CHAPTER IV.

I am sick and capable of fears; Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears; A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; A woman, naturally born to fears.--KING JOHN.

Mrs Buchanan had a good deal of anxiety about the position and prospects of her daughter. People began to speak of those constant visits of the minister, and now, when it seemed likely that some decision must speedily be come to, Mrs Buchanan began to think remorsefully of the long-tried familiar friend, whose place in their little household Mr Insches seemed so resolute to take. Yet she liked Mr Insches; she liked him for the simple, natural character which the influence of Helen seemed to draw forth more naturally and simply every day; she liked him, even for the faults which he could not hide; and most of all she liked him because he had fallen from his hobby--had lost his depth--and because it was no longer in his power to pretend that he could elevate that lofty head of his, and take his assiduities away. Besides it would be so very suitable; the modest dignity of his place, equal to the richest yet within the reach of the very poor--its necessary literature and necessary benevolence, which the good mother fancied would suit so well the delicate, impulsive, variable spirit of her only child: all these things increased her desire to see the suit of Mr Insches successful,--and yet--we are inconsistent always, we human folk--the gentle Mrs Buchanan looked wistfully at the address of the Edinburgh newspaper which he sent her constantly, and wondered how William would feel if he saw the new occupant of his long-accustomed corner. She did not like, in her kind inconsistency, to come to any distinct explanation with her daughter; often she spoke of Mr Insches, and Helen sometimes blushed as she listened; but the blush now was painful and uneasy. Mrs Buchanan became very anxious--desiring, and yet not desiring that this should come to some definite end.

Helen too felt her position very painful; night after night the Reverend Robert was there, with his good looks, his good mind, and the little sparks of temper which diversified and animated them. Week after week passed away, and she saw or heard nowhere but in the newspaper the name of William Oswald. She began to have a disagreeable consciousness that it was possible she might come to like this Reverend Robert, and she began to be a little piqued and angry at his rival for suffering her to remain so long ignorant of all his proceedings and feelings. Helen did not remember then the very decided negative she had put upon his proposal to write; she did not remember anything at that moment, in exculpation of the resolute labourer toiling to the utmost of his stout faculties in the distant city. She only felt impatient, inconsistent, irritable; very much disposed to quarrel with the two candidates for her favour, and still more offended with herself.

In this mood she set out one dull May afternoon immediately after her little crowd had dispersed, to see a small invalid whose place had been vacant among them for more than a week. It was Robbie Carlyle’s little daughter, Mary, who had been ill with some childish epidemic, and was now recovering. Helen had been struggling with the most painful mood of her nervous temperament this day--its irritability; she found herself a hundred times on the very point of unnecessary fault-finding--in spite of all her precautions, impatient hasty words had escaped from her lips; and now she was turning her sword against herself, and was in a bitter, painful, unhappy humour, which it was best to carry away out of the society of any whom it might wound, into the still country road, along which she went with the unequal pace, now slow, now hasty, which was usual to her.

The gentle summer air, the dreamy silence just touched and made human with its floating far-away sounds of life, the dim sky above with its soft dark clouds and veiled sun--in these was a charm to which the unquiet spirit never failed to answer. A touch of the kindly humanity which makes the whole world kin, might have lifted her up in a moment into the midst of the sunny clouds of her own bright especial heaven; but when Nature was the physician, the effect was different; the unhappy mood stole away into the deep sadness peculiar to her, and she lingered now and then to look over the fair, dim country with those slanting lines of pale sunshine stealing over it, from the head of yon shrouded mountain in the west, her heart sinking into the depths the while. The cap of which Skiddaw wots when it is put on, was shading the dark brow of the Scottish hill, and the air was subdued and soft, and the wind sighed about the hedges as though its wings were drenched with rain. Few articulate thoughts were in the downcast mind of Helen; only the thread of linked and varied fancies, which sometimes quivered below the sunbeams like a golden chord, was now sad and drooping like the wind. The unconscious tears gathered in her eyes--the shadow fell heavily over her heart. Slowly along the quiet road she wandered enveloped in the mist of her changed mood. The annoyances and the little angers had vanished away, but she was very sad.

Just then she came in sight of the Firth; between her and its pale glittering waves lay the green breadth of the Marsh, with its fine sea-side grass, and pools of deep still water. Nowhere, far or near, was there grass so smooth and velvet-like, as the close thin-bladed grass of this dangerous play-ground, interdicted to the obedient children of Fendie. But the children of Fendie, like all others, had a craving for interdicted pleasures, and when they got together in bands and could have the countenance of other rebels, the Marsh was a favourite trysting-place; and the bold example of Robbie Caryl’s amphibious boys overcame scruples of timidity. It was excellent sport to leap over the gleaming pools of salt water; the strong really enjoyed it, and the weak, precociously compelled by fear of ridicule to do as others did, made pretence of enjoying it too.

Pale, slanting, watery sunbeams were gleaming in the salt pools and on the shrunken Firth, as it began to gather volume, and retrace its rapid steps to the shore. It has strange moods this southern Firth; you see bare, dreary sand-banks at night, dotted with the stake-nets of the fishers, in the very midst of its broad course, where ships will sail bravely when to-morrow’s tide is in. The far-away English hills were blotted out with the mist of coming rain, and over the dark hill in the west the sun threw his flickering, sickly beams, longer and longer drawn out, as he faintly glided downward to his bed in the sea.

The Marsh was somewhere about a mile in extent, stretching along the bank of the Firth eastward from the mouth of the Fendie water. For the most part it looked verdant and tempting at a little distance, and was indeed scarcely so much a Marsh as a great extent of fine sea-side grass--what is called links in other places in Scotland--save that this was a complete net-work of clear salt-water pools, only to be traversed by dint of leaping. As Helen approached its borders a few children were painfully disentangling themselves from its labyrinth. Some of the pools were tolerably deep, and the Fendie children, to increase their dread of the Marsh, had been taught to believe them deeper. The little wanderers on this occasion had been struck with fear as they began to see the tawny waves of the returning Firth roll in on the dark pebbly sand far below. The clouds were gathering close over the sky as though the night was about to fall--some of the small hearts were beating timorously--they were all struggling as they could towards the road.

In the very heart of the Marsh where lay the deepest, broadest pools of all, shutting in the unwary wanderer on every side, Helen saw a little girl lifting in her arms a small, heavy brother, much younger, but not much less than herself. On even ground she could scarcely carry him, but now the young heroine had a desperate attempt to make. The rain had begun, the last lingering sunbeam was gone: all their companions were already out of peril; the poor little sister was essaying to leap over the pool which intercepted her, with the great lumbering boy in her arms.

“Dinna, Jeanie--dinna try’t,” cried another little girl, looking back; “just bide a wee while. I’ll rin and get Robbie Caryl--there’s nae fears.”

But Jeanie had many fears, and the rain began to come heavily down, and Robbie Caryl’s cottage was a full quarter of a mile away; so she made the leap, her frightened heart beating loud. It was successful so far; the little blubbering brother was safely landed, but she herself plunged to the knee into the pool, and her frock was torn, and one of her clogs lost in the tenacious wet sand. Poor Jeanie could not wait to get it out, and every step of her progress must be made at the same peril. She sat down on the sharp grass beside her little brother, and looked at her torn wet frock, and cried bitterly, with visions of high tide, and the dreary darkness, and being drowned, alternating in her mind with terror for what her mother would say about the torn frock and the lost shoe.

But Jeanie must rise and lift little Tammie, and try again; and as she looked wistfully over the dark Marsh, she saw some one taller and more agile than herself, springing step by step over the dangerous pools.

“It’s only a woman,” said Jeanie to herself, sadly; but immediately the little heart rose and grew courageous: “It’s the mistress!”

She had cured Helen. The cheek of the young schoolmistress of Fendie was glowing through the rain as if it never could be pale. Peter himself, the embryo fisherman, had never leaped those gleaming pools more bravely than Helen did. It was somewhat hard for an amusement to other than boyhood, but it made her eyes sparkle and her heart beat; she had never been blyther than she was now.

He was a serious weight, that little blubbering Tammie, and was somewhat afraid of the honour of being lifted in the arms of the mistress. It awed him into silence; and Jeanie ventured to pause, to rescue her shoe. The mistress assured her that the pool was not so deep after all, and Jeanie forgot her fears.

It was rather a dreary scene; the rain sweeping down heavier every moment, till against the lowering sky it began to look white, carried on the wind, like long, trailing skirts of some stiff silken garment; a little below, the tawny roaring Firth, making way sullen and strong over his shores, and lashing up on the shingle in long curls of foam, like a lion’s mane; and here the raindrops pattering in the ghostly pools, and the little girl at Helen’s feet forcing on the recovered shoe, and restraining her weeping in hysteric sobs, while Helen herself grasped the waist of the heavy Tammie with both her hands, and gathered up her dress for the laborious progress to the road.

A passer-by who came in sight on an ascending road at some distance hurried forward in fear for them when he looked down. There was no need: as he reached the edge of the Marsh, Helen cleared the last pool. Her dress was thoroughly wet; she had made one or two stumbles, but her rapid movements seemed more graceful, and her face was brighter, the banker Oswald thought, than when he saw her last in the drawing-room of the Manse; for Mr Oswald was the passer-by--and in the heavy rain and gathering darkness, with only the children to prevent their being alone, he was standing face to face with Helen Buchanan.

The little Tammie was rather a pretty child, and considering how his careful sister and he had spent the afternoon, was a very tolerably clean one; for the pools were very clear, and neither dust nor mud were on the Marsh; so as Helen set him on the ground, and bent down to help and console Jeanie, who had painfully followed her, they made by no means an ungraceful group--if we except the stout, perplexed elderly gentleman with the umbrella, who, not much less shy than Helen, stood with confused hesitation looking at them, and not knowing what to say.

A nervous tremor had come upon the young schoolmistress; half of it was physical, and proceeded from the unusual exertion she had made, and half of it owned her consciousness of the presence of William Oswald’s father. It was natural to her; the fingers which rested on little Jeanie’s shoulder trembled a good deal, and Helen’s attitude and glowing face were shy--a shyness which was at the same time frank, and an awkwardness by no means ungraceful. The banker meanwhile stood before her and her little _protégés_, and held his umbrella over his own head, and grew slightly red in the face. But there was no remnant of gracefulness in the embarrassment of the respectable Mr Oswald. The good man felt a little afraid of the shy, unquiet girl, wondered rather what she would say to him, and felt very much at a loss for something to say to her.

There were sounds of loud, boyish footsteps on the road, as Helen, stooping down, wrapped up the children as she best could to defend them from the rain.

“Eh!” exclaimed a voice corresponding to the feet, as Hector Maxwell of Firthside and his brother came up out of breath; “it’s Miss Buchanan--I knew it was Miss Buchanan--and she’s droukit. Here’s my plaid--take my plaid, Miss Buchanan! We’ve run a’ the road from the brae, because we saw you on the Marsh, and if you had just waited--”

Hector looked indignantly at the little heavy Tammie, and in great haste threw off his plaid.

“Miss Buchanan will not be much better with your plaid, Hector,” said Mr Oswald; “she must take my umbrella; it will be more serviceable, and not so heavy.”

Helen answered the somewhat constrained politeness with a little bow.

“Thank you, Hector; but you would be very wet before you got home, if I took your plaid from you.”

“But I’m no heeding,” said the generous Maxwell. Hector did not need to brush up his English for Helen; she was not so easily shocked as his sister.

“And I shall soon be home,” said Helen. “I must go with these children, you know, and see that they are not scolded; and I am wet already. Come, Tammie. Hector, good-night.”

Helen looked up into the banker’s face, and her natural frankness struggled for a moment with her shy pride. She was almost inclined to say that she would share his umbrella if he pleased, and the next moment she thought she would say nothing; but finally there was a compromise.

“Good-night, Mr Oswald,” said Helen, as she took little Tammie’s hand.

“We are going the same way,” said the embarrassed banker; and so they did; and amicably under shelter of one umbrella, with little Jeanie and her brother getting very muddy and wet at their feet, the banker Oswald and Helen Buchanan walked side by side towards the cheerful lights of Fendie.

Mr Oswald cleared his throat; he rather wanted to begin a conversation, but he did not very well know how. If this young lady was to be Mrs Insches, the good man said to himself plausibly, it was very necessary that he should at least be acquainted with her; but certain it is that with no other prospective Mrs Insches would Mr Oswald have felt himself so uncomfortably conscious. He made a beginning at last on the easiest subject.

“How foolish people are to permit their children to stray out on that Marsh!”

“It is the fault of the bairns themselves,” said Helen.

The banker remembered that Miss Swinton, Hope’s oracle, applauded our natural Scottish tongue, and it was rather a pretty word, “bairns.” In another person he would have thought it vulgar, perhaps, but no one could call that low voice, with its changeful modulations, vulgar, and he began to like listening to it.

“Jeanie is afraid her mother will be angry; but when she sees them so wet, she will forget their misdemeanour, I hope.”

Little Tammie had been tied up as well as it was possible to keep him comfortable, but the poor little fellow was very wet notwithstanding, and was getting weary and sleepy as he trudged along the road. Helen had insinuated him between the banker and herself, and so he was protected by the wonderful umbrella, and moreover had his thumb to suck consolation from, which melancholy pleasure the hapless Jeanie, walking on Helen’s other side, and laboriously gathering up her torn, wet frock, and thinking of what her mother would say, was quite deprived of.

“You seem fond of children, Miss Buchanan,” said the formal banker, after a considerable pause.

Helen began to forget the speciality of the case, in that this perplexed man was William Oswald’s father. She did not like, so sensitive and easily moved as she was herself, to see any one ill at ease beside her.

“I like them,” she said, frankly, “perhaps it is because I spend so much of my time among them; but I like their company.”

“And does it never weary you?” said the curious Mr Oswald.

Helen paused a moment--a sort of half-remembrance of the mood in which she left the school-room that day just floating like a cloud over the spirit which had shaken out its wings and was up again, singing in mid-heaven.

“We all weary sometimes,” she said; “but I not more, I think, than others. It is pleasant to work, and my own work, I fancy, is pleasanter to me than any other would be.”

Mr Oswald was a good deal astonished; he did not quite know how to answer so honest a statement, for the good man had taken it for granted that the young schoolmistress must be very sick of her labour, and eager to escape from it, which indeed she was not, except sometimes, when her wayward moods were upon her.

“I did not know that you knew Hector Maxwell,” said Mr Oswald, awkwardly; “do you admit those rude boys to your liking as well as the little girls, Miss Buchanan?”

“Hector Maxwell is not rude,” said Helen. “He is a genuine boy, and a great friend of mine. Yes, indeed; I like them all very well, until they become young gentlemen and young ladies.”

“And what then?” said the banker.

“And then I become a little afraid of them, and they do not suit me any longer,” said Helen, smiling, as she paused at an open door, where the mother of Jeanie was looking out anxiously for her little truants. “I thank you, Mr Oswald; good-night.”