CHAPTER XXV
It was very well for the Mistress’s spirit, though scarcely for her purse, that she was roused the next day to horror and indignation, scarcely restrainable, by the supposed exorbitant bill of the inn. She thought it the most monstrous imposition which ever had been practiced, and could scarcely be persuaded to depart from her first resolution of seeking out a “decent writer,” “if there is such a person in this wicked town,” as she added, scornfully—to arbitrate between her and the iniquitous publican. At last, however, Patie succeeded in getting his mother safely once more within the Glasgow steamer.
It was a melancholy voyage, for every breath of wind that blew, agitated Huntley’s mother with questions of his safety; and she had no better prospect than to part with Patie at this journey’s end. They reached their destination in the afternoon, when the great, smoky, dingy Glasgow, looked almost hotter and more stifled than the other great seaport they had left. From the Broomielaw, they went upon their weary way, through the town, to a humble lodging recommended by Dr. Logan, whose letter to the manager of one of the founderies Patie carried in his pocket. The house which the travelers sought was up three long flights of stairs, in a dark-complexioned close, where each flat was divided into two houses. The “land,” or block of buildings in which it was placed, formed one side of a little street, just behind the place where Patie was to work; and the windows of their lodging looked across the black yard and big buildings of this great, noisy foundery, to a troubled, smoky glimpse of the Clyde, and Glasgow Green upon the other side.
After he had seen his mother safely arrived in this shelter, Patie had to set out immediately to deliver his letter. The Mistress was left once more by herself to examine her new resting-place. It was a little room, with a little bed in the corner, hung with dark, unlined chintz. It was also what is called in these regions “coomcieled,” which is to say, the roof sloped on one side, being close under the leads. A piece of carpet in the centre, a little table in the centre of that, three chairs, a chest of drawers, and a washing stand, completed the equipment of the room. Was this to be Patie’s room—the boy’s only substitute for home?
The Mistress went to the window, to see if any comfort was to be found there; but there was only the foundery—the immense, black, coaly, smoky yard into which these windows looked; and, a little to the right, a great cotton factory, whence, at the sound of a big bell, troops of girls came crowding out, with their uncovered heads shining in the evening sun. The Mistress turned abruptly in again, much discomposed by the prospect. With their colored petticoats and short gowns, and shining, uncovered hair, the Glasgow mill girls were—at this distance at least—rather a pretty sight; and a perfectly uninterested person might have thought it quite seemly and natural that the black moleskin giants of the foundery, issuing from their own cavernous portals at the same time, should have exchanged sundry jokes and rough encounters of badinage with their female neighbors.
But the Mistress, whose son was to be left at this same foundery, awoke in a horror of injured pride and aristocracy to contemplate an unimagined danger.
“A barefooted lassie from a mill!—a bairn of mine!” cried the Mistress, with looks aghast; and she drew a chair carefully out of reach of the window, and sat down at the table to consider the matter.
But when she looked round upon the bare, mean room, and thought of the solitary lad, who knew nobody in Glasgow, who had been used to the kindly cares of home all his life, and who was only a boy, although a “bairn of mine!” it is not very wonderful, perhaps, that the Mistress should have done even the staid and sensible Patie the injustice of supposing him captivated by some one of that crowd of dumpy daughters of St. Mungo, who were so far beneath the dignity of a son of Norlaw. Even Huntley, far away at sea, disappeared, for the moment, from her anxious sight. Worse dangers than those of sea or storm might be here.
Patie, meanwhile, thinking of no womankind in the world, not even of his mother, was explaining very forcibly and plainly to Dr. Logan’s friend, the manager, his own wishes and intentions; railways were a very recent invention in those days, and steamboats not an old one—it was the bright day of engineering, while there still lingered a certain romance about those wondrous creations of steel and steam, with which the world had not yet grown too familiar—gentlemen apprentices were not uncommon in those great Cyclopean workshops—but Patrick Livingstone did not mean to be a gentleman apprentice. He wanted to put himself to school for a couple of years, to learn his craft like a man, without privilege of gentility, he was too old for the regular trade apprenticeship, but he desired nothing more than a lessening of the time of that probation—and whatever circumstances might lead him to do at the end of it, Patie was not afraid of being found wanting in needful skill or knowledge. Dr. Logan had given a most flattering description of his family and “station,” partly stimulated thereto by the zeal with which his nephew Cassilis took up the cause of the Livingstones—and Mr. Crawford, the Glasgow manager, was very civil to the lad, who was the son of a landed proprietor, and whose brother might, in a few years, be one of the first gentlemen in the county of Melrose; the interview on the whole was a very satisfactory one, and Patie plodded his way back to the little room where he had left his mother, engaged to return next day with her, to conclude the arrangement by which he should enter the foundery; the lad was satisfied, even exhilarated, in his sober fashion, to find himself thus upon the threshold of a more serious life. Though he observed perfectly the locality and appearances around him, they had not so much effect upon Patie as they might have had on a more imaginative temper. His calmer and more practical mind, paradox though it seems to say so, was less affected by external circumstances than either his mother or Huntley, and a thousand times less than Cosmo would have been. He did not concern himself about his surroundings—they had little debasing or depressing influence upon his thoughts—he scarcely noticed them indeed, if they were sufficient for his necessities. Patie could very well contrive to live without beauty, and could manage to get on with a very moderate degree of comfort, so long as his own vigorous mind approved his life, and he had plenty to do.
In consequence of which it happened that Patie scarcely comprehended his mother’s dissatisfaction with the room; if he remained here, it was the only room the mistress of the house could give her lodger. He thought it very well, and quite as much as he required, and apprehended no particular cheerlessness in consequence of its poverty.
“It is not home, of course,” he said, with great nonchalance, “but, granting that, mother, I don’t see what difference it makes to me. It’s all well enough. I don’t want any thing more—it’s near the work, and it’s in a decent house—that should be enough to please you.”
“Hold your peace, Patie—do you think I’m careless of my bairn’s comfort?” cried the Mistress, with a half tone of anger; “and wha’ was ever used to a place like this, coming out of Norlaw?”
“But there can not be two Norlaws,” said Patie, “nor two homes. I want but one, for my part. I have no desire at present to like a second place as well.”
“Eh, laddie, if you can but keep that thought, and be true!” cried the Mistress, “I wouldna heed, save for your ain comfort, where you were then.”
“Do you doubt me, mother? what are you feared for? tell me, and I’ll know what to do,” said Patie, coming close to her, with his look of plain, unmistakable sincerity.
“I’m no’ feared,” said the Mistress, those ever-rising, never-falling tears dimming her eyes again, while yet a little secondary emotion, half shame of her own suspicions, half petulance, rose to her voice; “but it’s a poor place for a laddie like you, bred up at hame—and it’s a great town, full of temptations—and night and day in a place like this, ilka street is full of evil—and naething but bare bed and board instead of hame. Oh! Patie if I was feared, it was because I knew mony a dreary story of lads that meant as well as yoursel’!”
“Perhaps I was presumptuous, mother,” said Patie; “I will not say there’s no fear;—but there’s a difference between one man and another, and time and your own judgment will prove what’s temptation to me. Now, come, if you have rested enough—the air will do you more good than sitting here.”
The Mistress was persuaded, and went out accordingly with her son, feeling strangely forlorn and solitary in the crowded thoroughfares, where she was struck with the common surprise of country people, to meet so many and to know no one. Still there was a certain solace in the calm summer evening, through which the moon was rising in that pale sky so far away and clear, above the hanging smoke of the town—and in Patie’s arm, which seemed to support her with more pride and tenderness now that Huntley was gone. The soft moon shining down upon the river, which here was not the commercial Clyde, of ships and steamers, the many half-distinguishable figures upon the Green opposite, from which color and light were fading, and the tranquillity of the night even here, bore back the thoughts of the mother into a tenderer channel. She put up her hand to her eyes to clear them.
“Eh Patie! I think I see my son on the sea, looking up at that very sky,” said the Mistress, with a low sob; “how will I look at it from Norlaw, where Cosmo and me will be our lane?—and now but another day more, and I’ll lose you!”
CHAPTER XXVI
The Mistress traveled home once more by the slow canal to Edinburgh, and from thence by the stage-coach to Kirkbride. She had left Patie, at last, with some degree of confidence, having seen Mr. Crawford, the manager of the foundery, and commended her son specially to his care; and having, besides, done what she could to improve the comfort of Patie’s little apartment, and to warn him against the temptations of Glasgow. It was rather heavy work afterward, gliding silently home alone by the monotonous motion of that canal, seeing the red-tiled cottages, the green slopes, the stubble-fields move past like a dream, and remembering how she had left her boys behind, one on the sea, and one among strangers, both embarked upon the current of their life. She sat still in the little cabin of the boat by one of the windows, moving nothing but her fingers, which clasped and unclasped mechanically. Her big black vail hung over her bonnet, but did not shroud her face; there was always moisture in her eyes, but very seldom tears that came the length of falling; and her mind was very busy, and with life in its musings—for it was not alone of the past she was thinking, but also of the future—of her own life at home, where Huntley’s self-denial had purchased comfort for his mother, and where his mother, not to be outdone, silently determined upon the course of those days, which she did not mean to be days of leisure. This Melmar, which had been a bugbear to the Mistress all her days, gradually changed its aspect now. It no longer reminded her of the great bitterness of her life—it was her son’s possible inheritance, and might be the triumphant occasion of Huntley’s return.
It was late on a September afternoon, when she descended from the coach at the door of the Norlaw Arms, and found Cosmo and Marget waiting there to welcome her. The evening sunshine streamed full in their faces, falling in a tender glory from the opposite brae of Tyne, where the white manse at the summit, and the cottages among the trees, shone in the tranquil light, with their kindliest look of home. The Mistress turned hurriedly from the familiar prospect, to repose her tired and wet eyes on the shadowed corner of the village street, where the gable of the little inn kept out the sunshine, and where the ostler had lifted down her trunk. She grasped Cosmo’s hand hastily, and scarcely ventured to look the boy in the face; it was dreary coming home alone; as she descended, bowed Jaacob at the smithy door took off his cowl in token of respect, and eyed her grimly with his twinkling eye. Jaacob, who was a moral philosopher, was rather satisfied, on the whole, with the demeanor of the family of Norlaw under their troubles, and testified his approbation by a slightly authoritative approval. The Mistress gave him a very hasty nod, but could not look even at Jaacob; a break-down, or public exhibition of emotion, being the thing of all others most nervously avoided by respectable matrons of her country and temper, a characteristic very usual among Scotchwomen, of middle age and sober mind. She would have “thought shame” to have been seen crying or “giving way,” “in the middle of the town,” as, even now, enlightened by the sight of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Liverpool, the Mistress still called the village street of Kirkbride; another hasty nod acknowledged the sympathetic courtesy of the widow who kept the village mangle, and whose little boy had wept at the door of Norlaw when its master was dying; and then Cosmo and Marget took the trunk between them, and the Mistress drew down her vail, and the little party set out, across the foot-bridge, through the tender slanting sunshine going home.
Then, at last, between the intervals of question and answer as to the common matters of country life, which had occurred during her absence, the Mistress’s lips were opened. Marget and Cosmo went on before, along the narrow pathway by the river, and she followed. Cosmo had spent half of his time at the manse, it appeared, and all the neighbors had sent to make kindly inquiry when his mother was expected home.
“It’s my hope you didna gang oftener than you were welcome, laddie,” said the Mistress, with a characteristic doubt; “but I’ll no deny the minister’s aye very kind, and Katie too. You should not call her Katie now, Cosmo, she’s woman grown. I said the very same to Huntley no’ a week ago, but he’s no like to offend onybody, poor lad, for many a day to come. And I left him very weel on the whole—oh, yes, very weel, in a grand ship for size, and mony mair in her—and they say they’ll soon be out of our northerly seas, and win to grand weather, and whiles I think, if there was great danger, fewer folk would gang—no’ to say that the Almighty’s no’ a bit nigher by land than he is by sea.”
“Eh! and that’s true!” cried Marget, in an involuntary amen.
The Mistress was not perfectly pleased by the interruption. This tender mother could not help being imperative even in her tenderest affections; and even the faithful servant could not share her mother-anxieties without risk of an occasional outbreak.
“How’s a’ the kye?” said the Mistress with a momentary sharpness. “I’ve never been an unthrifty woman, I’m bauld to say; but every mutchkin of milk maun double itself now, for my bairns’ sakes.”
“Na, mem,” said Marget, touched on her honor, “it canna weel do that; but you ken yoursel’, if you had ta’en my advice, the byre might have been mair profit years ago. Better milkers are no’ in a’ the Lowdens; and if you sell Crummie’s cauf, as I aye advised—”
“You’re aye very ready with your advice, my woman. I never meant any other thing,” said the Mistress, with some impatience; “but after this, the house of Norlaw maun even get a puir name, if it must be so; for I warn ye baith, my thoughts are upon making siller; and when I put my mind to a thing, I canna do it by halves.”
“Then, mother, you must, in the first place, do something with me,” said Cosmo. “I’m the only useless person in the house.”
“Useless, laddie!—hold you peace!” said the Mistress. “You’re but a bairn, and you’re tender, and you maunna make a profitless beginning till you win to your strength. Huntley and Patie—blessings on them!—were both strong callants in their nature, and got good time to grow; and I’ll no’ let my youngest laddie lose his youth. Eh, Cosmo, my man! if you were a lassie, instead of their brother, thae twa laddies that are away could not be mair tender of you in their hearts!”
A flush came over Cosmo’s face, partly gratified affection, partly a certain shame.
“But I’ll soon be a man,” he said, in a low and half excited tone; “and I can not be content to wait quietly at home when my brothers are working. I have a right to work as well.”
“Bless the bairn!” cried Marget, once more involuntarily.
“Dinna speak nonsense,” said the Mistress. “There’s a time for every thing; and because I’m bereaved of twa, is that a reason my last bairn should leave me? Fie, laddie! Patie’s eighteen—he’s come the length of a man—there’s a year and mair between him and you. But what I was speaking of was the kye. There’s nae such stock in the country as the beasts that are reared at Tyneside; and I mean to take a leaf out of Mr. Blackadder’s book, if I’m spared, and see what we can do at Norlaw.”
“Eh, Mistress, Mr. Blackadder’s a man in his prime!” cried Marget.
“Weel, you silly haverel, what am I? Do you think a man that’s laboring just for good name and fame, and because he likes it, and that has nae kin in the world but a far-away cousin, should be stronger for his wark than a widow woman striving for her bairns?” cried the Mistress, with a hasty tear in her eye, and a quick flush on her cheek; “but I’ll let you a’ see different things, if I’m spared, in Norlaw.”
While she spoke with this flush of resolution, they came in sight of their home; but it was not possible to see the westerly sunshine breaking through those blank eyes of the old castle, and the low, modern house standing peacefully below, those unchanged witnesses of all the great scenes of all their lives, without a strain of heart and courage, which was too much for all of them. To enter in, remembering where the father took his rest, and how the sons began their battle—to have it once more pierced into the depths of her heart, that, of all the family once circling her, there remained only Cosmo, overpowered the Mistress, even in the midst of her new purpose, with a returning agony. She went in silent, pressing her hand upon her heart. It was a sad coming home.
CHAPTER XXVII
“And so you’re the only ane of them left at hame?” said bowed Jaacob, looking up at Cosmo from under his bushy brows, and pushing up his red cowl off his forehead.
And there could not have been a more remarkable contrast of appearance than between this slight, tall, fair boy, and the swart little demon, who considered him with a scientific curiosity, keen, yet not unkindly, from the red twilight of the blacksmith’s shop.
“I should be very glad not to be left at home,” said Cosmo, with a boyish flush of shame; “and it will not be for long, if I can help it.”
“Weel, I’ll no’ say but ye a’ show a good spirit—a very good spirit, considering your up-bringing,” said Jaacob, “which was owre tender for laddies. I’ve little broo, for my ain part, of women’s sons. We’re a’ that, more or less, doubtless, but the less the better, lad. I kent little about mothers and such like when I was young mysel’.”
“They say,” said Cosmo, who, in spite of his sentiment, had a quick perception of humor, and was high in favor with the little Cyclops, “they say you were a fairy, and frightened everybody from your cradle, Jacob, and that your mother fainted with fear when she saw you first—is it true?”
“True!—aye, just as true as a’ the rest,” said Jaacob. “They’ll say whatever ye like that’s marvellous, if ye’ll but listen to them. A man o’ sense is an awfu’ phenomenon in a place like this. He’s no’ to be accounted for by the common laws o’ nature; that’s the philosophy of the matter. You’re owre young yet to rouse them; but they’ll make their story, or a’s one—take my word for it—of a lad of genius like yoursel’.”
“Genius, Jacob!”
The boy’s face grew red with a sudden, violent flush; and an intense, sudden light shone in his dark eyes. He did not laugh at the compliment—it awoke some powerful sentiment of vanity or self-consciousness in his own mind. The lighting-up of his eyes was like a sudden gleam upon a dark water—a revelation of a hundred unknown shadows and reflections which had been there unrevealed for many a day before.
“Aye, genius. I ken the true metal when I hear it ring,” said Jaacob. “Like draws to like, as ony fool can tell.”
And then the boy turned away with a sudden laugh—a perfectly mirthful, pure utterance of the half-fun, half-shame, and wholly ludicrous impression which this climax made upon him.
Strangely enough, Jaacob was not offended. He went on, moving about the red gloom of his workshop, without the slightest appearance of displeasure. He had no idea that the lad whom he patronized could laugh at him.
“I can not say but I’m surprised at your brother for a’ that,” said Jaacob. “Huntley’s a lad of spirit; but he should have stood up to Me’mar like a man.”
“Do you know about Me’mar, too?” cried Cosmo, in some surprise.
“I reckon I do; and maist things else,” said Jaacob, dryly. “I’m no’ vindictive mysel’, but when a man does me an ill turn, I’ve a real good disposition to pay him back. He aye had a grudge against the late Norlaw, this Aberdeenawa’ man; and if I had been your faither, Cosmo, lad, I’d have fought the haill affair to the last, though it cost me every bodle I had; for wha does a’ the land and the rights belong to, after all?—to her, and no’ to him!”
“Did you know her?” asked Cosmo, breathlessly, not perceiving, in his eager curiosity, how limited Jaacob’s real knowledge of the case was.
“Aye,” said Jaacob; and the ugly little demon paused, and breathed from his capacious lungs a sigh, which disturbed the atmosphere of the smithy with a sudden convulsion. Then he added, quietly, and in an undertone, “I had a great notion of her mysel’.”
“You!” said Cosmo.
The boy did not know whether to fall upon his companion with sudden indignation, and give him a hearty shake by his deformed shoulders, or to retire with an angry laugh of ridicule and resentment. Both the more violent feelings, however, merged into the unmitigated amazement with which Cosmo at last gazed at the swarthy hunchback, who had ventured to lift his eyes to Norlaw’s love.
“And what for no’ me?” said Jaacob, sturdily; “do ye think it’s good looks and naught else that takes a woman’s e’e? do you think I havena had them in my offer as weel favored as Mary Huntley? Na, I’ll do them this justice; a woman, if she’s no’ a downright haverel, kens a man of sense when she sees him. Mony a wiselike woman has cast her e’e in at this very smiddy; but I’m no’ a marrying man.”
“You would have made many discontented, and one ungrateful,” said the boy, laughing. “Is that what kept you back, Jacob?”
“Just that,” said the philosopher, with a grim smile; “but I had a great notion of Miss Mary Huntley; she was aulder than me; that’s aye the way with callants; ye’ll be setting your heart on a woman o’ twenty yoursel’. I’d have gane twenty miles a-foot, wet or dry, just to shoe her powny; and I wouldna have let her cause gang to the wa’, as your father did, if it had been me.”
“Was she beautiful? what like was she, Jacob?” cried Cosmo, eagerly.
“I can not undertake to tell you just what she was like, a callant like you,” said Jaacob; then the dark hobgoblin made a pause, drawing himself half into his furnace, as the boy could suppose. “She was like a man’s first fancy,” continued the little giant, abruptly, drawing forth a red-hot bar of iron, which made a fiery flash in the air, and lighted up his own swart face for the moment; “she was like the woman a lad sets his heart on, afore he kens the cheats of this world,” he added, at another interval, with a great blow of his hammer, which made the sparks fly; and through the din and the flicker no further words came. Cosmo’s imagination filled up the ideal. The image of Mary of Melmar rose angel-like out of the boy’s stimulated fancy, and there was not even a single glimmer of the grotesque light of this scene to diminish the romantic halo which rose around his father’s first love.
“As for me, if you think the like of me presumed in lifting his e’en,” said Jaacob, “I’ll warn you to change your ideas, my man, without delay; a’ that auld trash canna stand the dint of good discussion and opinion in days like these. Speak about your glorious revolutions! I tell you, callant, we’re on the eve of the real glorious revolution, the time when every man shall have respect for his neighbors—save when his neighbor’s a fool; nane o’ your oligarchies for a free country; we’re men, and we’ll have our birthright; and do you think I’m heeding what a coof’s ancestors were, when I ken I’m worth twa o’ him—ay, or ten o’ him!—as a’ your bits o’ lords and gentlemen will find as soon as we’ve The Bill.”
“An honorable ancestor is an honor to any man,” said Cosmo, firing with the pride of birth. “I would not take the half of the county, if it was offered me, in place of the old castle at Norlaw.”
“Well,” said Jaacob, with a softening glance, “it’s no’ an ill sentiment that, I’ll allow, so far as the auld castle gangs; but ony man that thinks he’s of better flesh and bluid than me, no’ to say intellect and spirit, on the strength of four old wa’s, or the old rascals that thieved in them—I’ll tell ye, Cosmo, my lad, I think he’s a fool, and that’s just the short and the long o’ the affair.”
“Better flesh and blood, or better intellect and spirit!” said the boy, with a half-meditative, half-mirthful smile. “Homer was a beggar, and so was Belisarius, and so was Blind Harry, of Wallace’s time.”
This highly characteristic, school-boyish, and national confusion of heroes, moved the blacksmith-philosopher with no sensation of the absurd. Homer and Blind Harry were by no means unfit companions in the patriotic conception of bowed Jaacob, who, nevertheless, knew Pope’s Homer very tolerably, and was by no means ignorant of the pretensions of the “blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle.”
“A feesical disqualification, Cosmo, is quite a different matter,” said Jaacob; “nae man could make greater allowance for the like of that than me, that might have been supposed at one time to be on the verge of it mysel’.”
And as he spoke, his one bright eye twinkled in Jaacob’s head with positive scintillations, as if Nature had endowed it with double power to make up for its solitude.
“The like of Homer and Blind Harry, however, belong to a primitive age,” said Jaacob; “the minstrel crew were aye vagrants—no’ to say it was little better than a kind of a servile occupation at the best, praises of the great. But the world’s wiser by this time. I would not say I would make the Bill final, mysel’, but let’s aince get it, laddie, and ye’ll see a change. We’ll hae nae mair o’ your lordlings in the high places—we’ll hae naething but men.”
“Did you ever hear any thing, Jacob,” said Cosmo, somewhat abruptly—for the romantic story of his kinswoman was more attractive to the boy’s mind than politics—“of where the young lady of Me’mar went to, or who it was she married? I suppose not, since she was searched for so long.”
“No man ever speered at me before, so far as I can mind,” said Jaacob, with a little bitterness; “your father behoved to manage the haill business himsel’, and he was na great hand. I’m no’ fond of writers when folk can do without them, but they’re of a certain use, nae doubt, like a’ other vermin; a sharp ane o’ them would have found Mary Huntley, ye may take my word for that. I was aince in France mysel’.”
“In France?” cried Cosmo, with, undeniable respect and excitement.
“Ay, just that,” said Jaacob, dryly; “it’s nae such great thing, though folk make a speech about it. I wasna far inower. I was at a bit seaport place on the coast; Dieppe they ca’ it, and deep it was to an innocent lad like what I was at the time—though I could haud my ain with maist men, both then and at this day.”
“And you saw there?"—cried Cosmo, who became very much interested.
“Plenty of fools,” said Jaacob, “and every wean in the streets jabbering French, which took me mair aback than onything else I heard or saw; but there was ae day a lady passed me by. I didna see her face at first, but I saw the bairn she had in her hand, and I thought to mysel’ I could not but ken the foot, that had a ring upon the path like siller bells. I gaed round about, and round about, till I met her in the face, but whether it was her or no I canna tell; I stood straight afore her in the midroad, and she passed me by with a glance, as if she kent nae me.”
The tone in which the little hunchback uttered these words was one of indescribable yet suppressed bitterness. He was too proud to acknowledge his mortification; yet it was clear enough, even to Cosmo, that this pride had not only prevented him from mentioning his chance meeting at the proper time, but that even now he would willingly persuade himself that the ungrateful beauty, who did not recognize him, could not be the lady of his visionary admiration.
“Do you think it was the Lady of Melmar?” asked the boy, anxiously, for Jaacob’s “feelings,” though they had no small force of human emotion in them, were, for the moment, rather a secondary matter to Cosmo.
“If it had been her, she would have kent me,” said Vulcan, with emphasis, and he turned to his hammering with vehemence doubly emphatic. Jaacob had no inclination to be convinced that Mary of Melmar might forget him, who remembered her so well. He returned to the Bill, which was more or less in most people’s thoughts in those days, and which was by no means generally uninteresting to Cosmo—but the boy’s thoughts were too much excited to be amused by Jaacob’s politics; and Cosmo went home with visions in his mind of the quaint little Norman town, where Mary of Melmar had been seen by actual vision, and which henceforth became a region of dreams and fancy to her young knight and champion, who meant to seek her over all the world.