“THE Reform Bill’s passed, mother! we’ve won the day!” cried Cosmo, rushing into the Norlaw dining-parlor with an additional hurra! of exultation. After all the din and excitement out of doors, the summer twilight of the room, with one candle lighted and one unlit upon the table, and the widow seated by herself at work, the only one living object in the apartment, looked somewhat dreary—but she looked up with a brightening face, and lighted the second candle immediately on her son’s return.
“Eh, laddie, that’s news!” cried the Mistress; “are you sure it’s true? I didna think, for my part, the Lords had as much sense. Passed! come to be law!—eh, my Huntley! to think he’s at the other end of the world and canna hear.”
“He’ll hear in time,” said Cosmo, with a little agitation, producing his budget of letters. “Mother, I’ve more news than about the Bill. I’ve a letter here.”
His mother rose and advanced upon him with characteristic vehemence:—
“Do you dare to play with your mother, you silly bairn? Give it to me,” said the Mistress, whom Cosmo’s hurried, breathless, joyful face had already enlightened; “do you think I canna bear gladness, me that never fainted with sorrow? Eh Huntley, my bairn!”
And in spite of her indignation, Huntley’s mother sank into the nearest chair, and let her tears fall on his letter as she opened it. It did not, however, prove to be the intimation of his arrival, which they hoped for. It was written at sea, three months after his departure, when he was still not above half way on his journey; for it was a more serious business getting to Australia in those days than it is now. Huntley wrote out of his little berth in the middle of the big ocean, with all the strange creaks of the ship and voices of his fellow-passengers to bear him company, with a heart which was still at Norlaw. The Mistress tried very hard to read his letter aloud; she drew first one and then the other candle close to her, exclaiming against the dimness of the light; she stopped in the middle of a sentence, with something very like a sob, to bid Cosmo sharply be quiet and no’ interrupt her, like a restless bairn, while she read his brother’s letter; but at last the Mistress broke down and tried no further. It was about ten months since she bade him farewell, and this was the first token of Huntley’s real person and existence which for all that lingering and weary time had come to his mother, who had never missed him out of her sight for a week at a time, all his life before.
There was not a very great deal in it even now, for letter-writing had been a science little practiced at Norlaw, and Huntley had still nothing to tell but the spare details of a long sea voyage; there was, however, in it, what there is not in all letters, nor in many—even much more affectionate and effusive epistles than this—Huntley himself. When the Mistress had come to the end, which was but slowly, in consideration of the dimness of the candles or her eyes, she gave it to Cosmo, and waited rather impatiently for his perusal of the precious letter. Then she went over it again, making hasty excuse, as she did so; for “one part I didna make out,” and finally, unable to refrain, got up and went to the kitchen, where Marget was still busy, to communicate the good news.
The kitchen door was open; there was neither blind nor shutter upon the kitchen-window, and the soft summer stars, now peeping out in half visible hosts like cherubs, might look in upon Marget, passing back and forward through the fire light, as much and as often as they pleased. From the open door a soft evening breath of wind, with the fragrance of new growth and vegetation upon it, which is almost as sweet as positive odors, came pleasantly into the ruddy apartment, where the light found a hundred bright points to sparkle in, from the “brass pan” and copper kettle on the shelf to the thick yolks of glass in one or two of the window-panes. It was not quite easy to tell what Marget was doing; she was generally busy, moving about with a little hum of song, setting every thing in order for the night.
“Marget, my woman, you’ll be pleased to hear—I’ve heard from my son,” said the Mistress, with unusual graciousness. She came and stood in front of the fire, waiting to be questioned, and the fire light still shone with a very prismatic radiance through the Mistress’s eyelashes, careful though she had been, before she entered, to remove the dew from her eyes.
“You’re no’ meaning Mr. Huntley? Eh! bless him! has he won there?” cried Marget, letting down her kilted gown, and hastening forward.
And then the Mistress was tempted to draw forth her letter, and read “a bit here and a bit there,” which the faithful servant received with sobs and exclamations.
“Bless the laddie, he minds every single thing at Norlaw—even the like of me!” cried Marget; upon which the Mistress rose again from the seat she had taken, with a little start of impatience:—
“Wherefore should he no’ mind you?—you’ve been about the house a’ his life; and I hope I’ll never live to see the day when a bairn of mine forgets his hame and auld friends! It’s time to bar the door, and put up the shutter. You should have had a’ done, and your fire gathered by this time; but it’s a bonnie night!”
“’Deed, ay!” said Marget to herself, when Huntley’s mother had once more joined Cosmo in the dining-room; “the bonniest night that’s been to her this mony a month, though she’ll no’ let on—as if I didna ken how her heart yearns to that laddie on the sea, blessings on him! Eh, sirs! to think o’ thae very stars shining on the auld castle and the young laird, though the world itsel’s between the twa—and the guid hand of Providence ower a’—God be thanked!—to bring the bairn hame!”
When the Mistress returned to the dining-parlor, she found Cosmo quite absorbed with another letter. The lad’s face was flushed with half-abashed pleasure, and a smile, shy, but triumphant, was on his lip. It was not Patie’s periodical letter, which still lay unopened before her own chair, where it had been left in the overpowering interest of Huntley’s. The Mistress was not perfectly pleased. To care for what anybody else might write—“one of his student lads, nae doubt, or some other fremd person,” in presence of the first letter from Huntley, was almost a slight to her first-born.
“You’re strange creatures, you laddies,” said the Mistress. “I dinna understand you, for my part. There are you, Cosmo Livingstone, as pleased about your nonsense letter, whatever it may be, as if there was no such person as my Huntley in the world—him that aye made such a wark about you!”
“This is not a nonsense letter—will you read it, mother?” said Cosmo.
“Me!—I havena lookit at Patie’s letter yet!” cried the Mistress, indignantly. “Do you think I’m a person to be diverted with what one callant writes to another? Hold your peace, bairn, and let me see what my son says.”
The Mistress accordingly betook herself to Patrick’s letter with great seriousness and diligence, keeping her eyes steadily upon it, and away from Cosmo, whom, nevertheless, she could still perceive holding his letter, his own especial correspondence, with the same look of shy pleasure, in his hand. Patie’s epistle had nothing of remarkable interest in it, as it happened, and the Mistress could not quite resist a momentary and troubled speculation, Who was Cosmo’s correspondent, who pleased him so much, yet made him blush? Could it be a woman? The idea made her quite angry in spite of herself—at his age!
“Now, mother, read this,” said Cosmo, with the same smile.
“If it’s any kind of bairn’s nonsense, dinna offer it to me,” said the Mistress, impatiently. “Am I prying into wha writes you letters? I tell you I’ve had letters enough for ae night. Peter Todhunter!—wha in the world is he?”
“Read it, mother,” repeated Cosmo.
The Mistress read in much amazement; and the epistle was as follows:
“NORTH BRITISH COURANT OFFICE,
“EDINBURGH.
“DEAR SIR,
“Hearing that you are the C. L. N. who have favored the North British Courant from time to time with poetical effusions which seem to show a good deal of talent, I write to ask whether you have ever done any thing in the way of prose romance, or essays of a humorous character in the style of Sterne, or narrative poetry. I am just about to start (with a good staff of well-known contributors) a new monthly, to be called the Auld Reekie Magazine, a miscellany of general literature; and should be glad to receive and give my best consideration to any articles from your pen. The rates of remuneration I can scarcely speak decisively about until the success of this new undertaking is in some degree established; but this I may say—that they shall be liberal and satisfactory, and I trust may be the means of inaugurating a new and better system of mutual support between publishers and authors—the accomplishment of which has long been a great object of my life.
“Your obedient servant,
“PETER TODHUNTER.”
“The North British Courant! poetry! writing for a magazine!—what does it a’ mean?” cried the Mistress. “Do you mean to tell me you’re an author, Cosmo Livingstone?—and me never kent—a bairn like you!”
“Nothing but some—verses, mother,” said the boy, with a blush and a laugh, though he was not insensible to the importance of Mr. Todhunter’s communication. Cosmo’s vanity was not sufficiently rampant to say poems. “I did not send them with my name. I wanted to do something better before I showed them to you.”
“And here they’re wanting the callant for a magazine!” cried the Mistress. “Naething but a bairn—the youngest! a laddie that was never out of Norlaw till within six months time! And I warrant they ken what’s for their ain profit, and what kind of a lad they’re seeking after—and me this very night thinking him nae better than a bairn!”
And the Mistress laughed in the mood of exquisite pride at its highest point of gratification, and followed up her laugh by tears of the same. The boy was pleased, but his mother was intoxicated. The North British Courant and the Auld Reekie Magazine were glorious in her eyes as celestial messengers of fame, and she could not but follow the movements of her boy with the amazed observation of a sudden discovery. He who was “naething but a bairn” had already proved himself a genius, and Literature urgent called him to her aid. He might be a Scott—he might turn out a Shakespeare. The Mistress looked at him with no limit to her wonder, and for the moment none in her faith.
“And just as good a laddie as he aye was,” she murmured to herself, stroking his hair fondly—“though mony a ane’s head would have been clean turned to see themsels in a printed paper—no’ to say in a book. Eh, bairn! and to think how little I kent, that am your mother, what God had put among my very bairns!”
“Mother, it may turn out poor enough, after all,” cried Cosmo, half ashamed—“I don’t know yet myself what I can do.”
“I daresay no’,” said the Mistress, proudly, “but you may take my word this decent man does, Cosmo, seeing his ain interest is concerned. Na, laddie, I ken, if you dinna, the ways of this world, and I wouldna say but they think they’ve got just a prize in my bairn. Eh! if the laddies were but here and kent!—and oh, Cosmo! what he would have thought of it that’s gone!”
When the Mistress had dried her eyes, she managed to draw from the boy a gradual confession that the North British Courant, sundry numbers of it, were snugly hid in his own trunk up stairs, from which concealment they were brought forth with much shamefacedness by Cosmo, and read with the greatest triumph by his mother. The Mistress had no mind to go to rest that night—she staid up looking at him—wondering over him; and Cosmo confessed to some of his hitherto secret fancies—how he would like to go abroad to see new countries, and to hear strange tongues, and how he had longed to labor for himself.
“Whisht! laddie—I would have been angry but for this,” said the Mistress. “The like of you has nae call to work; but I canna say onything mair, Cosmo, now that Providence has taken it out of my hand. And I dinna wonder you would like to travel—the like of you canna be fed on common bread like common folk—and you’ll hae to see every thing if you’re to be an author. Na, laddie, no’ for the comfort of seeing you and hearing you would I put bars on your road. I aye thought I would live to be proud of my sons, but I didna ken I was to be overwhelmed in a moment, and you naething but a bairn!”