The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

Then Cosmo went on, in the natural current of his changed thoughts, to think of the present family, the frank and friendly Joanna, the unknown brother whom bowed Jaacob respected as a virtuoso, and who, doubtless, firmly believed himself the heir—the father who, though an enemy, was still a homeborn and familiar countryman. Well, that household must fall suddenly out of prosperity and wealth into ruin—his own must forego at once a well-warranted and honorable hope—all to enrich a family of St. Ouen, who knew neither Melmar nor Scotland, and perhaps scorned them both! And it was all Cosmo’s doing!—a matter deliberately undertaken—a heroical pursuit for which he had quite stepped out of his way! The lad was quite as high-minded, generous, even romantic, in the streets of St. Ouen as he had been in his favorite seat of meditation among the ruins of Norlaw; but somehow, at this moment, when he had just succeeded in his enterprise, he could not manage to raise within his own heart all the elevated sentiments which had inspired it. On the contrary, he went slowly along to his lodgings, where he should have to communicate the news to Cameron, feeling rather crest-fallen and discomfited—not the St. George restoring a disinherited Una, but rather the intermeddler in other men’s matters, who gets no thanks on any hand. To tell Cameron, who had spent the whole fiery torrent of that love which it was his nature to bestow, with a passionate individual fervor, on one person and no more—upon the capricious little French Marie, who could not even listen, to its tale! Cosmo grew bitter in his thoughts as he took down the key of his chamber from the wall in Baptiste’s room and received a little note which the cobbler handed him, and went very softly up stairs. The note was from Madame Roche, but Cosmo was misanthropical, and did not care about it. He thought no longer of Madame Roche—he thought only of Marie, who was to be the real Mary of Melmar, and of poor Cameron heart-broken, and Huntley disappointed, and the French vagabond of a husband, who was sure to come home.

CHAPTER LVII

Cameron was not visible until the evening, when he sent for Cosmo to his own room. The lad obeyed the summons instantly; the room was rather a large one, very barely furnished, without any carpet on the floor, and with no fire in the stove. It was dimly lighted by one candle, which threw the apartment into a general twilight, and made a speck of particular illumination on the table where it stood, and by which sat Cameron, with his pocket-book and Baptiste’s bill before him. He was very pale, and somehow it seemed impossible to see his face otherwise than in profile, where it looked stern, rigid, and immoveable as an old Roman’s; but his manner, if perhaps a little graver, was otherwise exactly as usual. Cosmo was at a loss how to speak to him; he did not even like to look at his friend, who, however, showed no such embarrassment in his own person.

“We go to-morrow, Cosmo,” said Cameron, rather rapidly; “here is Baptiste’s bill to be settled, and some other things. We’ll go over to Dieppe the first thing in the morning—every thing had better be done to night.”

“The first thing in the morning! but I am afraid I—I can not go,” said Cosmo, hesitating a little.

“Why?” Cameron looked up at him imperiously—he was not in a humor to be thwarted.

“Because—not that I don’t wish to go, for I had rather be with you,” said Cosmo—“but because I made a discovery, and a very important one, to-day.”

“Ah?” said Cameron, with a smile and a tone of dreary satire; “this must have been a day for discoveries—what was yours?”

“It was about Madame Roche,” said Cosmo, with hesitation—he was afraid to broach the subject, in his anxiety for his friend, and yet it must be told.

“Just so,” said Cameron, with the same smile; “I knew it must be about Madame Roche—what then? I suppose it is no secret? nothing more than everybody knew?”

“Don’t speak so coldly,” entreated Cosmo, with irrestrainable feeling; “indeed it is something which no one could have dreamed of; Cameron, she is Mary. I never guessed or supposed it until to-day.”

Something like a groan burst from Cameron in spite of himself. “Ay, she’s Mary!” cried the Highlander, with a cry of fierce despair and anguish not to be described, “but laddie, what is that to you?”

They were a world apart as they sat together on either side of that little table, with the pale little light between them—the boy in the awe of his concern and sympathy—the man in the fiery struggle and humiliation of his manhood wrung to the heart. Cosmo did not venture to look up, lest the very glance—the water in his eyes, might irritate the excited mind of his friend. He answered softly, almost humbly, with the deep imaginative respect of youth.

“She is Mary of Melmar, Cameron—the old lady; my father’s kinswoman whom he was—fond of—who ran away to marry a Frenchman—who is the heir of Melmar—Melmar which was to be Huntley’s, if I had not found her. It can not be Huntley’s now; and I must stay behind to complete the discovery I have made.”

Perhaps Cosmo’s tone was not remarkably cheerful; the Highlander looked at him with an impatient and indignant glance.

“Why should it be Huntley’s when it is hers?” he said, almost angrily. “Would you grudge her rights to a helpless woman? you, boy! are even you beguiled when yourself is concerned?”

“You are unjust,” said Cosmo. “I do not hesitate a moment—I have done nothing to make any one doubt me—nor ever will.”

The lad was indignant in proportion to his uneasiness and discomfort in his discovery, but Cameron was not sufficiently at rest himself to see through the natural contradictions of his young companion. He turned away from him with the half-conscious gesture of a sick heart.

“I am unjust—I believe it,” he said, with a strange humility; “lands and silver are but names to me. I am like other folk—I can be liberal with what I have not—ay, more! I can even throw away my own,” continued Cameron, his strong voice trembling between real emotion and a bitter self-sarcasm, “so that nobody should be the better for the waste; that’s my fortune. Your estate will be of use to somebody—take comfort, callant; if you are disappointed, there’s still some benefit in the gift. But ye might give all and no mortal be a gainer—waste, lavish, pour forth every thing ye have, and them the gift was for, if ever they knew, be the worse and not the better! Ay! that’s some men’s portion in this life.”

Cosmo did not venture to say a word—that bitter sense of waste and prodigality, the whole treasure of a man’s heart poured forth in vain, and worse than in vain, startled the lad with a momentary vision of depths into which he could not penetrate. For Cameron was not a boy, struggling with a boy’s passion of disappointment and mortification. He was a strong, tenacious, self-concentrated man. He had made a useless, vain, unprofitable holocaust, which could not give even a moment’s pleasure to the beloved of his imagination, for whom he had designed to do every thing, and the unacceptable gift returned in a bitterness unspeakable upon the giver’s heart. Other emotions, even more heavy and grievous, struggled also within him. His old scruples against leaving his garret and studies, his old feelings of guilt in deferring voluntarily, for his own pleasure and comfort, the beginning of his chosen “work,” came back upon his silent Celtic soul in a torrent of remorse and compunction, which he could not and would not confide to any one. If he had not forsaken the labors to which God had called him, could he have been left to cast his own heart away after this desperate and useless fashion? With these thoughts his fiery spirit consumed itself. Bitter at all times must be the revulsion of love which is in vain, but this was bitterer than bitterness—a useless, unlovely, unprofitable sacrifice, producing nothing save humiliation and shame.

“I see, Cosmo,” he said, after a little pause, “I see that you can not leave St. Ouen to-morrow. Do your duty. You were fain to find her, and you have found her. It might be but a boy’s impulse of generosity, and it may bring some disappointment with it; but it’s right, my lad! and it’s something to succeed in what you attempt, even though you do get a dinnle thereby in some corner of your own heart. Never fear for Huntley—if he’s such as you say, the inheritance of the widow would be sacred to your brother. Now, laddie, fare you well. I’m going back to my duty that I have forsaken. Henceforth you’re too tender a companion for the like of me. I’ve lost—time, and such matters that you have and to spare; you and I are on different levels, Cosmo; and now, my boy, fare ye well.”

“Farewell? you don’t blame me, Cameron?” cried Cosmo, scarcely knowing what he said.

“Blame you—for what?” said the other, harshly, and with a momentary haughtiness; then he rose and laid his hand with an extreme and touching kindness, which was almost tender, upon Cosmo’s shoulder. “You’ve been like my youth to me, laddie,” said the Highlandman; “like a morning’s dew in the midst of drouth; when I say fare ye well I mean not to say that we’re parted; but I must not mint any more at the pathways of your life—mine is among the rocks, and in the teeth of the wind. I have no footing by nature among your primroses. That is why I say—not to-morrow in the daylight, and the eyes of strangers, but now when you and me and this night are by ourselves—fare ye well, laddie! We’re ever friends, but we’re no more comrades—that is what I mean.”

“And that is hard, Cameron, to me,” said Cosmo, whose eyes were full.

Cameron made no answer at all to the boy; he went to the door of the dim room with him, wrung his hand, and said, “Good night!” Then, while the lad went sadly up the noisy stair-case, the man turned back to his twilight apartment, bare and solitary, where there was nothing familiar and belonging to himself, save his pocket-book and passport upon the table, and Baptiste’s bill. He smiled as he took that up, and began to count out the money for its payment; vulgar, needful business, the very elements of daily necessity—these are the best immediate styptics for thrusts in the heart.

Cosmo, to whom nothing had happened, went to his apartment perhaps more restlessly miserable than Cameron, thinking over all his friend’s words, and aggravating in imagination the sadness of their meaning. The lad did not care to read, much less to obey the call of Madame Roche’s pretty note, which bade him come and tell her further what his morning’s communication meant. For this night, at least, he was sick of Madame Roche, and every thing connected with her name.

CHAPTER LVIII

The morning brought feelings a little more endurable, yet still, very far from pleasant. Very early, while it was still dark, Cosmo saw his companions set off on their journey home, and was left to the cold dismal consciousness of a solitary day just beginning, as he watched the lights put out, and the chill gray dawn stealing over the high houses. The first ray of sunshine glimmered upon the attic windows and burned red in the vane over the dwelling-place of Madame Roche. This gleam recalled the lad’s imagination from a musing fit of vague depression and uneasiness. He must now think no more of Cameron—no more of those strange breakings off and partings which are in life. On the contrary, his old caprice of boyish generosity laid upon him now the claim of an urgent—almost an irksome—duty, and he, who went upon his travels to seek Mary of Melmar with all the fervor of a knight-errant, turned upon his heel this cold spring dawn with an inexpressible reluctance and impatience, to go to her, in obedience to her own summons. He would rather have been with Cameron in his silent and rapid journey—but his duty was here.

When Cosmo went to Madame Roche, which he did at as early an hour as he thought decorous, he found her alone, waiting for him. She came forward to receive him with rather an anxious welcome. “I almost feared you were gone,” said the old lady, with a smile which was less tranquil than usual. “When I saw your friends go, I said to myself, this boy is but a fairy messenger, who tells of a strange hope, and then is gone and one hears no more of it. I am glad you have not gone away; but your poor friend, he has left us? I thought it best, my child, to say nothing to Marie.”

Cosmo’s heart swelled a little in spite of himself; he could not bear the idea of the two women gossiping together over his friend’s heart-break, which was the first thought that occurred to him as Madame Roche spoke, and which, though it was certainly unjust, was still partly justified by the mysterious and compassionate tone in which the old lady mentioned Cameron’s name.

“I am not aware that there is any occasion for saying any thing, madame,” said Cosmo, with a little abruptness. Madame Roche was not remarkably quick-sighted, yet she saw through the lad’s irritation—the least smile in the world came to the corner of her lip. She did not think of the great pang in the Highlander’s heart—she knew very little indeed of Cameron—she only smiled with a momentary amusement at Cosmo’s displeasure, and a momentary sense of womanish triumph over the subjugated creature, man, represented in the person of this departed traveler, who, had just gone sadly away.

“Do not quarrel with me, my child,” she said, her smile subsiding into its usual sweetness; “the fault was not with me; but tell me once more this strange news you told me last night. Melmar, which was my father’s, I was born heiress of it—did you say it was mine—mine? for I think I must have mistaken what the words mean.”

“It is quite true,” said Cosmo, who had not yet quite recovered his temper, “your father left it to you if you were ever found, and if you were not found, to my father, and to Huntley Livingstone, his heir and eldest son. My father sought you in vain all his life; he never would put in his own claim lest it should injure you. When he died, Huntley was not rich enough to go to law for his rights, but he and everybody believed that you never would be found, and that he was the heir. He thinks so now; he is in Australia working hard for the money to maintain his plea, and believing that Melmar will be his; but I have found you, and you are the lady of Melmar; it is true.”

“You tell me a romance—a drama,” cried Madame Roche, with tears in her eyes. “Your father sought me all his life—me? though I was cruel to him. Ah, how touching! how beautiful!—and you, my young hero!—and this Huntley, this one who thinks himself the heir—he, too, is generous, noble, without selfishness—I know it! Oh, my child, what shall I do for him? Alas, Marie! She is my eldest child, and she is married already—I never grieved for it enough till now.”

“There is no need, madame,” said Cosmo, to whom these little sentences came like so many little shooting arrows, pricking him into a disappointed and vexed resentment. “Huntley needs nothing to make him amends for what is simply justice. Melmar is not his, but yours.”

This speech, however, which was somewhat heroical in tone, expressed a most uncomfortable state of mind in Cosmo. He was angry at the idea of rewarding Huntley with the hand of Marie, if that had not been given away already. It was a highly romantic suggestion, the very embodiment of poetic justice, had it been practicable; but somehow it did not please Cosmo. Then another suggestion, made by his own fancy, came dancing unsolicited into the lad’s mind. Desirée, perhaps, who was not married, might not she be compensation sufficient for Huntley? But Cosmo grew very red and felt exceedingly indignant as he thought of it; this second reward was rather more distasteful than the first. He paid very little attention, indeed, to Madame Roche, who, much excited, smiled and shed tears, and exclaimed upon her good fortune, upon the kindness of her friends, upon the goodness of God. Cosmo put his hands in his pockets and did not listen to her. He was no longer a young poet, full of youthful fervor and generosity. The temper of the British lion began to develop itself in Cosmo. He turned away from Madame Roche’s pretty effusion of sentiment and joy, in a huff of disenchantment, discontented with her, and himself, and all the world.

Perhaps some delicate spirit whispered as much in the old lady’s ear. She came to him when her first excitement was over, with tender tears in her beautiful old eyes.

“My child, you have found a fortune and a home for me,” said Madame Roche, “but it is to take them away from your brother. What will your mother say at home?”

“She will say it is right and just, madame, and I have done my duty,” said Cosmo, briefly enough.

Then Madame Roche bent forward and kissed his young cheek, like a mother, as she was.

“We are widow and orphans,” she said, softly. “God will bless you—He is the guardian of such; and He will not let Huntley suffer when He sees how all of you do justice out of a free heart.”

Cosmo was melted; he turned away his head to conceal the moisture in his own eyes—was it out of a free heart? He felt rebuked and humbled when he asked himself the question; but Madame Roche gave him no time to think of his own feelings. She wanted to know every thing about all that had occurred. She was full of curiosity and interest, natural and womanly, about not only the leading points of the story, but all its details, and as Marie did not appear, Cosmo by himself, with his beautiful old lady, was soon reconciled to the new circumstances, and restored to his first triumph. He had done what his father failed to do—what his father’s agents had never been able to accomplish—what newspaper advertisements had attempted in vain. He had justified his own hope, and realized his own expectation. He had restored home and fortune to the lost Mary of Melmar. A night and a morning were long enough for the sway of uncomfortable and discontented feelings. He gave himself up, once more, to his old enthusiasm, forgetting Huntley’s loss and Cameron’s heart-break, and his mother’s disappointment, in the inspiration of his old dreams, all of which were now coming true. The end of this conversation was, that Cosmo—charged with Madame Roche’s entire confidence, and acting as her representative—was to follow his former companions and return to Edinburgh as speedily as possible, and there to instruct his old acquaintance, Cassilis, to take steps immediately for the recovery of Melmar. He parted with the old lady, who was, and yet was not, the Mary of his fancy, that same evening—did not see Marie, who was fortunately kept in her room by an access of illness or peevishness, took leave of Baptiste and the old streets of St. Ouen with great content and exhilaration, and on the very next morning, at an hour as early, as chilly, and as dark as that of Cameron’s departure, began his journey home.

CHAPTER LIX

The streets of Edinburgh looked strange and unfamiliar to Cosmo Livingstone when he stood in them once more—a very boy still in heart and experience, yet feeling himself a traveled and instructed man. He no longer dreamed of turning his steps towards Mrs. Purdy’s in the High Street; he took his carpet bag to a hotel instead, half wondering at himself for his changed ideas. Cameron’s ideas too, probably, were equally changed. Where was he, or how had he managed to reconcile the present with the past? But Cosmo had no time to inquire. He could not pause in Edinburgh for any thing but his needful business, which was to see Mr. Cassilis, and to place in his hands the interests of Madame Roche.

The young lawyer received him with a careless kindness not very flattering to Cosmo’s dignity, but was greatly startled by the news he brought. Once only he paused in taking down all the facts of the case which Cosmo could give him, to say:—

“This discovery will be a serious loss to your brother;” but Cosmo made no reply, and with that the comment ceased. Huntley and his heirship melted away out of sight in the strangest manner while this conversation went on. Cosmo had never realized before how entirely it separated him and his from all real connection with Melmar. The sensation was not quite satisfactory, for Melmar, one way or another, had borne a most strong and personal connection with all the thoughts and projects of the family of Norlaw for a year or two past; but that was all over. Cosmo alone now had any interest in the matter, and that solely as the representative of Madame Roche.

When he had fully informed the young lawyer of all the needful points in the matter, and formally left the cause in his hands, Cosmo left him to secure a place in the first coach, and to hasten home with all the speed he could make. He could scarcely have felt more strange, or perceived a greater change upon every thing, if he had dropped from the skies into Kirkbride; yet every thing was precisely the same, so clearly and broadly recognizable, that Cosmo could not understand what difference had passed upon them, and still less could understand that the difference was in himself. His mother stood waiting for him at the door of the Norlaw Arms. It was cold March weather, and the Mistress had been sitting by the fire, waiting the arrival of the coach. She was flushed a little with the frosty air and the fire, and looked disturbed and uneasy. Cosmo thought he could fancy she turned a jealous eye upon himself as he sprang from the coach to meet her, which fancy was perfectly true, for the Mistress was half afraid that her son who had been abroad might be “led away” by his experiences of travel, and might have become indifferent or contemptuous about his home. She was a little displeased, too, that he had lingered behind Cameron. She was not like Madame Roche—all-enduring sweetness was not in this old-fashioned Scottish mother. She could not help making a strong personal claim of that arbitrary love which stinted nothing in bestowing upon those who were her own, and opened her heart only slowly and secondarily to the rest of the world.

“So you’re hame at last!” was the Mistress’s salutation; though her eye was jealous, there was moisture in it, as she looked at her boy. Cosmo had grown in stature for one thing; he was brown with exposure, and looked manly and strong; and, not least, his smooth cheeks began to show evidence of those symptoms of manhood which boys adore. There was even a something not to be described or defined upon Cosmo’s upper lip, which caught his mother’s eye in a moment, and gave a tangible ground for her little outburst of half-angry fondness.

“You’re no’ to bring any of your outlandish fashions here!” said the Mistress, “though you have been in foreign parts. I’ll have no person in my house bearded like a Frenchman. Can you no’ carry your bag in your ain hand, laddie? Come away, then; you can shake hands with other folk another time.”

As the Mistress spoke, a figure strange to Kirkbride stalked through the circle of lookers-on. Nothing like that bearded face and wide cloak had been known to Cosmo’s memory in the village or the district. He turned unconsciously to look after the stranger. Further down on the road before were two girls whom Cosmo recognized with a start; one was Joanna Huntley, the other there was no possibility of mistaking. Cosmo gazed after her wistfully—a blush of recollection, of embarrassment, almost of guilt, suddenly rising to his face. Bowed Jaacob stood at his smithy door, with the fiery glow of the big fire behind him, a swart little demon gazing after her too. Desirée! Was she the desired of this unknown figure in the cloak, who went languidly along to join her? Cosmo stood silent for a moment, altogether absorbed by the junction of old and new thus strangely presented to him. Familiar Kirkbride, with Jaacob at the smithy door, and that graceful little figure of romance, whose story no one but Cosmo knew, followed by the other stranger figure which he was entirely unacquainted with. He started when his mother repeated her imperative summons—the color on his cheeks looked guilty and troubled; he had his secret on his heart, and knew beforehand that it would not be agreeable to the Mistress. So he did the very worst thing he could have done—postponed the telling of it to a more convenient season, and so went uncomfortably, and with a visible restraint, which vexed his mother’s soul within her, home to Norlaw.

Patie, as it happened, had come home a few days before on a brief visit; and when they met round the fire that first evening, every one’s thought instinctively was of Huntley. When Marget came in, disturbing the gloamin quietness with lights, her long-drawn sigh and involuntary exclamation:—