It was impossible to restrain the start of amazement with which Huntley, growing red and agitated, sprang to his feet, and the others stirred out of their quietness of listening. Their mother took no time to answer the eager questions in their eyes, nor to hear even the exclamations which burst from them unawares. She bent her head again, and drew through her fingers, rapidly, the hem of her apron. She did not see, nor seem to think of, her children. Her mind was busy about the heaviest epoch of her own life.
“When Melmar died, search was caused to be made every place for his daughter,” said the Mistress, passing back and forwards through her hands this tight strip of her apron. “Your father thought of nothing else, night nor day; a’ for justice, bairns, doubtless for justice—that nobody might think he would take an advantage of his kinswoman, though he could not approve of her ways! He went to Edinburgh himself, and from there to London. I was young then, and Cosmo little mair than an infant, and a’ thing left in my hands. Aye this one and the other one coming to tell about Mary Huntley—and Norlaw away looking for her—and the very papers full of the heiress—and me my lane in the house, and little used to be left to mysel’. I mind every thing as if it had happened this very day.”
The Mistress paused once more—it was only to draw a long breath of pain, ere she hurried on with the unwelcome tale, which now had a strange interest, even for herself. The boys could not tell what was the bitterness of the time which their mother indicated by these compressed and significant words; but it was impossible to hear even her voice without perceiving something of the long-past troubles, intense and vivid as her nature, which nothing in the world could have induced her to disclose.
“The upshot was, she could not be found,” said the Mistress, abruptly; “either she never heard tell that she was sought for, or she took guilt to herself, and would not appear. They kept up the search as long as a year, but they never heard a word, or got a clue to where she was.”
“And then?” cried Huntley, with extreme excitement.
“And then,” said the Mistress—“was he a man to take another person’s lands, when but a year had gane?” She spoke with a visible self-restraint, strong and bitter—the coercion which a mind of energy and power puts upon itself, determining not to think otherwise than with approbation of the acts of a weaker nature—and with something deeper underlying even this. “He said she would still come hame some day, as was most likely. He would not take up her rights, and her living, as he was persuaded in his mind. The will was proved in law, for her sake, but he would not take possession of the land, nor put forward his claims to it, because he said she lived, and would come hame. So, laddies, there’s the tale. A Mr. Huntley, a writer, from the northcountry, a far-away friend, came in and claimed as next of kin. Mary of Melmar was lost and gane, and could not be found, and Norlaw would not put in his ain claim, though it was clear. He said it would be taking her rights, and that then she would never come back to claim her land. So the strange man got possession and kept it, and hated Norlaw. And from that day to this, what with having an enemy, and the thought of that unfortunate woman coming back, and the knowledge in his heart that he had let a wrongful heir step in—what with all that bairns, and more than that, another day of prosperity never came to this house of Norlaw.”
“Then we are the heirs of Me’mar!” said Huntley; “we, and not my father’s enemy! Mother, why did we never hear this before?”
“Na, lads,” said the Mistress, with an indescribable bitterness in her tone; “it’s her and her bairns that are the heirs—and they’re to be found, and claim their inheritance, soon or syne.”
“Then this is what I’ll do,” cried Cosmo, springing to his feet; “I’ll go over all the world, but I’ll find Mary of Melmar! I’m not so strong as Huntley, or as Patie, but I’m strong enough for this. I’ll do what my father wished—if she should be in the furtherest corner of the earth, I’ll bring her hame!”
To the extreme amazement of the boys, the Mistress laid a violent hand on Cosmo’s shoulder, and, either with intention or unconsciously, shook the whole frame of the slender lad with her impetuous grasp.
“Will ye?” cried his mother, with a sharpness of suffering in her voice that confounded them. “Is it no’ enough, all that’s past? Am I to begin again? Am I to bring up sons for her service? Oh, patience, patience! it’s more than a woman like me can bear!”
Amazed, grieved, disturbed by her words and her aspect, her sons gathered around her. She pushed them away impatiently, and rose up.
“Bairns, dinna anger me!—I’m no’ meek enough,” said the Mistress, her face flushing with a mixture of mortification and displeasure. “You’ve had your will, and heard the story—but I tell you this woman’s been a vexation to me all my life—and it’s no’ your part, any one of you, to begin it a’ over again.”
CHAPTER XII
This story, which Mrs. Livingstone told with reluctance, and, in fact, did not tell half of, was, though the youths did not know it, the story of the very bitterest portion of their mother’s life. The Mistress never told, either to them or to any one else, how, roused in her honest love and wifely sincerity into sympathy with her husband’s generous efforts to preserve her own inheritance to his runaway cousin, she had very soon good reason to be sick of the very name of Mary of Me’mar; how she found out that, after years long of her faithful, warm-hearted, affectionate society, after the birth of children and consecration of time, after all the unfailing courage and exertions, by which her stout spirit had done much to set him right in the world, and, above all, in spite of the unfeigned and undivided love of a full heart like her own, the visionary heart of her husband had all this time been hankering after his first love.
Without preparation, and without softening, the Mistress found this out. He would not advantage his own family at the cost of Mary; he would seek for Mary through the whole world. These had been the words of Norlaw, ten years after Mary of Melmar’s disappearance, and even years after he had become the father of Huntley. The unsuspecting wife thought no harm; then he went and came for a whole year seeking for his cousin; and during that time, left alone day after day, and month after month, the mistress of Norlaw found out the secret. It was a hard thing for her, with her strong personality and burning individual heart, to bear; but she did bear it with an indignant heroism, never saying a word to mortal ear. He himself never knew that she had discovered his prior love, or resented it. She would have scorned herself could she have reproached him or even made him conscious of her own feelings. Good fortune and strong affection at the bottom happily kept contempt out of the Mistress’s indignation; but her heart continued sore for years with the discovery—sore, mortified, humiliated. To think that all her wifely, faithful regard had clung unwittingly to a man who, professing to cherish her, followed, with a wandering heart, a girl who had run away from him years before to be another man’s wife! The Mistress had borne it steadily and soberly, so that no one knew of her discovery, but she had never got beyond this abiding mortification and injury; and it was not much wonder that she started with a sudden burst of exasperated feeling, when Cosmo, her own son, echoed his father’s foolish words. Her youngest boy, her favorite and last nursling, the one bird that was to be left in the nest, could stir to this same mad search, when he had not yet ambition enough to stir for his own fortune. It was the last drop which made all this bitterness run over. No wonder that the Mistress lost command of herself for once, and going up to her own room in a gust of aggravated and angry emotions, thrust Cosmo away from her, and cried, “Am I to bring up sons for her service?” in the indignation of her heart.
Yes, it was a very pretty story for romance. The young girl running away, “all for love"—the faithful forsaken lover thinking of her in secret—rising up to defend her rights after ten long years—eagerly searching for her—and, with a jealous tenderness, refusing to do any thing which might compromise