“GO wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please—I canna see a step before me, for my part—it’s you and no’ me that must take the lead,” said the Mistress, with a heavy sigh. These words were said as the little party, Huntley, Patrick and herself, were left standing by a little pile of luggage, in the dusk of a harvest evening, in front of the coach office on the Edinburgh pavement. They were on their way to Liverpool, from which place Huntley was to sail in an emigrant ship for Port Philip. Princes Street was full of the open-air and street-loving crowd which gives to that splendid promenade, on summer nights, so much of a continental aspect. The dusk of the twilight fell softly in the valley which lay behind, the lights in the high houses on the other side hung softly midway in the air, the voices of the passengers, and sounds of the city, though doubtless many of these were sad enough, mingled in the soft-shadowed air to a harmonious hum of pleasant sound, which echoed with a mocking gayety into the heavy heart of the mother who was about to part with her boys. She was bewildered for the moment with her journey, with the unknown place and unusual animation around her, and it was only very slowly and by degrees that her mind regained its usual self-possession. She stood gazing blankly round her, while the boys made arrangements about their superfluous packages, which were to be left at the coach office, and finally came up to her, carrying between them the little trunk which contained the necessaries for their journey. Cabs were not in those days, and the Mistress would have been horrified into perfect self-possession by the preposterous idea of “a noddy.” When they were thus far ready, she turned with them briskly enough, leading the way without any uncertainty, for, in spite of her exclamation, it had been already arranged where they were to go, and the Mistress had been at school in Edinburgh in her young days, and was by no means unacquainted with the town. They went along in this order—Mrs. Livingstone carrying a considerable bag on her own arm, and the young men with a trunk between them—across the North Bridge towards the old town, that scene of magic to every stranger; the valley, the hill, the dim gray turrets of Holyrood, the soft darkness of the night full of sounds, lying beneath them—the rugged outline, picturesque and noble, of the lofty old street before—the lights shining here and there like fairy stars in irregular specks among the high windows, and everywhere the half-seen, unrecognizable throng of wayfarers, and the world of subdued sound on every side made but small impression upon the absorbed minds of the little party. They knew it all before, and their thoughts were otherwise occupied; yet involuntarily that noble landscape, which no one could look upon with absolute indifference, soothed them all, in spite of themselves. Their destination was the High Street, where, in one of the more respectable closes, and at the top of an interminable ascent of stairs, there lived a native of Kirkbride, who was in the habit of letting lodgings to students, and with whom they were to find accommodation for the night. Mrs. Purdie gave to the Mistress a little room boasting a “concealed bed,” that is to say, a recess shut in by folding-doors, and just large enough to contain a bedstead, and to the lads a bed-closet, with a borrowed light, both of which inventions specially belong to the economy of flats and great subdivided houses, and are the most unfavorable features in the same. But the window of Mrs. Livingstone’s room, where they had tea, looked abroad over that great panorama, bounded by the gleam of the Firth, and the low green line of the Fife hills, which makes it worth while to ascend stairs and watch at lofty windows in Edinburgh. The yellow harvest moon had risen ere they had finished the simple meal, which none of them had any heart for, and Huntley drew his mother to the window to bid her look at the wonderful broad moonlight lying white upon the long line of street below, and thrusting out all the monuments of the little hill into bold and striking relief against the luminous sky. The Mistress turned away from the window, with big tears in her eyes.
“Eh, Huntley, laddie, what do I care? if it was the grandest view that ever was, do you think I could see it?” cried his mother, “when I ken that I’ll never see the light of the moon mair without weary thoughts and yearning to where my bairns are, hundreds and thousands of miles away from me!”
“But, mother, only till we come home,” said Huntley, with his arm round his mother, speaking low in her ear.
The Mistress only turned towards the dim little table, with its dim candles, hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes. This was endurable—but the night and the calm, and the glory of the heavens and the earth, were too much for the mother. If she had remained there looking out, it almost seemed to her as if she must have wept her very heart dry.
The next morning they set out once more upon their journey—another day’s travel by the canal to Glasgow. The canal was not to be despised in those days; it was cheaper, and it was not a great deal slower than the coach; and if the errand had been happier, the mode of traveling, in that lovely harvest weather, with its gradual glide and noiseless progress, was by no means an unpleasant one. Glasgow itself, a strange, unknown, smoky Babel, where, after Huntley was gone, the Mistress was to part with her second son, bewildered her mind completely with its first aspect; she could make nothing of it as they pursued their way from the canal to the river, through a maze of perplexing and noisy streets, where she felt assured hundreds of people might lose themselves, never to be found again. And, with a feeling half of awe and half of disgust, Mrs. Livingstone contemplated the place, so unlike the only other large town she knew, where Patie was to pass the next half dozen years of his life. Instinctively she caught closer hold of him, forgetting Huntley for the moment—Huntley’s dangers would be those of nature, the sea and the wilderness—but temptation! ill-doing! The Mistress grasped her son’s sleeve with tenacious fingers, and looked into his face with half an entreaty, half a defiance.
“If I should ever see the like of that in a bairn of mine!” she cried aloud, as they passed a corner where stood some of those precocious men, haggard and aged beyond double their years, whom it is the misfortune of a great town sometimes to produce. The idea struck her with an impatient dread which overcame even her half-apprehensive curiosity about the voyage they were going to undertake; and she had scarcely overcome this sudden alarm, when they embarked in the snorting steamer which was to convey them to Liverpool. Standing on the deck, surrounded by the pile of boxes which formed Huntley’s equipment, and looking with startled and disapproving eyes upon the arriving passengers, and the crowded sheds of the Broomielaw, the Mistress saw the same moon rising above the masts, and housetops, and smoke of Glasgow, without any thing like the same feelings which had moved her on the previous night. Her mind was excited, her active spirit stirred, her very nerves, steady as they were, influenced a little by the entirely new anticipation of the voyage; a night at sea!—it seemed almost as great looking forward to it as Huntley’s journey, though that was to the other end of the world.
And so they glided down the beautiful Clyde, the breeze freshening about them, as hills began to rise black in the moonlight, and little towns to glimmer on the water’s edge. The mother and the sons walked about the deck together, talking earnestly, and when the vessel rose upon the bigger waves, as they stole out to sea, and every thing but the water and the sky, and the moonlight, gradually sank out of sight, the Mistress, with a little thrill of danger and adventure at her heart, forgot for the moment how, presently, she should return alone by the same road, and almost could suppose that she was setting out with Huntley. The fancy restored her to herself: she was not much of an advice giver. Her very cautions and counsels, perhaps, were arbitrary and slightly impatient, like her nature; but she was their true mother, heart and soul; and the lads did not forget for long years after what the Mistress said as she paced about the deck between them, with a firm, yet sometimes uncertain foot, as the midnight glided into morning, and the river disappeared in the bigger waters of the sea.