CHAPTER XXXVII
The pace of events began to quicken with Cosmo. When he encountered his fellow-lodger in the evening, he found that Cameron had been permitting his temptation to gain more and more ground upon him. The Highlander, humbly born and cottage bred as he was, and till very recently bounded by the straitest prospects as to the future, had still a deep reserve of imaginative feeling, far away down where no one could get at it—under the deposit left by the slow toil and vulgar privations of many years. Unconsciously to himself, the presence and society of Cosmo Livingstone had recalled his own boyhood to the laboring man, in the midst of that sweat of his brow in which he ate his scanty bread in the Edinburgh garret. Where was there ever boyhood which had not visions of adventure and dreams of strange countries? All that last winter, through which his boy companion stole into his heart, recollections used to come suddenly upon the uncommunicating Highlander of hours and fancies in his own life, which he supposed he had long ago forgotten—hours among his own hills, herding sheep, when he lay looking up at the skies, and entranced by the heroic lore with which he was most familiar, thinking of David’s well at Bethlehem, and the wine-press where Gideon thrashed his wheat, and the desert waters where Moses led his people, and of all the glorious unknown world beside, through which his path must lie to the Holy Land. Want, and labor, and the steady, desperate aim, with which he pushed through every obstacle towards the one goal of his ambition, had obscured these visions in his mind, but Cosmo’s fresh boyhood woke them by degrees, and the unusual and unexpected proposal lately made to him, had thrilled the cooled blood in Cameron’s veins as he did not suppose it could be thrilled. Ease, luxury (to him), and gratification in the meantime, with a reserve fund great enough to carry him through a session without any extra labor. Why did he hesitate? He hesitated simply because it might put off for six months—possibly for a year—the accomplishment of his own studies and the gaining of that end, which was not a certain living, however humble, but merely a license to preach, and his chance with a hundred others of a presentation to some poor rural parish, or a call from some chapel of ease. But he did hesitate long and painfully. He feared, in his austere self-judgment, to prefer his own pleasure to the work of God, and it was only when his boy-favorite came back again and threw all his fervid youthful influence into the scale, that Nature triumphed with Cameron, and that he began to permit himself to remember that, toilworn as he was, he was still young, and that the six months’ holiday might, after all, be well expended. The very morning after Cosmo’s arrival, after lying awake thinking of it half the night, he had gone to the father of his would-be-pupil to explain the condition on which he would accept the charge, which was, that Cosmo might be permitted to join the little party. Cameron’s patron was a Highlander, like himself—obstinate, one-sided, and imperious. He did not refuse the application. He only issued instant orders that Cosmo should be presented to him without delay, that he might judge of his fitness as a traveling companion—and Cameron left him, pledged, if his decision should be favorable, to accept the office.
The next day was a great day in Edinburgh—an almost universal holiday, full of flags, processions, and all manner of political rejoicings—the Reform Jubilee. Cosmo plunged into the midst of it with all the zeal of a young politician and all the zest of a school-boy, and was whirled about by the crowd through all its moods and phases, through the heat, and the dust, and the sunshine, through the shouts and groans, the applauses and the denunciations, to his heart’s content. He came in breathless somewhere about midday, as he supposed, though in reality it was late in the afternoon, to snatch a hurried morsel of the dinner which Mrs. Purdie had vainly endeavored to keep warm for him, and to leave a message for Cameron to be ready for him in the evening, to go out and see the illumination. When Cosmo reappeared again, flushed, tired, excited, yet perfectly ready to begin once more, it was already darkening towards night. Cameron was ready, and the boy was not to be persuaded to lose the night and “the fun,” which already began to look rather like mischief. The two companions, so unlike each other, made haste to the Calton Hill, where a great many people had already preceded them. Oh, dwellers on the plains! oh, cockney citizens!—spite of your gas stars and your transparencies—your royal initials and festoons of lamps, don’t suppose that you know any thing about an illumination; you should have seen the lines of light stealing from slope to slope along the rugged glory of that antique Edinburgh—the irregular gleams descending into the valley, the golden threads, here and there broken, that intersected the regular lines of the new town. Yonder tall houses, seven stories high, where every man is a Reformer, and where the lights come out in every window, star by star, in a flicker and glow, as if the very weakness of those humble candles gave them the animation and humanness of a breathing triumph—swelling higher towards the dark Castle, over whose unlighted head the little moon looks down, a serene spectator of all this human flutter and commotion—undulating down in rugged breaks towards lowly Holyrood, sometimes only a thin line visible beneath the roof—sometimes a whole house aglow. The people went and came, in excited groups, upon the fragrant grass of the Calton Hill; sometimes turning to the other side of the landscape, to see the more sparely lighted streets of gentility, or the independent little sparkle which stout little Leith in the distance threw out upon the Firth—but always returning with unfailing fascination to this scene of magic—the old town shining with its lamps and jewels, like a city in a dream.
But it was not destined to be a perfectly calm summer evening’s spectacle. The hum of the full streets grew riotous even to the spectators on the hill. Voices rose above the hum, louder than peaceful voices ever rise. The triumph was a popular triumph, and like every other such, had its attendant mob of mischief. Shouts of rising clamor and a noise of rushing footsteps ran through the busy streets—then came a sharp rattle and peal like a discharge of musketry. What was it? The crowd on the hill poured down the descent, in fright, in excitement, in precaution—some into the mischief, some eager to escape out of it. “It’s the sodgers,” “it’s the police,” “it’s the Tories,” shouted the chorus of the crowd—one suggestion after another raising the fury of some and the terror of others; again a rattling, dropping, continued report—one after another, with rushes of the crowd between, and perpetual changes of locality in the sound, which at last indicated its nature beyond mistake. It was no interference of authority—no firing of “the sodgers.” It was a sound less tragic, yet full of mischief—the crash of unilluminated windows, the bloodless yet violent revenge of the excited mob.
The sound—the swell—the clamor—the tramp of feet—the shouts—the reiterated volleys, now here, now there, in constant change and progress, the silent flicker and glow of the now neglected lights, the hasty new ones thrust into exposed windows, telling their story of sudden alarm and reluctance, and above all the pale, serene sky, against which the bold outline of Arthur’s Seat stood out as clear as in the daylight, and the calm, unimpassioned shining of the little moon, catching the windows of the Castle and church beneath with a glimmer of silver, made altogether a scene of the most singular excitement and impressiveness. But Cosmo Livingstone had forgotten that he was a poet—he was only a boy—a desperate, red-hot Radical—a friend of the people. Despite all Cameron’s efforts, the boy dragged him into the crowd, and hurried him along to the scene of action. The rioters by this time were spreading everywhere, out of the greater streets into the calm of the highest respectability, where not one window in a dozen was lighted, and where many had closed their shutters in defiance—far to the west in the moonlight, where the illuminations of the old town were invisible, and where wealth and conservatism dwelt together. Breathless, yet dragging his grave companion after him, Cosmo rushed along one of the dimmest and stateliest of these streets. The lad leaped back again into the heart of a momentary fancy, which was already old and forgotten, though it had been extremely interesting a month ago. He cried “Desirée!” to himself, as he rushed in the wake of the rioters through Moray Place. He did not know which was the house, yet followed vaguely with an instinct of defense and protection. In one of the houses some women appeared, timidly putting forward candles in the highest line of windows; perhaps out of exasperation at this cowardice, perhaps from mere accident, some one among the crowd discharged a volley of stones against one of the lower range. There was a moment’s pause, and it remained doubtful whether this lead was to be followed, when suddenly the door of the house was thrown open, and a girl appeared upon the threshold, distinctly visible against the strong light from the hall. Though Cosmo sprang forward with a bound, he could not hear what she said, but she rushed down on the broad step, and made a vehement address to the rioters, with lively motions of her hands, and a voice that pierced through their rough voices like a note of music. This lasted only a moment; in another the door had closed behind her with a loud echo, and all was dark again. Where was she? Cosmo pushed through the crowd in violent excitement, thrusting them away on every side with double strength. Yes, there she stood upon the step, indignant, vehement, with her little white hands clasped together, and her eyes flashing, from the rioters before her to the closed door behind.
“You English!—you are cowards!” cried the violent little heroine; “you do not fight like men, with balls and swords—you throw pebbles, like children—you wound women—and when one dares to go to speak to the madmen, she is shut out into the crowd!”
“We’re no’ English, missie, and naebody meant to hurt you; chap at the door for her, yin o’ you lads—and let the poor thing alone—she’s a very good spirit of her ain. I’m saying, open the door,” cried one of the rioters, changing his soothing tone to a loud demand, as he shook the closed door violently. By this time Cosmo was by the little Frenchwoman’s side.
“I know her,” cried Cosmo, “they’ll open when you’re past—pass on—it’s a school—a housefull of women—do you mean to say you would break a lady’s windows that has nothing to do with it?—pass on!—is that sense, or honor, or courage? is that a credit to the Bill, or to the country? I’ll take care of the young lady. Do you not see they think you robbers, or worse? They’ll not open till you pass on.”
“He’s in the right of it there—what are ye a’ waiting for?” cried some one in advance. The throng moved on, leaving a single group about the door, but this little incident was enough to damp them. Moray Place escaped with much less sacrifice of glass and temper than might have been looked for—while poor little Desirée, subsiding out of her passion, leaned against the pillar of the inhospitable door, crying bitterly, and sobbing little exclamations of despair in her own tongue, which sounded sweet to Cosmo’s ear, though he did not know what they were.
“Mademoiselle Desirée, don’t be afraid,” cried the boy, blushing in the dark. “I saw you once with Joanna Huntley—I’m a friend. Nobody will meddle with you. When they see these fellows gone, they’ll open the door.”
“And I despise them!” cried Desirée, suddenly suspending her crying; “they will shut me out in the crowd for fear of themselves. I despise them! and see here!”
A stone had struck her on the temple; it was no great wound, but Desirée was shocked and excited, and in a heroic mood.
“And they will leave me here,” cried the little Frenchwoman, pathetically, with renewed tears; “though it is my mother’s country, and I meant to love it, they shut me out among strangers, and no one cares. Ah, they would not do so in France! there they do not throw stones at women—they kill men!”
Cosmo was horrified by the blow, and deeply impressed by the heroics. The boy blushed with the utmost shame for his townsmen and co-politicians. He thought the girl a little Joan of Arc affronted by a mob.
“But it was accident; and every man would be overpowered with shame,” cried Cosmo, while meanwhile Cameron, who had followed him, knocked soberly and without speaking, at the door.
After a little interval, the door was opened by the mistress of the school, a lady of grave age and still graver looks; a couple of women-servants in the hall were defending themselves eagerly.
“I was up stairs, and never heard a word of it, mum,” said one. “Eh, it wasna me!” cried another; “the French Miss flew out upon the steps, and the door just clashed behind her; it was naebody’s blame but her ain.”
In the midst of these self-exculpatory addresses, the mistress of the house held the door open.
“Come in, Mademoiselle Desirée,” she said gravely.
The excited little Frenchwoman was not disposed to yield so quietly.
“Madame, I have been wounded, I have been shut out, I have been left alone in the crowd!” cried Desirée; “I demand of you to do me justice—see, I bleed! One of the vauriens struck me through the window with a stone, and the door has been closed upon me. I have stood before all the crowd alone!”
“I am sorry for it, my dear,” said the lady, coldly; “come in—you ought never to have gone to the door, or exposed yourself; young ladies do not do so in this country. Pray come in, Mademoiselle Desirée. I am sorry you are hurt—and, gentlemen, we are much obliged to you—good night.”
For the girl, half-reluctantly, half-indignantly, had obeyed her superior, and the door was calmly closed in the faces of Cosmo and Cameron, who stood together on the steps. Cosmo was highly incensed and wrathful. He could have had the heart to plunge into that cold, proper, lighted hall, to snatch the little heroine forth, and carry her off like a knight of romance.
“Do you hear how that woman speaks to her?” he cried, indignantly.
Cameron grasped his arm and drew him away.
“She’s French!” said the elder man, laconically, and without any enthusiasm; “and not to anger you, Cosmo, the lady is perfectly right.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Cosmo went home that evening much excited by his night’s adventures. Mrs. Payne, of Moray Place, was an ogre in the boy’s eyes, the Giantess Despair, holding bewitched princesses in vile durance and subjection—and Desirée, with the red mark upon her pretty forehead, with her little white hands clasped together, and her black eyes sparkling, was nothing less than a heroine. Cosmo could not forget the pretty attitude, the face glowing with resentment and girlish boldness; nor the cold gravity of the voice which bade her enter, and the unsympathetic disapproval in the lady’s face. He could not rest for thinking of it when he got home. In his new feeling of importance and influence as a person privileged to address the public, his first idea was to call upon Mrs. Payne in the morning, by way of protector to Desirée, to explain how the whole matter occurred; but on further thoughts Cosmo resolved to write a very grave and serious letter on the subject, vindicating the girl, and pointing out, in a benevolent way, the danger of repressing her high spirit harshly.
As soon as he was alone, he set about carrying out this idea in an epistle worthy the pages of the Auld Reekie Magazine, and written with a solemn authority which would have become an adviser of eighty instead of eighteen. He wrote it out in his best hand, put it up carefully, and resolved to leave it himself in the morning, lest the post (letters were dear in those days) might miscarry with so important a document. But Cosmo, who was much worn out, slept late in the morning, so late that Cameron came into his room, and saw the letter before he was up. It excited the curiosity of the Highlander, and Cosmo, somewhat shyly, admitted him to the privilege of reading it. It proved too much, however, for the gravity of his friend; and, vexed and ashamed at last, though by no means convinced the lad tore it in bits, and threw it into the fire-place. Cameron kept him occupied all day, breaking out, nevertheless, into secret chuckles of amusement now and then, which it was very difficult to find a due occasion for; and Cosmo was not even left to himself long enough to pass the door of the house in Moray Place, or to ask after the “wound” of his little heroine. He did the only thing which remained possible to him, he made the incident into a copy of verses, which he sent to the North British Courant, and which duly appeared in that enlightened newspaper—though whether it ever reached the eyes of Desirée, or touched the conscience of the schoolmistress by those allusions which, though delicately vailed, were still, Cosmo flattered himself, perfectly unmistakable by the chief actors in the scene, the boy could not tell.
These days of holiday flew, however, as holidays will fly. Cameron’s Highland patron had Cosmo introduced to him, and consented that his son should travel in the company of the son of “Mrs. Livingstone, of Norlaw,” and the lad went home, full of plans for his journey, to which the Mistress as yet had given only a very vague and general consent, and of which she scarcely still understood the necessity. When Cosmo came home, he had the mid-chamber allotted to him as a study, and went to work with devotion. The difficulty was rather how to choose between the narrative in ballad verse, the spirited dramatic sketch, and the historical tale, than how to execute them, for Cosmo had that facility of language, and even of idea, which many very youthful people, with a “literary turn,” (they were very much less common in those days) often possess, to the half-amusement, half-admiration of their seniors and their own intense confusion in maturer days. Literature was not then what it is now, the common resource of most well-educated young men, who do not know what else to do with themselves. It was still a rare glory in that rural district where the mantle of Sir Walter lay only over the great novelist’s grave, and had descended upon nobody’s shoulders; and as Cosmo went on with his venture, the Mistress, glowing with mother-pride and ambition, hearing the little bits of the “sketch"—eighteen is always dramatical—which seemed, to her loving ears, melodious, and noble, and life-like, almost above comparison, became perfectly willing to consent to any thing which was likely to perfect this gift of magic. “Though I canna weel see what better they could have,” she said to herself, as she went down from Cosmo’s study, wiping her eyes. Cosmo’s muse had sprung, fully equipped, like Minerva, into a glorious existence—at least, so his mother, and so, too, if he had permitted himself to know his own sentiments—perhaps also Cosmo thought.
The arrangement was concluded, at last, on the completion of Cosmo’s article. Cameron and his young pupil were to start in August; and the Mistress herself went into Edinburgh to buy her boy-author the handiest of portmanteaus, and every thing else which her limited experience thought needful for him; the whole country-side heard of his intended travels, and was stirred with wonder and no small amount of derision. The farmers’ wives wondered what the world was coming to, and their husbands shook their heads over the folly of the widow, who would ruin her son for work all his days. The news was soon carried to Melmar, where Mr. Huntley by no means liked to hear it, where Patricia turned up her little nose with disgust, and where Joanna wished loudly that she was going too, and announced her determination to intrust Cosmo with a letter to Oswald. Even in the manse, the intelligence created a little ferment. Dr. Logan connected it vaguely—he could not quite tell how—with the “Bill,” which the excellent minister feared would revolutionize every thing throughout the country, and confound all the ranks and degrees of social life; and shook his head over the idea of Cosmo Livingstone, who had only been one session at college, and was but eighteen, writing in a magazine.
“Depend upon it, Katie, my dear, it’s an unnatural state of things,” said the Doctor, whose literature was the literature of the previous century, and who thought Cosmo’s pretensions unsafe for the stability of the country.
And sensible Katie, though she smiled, felt still a little doubtful herself, and, in her secret heart, thought of Huntley gone away to labor at the other end of the world, while his boy-brother tasted the sweets of luxury and idleness in an indulgence so unusual to his station.
“Poor Huntley!” said Katie to herself, with a gentle recollection of that last scene in the manse parlor, when she mended her children’s stockings and smiled at the young emigrant, as he wondered what changes there might be there when he came back. Katie put up her hand very softly to her eyes, and stood a long time in the garden looking down the brae into the village—perhaps only looking at little Colin, who was visible amid some cottage boys on the green bank of Tyne—perhaps thinking of Cosmo, who was going “to the Continent,"—perhaps traveling still further in her thoughts, over a big solitary sea; but Katie said “nothing to nobody,” and was as blythe and busy in the manse parlor when the minister rejoined her, as though she had not entered with a little sigh.
All this time Cosmo never said a word to his mother of Mary of Melmar; but he leaped up into the old window of the castle every evening to dream his dream, and a hundred times, in fancy, saw a visionary figure, pale, and lovely, and tender, coming home with him to claim her own. He, too, looked over the woods of Melmar as his brother had done, but with feelings very different—for no impulse of acquisition quickened in the breast of Cosmo. He thought of them as the burden of a romance, the chorus of a ballad—the inheritance to which the long lost Mary must return; and while the Mistress stocked his new portmanteau, and made ready his traveling wardrobe, the lad was hunting everywhere with ungrateful pertinacity for scraps of information to guide him in this search which his mother had not the most distant idea was the real motive of his journey. If she had known it, scarcely even the discovery of her husband’s longing after his lost love could have affected the Mistress with more overpowering bitterness and disgust. Marget shut the door when Cosmo came to question her on the subject, and made a vehement address to him under her breath.
“Seek her, if you please,” said Marget, in a violent whisper; “but if your mother ever kens this—sending out her son into the world with a’ this pride and pains for her sake—I’d rather the auld castle fell on our heads, Cosmo Livingstone, and crushed every ane of us under a different stane!”
“Hush, Marget! my mother is not unjust,” said Cosmo, with some displeasure.
“She’s no’ unjust; but she’ll no’ be second to a stranger woman that has been the vexation of her life,” said Marget, “spier where you like, laddie. Ye dinna ken, the like of you, how things sink into folks’ hearts, and bide for years. I ken naething about Mary of Melmar—neither her married name nor naught else—spier where ye like, but dinna spier at me.”
But it did not make very much matter where Cosmo made inquiry. Never was disappearance more entire and complete than that of Mary of Melmar. He gathered various vague descriptions of her, not quite so poetical in sentiment as Jaacob’s, but quite as confusing. She was “a great toast among a’ the lads, and the bonniest woman in the country-side"—she was “as sweet as a May morning"—she was “neither big nor little, but just the best woman’s size"—she was, in short, every thing that was pretty, indefinite, and perplexing. And with no clue but this, Cosmo set out, on a windy August morning, on his travels, to improve his mind, and write for the Auld Reekie Magazine, as his mother thought—and to seek for the lost heir of the Huntleys, as he himself and the Laird of Melmar knew.