“Farewell? you don’t blame me, Cameron?” cried Cosmo, scarcely knowing what he said.
“Blame you—for what?” said the other, harshly, and with a momentary haughtiness; then he rose and laid his hand with an extreme and touching kindness, which was almost tender, upon Cosmo’s shoulder. “You’ve been like my youth to me, laddie,” said the Highlandman; “like a morning’s dew in the midst of drouth; when I say fare ye well I mean not to say that we’re parted; but I must not mint any more at the pathways of your life—mine is among the rocks, and in the teeth of the wind. I have no footing by nature among your primroses. That is why I say—not to-morrow in the daylight, and the eyes of strangers, but now when you and me and this night are by ourselves—fare ye well, laddie! We’re ever friends, but we’re no more comrades—that is what I mean.”
“And that is hard, Cameron, to me,” said Cosmo, whose eyes were full.
Cameron made no answer at all to the boy; he went to the door of the dim room with him, wrung his hand, and said, “Good night!” Then, while the lad went sadly up the noisy stair-case, the man turned back to his twilight apartment, bare and solitary, where there was nothing familiar and belonging to himself, save his pocket-book and passport upon the table, and Baptiste’s bill. He smiled as he took that up, and began to count out the money for its payment; vulgar, needful business, the very elements of daily necessity—these are the best immediate styptics for thrusts in the heart.
Cosmo, to whom nothing had happened, went to his apartment perhaps more restlessly miserable than Cameron, thinking over all his friend’s words, and aggravating in imagination the sadness of their meaning. The lad did not care to read, much less to obey the call of Madame Roche’s pretty note, which bade him come and tell her further what his morning’s communication meant. For this night, at least, he was sick of Madame Roche, and every thing connected with her name.
CHAPTER LVIII.
The morning brought feelings a little more endurable, yet still, very far from pleasant. Very early, while it was still dark, Cosmo saw his companions set off on their journey home, and was left to the cold dismal consciousness of a solitary day just beginning, as he watched the lights put out, and the chill gray dawn stealing over the high houses. The first ray of sunshine glimmered upon the attic windows and burned red in the vane over the dwelling-place of Madame Roche. This gleam recalled the lad’s imagination from a musing fit of vague depression and uneasiness. He must now think no more of Cameron—no more of those strange breakings off and partings which are in life. On the contrary, his old caprice of boyish generosity laid upon him now the claim of an urgent—almost an irksome—duty, and he, who went upon his travels to seek Mary of Melmar with all the fervor of a knight-errant, turned upon his heel this cold spring dawn with an inexpressible reluctance and impatience, to go to her, in obedience to her own summons. He would rather have been with Cameron in his silent and rapid journey—but his duty was here.
When Cosmo went to Madame Roche, which he did at as early an hour as he thought decorous, he found her alone, waiting for him. She came forward to receive him with rather an anxious welcome. “I almost feared you were gone,” said the old lady, with a smile which was less tranquil than usual. “When I saw your friends go, I said to myself, this boy is but a fairy messenger, who tells of a strange hope, and then is gone and one hears no more of it. I am glad you have not gone away; but your poor friend, he has left us? I thought it best, my child, to say nothing to Marie.”
Cosmo’s heart swelled a little in spite of himself; he could not bear the idea of the two women gossiping together over his friend’s heart-break, which was the first thought that occurred to him as Madame Roche spoke, and which, though it was certainly unjust, was still partly justified by the mysterious and compassionate tone in which the old lady mentioned Cameron’s name.
“I am not aware that there is any occasion for saying any thing, madame,” said Cosmo, with a little abruptness. Madame Roche was not remarkably quick-sighted, yet she saw through the lad’s irritation—the least smile in the world came to the corner of her lip. She did not think of the great pang in the Highlander’s heart—she knew very little indeed of Cameron—she only smiled with a momentary amusement at Cosmo’s displeasure, and a momentary sense of womanish triumph over the subjugated creature, man, represented in the person of this departed traveler, who, had just gone sadly away.