“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.