“For your sake, you know, laddie—Macgregor and I would have had little chance by ourselves—yes, we’ll go,” and went off to write a very stiff and elaborate reply, in the concoction of which Cameron found it more difficult to satisfy himself than he had ever been before all his life. It was finished, how ever, and dispatched at last. That day ended, the fated evening came. The Highland student never made nor attempted so careful a toilette—he, too, had found time to catch a glimpse of Cosmo’s beautiful old lady, and of the pale, fragile daughter, who went out once a week to drive in the little carriage. Mademoiselle Marie, whom Cosmo had scarcely noticed, looked to Cameron like one of the tender virgin martyrs of those old pictures which had impressed his uncommunicative imagination without much increasing his knowledge. He had watched her, half lifted, half helped into the little carriage, with pity and interest greater than any one knew of. He was a strong man, unconscious in his own person of what illness was—a reserved, solitary, self-contained hermit, totally ignorant of womankind, save such as his old mother in her Highland cottage, or the kind, homely landlady in the High Street whose anxiety for his comfort sometimes offended him as curiosity. A lady, young, tender, and gentle—a woman of romance, appealing unconsciously to all the protecting and supporting impulses of his manhood, had never once been placed before in Cameron’s way.
So Cosmo and his friend, with an interest and excitement almost equal, crossed the little street of St. Ouen, towards Madame Roche’s second floor, in the early darkness of the February night, feeling more reverence, respect, and enthusiasm than young courtiers going to be presented to a queen. As for their companion, Cameron’s pupil, he was the only unconcerned individual of the little party. He was not unaccustomed to the society of ladies—Madame Roche and her daughter had no influence on his imagination; he went over the way with the most entire complacency, and not a romantical sentiment within a hundred miles of him; he was pleased enough to see new faces, and share his own agreeable society with some one else for the evening, and he meant to talk of Italy and pictures and astonish these humble people, by way of practice when he should reach home—Macgregor was not going to any enchanted palace—he only picked his steps over the causeway of the little street of St. Ouen, directing his way towards Madame Roche’s second floor.
This chamber of audience was a small room, partly French and party English in its aspect; the gilded clock and mirror over the mantel-piece—the marble table at the side of the room—the cold polished edge of floor on which Cameron’s unwary footsteps almost slid—the pretty lamp on the table, and the white maze of curtains artistically disposed at the window, and looped with pink ribbons, were all indigenous to the soil; but the square of thick Turkey carpet—the little open fire-place, where a wood fire burned and crackled merrily, the warm-colored cover on the table, where stood Madame Roche’s pretty tea equipage, were home-like and “comfortable” as insular heart could wish to see. On a sofa, drawn close to the fire-place, half sat, half reclined, the invalid daughter. She was very pale, with eyes so blue, and mild, and tender, that it was impossible to meet their gentle glance without a rising sympathy, even though it might be impossible to tell what that sympathy was for. She was dressed—the young men, of course, could not tell how—in some invalid dress, so soft, so flowing, so seemly, that Cameron, who was as ignorant as a savage of all the graces of the toilette, could not sufficiently admire the perfect gracefulness of those most delicate womanly robes, which seemed somehow to belong to, and form part of, this fair, pale, fragile creature, whose whole existence seemed to be one of patience and suffering. Madame Roche herself sat on the other side of the table. She was not in widow’s dress, though she had not been many years a widow. She wore a white lace cap, with spotless, filmy white ribbons, under which her fair hair, largely mixed with silver, was braided in soft bands, which had lost nothing of their gloss or luxuriance. Her dress was black satin, soft and glistening—there was no color at all about her habiliments, nothing but soft white and black. She did not look younger than she was, nor like any thing but herself. She was not a well-preserved, carefully got-up beauty. There were wrinkles in her sweet old face, as well as silver in her hair. Notwithstanding, she sat there triumphant, in the real loveliness which she could not help and for which she made no effort, with her beautiful blue eyes, her soft lips, her rose cheek, which through its wrinkles was as sweet and velvety as an infant’s, her pretty white hands and rosy finger tips. She was not unconscious either of her rare gift—but bore it with a familiar grace as she had borne it for fifty years. Madame Roche had been beautiful all her life—she did not wonder nor feel confused to know that she was beautiful now.
And she received them, singular to say, in a manner which did not in the slightest degree detract from Cosmo’s poetic admiration, asking familiar questions about their names, and where, and how, and why they traveled, with the kindly interest of an old lady, and with the same delightful junction of English speech with an occasional French idiom, which had charmed the lad in her note. Cameron dropped shyly into a chair by the side of the couch, and inclined his ear, with a conscious color on his face, to the low voice of the invalid, who, though a little surprised, took polite pains to talk to him, while Cosmo as shyly, but not with quite so much awkwardness, took up his position by the side of Madame Roche. She made no remark, except a kindly smile and bow, when she heard the names of Cameron and Macgregor, but when Cosmo’s was named to her she turned round to him with a special and particular kindness of regard.
“Ah! Livingstone!” she said; “I had a friend once called by that name,” and Madame Roche made a little pause of remembrance, with a smile and a half sigh, and that look of mingled amusement, complacence, gratitude, and regret, with which an old lady like herself remembers the name of an old lover. Then she returned quietly to her tea-making. She did not notice Macgregor much, save as needful politeness demanded, and she looked with a little smiling surprise into the shadow where Cameron had placed himself by the side of her daughter, but her own attention was principally given to Cosmo, who brightened under it, and grew shyly confidential, as was to be looked for at his age.
“I have seen you at your window,” said Madame Roche. “I said to Marie, this young man, so modest, so ingenuous, who steals back when we come to the window, I think he must be my countryman. I knew it by your looks—all of you, and this gentleman, your tutor—ah, he is not at all like a Frenchman. He has a little forest on his cheeks and none on his chin, my child—that is not like what we see at St. Ouen.”
The old lady’s laugh was so merry that Cosmo could not help joining in it—“He is my dear friend,” said Cosmo, blushing to find himself use the adjective, yet using it with shy enthusiasm; “but he is only Macgregor’s tutor not mine.”
“Indeed! and who then takes care of you?” said the old lady. “Ah, you are old enough—you can guard yourself—is it so? Yet I know you have a good mother at home.”
“I have indeed; but, madame, how do you know?” cried Cosmo, in amazement.
“Because her son’s face tells me so,” cried Madame Roche, with her beautiful smile. “I know a mother’s son, my child. I know you would not have looked down upon an old woman and her poor daughter so kindly but for your mother at home; and your good friend, who goes to talk to my poor Marie—has he then a sick sister, whom he thinks upon when he sees my poor wounded dove?”