action—but now he rejoiced that he had made his conclusion alone. He came to his mother with tenderness, which perhaps if it touched her secretly, made her displeasure only the greater so far as appearance went—for the mother of this house, who was not born of a dependent nature, was still too young and vigorous in her own person, and too little accustomed to think of her sons as men, to be able to receive with patience the new idea that their relative positions were so far changed, and that it was now her children’s part to provide for her, instead of hers to provide for them.
“Mother, suppose we were to fail—which is as likely as success,” said Huntley, “and I had to go away—after all, should you like me to leave no home to think of—no home to return to?—is that not reason enough to make you content with Norlaw?”
“Hold your peace!” cried the Mistress—“hame! do you mean to tell me that I couldna make a cothouse in Kirkbride, or a lodging in a town look like hame to my own bairns, if Providence ordained it sae, and their hearts were the same? What’s four walls here or there?—till you’ve firesides of your ain, your mother’s your hame wherever she may be. Am I a weak auld wife to be maintained at the ingleside with my son’s toil—or to have comfort, or fortune, or hope sacrificed to me? Eh, laddie, Guid forgive ye!—me that would shear in the harvest field, or guide the kye, or do any day’s work in this mortal world, with a cheerful heart, if it was needful, for the sake of you!”
“Ay, mother,” cried Cosmo, suddenly springing up from the table where he had been sitting stooping over a book in his usual attitude, without any apparent notice of the conversation. “Ay, mother,” cried the boy, “you could break your heart, and wear out your life for us, because it’s in your nature—but you’re too proud to think that it’s our nature as well, and that all you would do for your sons, your sons have a right to do for you!”
The boy’s pale face shone, and his eyes sparkled; his slender, tall, overgrown boyish figure, his long arms stretching out of the narrow sleeves of his jacket, his long slender hands, and long hair, the entire and extreme youthfulness of his whole appearance, so distinct from the fuller strength and manhood of his brothers, and animated by the touch of a delicate spirit, less sober and more fervid than theirs, struck strangely and suddenly upon the two who had hitherto held this discussion alone. An instantaneous change came over the Mistress’s face; the fire in her eyes melted into a tender effusion of love and sorrow, the yearning of the mother who was a widow. Those tears, which her proud temper and independent spirit had drawn into her eyes, fell with a softness which their original cause was quite incapable of. She could not keep to her first emotions; she could not restrain the expansion of her heart toward the boy who was still only a boy, and his father’s son.
“My bairn!” cried the Mistress, with a short sob. He was the youngest, the tenderest, the most like him who was gone—and Cosmo’s words had an unspeakable pathos in their enthusiasm—the heroism of a child!
After this the mother dropped into her chair, altogether softened, while Huntley spoke to her low and earnestly.
“Melmar is nothing to me,” said her eldest son, in the half-whispered forcible words which Cosmo did not hear, but in which his mother recognized the distinct resolution of a nature as firm as her own; “nothing at least except a chance of wealth and fortune—only a chance which can wait; but Norlaw is every thing—house, family, ancestors, every thing that makes me proud of my name. Norlaw and the Livingstones must never be disconnected while we can prevent it—and, mother, for Cosmo’s sake!”
“Eh, Huntley, God forgive me if I set more weight upon him than I should set!” said the Mistress, with tears; “no’ to your detriment, my own son; but look at the bairn! is he not his very image that’s gane?”
Not a single shadow of envy or displeasure crossed Huntley’s face; he stood looking at his young brother with a love almost as tender as their mother’s, with besides an unconscious swell of manhood and power in his own frame. He was the eldest brother, the head of the house, and the purest saint on earth could not have condemned the generous pride which rose in Huntley’s breast. It was not a weak effusion of sentimental self-sacrifice—his own hopes, his own heart, his own life, were strong with an individual identity in the young man’s nature. But the tender son of this house for the first time had made his own authoritative and masterly decision. To set aside his ambition and let it wait—to postpone fortune to labor—to do the first duty of a man on his own sole and unadvised responsibility—to provide for those of his own house, and set them above the anxieties of poverty. He was proud, when he thought of it, to feel the strength in his own arm, the vigor of his own step—but the pride was such as almost an angel might have shared.
When Huntley left the room, the Mistress called Cosmo to her side. She had resumed her seat by the corner window, and they could see him going out, disappearing behind the old castle walls, in the glory of the autumn sunset.
“Do you see him, Cosmo?” said the Mistress, with renewed tears, which this time were of mingled pride and tenderness; “I resisted, but I never wronged his thoughts. Do ye see your brother? Yonder he is, a young lad, proud, and bold, and masterful—he’s no’ like you—he has it in his heart to seek power, and riches, and honors, and to take pleasure in them—and he’s that daring that the chance of a battle would be more pleasant to Huntley than any thing in this world that was secure. Yet—do you hear me, laddie? he’s put them all aside, every ane, for the sake of this hame and name, and for you and me!”
And the color rose high upon the Mistress’s cheek in a flush of triumph; the necessity and blessing of women came upon her in a sudden flood—she could not be heroic herself, though she might covet the glory—but with a higher, tenderer, more delicious pride, she could rejoice and triumph in the courage of her boy. Her voice rose even in those restrained and moderate words of common speech as if in a song; there was an indescribable something in her tone which reminded one involuntarily of the old songs of Scripture, the old triumphant Hebrew parallelisms of Miriam and Deborah. She grasped Cosmo’s shoulder with an emphatic pressure, and pointed with the other hand to the retiring figure of Huntley, passing slowly and with a thoughtful step by the wall of the old castle. Cosmo leaned out beside her, catching a flush upon his delicate cheek from hers, but gazing upon the scene with a different eye. Insensibly the poetic glance of the boy left his brother, to dwell upon the other features of this picture before him. Those stern old walls with their windowless sockets, through which once the sunshine shone and the summer breezes entered to former generations of their name—that sweet evening glory of sunshine, pouring aslant in a lingering tender flood upon the world and the day, which it seemed sad to leave—that sunshine which never grew old—insensibly his own romance stole back into Cosmo’s mind. He forgot, with the inadvertence of his years, that it was not a romance agreeable to his mother, or that, even if it had been, she was not of a temper to bear the intrusion of other subjects when her mind was so fully occupied with concerns of her own.
“Mother, Huntley is right,” cried Cosmo; “Melmar can not be his if she is alive—it would not become him to seek it till he has sought her—and as Huntley can not seek her, for her sake and for my father’s, I will, though it should take the half of my life!”
Once more the Mistress’s face changed; a glance of fiery impatience flashed from her eyes, her cheek grew violently red, the tears dried as if by a spell, and she put Cosmo away hastily with the same arm which had held him.
“Get away to your plays, bairn—dinna trouble me!” cried the Mistress, with a harsh contempt, which was as strong as it was unjust; “to think I should open my heart to you that thinks of nothing but your romances and story books! Go! I’ve different things to think of—dinna trouble me!”
And she rose with a murmur of indignation and anger, and went hurriedly, with a flushed cheek, to seek her usual work, and take refuge in occupation. If the lost heiress had been her dearest friend, she would still have resented urgently the introduction of an intruder into her sudden burst of mother-pride. As it was, it overturned temper and patience entirely. She brushed past Cosmo with a hasty contempt, which humiliated and mortified the boy beyond expression. He did not attempt to justify himself—perhaps a kindred spark of resentment, and the bitterness with which youth appreciates injustice, helped to silence him—but when his mother resumed her seat and worked on hurriedly in a disdainful and angry silence, Cosmo withdrew out of the room and out of the house with a swelling heart. Too proud to betray how much he was wounded, he stole round behind the farm offices to his favorite perch among the ruins, where the lad brooded in mournful mood, sinking into the despairing despondency of his years and temperament, feeling himself misunderstood and unappreciated, and meditating a hundred melancholy heroisms. Mary of Melmar, so far, seemed as little propitious to Norlaw’s son as she had once been to Norlaw.
CHAPTER XXII
“Go wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please—I canna see a step before me, for my part—it’s you and no’ me that must take the lead,” said the Mistress, with a heavy sigh. These words were said as the little party, Huntley, Patrick and herself, were left standing by a little pile of luggage, in the dusk of a harvest evening, in front of the coach office on the Edinburgh pavement. They were on their way to Liverpool, from which place Huntley was to sail in an emigrant ship for Port Philip. Princes Street was full of the open-air and street-loving crowd which gives to that splendid promenade, on summer nights, so much of a continental aspect. The dusk of the twilight fell softly in the valley which lay behind, the lights in the high houses on the other side hung softly midway in the air, the voices of the passengers, and sounds of the city, though doubtless many of these were sad enough, mingled in the soft-shadowed air to a harmonious hum of pleasant sound, which echoed with a mocking gayety into the heavy heart of the mother who was about to part with her boys. She was bewildered for the moment with her journey, with the unknown place and unusual animation around her, and it was only very slowly and by degrees that her mind regained its usual self-possession. She stood gazing blankly round her, while the boys made arrangements about their superfluous packages, which were to be left at the coach office, and finally came up to her, carrying between them the little trunk which contained the necessaries for their journey. Cabs were not in those days, and the Mistress would have been horrified into perfect self-possession by the preposterous idea of “a noddy.” When they were thus far ready, she turned with them briskly enough, leading the way without any uncertainty, for, in spite of her exclamation, it had been already arranged where they were to go, and the Mistress had been at school in Edinburgh in her young days, and was by no means unacquainted with the town. They went along in this order—Mrs. Livingstone carrying a considerable bag on her own arm, and the young men with a trunk between them—across the North Bridge towards the old town, that scene of magic to every stranger; the valley, the hill, the dim gray turrets of Holyrood, the soft darkness of the night full of sounds, lying beneath them—the rugged outline, picturesque and noble, of the lofty old street before—the lights shining here and there like fairy stars in irregular specks among the high windows, and everywhere the half-seen, unrecognizable throng of wayfarers, and the world of subdued sound on every side made but small impression upon the absorbed minds of the little party. They knew it all before, and their thoughts were otherwise occupied; yet involuntarily that noble landscape, which no one could look upon with absolute indifference, soothed them all, in spite of themselves. Their destination was the High Street, where, in one of the more respectable closes, and at the top of an interminable ascent of stairs, there lived a native of Kirkbride, who was in the habit of letting lodgings to students, and with whom they were to find accommodation for the night. Mrs. Purdie gave to the Mistress a little room boasting a “concealed bed,” that is to say, a recess shut in by folding-doors, and just large enough to contain a bedstead, and to the lads a bed-closet, with a borrowed light, both of which inventions specially belong to the economy of flats and great subdivided houses, and are the most unfavorable features in the same. But the window of Mrs. Livingstone’s room, where they had tea, looked abroad over that great panorama, bounded by the gleam of the Firth, and the low green line of the Fife hills, which makes it worth while to ascend stairs and watch at lofty windows in Edinburgh. The yellow harvest moon had risen ere they had finished the simple meal, which none of them had any heart for, and Huntley drew his mother to the window to bid her look at the wonderful broad moonlight lying white upon the long line of street below, and thrusting out all the monuments of the little hill into bold and striking relief against the luminous sky. The Mistress turned away from the window, with big tears in her eyes.
“Eh, Huntley, laddie, what do I care? if it was the grandest view that ever was, do you think I could see it?” cried his mother, “when I ken that I’ll never see the light of the moon mair without weary thoughts and yearning to where my bairns are, hundreds and thousands of miles away from me!”
“But, mother, only till we come home,” said Huntley, with his arm round his mother, speaking low in her ear.
The Mistress only turned towards the dim little table, with its dim candles, hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes. This was endurable—but the night and the calm, and the glory of the heavens and the earth, were too much for the mother. If she had remained there looking out, it almost seemed to her as if she must have wept her very heart dry.
The next morning they set out once more upon their journey—another day’s travel by the canal to Glasgow. The canal was not to be despised in those days; it was cheaper, and it was not a great deal slower than the coach; and if the errand had been happier, the mode of traveling, in that lovely harvest weather, with its gradual glide and noiseless progress, was by no means an unpleasant one. Glasgow itself, a strange, unknown, smoky Babel, where, after Huntley was gone, the Mistress was to part with her second son, bewildered her mind completely with its first aspect; she could make nothing of it as they pursued their way from the canal to the river, through a maze of perplexing and noisy streets, where she felt assured hundreds of people might lose themselves, never to be found again. And, with a feeling half of awe and half of disgust, Mrs. Livingstone contemplated the place, so unlike the only other large town she knew, where Patie was to pass the next half dozen years of his life. Instinctively she caught closer hold of him, forgetting Huntley for the moment—Huntley’s dangers would be those of nature, the sea and the wilderness—but temptation! ill-doing! The Mistress grasped her son’s sleeve with tenacious fingers, and looked into his face with half an entreaty, half a defiance.
“If I should ever see the like of that in a bairn of mine!” she cried aloud, as they passed a corner where stood some of those precocious men, haggard and aged beyond double their years, whom it is the misfortune of a great town sometimes to produce. The idea struck her with an impatient dread which overcame even her half-apprehensive curiosity about the voyage they were going to undertake; and she had scarcely overcome this sudden alarm, when they embarked in the snorting steamer which was to convey them to Liverpool. Standing on the deck, surrounded by the pile of boxes which formed Huntley’s equipment, and looking with startled and disapproving eyes upon the arriving passengers, and the crowded sheds of the Broomielaw, the Mistress saw the same moon rising above the masts, and housetops, and smoke of Glasgow, without any thing like the same feelings which had moved her on the previous night. Her mind was excited, her active spirit stirred, her very nerves, steady as they were, influenced a little by the entirely new anticipation of the voyage; a night at sea!—it seemed almost as great looking forward to it as Huntley’s journey, though that was to the other end of the world.
And so they glided down the beautiful Clyde, the breeze freshening about them, as hills began to rise black in the moonlight, and little towns to glimmer on the water’s edge. The mother and the sons walked about the deck together, talking earnestly, and when the vessel rose upon the bigger waves, as they stole out to sea, and every thing but the water and the sky, and the moonlight, gradually sank out of sight, the Mistress, with a little thrill of danger and adventure at her heart, forgot for the moment how, presently, she should return alone by the same road, and almost could suppose that she was setting out with Huntley. The fancy restored her to herself: she was not much of an advice giver. Her very cautions and counsels, perhaps, were arbitrary and slightly impatient, like her nature; but she was their true mother, heart and soul; and the lads did not forget for long years after what the Mistress said as she paced about the deck between them, with a firm, yet sometimes uncertain foot, as the midnight glided into morning, and the river disappeared in the bigger waters of the sea.