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.