“Thank you for warning them. He had come yesterday, and I fear he will do Marie a very ill turn,” said Cosmo; “but nobody has any right to interfere—he is a—a relation. But may I tell Desirée—I mean Miss Roche—any thing of yourself? I know she often speaks, and still oftener thinks, of you.”
“She has nothing to do with us that I know of,” said Joanna, sharply; “good day to you; that was all I had to say,” and she rushed past him, passing perilously down the narrow edge of the stair. But when she had descended a few steps, Joanna’s honest heart smote her. She turned back, looking up to him with eyes which looked so straightforward and sincere, in spite of their irascible sparkle, that Joanna’s plain face became almost pretty under their light. “I am sure I need not quarrel with you,” she said with a little burst of her natural frankness, “nor with Desirée either. It was not her fault—but I was very fond of Desirée. Tell her I teach in a school now, and am very happy—they even say I’m clever,” continued the girl, with a laugh, “which I never was at Melmar; and mamma is stronger, and we’re all as well as we can be. You need not laugh, Cosmo Livingstone, it’s true!” cried Joanna, with sudden vehemence, growing offended once more; “papa may have done wrong whiles, but he’s very good to us; and no one shall dare throw a stone at him while I’m living. You can tell Desirée.”
“I will tell Desirée you were very fond of her—she will like that best,” said Cosmo.
Whereupon the vail, which had been hanging about her bonnet, suddenly dropped over Joanna’s face; it is to be supposed from the suppressed and momentary sound that followed, that, partly in anger, partly in sorrow, partly in old friendship and tenderness, she broke down for the instant, and cried—but all that could clearly be known was, that she put out her hand most unexpectedly, shook Cosmo’s hand, and immediately started down the stair with great haste and agitation. Cosmo could not try to detain or follow her; he knew very well that no such proceeding would have found favor in the eyes of Joanna; and Cameron at that moment came in sight from the upper floor.
Cosmo never could tell by what sudden impulse it was that he begged his old friend to return with him to his lodgings and dine; he had no previous intention of doing so—but the idea seized him so strongly, that he urged, and almost forced the half reluctant Highlandman into compliance. Perhaps the listless loveliness of the day affected Cameron, in a less degree, somewhat as it affected his more imaginative companion—for, at length, after consulting his note-book, he put his strong arm within Cosmo’s, and went with him. Cameron, like everybody else, had changed in these five years. He was now what is called a licentiate in the Church of Scotland—authorized to preach, but not to administer the sacraments, an office corresponding somewhat with the deacon’s orders of the English Church. And like other people, too, Cameron had not got his ideal fortune. The poor student had no patronage, and the Gaelic-speaking parish among his own hills, to which his fancy had once aspired, was still as distant as ever from the humble evangelist. Perhaps Cameron did not even wish it now—perhaps he had never forgotten that hard lesson which he learned in St. Ouen—perhaps had never so entirely recovered that throwing away of his heart, as to be able to content himself among the solitudes of the hills. But, at least, he had not reached to this desired end—and was now working hard among the wynds and closes of old Edinburgh, preaching in a public room in that sad quarter, and doing all that Christian man could do to awaken its inhabitants to a better life.
“It is good, right, best! I confess it!” cried Cosmo, in a sudden accés of natural feeling, “but how can you do it, Cameron?—how is it possible to visit, to interest, to woo, such miserable groups as these? Look at them!” exclaimed the young man. “Mean, coarse, brutal, degraded, luxuriating in their own wretchedness, knowing nothing better—unable to comprehend a single refined idea, a single great thought. Love your neighbor—love them?—is it in the power of man?”
Cameron looked round upon them, too; though with a different glance.
“Cosmo,” said the Highlandman, with that deep voice of his, to which additional years and personal experience had given a sweeter tone than of old, “do you forget that you once before asked me that same question? Love is ill to bind, and hard to draw. I love few in this world, and will to the end; but first among them is One whose love kens no caprice like to ours. I tell you again, laddie, what I tell them forever. Can I comprehend it?—it’s just the mystery of mysteries—He loves them all. I have room in my goodwill, if not in my heart, for them that you love, Cosmo; and what should I have for them that He loved, and loved to the death? That is the secret. My boy, I would rather than gear and lands that you found it out for yourself.”
“I can understand it, at least,” said Cosmo, grasping his friend’s hand; “but I blush for myself when I look at your work and at mine. They are different, Cameron.”
“A lad may leave the plow in mid-furrow for a flower on the brae or a fish in the water,” said Cameron, with a smile; “but a man returns to the work he’s put his hand to. Come back, my boy, to your first beginning—there’s time.”
And Cosmo was almost persuaded, as they went on discussing and remonstrating to the young man’s lodging, where other thoughts and other purposes were waiting for them both.
CHAPTER LXXII
For on Cosmo’s table lay a letter, newly arrived, and marked immediate. Cosmo felt himself forewarned by the sudden tremor which moved him, as he sprang forward to take it up, that it was from Madame Roche. Perhaps some strange instinct suggested the same to Cameron, for he withdrew immediately from his friend’s side, and went away to Cosmo’s book-shelf in the corner without a word. Then, perhaps, for the first time, any unconcerned spectator looking on might have perceived that Cameron looked weary, and that, besides the dust upon his boots and black coat, the lines in his face were deeper drawn than his years and strength warranted, and told of a forlorn fatigue somewhere which no one tried to comfort. But he did not say any thing—he only stood quietly before the book-shelf, looking over Cosmo’s books.
Cosmo, on the contrary, his face flushed with excitement and expectation, and his heart beating high, opened the letter. As he ran over it, in his haste and anxiety, the flush faded from his face. Then he read it seriously a second time—then he looked at his friend.
“Cameron!” said Cosmo.
But it seemed that Cameron did not hear him till he was called a second time, when he looked round slowly; and, seeing Cosmo holding towards him the letter which he had just read so eagerly, looked at it with a strange confusion, anxiety, and embarrassment, half-lifting his hand to take it, and saying “Eh?” with a surprised and reluctant inquiry.
“It concerns you as well as me. Look at it, Cameron,” said the young man.
It was from Madame Roche; and this is what Cameron read:—
“Cosmo—my son, my friend! come back and help us! Pierrot—he of whom you warned us—has come; and I, in my folly—in my madness, could not deny to Marie to see him. You will ask me why? Alas! he is her husband, and she loves him! I thought, in my blindness, it might make her well; but we have known her illness so long, we have forgotten how great it is; and the shock has killed her—ah, me! unhappy mother!—has stricken my child! She was very joyful, the poor soul!—she was too happy!—and he who is so little deserving of it! But it has been more than she could bear, and she is dying! Come!—sustain us, comfort us, Cosmo, my friend! We are but women alone, and we have no one who will be so tender to us as you! It was but Monday when he came, and already she is dying!
“I have another thing to say. My poor Marie spoke to me this morning. I could not tell my child how ill, how very ill she was—I, her mother! but she has learned from our sad looks, or, perhaps, alas, from the wretch, Pierrot, that she is in danger. She spoke to me this morning. She said, ‘Mamma, will no one speak to me of heaven? Alas, I know not heaven. How shall I know the way? Send for the Englishman—the Scottishman—the traveler who came with Cosmo to our old house. I remember how he spoke—he spoke of God as one might who loved Him. None but he ever spoke so to me. Send mother—if he loves God he will come.’ Alas, my friend! could I say to her on her sick bed, ‘My child, this good Monsieur Cameron loved you. I can not break his heart over again, and ask him to come.’ No! I could not say it. I can but write to you, Cosmo. Speak to this good Cameron—this man who loves God. Ah, my friend, can you not think how I feel now that I am ignorant, that I am a sinner—that I, who am her mother, have never taught my Marie? Tell it to your friend—tell him what she has said—she knows not, my poor child, what thoughts might once have been in his heart. Let him come, for the love of God.”
Cosmo scarcely ventured to look at his friend while he read this letter; and as for Cameron himself, he raised it in his hands so as to shade his face, and held it so with strong yet trembling fingers, that nobody might see the storm of passionate emotions there. Never before in his life, save once, had the vehement and fiery nature of the Highlandman been subject to so violent a trial, and even that once was not like this. A great sob rose in his throat—his whole passionate heart, which had been strained then in desperate self-preservation, melted now in a flood of sudden grief and tenderness, ineffable and beyond description. Marie, upon whom he had wasted his heart and love—Marie, whose weakness had filled him with a man’s impulse of protection, sustenance, and comfort—Marie! Now at last should it be his, in solemnwise, to carry out that love-dream—to bring her in his arms to the feet of the Lord whom he loved—to show the fainting spirit where to find those wings of a dove, by which she might fly away and be at rest. Great over-brimming tears, big as an ocean of lighter drops, made his eyes blind, but did not fall. He sat gazing at the conclusion of the letter long after he had read it, not reading it over again like Cosmo—once had been enough to fix the words beyond possibility of forgetting upon Cameron’s heart—but only looking at it with his full eyes, seeing the name, “Mary Roche de St. Martin,” glimmering and trembling on the page, now partially visible, now altogether lost. When Cosmo ventured at last to glance at his friend, he was still sitting in the same position, leaning both his elbows upon the table, and holding up the letter in his hands to screen his face. Cosmo was aware of something strangely touching in the forced, strained, spasmodic attitude, but he could not see the big silent sob that heaved in his friend’s strong heart, nor the tears that almost brimmed over but did not fall out of Cameron’s eyes.
Presently the Highlandman folded up the letter with care and elaboration, seemed to hesitate a moment whether he would keep it, and finally gave it over with some abruptness to Cosmo. “Relics are not for me,” he said, hastily. “Now, when you are ready, let us go.”
“Go?—to Melmar!” said Cosmo, faltering a little.
“Where else?” asked Cameron, sternly—“is that a summons to say no to? I am going without delay. We can get there to-night.”
“The coach will not leave for an hour—take some refreshment first,” said Cosmo; “you have been at work all day—you will be faint before we get there.”
Cameron turned towards him with a strange smile:—
“I will not faint before we get there,” he said slowly, and then rose up and lifted his hat. “You can meet me at the coach, Cosmo, in an hour—I shall be quite ready; but in the first place I must go home; make haste, my boy; I will go, whether you are there or not.”
Cosmo gazed after him with something like awe; it was rather beyond romance, this strange errand—and Cameron, in spite of the fervid Highland heart within him did not look a very fit subject for romance; but somehow Cosmo could not think what personal hopes of his own might be involved in this relenting of Madame Roche—could not think even of Desirée, whose name was not once mentioned in the letter, could think of nothing but Cameron, called of all men in the world to that bedside to tell the dying Marie where to find her Lord.
They left Edinburgh accordingly within the hour. Cameron had entirely recovered his usual composure, but scarcely spoke during the whole journey, in which time Cosmo had leisure to return to his own fortune, with all its perplexities. Even Marie’s illness was not likely to form reason enough in the eyes of the Mistress for his abrupt and unexpected return, and he could hardly himself see what good his presence could do Madame Roche, with dangerous illness, perhaps death, and a disagreeable son-in-law in her house. Take him at his worst, Pierrot, who was Marie’s husband, had a more natural place there than Cosmo, who was only Desirée’s lover—a lover rejected by Madame Roche; and Desirée herself had not intimated by word or sign any desire for his presence. The whole aspect of things did not conduce to make Cosmo comfortable. It seemed almost a necessity to go to Melmar, instantly, instead of going to Norlaw; but what would the Mistress think of so strange a proceeding? And Huntley and Patie now, it was to be presumed, were both at home. What a strange, disturbing influence had come among the brothers! Cosmo began to contemplate his own position with a certain despair; he knew well enough by this time the unreasoning sentiment of Madame Roche; he knew very well that though she relieved herself in her trouble by writing to him, and made a solemn appeal for his services, that it by no means followed when this emergency was past, that she would confirm his sonship by giving him her daughter, or relinquish her past idea for the sake of the hopes she might have excited; and in the second place Cosmo could not tell for his life what use he was likely to be to Madame Roche, or how he could sustain her in her trouble—while the idea of being so near home without going there, and without the knowledge of his mother, aggravated all his other difficulties. He went on, however, with resignation, got down with the calmness of despair and bewilderment at Kirkbride, walked silently towards Melmar, guiding Cameron along the silent leafy ways, and yielding himself, whatever that might be, to his fate.
CHAPTER LXXIII
And there stood the house of Melmar, resting among its trees, in the soft sweet darkness of the June night.
Perhaps Cameron’s heart failed him as he came so near—at least Cosmo reached the house first. The foliage was so thick around that the darkness seemed double in this circle round the house. You could only see the colorless, dark woods, stretching back into the night, and the gleam of blue sky over head, and the lighted windows in the house itself—lights which suggested no happy household meeting, but were astray among different windows in the upper story, telling their own silent tale of illness and anxiety. Cosmo, standing before the door which he knew so well, could only tell that Tyne was near by the low, sweet tinkle of the water among the sighing leaves, and was aware of all the summer flush of roses covering that side of the house by nothing save the fragrance. He stood there gazing up for a moment at one light which moved about from window to window with a strange restlessness, and at another which burned steadily in Marie’s bed-chamber. He knew it to be Marie’s chamber by instinct. A watch-light, a death-light, a low, motionless flame, so sadly different from the wavering and brightening of that other, which some anxious watcher carried about. Cosmo’s heart grew sad within him as he thought of this great solemn death which was coming on Marie. Poor Marie, with her invalid irritability, her little feverish weakness, her ill-bestowed love! To think that one so tender and wayward, from whom even reason and sober thought were not to be expected, should, notwithstanding, go forth alone like every other soul to stand by herself before her God, and that love and pity could no longer help her, let them strain and struggle as they would! The thought made Cosmo’s heart ache, he could not tell why.
Madame Roche met them at the door. She was not violently affected as Cosmo feared—she only kept wiping from her eyes the tears which perpetually returned to fill them, as he had seen his own mother do in her trouble—and perhaps it is the common weeping of age which has no longer hasty floods of youthful tears to spend upon any thing. She gave a cry of joy when she saw Cameron.
“Ah, my friend, it is kind—God will reward you!” said Madame Roche, “and you must come to her—there is little time—my child is dying.”
Cameron did not answer a word—he only threw down his hat and followed her, restraining his step with a painful start when he heard it ring against the pavement. Cosmo followed, not knowing what else to do, to the door of the sick room. He did not enter, but as the door opened he saw who and what was there. And strange to her son sounded the voice which came out of that sad apartment—the voice of the Mistress reading with her strong Scottish accent and old fashioned intonation, so different from the silvery lady’s voice of Madame Roche, and the sweet tones of Desirée. Spread out before her was the big Bible, the family book of old Huntley of Melmar, and she was seated close by the bedside of the sufferer, who lay pallid and wasted, with her thin hands crossed upon the coverlet, and her whole soul in an agony of listening not to be described. Close by the Mistress, Desirée was kneeling watching her sister. This scene, which he saw only in a momentary glance before the door was closed, overpowered Cosmo. He threw himself down upon a window-seat in the long corridor which led to this room, and covered his face with his hands. The sudden and unexpected appearance of his mother brought the young man’s excitement to a climax. How unjust, unkind, ungenerous now seemed his own fears!
Madame Roche was one of those women who fear to meet any great emergency alone. In the first shock of dismay with which she heard that Marie’s life was fast hastening to its end, she wrote to Cosmo; and before it was time for Cosmo to arrive—while indeed it was impossible that he could even have received her letter—the poor mother, with an instinct of her dependent nature, which she was not aware of and could not subdue, hastened to send for the Mistress to help her to bear that intolerable agony in which flesh and heart faint and fail—the anguish of beholding the dying of her child. The Mistress, who under similar circumstances would have closed her doors against all the world, came, gravely and soberly to the call of this undeniable sorrow. In face of that all the bitterness died out of her honest heart. Madame Roche had already lost many children. “And I have all mine—God forgive me—I ken nothing of that grief,” cried Mrs. Livingstone, with a sob of mingled thankfulness and terror. It was not her vocation to minister at sick-beds, or support the weak; yet she went without hesitation, though leaving Huntley to do both. And even before Madame Roche sent for her, Desirée, who understood her character, had run over by herself early in the morning, when, after watching all night, she was supposed asleep, to tell the Mistress that her mother had written to Cosmo. So there was neither cause nor intention of offense between the sad family at Melmar and that of Norlaw. When she came to Marie’s sick-bed, the Mistress found that poor sufferer pathetically imploring some one to tell her of the unknown world to which she was fast approaching—while Madame Roche, passionately reproaching herself for leaving her daughter uninstructed, mingled with her self-accusations, vague words about heaven and descriptions of its blessedness which fell dull upon the longing ears of the anxious invalid. The harps and the white robes, the gates of pearl and the streets of gold were nothing to Marie—what are they to any one who does not see there the only presence which makes heaven a reality? The Mistress had no words to add to the poor mother’s anxious eager repetition of all the disjointed words, describing heaven, which abode in her memory—but instead, went softly down stairs and returned with the big Bible, the old, well remembered book, which never failed to produce a certain awe in Madame Roche—and this was how it happened that Cosmo found his mother reading to Marie.
When Cameron entered the room, the Mistress, who had not paused, continued steadily with the reading of her gospel. He, for his part, did not interrupt her—he went to the other side of the bed and sat down there, looking at the white face which he had never seen since he saw it in St. Ouen, scarcely less pale, yet bright enough to appear to his deluded fancy a star which might light his life. That was not an hour or place to think of those vain human dreams. Sure as the evening was sinking into midnight, this troubled shadow of existence was gliding on toward the unspeakable perfection of the other life. A little while, and words would no more vail the face of things to this uninstructed soul—a little while—but as he sat by Marie’s death-bed the whole scene swam and glimmered before Cameron’s eyes—“A little while and ye shall not see me—and again a little while and ye shall see me.” Oh these ineffable, pathetic, heart breaking words! They wandered out and in through Cameron’s mind in an agony of consolation and of tears. He heard the impatient anxious mother stop the reading—he felt her finger tap upon his arm urging him to speak—he saw Marie turn her tender, dying eyes toward him—he tried to say something but his voice failed him—and when at last he found utterance, with a tearless sob, which it was impossible to restrain, the words which burst from his lips with a vehement outcry, which sounded loud though it was nearer a whisper, were only these:—“Jesus! Jesus! our Lord!”
Only these!—only that everlasting open secret of God’s grace by which He brings heaven and earth together! The gentle, blue eyes, which were no longer peevish, brightened with a wistful hope. There was comfort in the very name; and then this man—who labored for the wretched—whom himself could not force his human heart to love, because his Master loved them—this man, whom poor Marie never suspected to have loved her in her selfish weakness with the lavish love of a prodigal, who throws away all—this man stood up by the bedside with his gospel. He himself did not know what he said—perhaps neither did she, who was too far upon her way to think of words—but the others stood round with awe to hear. Heaven? No, it was not heaven he was speaking of—there was no time for those celestial glories, which are but a secondary blessing; and Cameron had not a thought in his heart save for this dying creature and his Lord.
Was it darker out of doors under the skies? No; there was a soft young moon silvering over the dark outline of the trees, and throwing down a pale glory over this house of Melmar, on the roof, which glimmered like a silver shield; and, in the hush, the tinkling voice of Tyne and the breath of the roses, and a sweet white arrow of moonlight, came in, all mingled and together, into the chamber of death. Yet, somehow, it is darker—darker. This pale figure, which is still Marie, feels it so, but does not wonder—does not ask—is, indeed, sinking into so deep a quiet, that it does not trouble her with any fears.
“I go to sleep,” she says faintly, with the sweetest smile that ever shone upon Marie’s lips, “I am so well. Do not cry, mamma; when I wake, I shall be better. I go to sleep.”
And so she would, and thus have reached heaven unawares, but for the careless foot which pushed the door open, and the excited figure which came recklessly in. At sight of him, Cameron instantly left the bedside—instantly without a word, quitted the room—and began to walk up and down the corridor, where Cosmo stood waiting. Pierrot began immediately to address his wife:—His wife!—his life!—his angel! was it by her orders that strangers came to the house, that his commands were disobeyed, that he himself was kept from her side? He begged his adored one to shake off her illness, to have a brave spirit, to get up and rouse herself for his sake.
“What, my Marie! it is but courage!” cried her husband. “A man does not die who will not die! Up, my child! Courage! I will forsake you no more—you have your adored husband—you will live for him. We shall be happy as the day. Your hand, my angel! Have courage, and rise up, and live for your Emile’s sake!”
And all the peace that had been upon it fled from Marie’s face. The troubled eagerness of her life came back to her. “Yes Emile!” she whispered, with breathless lips, and made the last dying effort to rise up at his bidding and follow him. Madame Roche threw herself between, with cries of real and terrified agony; and the Mistress, almost glad to exchange her choking sympathy for the violent, sudden passion which now came upon her, went round the bed with the silence and speed of a ghost, seized his arm with a grip of imperative fury not to be resisted, and, before he was aware, had thrust him before her to the door. When she had drawn it close behind her, she shook him like a child with both her hands. “You devil!” cried the Mistress, transported out of all decorum of speech by a passion of indignation which the scene almost warranted. “You dirty, miserable hound! how daur you come there? If you do not begone to your own place this instant—Cosmo, here! She’s gone, the poor bairn. He has nae mair right in this house, if he ever had ony—take him away.”
But while this violent scene disturbed the death calm of the house, it did not disturb Marie. She had seen for herself by that time, better than any one could have told her, what robes they wore and what harps they played in the other world.