CHAPTER L
The sunset glory of this January evening still shone over the tops of the trees upon the high bank of Tyne, leaving a red illumination among the winter clouds; but low upon the path the evening was gathering darkly and chilly, settling down upon the ice-cold branches, which pricked the hasty passenger like thorns, in the black dryness of the frost. The Kelpie itself was scarcely recognizable in the torpid and tiny stream which trickled down its little ravine; only the sharp sound of its monotone in the tingling air made you aware of its vicinity; and frozen Tyne no longer added his voice to make the silence musical. The silence was dry, hard, and harsh, the sounds were shrill, the air cut like a knife. No creature that could find shelter was out of doors; yet poor little Desirée, vehement, willful, and passionate, with her cloak over her shoulders, and her pretty uncovered head, exposed to all the chill of the unkindly air, went rushing out, with her light foot and little fairy figure, straight as an arrow over Tyne, and came up the frozen path, into the wood and the night.
One side of her face was still scorched and crimsoned with the fervor of Aunt Jean’s fire, before which she had been bending; the other, in comparison, was already chilled and white. She ran along up the icy, chilly road, with the night-wind cutting her delicate little ears, and her rapid footsteps sliding upon the knots of roots in the path, straight up to that height where the Kelpie trickled, and the last red cloud melted into gray behind the trees. The dubious, failing twilight was wan among those branches, where never a bird stirred. There was not a sound of life anywhere, save in the metallic tinkle of that drowsing waterfall. Desirée rushed through the silence and the darkness, and threw herself down upon the hard path, on one of the hard knots, beneath a tree. She was not sorry, in her passionate abandon, to feel the air prick her cheek, to see the darkness closing over her, to know that the cold pierced to the bone, and that she was almost unprotected from its rigor. All this desolation was in keeping with the tumult which moved the willful heart of the little stranger. The prick of the wind neutralized somewhat the fiery prick in her heart.
Poor little Desirée! She had, indeed, enough to think of—from her morning’s flush of happiness and dawning love to plunge into a cold profound of treachery, deceit, and falsehood like that which gaped at her feet, ready to swallow her up. For the moment it was anger alone, passionate and vivid as her nature, which burned within her. She, frank, child-like, and unsuspicious, had been degraded by a pretended love, a false friendship; had been warned, “for her own sake,” by the treacherous host whom Desirée hated, in her passion, to say nothing of her descent or of her mother. For her own sake! and not a syllable of acknowledgment to confess how well the wily schemer knew who that mother was. Yet, alas, if that had but been all!—if there had been nothing to do but to confound Melmar, to renounce Joanna, to shake off the dust of her indignant feet against the house where they would have kept her in bondage!—if that had but been all! But Desirée clenched her little hands with a pang of angry and bitter resentment far more overpowering. To think that she should have been insulted with a false love! Bitter shame, quick, passionate anger, even the impulse of revenge, came like a flood over the breast of the girl, as she sat shivering with cold and passion at the foot of that tree, with the dark winter night closing over her. She could almost fancy she saw the curl of Oswald Huntley’s lip as he heard to-day, on this very spot, that she had a sister; she could almost suppose, if he stood there now, that she had both strength and will to thrust him through the rustling bushes down to the crackling, frozen Tyne, to sink like a stone beneath the ice, which was less treacherous than himself. Poor little desolate, solitary stranger! She sat in the darkness and the cold, with the tears freezing in her eyes, but passion burning in her heart; she cried aloud in the silence with an irrepressible cry of fury and anguish—the voice of a young savage, the uncontrolled, unrestrained, absolute violence of a child. She was half crazed with the sudden downfall, the sudden injury; she could think of nothing but the sin that had been done against her, the vengeance, sharp and sudden as her passion, which she would inflict if she could.
But as poor little Desirée crouched beneath the tree, not even the vehemence of her resentment could preserve her from the influences of Nature. Her little feet seemed frozen to the path; her hands were numb and powerless, and ice-cold as the frozen water beneath. The chill stole to her heart with a sickening faintness, then a gradual languor crept over her passion; by degrees she felt nothing but the cold, the sharp rustle of the branches, the chill gloom of the night, the harsh wind that blew in at her uncovered ears. Her hair fell down on her neck, and her fingers were too powerless to put it up. She had no heart to return to the house from which she fled in so violent an excess of insulted feeling—it almost seemed that she had no place in the world to go to, poor child, but this desolate winter woodland, which in its summer beauty she had associated with her mother. The night blinded her, and so did the growing sickness of extreme cold. Another moment, and poor little Desirée sank against the tree, passionless and fainting—the last thought in her heart a low outcry for her mother, who was hundreds of miles away and could not hear.
The cold was still growing sharper and keener as the last glimmer of daylight faded out of the skies. She might have slid down into the frozen Tyne, as she had imagined her enemy, or she might have perished in her favorite path, in the cold which was as sharp as an Arctic frost. But Providence does not desert those poor, suffering, wicked children who fly to death’s door at the impulse of passion as Desirée did. A laborer, hastening home by the footpath through the Melmar woods, wandered out of his way, by chance, and stumbled over the poor little figure lying in the path. When the man had got over his first alarm, he lifted her up and carried her like a child—she was not much more—to Melmar, where he went to the side door and brought her in among the servants to that great kitchen, which was the most cheerful apartment in the house. The maids were kind-hearted, and liked the poor little governess—they chafed her hands and bathed her feet, and wrapped her in blankets, and, at last, brought Desirée to her senses. When she came alive again, the poor, naughty child looked round her bewildered, and did not know where she was—the place was strange to her—and it looked so bright and homely that Desirée’s poor little heart was touched by a vague contrasting sense of misery.
“I should like to go to bed,” she said, sadly, turning her face away from the light to a kind housemaid, who stood by her, and who could not tell what ailed “the French miss,” whom all the servants had thought rather too well-used of late days, and whose look of misery seemed unaccountable.
“Eh, Missie, but ye maun wait until the fire’s kindled,” said the maid.
Desirée did not want a fire—she had no desire to be comforted and warmed, and made comfortable—she would almost rather have crept out again into the cold and the night. Notwithstanding, they carried her up stairs carefully, liking the stranger all the better for being sad and in trouble and dependent on them—and undressed her like a child, and laid her in bed in her little room, warm with firelight, and looking bright with comfort and kindness. Then the pretty housemaid, whom Patricia exercised her tempers on, brought Desirée a warm drink and exhorted her to go to sleep.
“What made ye rin out into the cauld night, Missie, without a thing on your head,” said Jenny Shaw, compassionately; “but lie still and keep yoursel’ warm—naebody kens yet but us in the kitchen, or Miss Joan would be here; but I thought you would like best to be quiet, and it would do you mair good.”
“Oh, dear Jenny, don’t let any one know—don’t tell them—promise!” cried Desirée, half starting from her bed.
The maid did not know what to make of it, but she promised, to compose the poor little sufferer; and so Desirée was left by herself in the little room, with the warm fire light flickering about the walls, and her little hands and feet, which had been so cold, burning and prickling with a feverish heat, her limbs aching, her thoughts wandering, her heart lost in an ineffable, unspeakable melancholy. She could not return to her passion, to the bitter hurry and tumult of resentful fancies which had occupied her out of doors. She lay thinking, trying to think, vainly endeavoring to confine the wandering crowd of thoughts, which made her head ache, and which seemed to float over every subject under heaven. She tried to say her prayers, poor child, but lost them in an incoherent mist of fancy. She fell asleep, and awoke in a few minutes, thinking she had slept for hours—worse than that, she fell half asleep into a painful drowse, where waking thoughts and dreams mingled with and confused each other. Years of silence and unendurable solitude seemed to pass over her before Jenny Shaw came up stairs again to ask her how she was, and the last thing clear in Desirée’s remembrance was that Jenny promised once more not to tell any one. Desirée did not know that the good-hearted Jenny half slept, half watched in her room all that night. The poor child knew nothing next day but that her limbs ached, and her head burned, and that a dull sense of pain was at her heart. She was very ill with all her exposure and suffering—she was ill for some time, making a strange commotion in the house. But no one had any idea of the cause of her illness, save perhaps Aunt Jean, who did not say a word to any one, but trotted about the sick-room, “cheering up” the little sick stranger and finding out her wants with strange skill in spite of her deafness. All the time of Desirée’s illness Aunt Jean took not the slightest notice of Oswald Huntley—she was doubly deaf when he addressed her—she lost even her sharp and lively eyesight when he encountered her on the stair. Aunt Jean did not know what ailed Desirée besides the severe cold and fever which the doctor decided on, but the old woman remembered perfectly at what point of their conversation it was that the little girl rushed from her side and fled out of the house—and she guessed at many things with a keen and lively penetration which came very near the truth. And so Desirée was very ill, and got slowly well again, bringing with her out of her sickness a thing more hard to cure than fever—a sick heart.
CHAPTER LI
While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo Livingstone wandered over classic ground with Cameron and his young pupil, and sent now and then, with modest pride, his contribution to the Auld Reekie Magazine which had now been afloat for four months, and on account of which Mr. Todhunter, in his turn, sent remittances—not remarkably liberal, yet meant to be so, in letters full of a rude, yet honest, vanity, which impressed the lad with great ideas of what the new periodical was to do for the literary world. So far, all was satisfactory with Cosmo. He was very well off also in his companions. Cameron, who had been shy of undertaking a manner of life which was so new to him, and whom all the innkeepers had fleeced unmercifully on the first commencement of their travels—for the very pride which made him starve in his garret at home, out of everybody’s ken, made him, unused and inexperienced as he was, a lavish man abroad, where everybody was looking on, and where the thought of “meanness” troubled his spirit. But by this time, even Cameron had become used to the life of inns and journeys, and was no longer awed by the idea that landlords and waiters would suspect his former poverty, or that his pupil himself might complain of undue restraint. The said pupil, whose name was Macgregor, was good-natured and companionable, without being any thing more. They had been in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Germany. They had all acquired a traveler’s smattering of all the three tongues familiar on their road—they had looked at churches, and pictures, and palaces, till those eyes which were unguided by Murray, and knew just as much, or rather as little, of art, as the bulk of their countrymen at the time, became fairly bewildered, and no longer recollected which was which. They were now in France, in chilly February weather, on their way home. Why they pitched upon this town of St. Ouen for their halt it would have been hard to explain. It was in Normandy, for one reason, and Cosmo felt rather romantically interested in that old cradle of the conquering race. It was within reach of various places, of historic interest. Finally, young Macgregor had picked up somewhere a little archaic lore, which was not a common accomplishment in those days, and St. Ouen was rich in old architecture. Thus they lingered, slow to leave the shores of France, which was not sunny France in that February, but had been the beginning and was about to be the end of their pleasant wandering, and where accordingly they were glad to rest for a little before returning home.
Though, to tell the truth, Cosmo would a great deal rather have tarried on the very edge of the country, at the little sea-port which bowed Jaacob called “Deep,” and where that sentimental giant had seen, or fancied he had seen, the lady of his imagination. Cosmo had enjoyed his holiday heartily, as became his temperament and years, yet he was returning disappointed, and even a little chagrined and ashamed of himself. He had started with the full and strong idea that what his father could not succeed in doing, and what advertisements and legal search had failed in, he himself, by himself, could do—and he was now going home somewhat enlightened as to this first fallacy of youth. He had not succeeded, he had not had the merest gleam or prospect of success; Mary of Melmar was as far off, as totally lost, as though Cosmo Livingstone, who was to be her knight and champion, had never known the story of her wrongs, and Time was gliding away with silent, inevitable rapidity. A year and a half of the precious remaining interval was over. Huntley had been at his solitary work in Australia for nearly a whole year, and Huntley’s heart was bent on returning to claim Melmar, if he could but make money enough to assert his right to it. This Cosmo knew from his brother’s letters, those to himself, and those which his mother forwarded to him (in copy). He loved Huntley, but Cosmo thought he loved honor more—certainly he had more regard for the favorite dream of his own imagination, which was to restore the lost lady to her inheritance. But he had not found her, and now he was going home!
However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the premier étage for Cameron and his pupil, and one au troisième for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common stair-case—where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light, went up the echoing flight above to the mansarde, and made jokes, which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots, standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed, in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner, overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the sunshine. Up in the corner, au troisième, with the next door neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s window—yet it so happened that there was.
Not in the window itself, though that was near enough the clouds—but Cosmo, looking down, looked, as his good fortune was, into another window over the way, a pretty second floor, with white curtains and flowers to garnish it, and sunshine that loved to steal in for half the day. It was a pretty point of itself, with its little stand of early-blooming plants, and its white curtains looped up with ribbon. The plants were but early spring flowers, and did not at all screen the bright little window which Cosmo looked at, as though it had been a picture—and even when the evening lamp was lighted, no jealous blinds were drawn across the cheerful light. The lad was not impertinent nor curious, yet he sat in the dusk sometimes, looking down as into the heart of a little sacred picture. There were only two people ever in the room, and these were ladies, evidently a mother and daughter—one of them an invalid. That there was a sofa near the fire, on which some one nearly always lay—that once or twice in the day this recumbent figure was raised from the couch, and the two together paced slowly through the room—and that, perhaps once a week, a little carriage came to the door to take the sick lady out for a drive, was all that Cosmo knew of the second person in this interesting apartment; and the lad may have been supposed to be sufficiently disinterested in his curiosity, when we say that the only face which he ever fully saw at that bright window was the face of an old lady—a face as old as his mother’s. It was she who watered the flowers and looped the curtains—it was she who worked within their slight shadow, always visible—and it was she who, sometimes looking up and catching his eye, smiled either at or to Cosmo, causing him to retreat precipitately for the moment, yet leaving no glance of reproach on his memory to forbid his return.
Beauty is not a common gift; it is especially rare to the fanciful, young imagination, which is very hard to please, save where it loves. This old lady, however, old though she was, caught Cosmo’s poetic eye with all the glamour, somehow tenderer than if she had been young, of real loveliness. She must have been beautiful in her youth. She had soft, liquid, dark-blue eyes, full of a motherly and tender light now-a-days, and beautiful light-brown hair, in which, at this distance, it was not possible to see the silvery threads. She was tall, with a natural bend in her still pliant form, which Cosmo could not help comparing to the bend of a lily. He said to himself, as he sat at his window, that he had seen many pretty girls, but never any one so beautiful as this old lady. Her sweet eyes of age captivated Cosmo; he was never weary of watching her. He could have looked down upon her for an hour at a time, as she sat working with her white hands, while the sun shone upon her white lace cap, and on the sweet old cheek, with its lovely complexion, which was turned to the window; or when she half disappeared within to minister to the other half visible figure upon the sofa. Cosmo did not like to tell Cameron of his old lady, but he sat many an hour by himself in this little room, to the extreme wonderment of his friend, who supposed it was all for the benefit of the Auld Reekie Magazine, and smiled a little within himself at the lad’s literary enthusiasm. For his part, Cosmo dreamed about his opposite neighbors, and made stories for them in his own secret imagination, wondering if he ever could come to know them, or if he left St. Ouen, whether they were ever likely to meet again. It certainly did not seem probable, and there was no photography in those days to enable Cosmo to take pictures of his beautiful old lady as she sat in the sunshine. He took them on his own mind instead, and he made them into copies of verses, which the beautiful old lady never would see, nor if she saw could read—verses for the Auld Reekie Magazine and the North British Courant.