THE end of the season arrived, Cosmo came home, leaving his fellow-student, who would not even accept an invitation to Norlaw, behind him in Edinburgh. Cameron thought it half a weakness on his part, the sudden affection to which the boy had moved him, but he would not yield so much to it as to lay himself under “an obligation,” nor suffer any one to suppose that any motive whatever, save pure liking, mingled in the unlikely friendship he had permitted himself to form. Inveterate poverty teaches its victims a strange suspiciousness; he was half afraid that some one might think he wanted to share the comforts of Cosmo’s home; so, as he was not going home himself, he remained in Edinburgh, working and sparing as usual, and once more expanding a little with the idea, so often proved vain hitherto, of getting so much additional work as to provide for his next session, leaving it free to its own proper studies; and Cosmo returned to rejoice the hearts of the women in Norlaw.
Who found him grown and altered, and “mair manlike,” and stronger, and every way improved, to their hearts’ content. The Mistress was not given to caresses or demonstrations of affection—but when the lad got home, and saw his mother’s eye brighten, and her brow clear every time she looked at him, he felt, with a compunction for his own discontented thoughts, of how much importance he was to the widow, and tried hard to restrain the instinct of wandering, which many circumstances had combined to strengthen in his mind, although he had never spoken of it. Discontent with his present destination for one thing; the example of Huntley and Patrick; the perpetual spur to his energy which had been before him during all his stay in Edinburgh, in the person of Cameron; his eager visionary desire to seek Mary of Melmar, whom the boy had a strong fancy that he was destined to find; and, above and beyond all, a certain vague ambition, which he could not have described to any one, but which lured him with a hundred fanciful charms—moved him to the new world and the unknown places, which charmed chiefly because they were new and unknown. Cosmo had written verses secretly for a year or two, and lately had sent some to an Edinburgh paper, which, miracle of fortune! published them. He was not quite assured that he was a poet, but he thought he could be something if he might but reach that big, glorious world which all young fancies long for, and the locality of which dazzling impossible vision, is so oddly and so often placed in London. Cosmo was not sure that it was in London—but he rather thought it was not in Edinburgh, and he was very confident it could not be in Norlaw.
About the same time, Joanna Huntley came home for the long summer holidays. Joanna had persuaded her father into giving her a pony, on which she trotted about everywhere unattended, to the terror of her mother and the disgust of Patricia, who was too timid for any such impropriety. Pony and girl together, on their rambles, were perpetually falling in with Cosmo Livingstone, whom Joanna rather meant to make a friend of, and to whom she could speak on one subject which occupied, at the present time, two thirds of her disorderly thoughts, and deafened, with perpetual repetition, the indifferent household of Melmar.
This was Desirée. The first of first loves for a girl is generally another girl, or young woman, a little older than herself; and nothing can surpass the devotion of the worshiper.
Desirée was only a year older than Joanna, but she was almost every thing which Joanna was not; and she was French, and had been in Paris and London, and was of a womanly and orderly temper, which increased the difference in years. She was, for the time being, Joanna’s supreme mistress, queen, and lady-love.
“I’m very glad you saw her, Cosmo,” cried the girl, in one of their encounters, “because now you’ll know that what I say is true. They laugh at me at Melmar; and Patricia (she’s a cat!) goes on about her Clapham school, and says Desirée is only a little French governess—as if I did not know better than that!”
“Is she a governess?” asked Cosmo.
“She’s a lady!” said Joanna, reddening suddenly; “but she does not pay as much as we do; and she talks French with the girls, and sometimes she helps the little ones on with their music, and—but as for a governess like madame, or like Miss Trimmer, or even Mrs. Payne herself—she is no more like one of them than you are. Cosmo. I think Desirée would like you!”
“Do you think so?” said Cosmo, with a boyish blush and laugh.
Joanna, however, was far too much occupied to notice his shamefacedness.
“I’ll tell you just what I would like,” she said, as they went on together, the pony rambling along at its own will, with the reins lying on its neck, while Cosmo, half-attracted, half-reluctant, walked by its side. “I don’t think I should tell you either,” said Joanna, “for I don’t suppose you care about us. Cosmo Livingstone, I am sure, if I were you, I would hate papa; but you’ll no’ tell—I would like Desirée to come here and marry my brother Oswald, and be lady of Melmar. I would not care a bit what became of me. Though she’s French, there’s nobody like her; and that’s just what I would choose, if I could choose for myself. Would it not be grand? But you don’t know Oswald—he’s been away nearly as long as I can mind; but he writes me letters sometimes, and I like him better than anybody else in the world.”
“Where is he?” said Cosmo.
“He’s in Italy. Whiles he writes about the places, whiles about Melmar; but he never seems to care for coming home,” said Joanna. “However, I mean to write him to tell him he must come this summer. Your Huntley is away too. Isn’t it strange to live at home always the same, and have so near a friend as a brother far, far away, and never, be able to know what he is doing? Oswald might be ill just now for any thing we know; but I mean to write and tell him he must come to see Desirée, for that is what I have set my heart upon since I knew her first.”
Joanna, for sheer want of breath, came to a pause; and Cosmo made no reply. He walked on, rather puzzled by the confidence she gave him, rather troubled by this other side of the picture—the young man in Italy, who very likely thought himself the unquestionable heir, perfectly entitled to marry and bring home a lady of Melmar. The whole matter embarrassed Cosmo. Even his acquaintance with Joanna, which was not of his seeking, seemed quite out of place and inappropriate. But the girl was as totally unconscious as the pony of the things called improprieties, and had taken a friendship for Cosmo as she had taken a love for Desirée—partly because the house of Norlaw bore a certain romance to her fancy—partly because “papa would be mad"—and partly because, in all honesty, she liked the boy, who was not much older, and was certainly more refined and gentle than herself. Joanna was not remarkably amiable in her present development, but she could appreciate excellence in others.
“And she’s beautiful, too—don’t you think so?” said Joanna; “not pretty, like Patricia, nor bonnie, like Katie Logan—but beautiful. I wish I could bring her to Melmar—I wish Oswald could see her—and I’ll do any thing in the world rather than let Desirée go to anybody’s house like any other governess. Isn’t it a shame? A delicate little lady like her has to go and teach little brats of children, and me that am strong and big, and could do lots of things—I never have any thing to do! I don’t understand it—they say it’s providence. I would not make things be like that if it was me. What do you think? You never say a word. I suppose you just listen, and laugh at me because I speak every thing out. What for do you not speak like a man?”
“A man sometimes has nothing to say, Miss Huntley,” said Cosmo, with a rather whimsical shyness, which he was half-inclined himself to laugh at.
“Miss Huntley!—I’m Joanna!” cried the girl, with contempt. “I would like to be friends with you, Cosmo, because papa behaved like a wretch to your father; and many a time I think I would like to come and help Mrs. Livingstone, or do any thing for any of you. I canna keep in Melmar in a corner, and never say a word to vex folk, like Patricia, and I canna be good, like Katie Logan. Do you want to go away and no’ to speak to me? You can if you like—I don’t care! I know I’m no’ like a lady in a ballad; but neither are you like one of the old knights of Norlaw!”
“Not if you think me rude, or dull, or ungrateful for your frankness!” cried Cosmo, touched by Joanna’s appeal, and eager to make amends; but the girl pulled up the pony’s reins, and darted away from him in mighty dudgeon, with the slightest touch of womanish mortification and shame heightening her childish wrath. Perhaps this was the first time it had really occurred to Joanna that, after all, there was a certain soul of truth in the proprieties which she hated, and that it might not be perfectly seemly to bestow her confidence, unasked, upon Cosmo—a confidence which was received so coldly.
She comforted herself by starting off at a pace as near a gallop as she and her steed were equal to, leaving Cosmo rather disconcerted in his turn, and not feeling particularly pleased with himself, but with many thoughts in his mind, which were not there when he left Norlaw.