“I should like to go to bed,” she said, sadly, turning her face away from the light to a kind housemaid, who stood by her, and who could not tell what ailed “the French miss,” whom all the servants had thought rather too well-used of late days, and whose look of misery seemed unaccountable.
“Eh, Missie, but ye maun wait until the fire’s kindled,” said the maid.
Desirée did not want a fire—she had no desire to be comforted and warmed, and made comfortable—she would almost rather have crept out again into the cold and the night. Notwithstanding, they carried her up stairs carefully, liking the stranger all the better for being sad and in trouble and dependent on them—and undressed her like a child, and laid her in bed in her little room, warm with firelight, and looking bright with comfort and kindness. Then the pretty housemaid, whom Patricia exercised her tempers on, brought Desirée a warm drink and exhorted her to go to sleep.
“What made ye rin out into the cauld night, Missie, without a thing on your head,” said Jenny Shaw, compassionately; “but lie still and keep yoursel’ warm—naebody kens yet but us in the kitchen, or Miss Joan would be here; but I thought you would like best to be quiet, and it would do you mair good.”
“Oh, dear Jenny, don’t let any one know—don’t tell them—promise!” cried Desirée, half starting from her bed.
The maid did not know what to make of it, but she promised, to compose the poor little sufferer; and so Desirée was left by herself in the little room, with the warm fire light flickering about the walls, and her little hands and feet, which had been so cold, burning and prickling with a feverish heat, her limbs aching, her thoughts wandering, her heart lost in an ineffable, unspeakable melancholy. She could not return to her passion, to the bitter hurry and tumult of resentful fancies which had occupied her out of doors. She lay thinking, trying to think, vainly endeavoring to confine the wandering crowd of thoughts, which made her head ache, and which seemed to float over every subject under heaven. She tried to say her prayers, poor child, but lost them in an incoherent mist of fancy. She fell asleep, and awoke in a few minutes, thinking she had slept for hours—worse than that, she fell half asleep into a painful drowse, where waking thoughts and dreams mingled with and confused each other. Years of silence and unendurable solitude seemed to pass over her before Jenny Shaw came up stairs again to ask her how she was, and the last thing clear in Desirée’s remembrance was that Jenny promised once more not to tell any one. Desirée did not know that the good-hearted Jenny half slept, half watched in her room all that night. The poor child knew nothing next day but that her limbs ached, and her head burned, and that a dull sense of pain was at her heart. She was very ill with all her exposure and suffering—she was ill for some time, making a strange commotion in the house. But no one had any idea of the cause of her illness, save perhaps Aunt Jean, who did not say a word to any one, but trotted about the sick-room, “cheering up” the little sick stranger and finding out her wants with strange skill in spite of her deafness. All the time of Desirée’s illness Aunt Jean took not the slightest notice of Oswald Huntley—she was doubly deaf when he addressed her—she lost even her sharp and lively eyesight when he encountered her on the stair. Aunt Jean did not know what ailed Desirée besides the severe cold and fever which the doctor decided on, but the old woman remembered perfectly at what point of their conversation it was that the little girl rushed from her side and fled out of the house—and she guessed at many things with a keen and lively penetration which came very near the truth. And so Desirée was very ill, and got slowly well again, bringing with her out of her sickness a thing more hard to cure than fever—a sick heart.
CHAPTER LI.
While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo Livingstone wandered over classic ground with Cameron and his young pupil, and sent now and then, with modest pride, his contribution to the Auld Reekie Magazine which had now been afloat for four months, and on account of which Mr. Todhunter, in his turn, sent remittances—not remarkably liberal, yet meant to be so, in letters full of a rude, yet honest, vanity, which impressed the lad with great ideas of what the new periodical was to do for the literary world. So far, all was satisfactory with Cosmo. He was very well off also in his companions. Cameron, who had been shy of undertaking a manner of life which was so new to him, and whom all the innkeepers had fleeced unmercifully on the first commencement of their travels—for the very pride which made him starve in his garret at home, out of everybody’s ken, made him, unused and inexperienced as he was, a lavish man abroad, where everybody was looking on, and where the thought of “meanness” troubled his spirit. But by this time, even Cameron had become used to the life of inns and journeys, and was no longer awed by the idea that landlords and waiters would suspect his former poverty, or that his pupil himself might complain of undue restraint. The said pupil, whose name was Macgregor, was good-natured and companionable, without being any thing more. They had been in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Germany. They had all acquired a traveler’s smattering of all the three tongues familiar on their road—they had looked at churches, and pictures, and palaces, till those eyes which were unguided by Murray, and knew just as much, or rather as little, of art, as the bulk of their countrymen at the time, became fairly bewildered, and no longer recollected which was which. They were now in France, in chilly February weather, on their way home. Why they pitched upon this town of St. Ouen for their halt it would have been hard to explain. It was in Normandy, for one reason, and Cosmo felt rather romantically interested in that old cradle of the conquering race. It was within reach of various places, of historic interest. Finally, young Macgregor had picked up somewhere a little archaic lore, which was not a common accomplishment in those days, and St. Ouen was rich in old architecture. Thus they lingered, slow to leave the shores of France, which was not sunny France in that February, but had been the beginning and was about to be the end of their pleasant wandering, and where accordingly they were glad to rest for a little before returning home.
Though, to tell the truth, Cosmo would a great deal rather have tarried on the very edge of the country, at the little sea-port which bowed Jaacob called “Deep,” and where that sentimental giant had seen, or fancied he had seen, the lady of his imagination. Cosmo had enjoyed his holiday heartily, as became his temperament and years, yet he was returning disappointed, and even a little chagrined and ashamed of himself. He had started with the full and strong idea that what his father could not succeed in doing, and what advertisements and legal search had failed in, he himself, by himself, could do—and he was now going home somewhat enlightened as to this first fallacy of youth. He had not succeeded, he had not had the merest gleam or prospect of success; Mary of Melmar was as far off, as totally lost, as though Cosmo Livingstone, who was to be her knight and champion, had never known the story of her wrongs, and Time was gliding away with silent, inevitable rapidity. A year and a half of the precious remaining interval was over. Huntley had been at his solitary work in Australia for nearly a whole year, and Huntley’s heart was bent on returning to claim Melmar, if he could but make money enough to assert his right to it. This Cosmo knew from his brother’s letters, those to himself, and those which his mother forwarded to him (in copy). He loved Huntley, but Cosmo thought he loved honor more—certainly he had more regard for the favorite dream of his own imagination, which was to restore the lost lady to her inheritance. But he had not found her, and now he was going home!
However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the premier étage for Cameron and his pupil, and one au troisième for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common stair-case—where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light, went up the echoing flight above to the mansarde, and made jokes, which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots, standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed, in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner, overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the sunshine. Up in the corner, au troisième, with the next door neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s window—yet it so happened that there was.