CHAPTER XVII.

“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 Fendie was 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 plump hands 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 the _quoad sacra_ at 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 the _mésalliances_ of 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 had a 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 to _make_ his 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. If William 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 need have 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.