“I’m no’ feared,” said the Mistress, those ever-rising, never-falling tears dimming her eyes again, while yet a little secondary emotion, half shame of her own suspicions, half petulance, rose to her voice; “but it’s a poor place for a laddie like you, bred up at hame—and it’s a great town, full of temptations—and night and day in a place like this, ilka street is full of evil—and naething but bare bed and board instead of hame. Oh! Patie if I was feared, it was because I knew mony a dreary story of lads that meant as well as yoursel’!”
“Perhaps I was presumptuous, mother,” said Patie; “I will not say there’s no fear;—but there’s a difference between one man and another, and time and your own judgment will prove what’s temptation to me. Now, come, if you have rested enough—the air will do you more good than sitting here.”
The Mistress was persuaded, and went out accordingly with her son, feeling strangely forlorn and solitary in the crowded thoroughfares, where she was struck with the common surprise of country people, to meet so many and to know no one. Still there was a certain solace in the calm summer evening, through which the moon was rising in that pale sky so far away and clear, above the hanging smoke of the town—and in Patie’s arm, which seemed to support her with more pride and tenderness now that Huntley was gone. The soft moon shining down upon the river, which here was not the commercial Clyde, of ships and steamers, the many half-distinguishable figures upon the Green opposite, from which color and light were fading, and the tranquillity of the night even here, bore back the thoughts of the mother into a tenderer channel. She put up her hand to her eyes to clear them.
“Eh Patie! I think I see my son on the sea, looking up at that very sky,” said the Mistress, with a low sob; “how will I look at it from Norlaw, where Cosmo and me will be our lane?—and now but another day more, and I’ll lose you!”
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Mistress traveled home once more by the slow canal to Edinburgh, and from thence by the stage-coach to Kirkbride. She had left Patie, at last, with some degree of confidence, having seen Mr. Crawford, the manager of the foundery, and commended her son specially to his care; and having, besides, done what she could to improve the comfort of Patie’s little apartment, and to warn him against the temptations of Glasgow. It was rather heavy work afterward, gliding silently home alone by the monotonous motion of that canal, seeing the red-tiled cottages, the green slopes, the stubble-fields move past like a dream, and remembering how she had left her boys behind, one on the sea, and one among strangers, both embarked upon the current of their life. She sat still in the little cabin of the boat by one of the windows, moving nothing but her fingers, which clasped and unclasped mechanically. Her big black vail hung over her bonnet, but did not shroud her face; there was always moisture in her eyes, but very seldom tears that came the length of falling; and her mind was very busy, and with life in its musings—for it was not alone of the past she was thinking, but also of the future—of her own life at home, where Huntley’s self-denial had purchased comfort for his mother, and where his mother, not to be outdone, silently determined upon the course of those days, which she did not mean to be days of leisure. This Melmar, which had been a bugbear to the Mistress all her days, gradually changed its aspect now. It no longer reminded her of the great bitterness of her life—it was her son’s possible inheritance, and might be the triumphant occasion of Huntley’s return.
It was late on a September afternoon, when she descended from the coach at the door of the Norlaw Arms, and found Cosmo and Marget waiting there to welcome her. The evening sunshine streamed full in their faces, falling in a tender glory from the opposite brae of Tyne, where the white manse at the summit, and the cottages among the trees, shone in the tranquil light, with their kindliest look of home. The Mistress turned hurriedly from the familiar prospect, to repose her tired and wet eyes on the shadowed corner of the village street, where the gable of the little inn kept out the sunshine, and where the ostler had lifted down her trunk. She grasped Cosmo’s hand hastily, and scarcely ventured to look the boy in the face; it was dreary coming home alone; as she descended, bowed Jaacob at the smithy door took off his cowl in token of respect, and eyed her grimly with his twinkling eye. Jaacob, who was a moral philosopher, was rather satisfied, on the whole, with the demeanor of the family of Norlaw under their troubles, and testified his approbation by a slightly authoritative approval. The Mistress gave him a very hasty nod, but could not look even at Jaacob; a break-down, or public exhibition of emotion, being the thing of all others most nervously avoided by respectable matrons of her country and temper, a characteristic very usual among Scotchwomen, of middle age and sober mind. She would have “thought shame” to have been seen crying or “giving way,” “in the middle of the town,” as, even now, enlightened by the sight of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Liverpool, the Mistress still called the village street of Kirkbride; another hasty nod acknowledged the sympathetic courtesy of the widow who kept the village mangle, and whose little boy had wept at the door of Norlaw when its master was dying; and then Cosmo and Marget took the trunk between them, and the Mistress drew down her vail, and the little party set out, across the foot-bridge, through the tender slanting sunshine going home.
Then, at last, between the intervals of question and answer as to the common matters of country life, which had occurred during her absence, the Mistress’s lips were opened. Marget and Cosmo went on before, along the narrow pathway by the river, and she followed. Cosmo had spent half of his time at the manse, it appeared, and all the neighbors had sent to make kindly inquiry when his mother was expected home.
“It’s my hope you didna gang oftener than you were welcome, laddie,” said the Mistress, with a characteristic doubt; “but I’ll no deny the minister’s aye very kind, and Katie too. You should not call her Katie now, Cosmo, she’s woman grown. I said the very same to Huntley no’ a week ago, but he’s no like to offend onybody, poor lad, for many a day to come. And I left him very weel on the whole—oh, yes, very weel, in a grand ship for size, and mony mair in her—and they say they’ll soon be out of our northerly seas, and win to grand weather, and whiles I think, if there was great danger, fewer folk would gang—no’ to say that the Almighty’s no’ a bit nigher by land than he is by sea.”
“Eh! and that’s true!” cried Marget, in an involuntary amen.