“He’s gentle—of all sorts beloved—and indeed much in the heart of the world.”—As You like It.
“He’s gentle—of all sorts beloved—and indeed much in the heart of the world.”—As You like It.
Halbert Graemewas fully bent upon obeying the injunctions of his kinsman, and had already, thanks to his youthful strength, high spirits, and grey pony, made considerable acquaintance with his ancestral country. There were various good neighbours too who showed all willingness to aid him, and the race of young gentlemen who wrote themselves “younger of” all the castles and towers, shaws, braes, and holms of the district, opened their ranks with all imaginable pleasure to admit Halbert, “younger of Mossgray.” Halbert was happy in a frank temper, and no great share of ideality. His list of acquaintance grew like Jonah’s gourd. The fame of him went up the water and down the water; from the county-town some fifteen miles away, to the furthest bounds of the Scottish border, the landed community of the fair Southern shire had heard of the new heir of the Graemes. Nor was it alone the landed community; Halbert, like Hope Oswald, extended his friendship beyond his own exclusive class. Robbie Carlyle, the fisherman, grasped his bonnet when he met “the young laird” with a fervent salutation only accorded to his favourites, and John Brown, in the excitement of a busy market-day in the thronged Main Street of Fendie, proclaimed him: “Nane o’ your whilliewhaws—just a real, decent lad that kens a man o’ sense when he sees him!”
There were one or two dissentients. On a January day, Halbert, escorting Lilias on a walk longer than was usual to her, had the evil fortune to pass a potato field—a field whichhadborne potatoes—where Robert Paterson, the farmer of Whinnyside, was indolently superintending his two ploughs. It was a small farm, and its tenant was no great agriculturist. He “hadna just made up his mind what the crap was to be. Some said there wasna muckle dependence to be puttenon the taties, where they had ance turned out bad—though his had been no that ill the year—and some said the taties, noo, in thir times, paid better than the corn—and some said naithing paid ava; for his pairt he didna ken; he hadna made up his mind.”
Halbert was very active, and had a considerable share of the respectable qualities called sense and prudence. So he suggested to the good man of Whinnyside, that he was employing the most effectual means for securing that “naething should pay ava,” a reproof which did exceedingly offend and amaze the indignant Robert.
“He’s a bonnie ane, indeed!” said the angry farmer when Halbert had passed on, “to gie advice to a man that might be his faither—forbye being born on the land. I hae nae broo o’ thae keen Norlands. Ane would think they were learnt to put this and that thegither afore they were breekit—and the greed o’ them! considering and planning how to make the maist o’ everything; as if there was nocht to be done in this world but gather gear!”
But Robert Paterson was alone in his dissent—in all the district the feeling was strong in favour of the Norland Halbert.
Halbert and Lilias were going by Mossgray’s favourite walk, up the waterside. The two adopted children of Mossgray were very good friends; so good friends, Mrs Mense thought, that they would quite naturally settle down into the characters of laird and lady, and give Mossgray no further trouble; but altogether irrespective of the broken golden coin which hung from Halbert’s neck, and the solitary labourer in the East who toiled for Lilias, there were other preventives of which Mrs Mense was quite unaware. Lilias was a great deal older, graver, and more experienced than her young squire; though there was not much difference in positive age, but in that development and maturity of the mind which will not be confined to years. Halbert unconsciously looked up to the young Lilias as to his senior, and Lilias used terms of kindly familiarity to Halbert as to an ingenuous, pleasant younger brother. It was the best thing possible for their frank and friendly intercourse, but entirely destructive to the hopes of Mrs Mense.
The road along the waterside was a pleasant one, though the trees were bare, and though it ascended and descended steep braes now and then, and there were places here andthere, where the path was very nearly a rustic stair, with interwoven roots for steps. The neighbourhood of Fendie is the very stronghold of burns—you meet them running cheerily through the country like hardy cottage children at every turn, and multitudes of those fairy tributaries swell the noble dark-brown water as it sweeps downward to the Firth. Yonder does one pour down foaming, over the rugged bank of broken rock and gathered stones, high over which that daring stripling birch waves its thin branches, half timorous, half exultant; and here another, softly stealing under cover of the long melancholy willows glides noiselessly, a gentle child, into the bosom of the river. Another—and see how this kind alder kneels upon the mimic headland, shadowing the little bay where its coy wavelets linger—and yet another—with its wild headlong rush, defying those great stones, and jostling the roots of the shrinking beech which somehow has fallen here, and grows patiently and resigned, to its full height, a little timid of its impetuous neighbour. But the name of these children of the hills is legion; listen—you would fancy a school had newly “skailed,” so full is the air of their ceaseless singing; and if you dwell among them but a little time you will learn to know their individual voices, and to name them by separate names as you name human children.
The water itself is broad and full, “from bank to brae,” and flows down with a strong life in it, pleasant and hopeful to see; that ample, wide stream, instinct with the easy unostentatious force of nature—you can fancy, as it hastens on, that the bold current throbs, like the beating of a strong man’s breast.
Winding yonder through the trees—here, sweeping round that soft swelling grassy bank, and again a little further on over-arched by those long bare, far-spreading boughs. Beyond itself there is little prospect, for the trees on every side shut in the view, delicately revealing their naked tracing against the sky, with heavy firs and pines keeping some show of verdure in the skeleton wood.
But Halbert and Lilias were not thinking of views, except of those eager, hopeful human ones, which rose so vividly before the youth’s eyes; for Halbert was explaining his own wishes and intentions, and craving the good counsel of the Lily of Mossgray.
“I should have very much preferred my father’s profession,” said the young man, “and Mr Monikie told me Mossgray waswilling that I should study for the bar if I chose; but Mossgray has supported me all my life, Lilias. I could not think of remaining a burden on him.”
“And was that your sole reason?” asked his grave and sagacious counsellor.
The honest Halbert blushed, and smiled, and hesitated.
“Well, perhaps it would not be quite true if I said it was the sole reason; but it certainly was an important one.”
“And the others?” inquired Lilias with a smile.
“The others? they were various; for instance, I am not by any means sure that I have the necessary gifts—so few men can speak well in public; and—it must always be a slow success, I fancy, the success of an advocate; when one has a rank to maintain, and very little to maintain it—”
Halbert looked very prudent and careful as he paused.
“And you want to succeed quickly, Halbert,” said Lilias, “and so will choose some gainful business rather than the learned profession—is that it?”
“To tell the truth,” said Halbert, hastily, “I am anxious to be settled as soon as possible; to establish myself; to have a home; you understand me, Lilias?”
Lilias looked at the youth’s glowing face and smiled.
“Did you never think you were too young, Halbert, to be the head of a house?”
“Too young!” Halbert was half inclined to be angry. “Come, Lilias, that is not fair; and then you know, I have no friends, no relations; I am alone.”
Lilias became suddenly grave; but as she looked again at the young, frank face beside her, in its flush of early manhood, another smile, kindly and gentle, stole over her lip. To be alone—to have no friends—the joyous Halbert with his light spirit, and honest straightforward character, and lack of the ideal and sensitive, did by no means understand what these words meant. He could find a Menie Monikie everywhere, he could never be alone.
“You were not alone in Aberdeenshire,” said Lilias; “and I fancy you will be bringing this pretty Menie to Mossgray by and by, Halbert. Is that what being settled means?”
Halbert stammered a happy half denial, which was a confession, and proceeded in very high spirits to ask Lilias what she thought he should do.
“I think you should wait,” said his adviser, “till Mossgray gives you the counsel you asked from him. You may remind him of it, Halbert, but I think you should not press our good friend; we may have all confidence in the kindness of Mossgray.”
Halbert fully assented. The old man had charmed all doubts from the mind of the young one, and with a light heart and perfect content, he left his anxieties in his kinsman’s hand.
Lilias had never ventured so far before, and now their course was suddenly stayed by a deep cavernous burn, rumbling far down, under a long avenue of very large saugh or willow trees. The foliage of these was so exuberant in summer that the hoarse water below scarcely ever saw the sun; and over it was an old dilapidated bridge—rude planks of wood, fenced on each side by stiles, and so decayed as to seem unsafe. Halbert parted the thick willow branches with his hand to look through; and beyond they saw, half buried in a wilderness of trees, the roof and gables of a house. Lilias had heard of this place so often that she knew at once what it was.
“I am afraid this is scarcely safe for you,” said Halbert. “Shall we have to return, Lilias? though I confess I should like to explore this place. Does anybody live in that wilderness, I wonder.”
“I fancy it must be Murrayshaugh,” said Lilias. She spoke low; there was something which excited her reverence in the melancholy decay and loneliness of the old house, and the unknown fate of its owners. “Let us go nearer, Halbert; the bridge must be safe enough.”
It was not very safe, yet it bore the light weight of Lilias, and quivered beneath the springing bound of Halbert; they were within the enclosure of Murrayshaugh.
The house was less irregular and less extensive than Mossgray. Its former proprietors, in their prosperous time, had not chosen to establish themselves on the bleak far-seeing mount, where the remains of the ancient peel were now mouldering stone by stone: and this house, decayed as it was, had some architectural pretensions. Its taper spear-like turrets shot up through the bewildering maze of wood in which it was enclosed, and the mossy terrace stretching along its front gave some distinctness to its form below. A very narrow grass-grown path wound past a rounded gable to some back entrance; and the former flower-beds bordering the waybore now a scanty crop of vegetables—except this all was perfectly neglected; but the few cabbages and leeks, and a thin ascending breath of smoke, and a gentle aroma of peats, told that somewhere about the solitary house there was humanity, and its attendant spirit, the fire.
“Did you ever hear of this place, Halbert?” said Lilias, as they stood beside the great window in the gable, looking into a large, faded, melancholy room, which bore evident marks of care and order, solitary and desolate though it was.
Halbert looked a little astonished.
“I have never before been at Mossgray,” he answered, “and at home—I mean in the North—these border counties were very Antipodes to us.”
Lilias did not answer; she looked thoughtfully along the green, melancholy terrace, thinking of Lucy Murray in her solitude, and of Charlie Graeme the household traitor, whose honest, fresh, ingenuous son had never heard of Murrayshaugh.
The faint sound of a lifted latch aroused her attention and she looked round. A little old woman, with impatient, vivacious features and quick pattering steps, came along the grass-grown path. She had heard voices without, and had issued forth in evident wrath to avenge the intrusion on her territory.
“Oh, mem, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed, as she made a dead stop in front of Lilias. “If I didna think it was Robbie Carlyle’s cuddie and that tinkler of a callant, Peter, chasing him! but ye’ll be the young lady of Mossgray?”
Lilias took the designation with a smile.
“This is Murrayshaugh, is it not?” she asked.
But the little woman’s eyes were so busy that she lost the question. She was examining with singular curiosity the face of Halbert Graeme.
“This is Murrayshaugh?” repeated Lilias.
“Ay, it’s Murrayshaugh,” was the answer emphatically given, while the speaker looked wrathfully at Halbert Graeme.
Halbert was considerably astonished; but the unconscious natural prepossessing smile remained upon his truthful face. It was a very honest straightforward countenance;what we call “aefauld,” in Scotland—and the old woman gradually melted under the frank, good-humoured smile.
“They ca’ me Eesabell Broun,” she said abruptly, “and I keep the house. I’ve lived here a’ my days, and if ye would like to see it, I’ve nae objections.”
“If we will not trouble you too much,” said Lilias, smiling at the limited permission, “I shall be glad to see Murrayshaugh.”
Eesabell turned away at once, and went pattering round to a not very elegant back door. Her visitors followed her.
“Na—na,” said the old woman, fretfully waving them back with her quick, withered hand; “we may be puir, and puir eneugh, but there shall nae gentle come this gate into Murrayshaugh; gae round to the ither side; ye’ll get in by the richt door.”
It was a respectable irritation, and the two young explorers turned with some amusement to obey. The great door of Murrayshaugh was somewhat heavy on its rusted hinges; the opening of it taxed all the impatient strength of Isabell Brown.
There was not much to see within; everything saleable had been removed from those cold, dreary, uninhabited walls before the armed man, Want, drove its last tenant from his father’s house. So much furniture as remained was old and faded; the haughty, proud old man had studiously displayed its poverty; he professed to disdain the mean art of making shifts to hide it—it was the bitter art of unbending pride which left its forlorn nakedness so visible to every eye.
But the little, quick, irascible custodier of the lonely house had been so long used to the poverty of its scanty furniture that she was now unconscious of it; and when she carefully dusted the high-backed chairs of “Miss Lucy’s parlour,” and closed the shutters lest the sun should spoil the colours of the decayed worn carpet, whose colours had been jumbled in incoherent old age when she herself was but a child, Eesabell Brown was perfectly sincere. She had a veneration for those solitary and quiet inhabitants of the house in which she had lived all her days; they were older dwellers than she; and when she thought of the “Miss Lucy” who had been the pattern and glory of her younger days returning to Murrayshaugh—and she did think of it constantly—it was still as Miss Lucy—the fair,younglady whom inher own girlhood she thought chief of women. This was the romance of the little old housekeeper of Murrayshaugh. She had known few fluctuations of fortune since the great era of their departure; somehow or other Isabell herself had grown old; but unchangeable as the high-backed chairs and the faded carpets seemed Murrayshaugh and Miss Lucy—and they would return.
“My mother was housekeeper when the Laird and Miss Lucy gaed to foreign pairts,” she said to Lilias. “Ye’ll have heard o’ Miss Lucy?—ay, but I question if ye ever saw the like o’ her. Wasna auld Greenshaw your grandfather? I thocht that. Weel, Miss Lucy gaed herself, ance errant, to see your mother, to please Mossgray.”
Isabell said this with great importance; but Lilias was not overawed, though her face was very grave.
“There’s no a young lady atween this and her, wherever she be,” continued the old woman with vehemence, “that it wadna be an honour to even to Miss Lucy, though them that should have kent, didna ken.”
A quick indignant glance at the young man accompanied this speech; but the glance of Isabell’s wrath was harmless lightning to the unconscious Halbert.
“Me and my sister Jean were brought up here,” said Isabell, more calmly, “and she was married upon a cousin o’ our ain:—maybe ye ken John Broun that’s at the Mount—that’s Jean’s son.”
“He is my earliest acquaintance in Fendie,” said Halbert, good-humouredly, “and an honest fellow he is; but why do they leave you alone here?”
“My lane!” said Isabell; “am I no housekeeper? and us disna ken the day that Murrayshaugh may come hame!”
Lilias checked Halbert with her lifted hand; the old woman’s delusion was sacred.
They had entered “Miss Lucy’s parlour,” and were looking at some pictures on the wall. Before the first of these, that of a young man in an antique dress, evidently an old family portrait, Lilias paused with a sudden start. There was a vivid colour and surprised animation on her face, such as Halbert had never seen her have before, and the tone of her voice struck him as she turned to ask about the picture—low, full, and musical, as if the heart throbbed through it more warmly than was its wont.
“It’s ane o’ the auld Murrays—I dinna mind his name,” said Isabell; “but Miss Lucy had a conceit that it was like Mr Hew. They were a’ like ither; the same face came down, like the name, frae faither to son. That ane was a Hew too, I dinna doubt; it’s a guid name; they maun a’ have been fond o’t.”
“Hew,” repeated Lilias, slowly, as if she too loved to linger on the sound; “Hew—yes, it is a pleasant name.”
And she turned again with lingering looks and smiles of strange pleasure to the picture as she left the room. Halbert smiled too in wonder. He hardly could fancy an appropriate cause for such emotion in the wise, grave Lilias; and there was no such magic in any picture there for him.
“He thinks well of himself, Sir—we all do it; and he thinks well of his fortune—happy he who can! and if myself am well, and my fortune is well, who shall resist me?”—Old Play.
“He thinks well of himself, Sir—we all do it; and he thinks well of his fortune—happy he who can! and if myself am well, and my fortune is well, who shall resist me?”—Old Play.
The Manse of Fendiewas a good-sized, substantial house, situated at the rural end of the Main Street, with very tolerable grounds about it, and a well-stocked, extensive garden behind. Within, there were three good sitting-rooms—dining-room, drawing-room, and library, as the Reverend Robert Insches was pleased to call them. His predecessor had been a man of good family and small pretensions. In his time the library was only a study, and the drawing-room a family parlour; but the Reverend Robert had changed all that.
The furniture was all new, as it was natural that the furniture of a young man’s house should be, but it had a brassy look not very agreeable to the eye. The chairs stood so stiffly in their grim gentility, the carpets were so spotless, the tables so bright, that you felt afraid to disturb their solemn repose by presuming to make them serve the purposes of ordinary life; but if a stranger feared them, tenfold was the dread with which their dignified stillness impressed Miss Insches, the little, fat, roundabout sister of the Reverend Robert. With awe and reverence, she herself with her own plumphands dusted the sacred drawing-room; with fear for her own presumption, gingerly sat on the extreme edge of one of those wonderful rosewood chairs, when the drawing-room on solemn occasions was used. The Reverend Robert angrily lectured her for this foible; it was in vain. Miss Insches could not be otherwise than reverential of “the grand furniture.”
The library was the smaller room of the three. You could not have guessed it was a library, had not the minister’s sister been at pains to inform you. There was a small bookcase in it, veiled with curtains within the glass doors, and a study table; in the reign of the last minister it had been overflowing in all its corners with books—at present it was much too trimly arranged for that. The room had to do double duty; it was parlour as well as study. There Miss Insches sat, holding in her breath on the Fridays and Saturdays lest she should disturb Robert at his preparations; and there in the earlier days of the week, when Robert had no sermons to write, the elderly, worshipping sister, and the young idol brother, were very comfortable together. The young man was a genius in his way, and preached as no one had preached in Fendie for long years before. Save for the one weakness of making a hobby of his “position,” indeed he had good sense and good feeling as well as talent, and promised to be noticeable in his generation. Only the sudden change from the hard student life and cares of poverty, to the good stipend and much-prized “station” of Fendie, had a little dazzled the eyes of the Reverend Robert, and, like other young men, he rode his hobby hard and furiously.
At the fireside in the “library” his sister and he sat together; there was some consternation in the plump, good-humoured face of Miss Insches. She was evidently bewildered—“a party!”
“You know, Janet, I don’t by any means intend a formal, large party,” said the Reverend Robert, who had been for the last ten minutes vainly endeavouring to convey a less magnificent idea of his intention to his sister’s perplexed mind. “A few friends merely—a few of your own friends—it is necessary, you know, that we should not show ourselves unsocial.”
“My own friends?” Miss Insches was rather obtuse. “There’s the provost’s wife, and there’s Miss Rechie Sinclair, and Mrs Irving of Friarsford—is’t them you’re meaning, Robert?”
Robert was impatient.
“I am sure, Janet, you can have no pleasure in the company of a vulgar person like Mrs Irving—and the provost’s wife—I don’t like her, you know;—and Miss Rechie—well, she’s a good little woman—but she would be quite out of place in my drawing-room, surely.”
Miss Insches looked awed and reverential. It was very true that these plebeian personages would not at all suit the Reverend Robert’s dignified drawing-room, of which she herself was only a tenant at will, liable to be ejected whenever it should please its lord and master to bring home a wife.
“And our Robert’s a fine-looking lad, as well as a clever,” said Miss Insches under her breath; “he might marry onybody he likit.”
“Maybe it would be best to tell me, Robert,” she said aloud, humbly, “what folk you were thinking to ask—and then I would ken.”
“Well, Janet,” said the minister graciously, “there’s Mr Halbert Graeme and Miss Maxwell of Mossgray.”
Miss Insches lifted up her hands in the extremity of her astonishment.
“The young lady of Mossgray!”
“Why not?” exclaimed the Reverend Robert, indignantly impatient. “I am astonished, Janet;—you forget my position—you forget—”
“No me, Robert—no me,” ejaculated his penitent sister.
“And I suppose we must have some of the brethren,” continued Robert, after a pause. “There’s Mr Wright of thequoad sacraat Fairholm; but then we could not ask him without his wife, and she—you know he made a very foolish marriage.”
“Ay,” responded Miss Insches promptly; “he married Willie Tasker the joiner’s daughter, at Todholes, a bonnie-like wife for a minister. Weel, Robert, maybe I am not proud enough, but I would have you marry naebody but a lady.”
The Reverend Robert blushed a little.
“Do you know, Janet, little Hope Oswald has a theory that ladies are not made but born—not what you call well-born however; suppose we call on Mrs Wright and see what sort of a person she is. Wright has been very foolish, no doubt, but if we can consistently notice him, we should—” Mr Insches drew himself up, and thought of Mossgray’s graceful courtesy to the solitary Helen.
Miss Insches was decidedly repugnant—she had no toleration for themésalliancesof ministers.
“And there is Paulus Whyte,” continued the Reverend Robert. “He is to preach for me on the fast day, so we can have it the night before; and, by the by, Janet, there is a young lady in Fendie, a great friend of Miss Maxwell’s. What is her name again? Buchanan, yes, Buchanan—you must ask her.”
“You’re no meaning the schoolmistress?” said Miss Insches.
The Reverend Robert faltered a little—only a little—he was reässured by remembering the kindly attentions of Mossgray.
“Yes, I believe she does keep a school; but she is very intimate with Miss Maxwell—you must ask her.”
“Weel,” said Miss Insches, with some astonishment, “I am sure I dinna object; but to you to ask the schoolmistress among thae big folk, Robert! and maybe she’ll no like to come—she’s but young, puir thing—when the maister of the house is a young man.”
“Oh,” said the minister, with a hasty blush, “she will never think of me. You must ask her to meet Miss Maxwell.”
Miss Insches looked somewhat suspicious; she did not understand this; besides, she had heard her brother speak of Helen before, and now he hesitated at her name as if he did not recollect it. “I dinna ken what Robert means,” she muttered to herself as he left the room. “I am sure he kens the lassie well enough; what for could he no mind her name? Weel, to be sure, he’s the minister—but if he were ony ither man, I would hae my ain thoughts about it.”
And her ain thoughts Miss Insches had, minister though her brother was; but the will of Robert was not to be contested, so his suspicious sister prepared herself for obedience.
A still further test of obedience he required from her that very afternoon: but then, too, Robert conquered, and they set out together to call on the new Mrs Wright of the Fairholm chapel of ease.
The Reverend Simon Wright was, like the Reverend Robert Insches, of plebeian origin, but, unlike his younger, more graceful, and more talented neighbour, he was by no means adapted for the profession of gentleman. He too hada sort of sluggish, heavy ambition, though it had not reached the altitude of Robert’s; but his marriage had sentenced him hopelessly to his original standing. It was barely possible that he might have struggled upward alone, but there was no elevating the dead weight of his wife. For himself he had a ponderous unserviceable mind, not without a certain power, and after his own fashion could preach good sermons sometimes; but generally the man was an incapable man, slow to perceive, and helpless to take advantage of his opportunities. Willie Tasker, the joiner, had given him lodgings for a month or two, while his staring, red, box-like manse was being built, and the result was that Willie Tasker’s daughter became the minister’s wife.
To the immense indignation of his neighbours and people all and sundry, who felt in the degradation of their minister a personal injury, and who having expressed their disapprobation of the courtship by various very decided demonstrations, were now keeping aloof, and refusing to notice the new wife. Still more indignant were the wives of “the brethren” in the vicinity, at this intruder into their ranks. They, all of them, discovered suddenly that without a conveyance it was impossible to pay visits; and “we do not keep a conveyance.” The inference was unmistakeable; it was not in their power to call on Mrs Wright.
Miss Insches fully shared in the general indignation, but she was not without curiosity; so with proper condescension, and as a duty, she agreed to accompany her brother.
The best room of the Fairholm Manse had two windows; it stood rather high, and was approached by a road which one of these windows commanded, so as very conveniently to warn the inhabitants of the rare advent of visitors. As they opened the gate, a sturdy maid servant stared at them for a moment—answered Mr Insches in the affirmative, when he inquired if her mistress was at home, and precipitately fled to the back door, leaving the visitors to find the more dignified entrance at their leisure. They had to pass the windows of the “best room;” within, sitting as gingerly as ever Miss Insches sat, in a parlour by no means so fine as the sacred drawing-room, they had a first glimpse of the bride. She saw them looking for the door in some confusion, but she sat bolt upright in her new dignity, with her hands crossed in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the opposite wall, and made no sign.
“The woman’s daft,” muttered Miss Insches, “could she no let folk in? Mrs Whyte, that’s a lady born, is no ower grand to open the door.”
The Reverend Robert laughed, not without some secret shame; it was a good lesson, and did him service. He began to see the vulgarity of this assumption; his own natural taste had kept himself within bounds, anxious as he was to maintain the decorums which he fancied necessary to his “position;” but this was sufficiently ludicrous to make him ashamed of the stiff gentility to which he had been endeavouring to train his good-humoured sister. His heavy brother of Fairholm was labouring tomakehis wife a lady—a very impossible process, as her appearance showed.
She had a soft large face, a drooping head, a tall, gawky person—and when the handsome Mr Insches and his cheerful sister seated themselves beside her, she giggled. Miss Insches talked, and so did the Reverend Robert: the bride answered by a hysteric titter. It was her sole accomplishment. She had by no means a gift for conversation, but she could giggle to perfection.
Mr Wright came to the rescue, in his own person, and by means of ecclesiastical subjects a long half hour was spent; but Robert made no mention of the intended party. He was by no means proud of having made acquaintance with the bride.
“Robert,” said Miss Insches solemnly, as they left the house, “whatever ye do, dinna gang and break our hearts with a gawky like yon. I’m no caring for siller; but man, Robert, if ye canna get a lady, dinna take up with a fule!”
The Reverend Robert smiled—pleasantly before his eyes glided the graceful nervous figure, with its swift motions, and springing step, and eloquent face. Secretly in his own mind he did at that moment elect the poor schoolmistress to the honourable vacant seat at the head of his dignified table. It was true she was poor, and had for years laboured to earn her own bread; but Helen Buchanan was a gentlewoman born!
In the meantime Helen Buchanan remained perfectly unconscious of her election. Mr Insches, his good qualities, and his indifferent ones, had passed from her mind altogether. She was not even angry at his desertion of her, during the earlier part of that Mossgray party, and met him the next time she saw him after it with a quite unclouded face. IfWilliam Oswald had been the offender, the offence would have ruffled in a very different way the memory of Helen. It was a bad omen for the Reverend Robert.
And William Oswald was gone. He had established himself now, a permanent inhabitant of Edinburgh, practising his profession as it pleased the public to give him opportunity; and the public was not unpropitious. His father had many connections in other little towns like Fendie, and Fendie itself was respectably litigious. William Oswald was pronounced “a rising young man,” “a sagacious lad,” by voices of authority in the sacred precincts of the Parliament House. His prospects were fair and prosperous—the banker began to be proud of his thriving son.
And William began to be heard of in other spheres than the Parliament House. In the Scottish capital as in the English, stout hearts were banding themselves for a holy war, a new Crusade. Against the physical evils which debase the poor, against giant sins which have their absolute dominions mapped out in every city; for wise men began to see how poverty and wretchedness, iniquity and pollution, press forward upon the mere barrier of defence set up to oppose their progress, and steadily make a way. So one here and there, stung to the heart with one particular evil, and yearning over the masses of unregarded poor, had snatched a flaming brand out of the slow consuming fire, and holding it up above his head, in earnestness almost wild, had begged and prayed his fellows to look upon the ghastly sight below. Little perishing outcast children, trained, as one could fancy, by malignant spirits only, to breathe in crime like daily air. Strong men sinking—sinking—into woe and misery ineffable, binding themselves with those green withes of customary sin, which by and by should harden into chains of iron. Women, woe of woes, lost without hope. And good men had united themselves in an aggressive war, to go forth against all the powers of darkness—not simply to defend, but to invade and rout and conquer, holding no terms or parley with the might of sin.
The fluttering flush came and went over Helen’s cheek, as she read eagerly the doings of this new chivalry of Scotland. Her breast swelled—her heart beat. William was among them, bearing arms like a true man.
The Reverend Robert had no chance against this: the young man had strayed further from the East than he needhave done, and though performing his ministerial work well and conscientiously, did by no means project his very heart into it, or live for it as his chief end. He also was a good man and a Christian; but from his life you would have fancied that the ardent rejoicing might of labour, which insures success in any other profession, was misplaced in his—that the work of all others in which every moment is solemn and weighty, was the one work which should be done in deliberate calmness—for he was not aggressive. He lamented over existing evils, but he did not bravely and at once attack them. He was content to be a matter-of-course minister—as good as his neighbours, moving along in a sort of mechanical respectable way. He was not yet roused to feel himself standing alone, with God his master over him, and the whole world lying in wickedness—to be saved.
“I am bid forth to supper.”—Merchant of Venice.
“I am bid forth to supper.”—Merchant of Venice.
Itwas the evening of Miss Insches’ party, and two of her guests were already comfortably established in the sacred drawing-room. Next day was the fast day in Fendie, and the Reverend Paulus Whyte was to preach. Mr Insches was rather a favourite with Mrs Whyte. She had been persuaded to accompany her husband, and was to remain all night at the Manse.
Mr Whyte was seated in an easy chair, talking in a low, gentle, pleasant voice to the very attentive Miss Insches. He was a little man, with courteous, graceful manners, and a very mild, engaging face. No tongue, however slanderous, could find matter of accusation against Paulus Whyte; friend and foe alike did unconscious homage to the pure, unselfish spirit which dwelt among them in its peaceful mildness—a visible citizen of heaven. He was one of those few men whose especial gift seems holiness; you heard all classes, the religious and the profane, do reverence to the distinguishing quality of the gentle minister. He was a holy man.
He had one weakness—a failing incident to his guileless,benevolent nature. He was a little too apt to write biographies of very good little boys, who died at eight or nine in the odour of sanctity, and little girls who, at a like age, were experienced in all the difficulties and temptations of the spiritual life. On the counters of religious booksellers you were continually picking up little books in coloured covers, memorials of the last small pious Jane or William who had died within the good minister’s ken. In the simplicity of his own gentle nature, he received all the traits of childish goodness, which weeping mothers and aunts told him when their first grief began to soften; and rejoicing in “the holiness of youth,” recorded the little incidents of those young lives for the edification of all. They were not always to edification; but the good man fervently believed them so, and in his own devout heart gave thanks joyfully for the youthful angels of whom he had registered so many. There were some who smiled at the weakness, and some who sneered at its fruits; but few men sneered at Paulus Whyte. His garments were too spotless—his serene life too pure for any reproaches of the adversary.
His wife was a vivacious, lively, cheerful person, pleasantly patronizing to all youthful people. She liked young society, and she liked to take such as suited her under her wing, and bring them forward, and encourage them by all kindly means. She was chatting in her own cheerful, sprightly way, with Robert Insches, who held a high place in her favour. She was bent at present on providing him with that indispensable equipment for all young ministers—a wife—and had plans of her own on the subject, of which Robert had a considerable guess; but Robert conquered himself, had full confidence in the fascination of Helen, and felt sure of the ultimate approval of Mrs Whyte.
The first arrival was a sister of Mrs Whyte’s, a widow lady resident at Fendie. She was a querulous person, constitutionally inclined to look at the dark side of everything, a perfect contrast to the happier temper of her sister, but withal not destitute of a kindred kindliness. Only the youthful people patronized by Mrs Gray, were sedulously tutored into a melancholy certainty of the inevitable miseries of the world. She tried, good gloomy woman, to charge the natural atmosphere of hope with the vapoury fears in which she herself found a certain sombre satisfaction, and now and then she was temporarily successful.
The drawing-room was not very much crowded. Besides these, there were only Lilias, Halbert, Helen, and the banker Oswald and his wife.
The last two were invited by Mr Insches for some unexplained reason. They were certainly his very good friends, but that was not the cause; he had many good friends in Fendie quite as eligible; but the Reverend Robert had once or twice encountered William in the immediate vicinity of Mrs Buchanan’s house, and had an idea that his rival, like himself, was kept back by scruples of pride, or by consideration of what “the world” would say. Consequently, William’s parents were invited to-night to show them that the step was taken, that the dignified youthful minister had made up his mind, and that Helen was about to be elevated to the lofty position of Mistress of the Manse.
Helen herself, who had come with some reluctance, felt already uncomfortably hampered by her host’s attentions; there was a slight ostentation in them—a certain consciousness of derogation on his own part, and fear for her, lest the exaltation should dazzle her. Helen kept closely by the side of Lilias, amused, afraid, and suspecting some design upon her.
Mrs Oswald seated herself beside the young friends. The banker kept apart, struggling very vainly against the curiosity which turned his eyes towards this group; he began to feel an interest in watching the colour fluctuate and change on Helen’s cheek, and to understand the half-suppressed, impatient motion and altered attitude, which testified some annoyance under those elaborate courtesies of Robert Insches. Mr Oswald was sadly inconsistent; he had a certain satisfaction in perceiving that these courtesies did not seem particularly acceptable to Helen.
“My dear,” said the plaintive Mrs Gray, addressing Lilias, “I am glad to see you looking so much stronger: but perhaps you are flushed—just a little flushed to-night; you must be very careful as you go home that you don’t take cold.”
“I heard Mrs Mense making a great provision of cloaks for my home-going,” said Lilias, smiling; “they are too careful of me, Mrs Gray. I shall not take cold if my good friends can guard me from it.”
“Well,” said Mrs Gray, “this is a strange world; you will see trouble coming often to those who are most carefully guarded, while others who can use no precautions escapeit altogether. Ay, Miss Insches, you may well shake your head; I have seen such things myself.”
Miss Insches had indeed shaken her head sympathetically, because the good-humoured little woman thought some assent was necessary; but on being thus involved as an interlocutor, she looked very guilty and confused, and was by no means sure whether she should have done it or no.
“But why speak of it so drearily, Agnes?” said Mr Whyte, who, mild man as he was, gave his sister-in-law’s doleful moods no quarter. “I can see cause for nothing but thankfulness in that. That Providence specially cares for those who cannot care for themselves; it is positive sunshine to think of it.”
“Ay,” said Mrs Gray, mournfully, “the minister and I always take different views; but you’ll allow, Paulus, what the Bible says its very self of this weary world. A vale of tears—a shadow that fleeth away—the valley of the shadow of death.”
“My dear Agnes,” said the vivacious Mrs Whyte, with some impatience, “I wish you would quote the chapter and verse, for I really have no recollection of the vale of tears in Scripture.”
“Elizabeth,” answered Mrs Gray, with solemnity, “the dark day has not fallen upon you yet, and I hope it may be long deferred; but it is a heavy life. The very best of it is just a succession of work and fatigue, waking and sleeping, weariness and rest. I see you agree with me, Mr Oswald. We are in a miserable world, and the sooner we are done with it the better for ourselves.”
The banker, thus appealed to, looked as much amazed as Miss Insches; he did by no means agree with Mrs Gray, but he was somewhat slow of speech, and could not manage to express his sentiments. There was a certain orthodoxy too in this view of the matter; so the honest man hesitated and looked confused, and not knowing what to say, finally said nothing.
“And Miss Buchanan, my dear,” said Mrs Gray, with an affectionate sadness, “I see I have you on my side.”
“Oh no, no, no,” said Helen eagerly, in the tremulous low voice which she always spoke in, when she was greatly moved; a voice, more than half reverie, broken now and then abruptly by a consciousness of being listened to.
“No?”
“There is nothing miserable in it,” said Helen, forgetting herself, and speaking rapidly, and so low that the banker needed to bend forward before he could hear; “nothing but what wemake; I think the words should be noble and grand rather, in all its light and all its gloom. It is very dark sometimes. I know there are eclipses and thunderclouds; but not miserable—no, no. It does not become us—surely it does not become us to make its changes matters of sadness; for the labour’s sake it is good to rest, and the labour itself—I think sometimes that if we had no other blessing,thatwould be great enough to rejoice in all our days—to have work to do under the sunshine of heaven—work for the Master—the King! I do not know; I think there is no grief that can match the joy of this.”
The nervous small fingers were clasped together, the unquiet face looking into the vacant air with shining, abstracted eyes, the head erected in eager enthusiasm; and bending forward as if to a magnet, the banker Oswald looked on.
Lilias Maxwell laid her hand gently on Helen’s clasped fingers. There was an instantaneous change: the erect head fell into its ordinary stoop, the eyes were cast down, the figure shrank back shy and trembling, and Mr Oswald drew a long breath, and threw himself back in his chair, as the Reverend Robert brought down the tone of the conversation to the common-place and prosaic, by saying, with some emphasis,—
“I perfectly agree with Miss Buchanan.”
Mrs Gray had been somewhat startled. Mr Insches set her right again. She shook her head.
“Ah, young people, young people; it is quite natural, no doubt; but you don’t know—you will find it out only too soon.”
Mr Whyte rose from his chair with some displeasure, and lifted his fine hand in admonition.
“Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say unto you rejoice.”
The animation of his words lighted up his gentle face; not alone in the sunshine and in the fair earth, but in the Lord with whom was the wonderful “fellowship” of the holy man. It was meet that there should be gladness in all his peaceful life, for this was its charm and spell.
Mrs Whyte changed her seat. She took the chair whichMrs Gray left vacant beside Lilias and Helen, to the great contentment of the Reverend Robert.
“I warn you, young ladies, against my sister,” said Mrs Whyte, cheerfully. “Agnes has had a great deal of grief herself, and she thinks it is the common lot, and is anxious to prepare others for all that befell her. She means it very kindly, though I think she is mistaken; but, Miss Maxwell, you must not adopt these melancholy views of hers—it is quite soon enough to be sorrowful when sorrow comes.”
“You warnme, Mrs Whyte,” said Lilias, smiling. “Have you no fear for Helen?”
“No, Miss Buchanan has quite reässured me,” said Mrs Whyte; “and I am not sure that I should at any time have feared for her so much as for you. Is not Mossgray very quiet—shall I say dull? We have an idea that your guardian is a melancholy man, Miss Maxwell.”
“No, indeed, no,” said Lilias. “He likes to be alone, and is a thoughtful man, but Mossgray is not melancholy—if melancholy means anything like unhappiness. He may be pensive as the stars are—but not sad—never gloomy. You think so, Helen?”
Helen assented in a single word, for she had been led into saying far more than she intended before, and was considerably ashamed and embarrassed now; especially as the Reverend Robert was drawing up his stately figure close beside her, and Mrs Whyte looked interested and curious.
“You must come to the Manse and see me, Miss Buchanan,” said Mrs Whyte, “when the days are longer. I shall expect you often, mind, and we are really rather attractive people; besides myself, you know, there is Paulus, whom everybody has a kindness for, and two treasures of bairns. You will like Paulus,” continued the minister’s wife, glancing at him with a kindly smile, as he sat talking to Mrs Oswald: “and Paulus would say, I think, that you were not likely to cast out with me, and of course there can be but one opinion about the bairns. I shall expect you, Miss Buchanan, and I shall expect Miss Maxwell. It is not a very long walk, and you will do me a kindness if you come.”
The words were easily said, and it was very true that two such guests as Lilias and Helen would most pleasantly relieve the quietness of the Manse of Kirkmay; but they made the heart of the young schoolmistress glad. The delicate perception which gave this special invitation toherrather than to the well-friended Lilias—the true friendliness and appreciation which could venture to praise to her its own especial household. It is surely true thatwordswill rise up hereafter in judgment against us: so well and gracefully as we might heal and cheer and encourage with these magic utterances; so often as we make them poisoned arrows, to pierce, and kill, and wound.
“And I am sure,” said Miss Insches, who had been listening with great edification, “it would be a real charity if you would call whiles on me. I might maybe no presume on asking Miss Maxwell, because she’s a gey bit from the town, besides being delicate; but as you’re so near hand, Miss Buchanan, it wouldna be much trouble, and I would take it real kind. I’m sure Robert never wearies speaking about you, and he would be as glad as me: for ye see—Eh, is that you Robert? Was you wanting me?”
Robert had secretly, in vehement shame and anger, pulled his indiscreet sister’s sleeve, and the result was, that the innocent Miss Insches turned suddenly round upon him, and revealed the artifice he had used to stay her disclosures. The Reverend Robert blushed to the very hair. Helen shrank back, shyly conscious. Mrs Whyte cast wicked, intelligent glances at the minister, and Miss Insches, seeing that something was wrong, and that she had blundered, looked about her in bewildered penitence.
“Eh, Robert,” she repeated under her breath, “is’t me?”
The Reverend Robert was too much annoyed to laugh, but Mrs Whyte did, as she came to the rescue.
“I think when Paulus has his duty over to-morrow, that you and I must make some calls, Mr Insches. Miss Buchanan, will you introduce me to your mother; and may I venture, Miss Maxwell, to come as far as Mossgray?”
Lilias answered for both. Miss Insches’ last master-stroke had entirely silenced Helen.
Halbert all this time had been alone, or nearly so, and now Lilias perceived him at the other end of the room, patiently listening to Mrs Gray; so there was a general movement to rescue him. Halbert had felt ratherde tropthis evening; he was almost inclined to chime in at first with the lamentations of the mournful lady; and it was a relief to all parties when Mr Insches changed places with the young heir of Mossgray.