CHAPTER V.

Is she not proud? doth she not count her blessed, Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom? ROMEO AND JULIET.

The little roundabout Miss Insches began to grow disturbed about the length of her own continuance in office. She saw that very soon her dominion over the dining-room and the drawing-room, and her share of the comforts of the library, must come to a close; and while the good-humoured sister anticipated, with considerable relief, her return to the plebeian, unpretending home where there was no necessity for being always genteel, she felt also a good many qualms about resigning Robert, and Robert’s beautiful chairs and tables, into the keeping of a stranger.

“For ye see, Miss Buchanan, she’s young,” said Miss Insches to herself, not daring to have any other confidante, “and for a’ she’s nae better--I’m meaning for a’ she’s a hantle puirer than oursels, no to speak of Robert--she has gey high notions like himsel’; and I’m very doubtful that she’ll just let Nelly dust the big room, and no think of putting to her ain hand. Robert says I should do that too, but he’s a young lad for a’ he’s the minister, and doesna ken a’thing. I wish she may just be mindful o’ himsel’. He’s aye been used wi’ his ain way, puir man, and has been muckle made o’, and muckle thought o’; and I’m sure a better lad--”

Miss Insches paused with an incipient tear in her eye. The worshipped minister son, of whom the mother at home was so proud--the omnipotent brother whose slightest word was law--alas! was he to cease to be an idol--to come down from his absolute throne, and be limited to a constitutional monarchy like any other man, with perhaps a young, proud wife exacting service from him, instead of rendering the devoted homage which was Robert’s due? Miss Insches’s eye again wandered over the shining tables of the sacred drawing-room, and her heart was troubled.

“He’s aye had his ain way, puir man!” she repeated, mournfully, as she carefully closed the door and sighed. Poor Robert! he was to be married, as all Fendie said--he was to have his own way no longer.

The Reverend Robert was seated at his writing table in the library; it was a study day. Miss Insches stole noiselessly in, closed the door, and took her seat at the window, with her seam in her hand. Robert was writing his sermon; the good sister sewed those new shirts of his in devout silence; when her thread fell she picked it up with a look of guilt--she might have disturbed Robert. Foolish Robert! the young wife would not reverence his stillness so.

“Janet,” said Robert, graciously, “we are to dine at Kirkmay on Monday. I have just had a note from Mrs Whyte.”

“Ye dinna mean me, too, Robert?” said Miss Insches.

“Certainly I mean you too, Janet,” said the young man, with some impatience. “Why, you have been at Kirkmay before.”

“Yes, Robert, I’m meaning that,” responded the dutiful sister humbly, “but it’s the Monday of the preachings, is’t no? and will there be more folk than ministers?”

“Mrs Whyte is to have a few friends,” said the Reverend Robert, with a conscious smile, “and there is no reason why they should only be ministers.”

“I didna say there was,” said Miss Insches; “is onybody we ken to be there, Robert?”

Robert smiled again. His sister had come to understand the particular meaning of this smile.

“I fancy Miss Maxwell of Mossgray will be there,” he said with a blush as he returned to his sermon.

Miss Insches applied herself to her shirt with another little suppressed sigh. She understood very well what was meant by Miss Maxwell of Mossgray; and Miss Insches by no means disliked Helen; but the great question whether she would be sufficiently careful of Robert when advanced to the dignity of Robert’s wife was hard and difficult to solve. Miss Insches shook her head as she went on with her work. On Monday--the crisis might come on Monday.

Monday when it came was bright with the sunshine, and fragrant with all the sweet sounds and odours of May. On the preceding day had been the half-yearly Occasion, the Communion Sabbath of Kirkmay, and the Monday’s services were of thanksgiving, according to the reverent usage of Scotland. Mr Wright of Fairholm was the officiating minister, and preached a chaotic ponderous sermon, which, according to the judgment of the Kirkmay elders, had “guid bits in it; very guid bits; but was naething like the minister’s.” The minister was very much beloved in his parish; they rather prided themselves, these simple people, on their possession of a man who wrote books, even though the books were but sixpenny ones; and read his small biographies with proud regard. The one gentle weakness of his fine character came out as an excellence in their eyes, and there were few in Kirkmay who did not boast of “the minister.”

After dinner, while the gentlemen were still down-stairs, Mrs Whyte, with her lady guests, pleasantly occupied the comfortable plain drawing-room, which, though it was by no means so fine, did yet, Miss Insches could not fail to perceive, look a very much more habitable place than the corresponding room in the Manse of Fendie. Mr Whyte dabbled a little in all the gentler sciences--the flowers which his wife cultivated, because she cultivated everything beautiful which was within her reach, the good minister classified, and talked of with gentle erudition; and specimens of fine seaweed, and delicate mosses, and fossils not very rare, and shells picked up on the margin of the Firth, evinced his universal liking, and his only rudimentary knowledge of the kindred philosophies of nature. He was not very learned in these various departments; he only marvelled over the wondrous mechanism of everything which came from his Master’s hand, and cherished them all tenderly for their Maker’s sake.

The ladies--Mrs Gray, Lilias, and Helen were the only _lay_ persons present--were very comfortably gathered into groups in the drawing-room discussing the notable things of their own district: the church, their several families. The small company was by no means dull, especially as Mrs Whyte’s children, the little boy and girl about whom their frank mother had said there could not be two opinions, were, with all their might, entertaining the guests.

The room was rather an oddly shaped room; it had a curiously angled corner, with a window in it, which Mrs Whyte chose as her summer seat, and playfully called her boudoir. The work-table which stood in it was scarcely clear of its ordinary lumber even now; there were traces that the minister’s wife had been sitting there this morning, singing over her household work the low-voiced songs of a pure mind, happily at ease. Lilias Maxwell had strayed alone into Mrs Whyte’s chair by the window. She was very pale, and as she looked out upon the verdant country, and the Firth and the hills far away, her fingers came slowly towards each other, and were painfully clasped as was their wont. It was drawing near again--that day which might change the current of her life.

As she sat there, Helen Buchanan approached quietly; the pale, sad, absorbed face touched her to the heart.

“You are very sad, Lilias,” said Helen, as she stood screening her friend from the other occupants of the room, “but you will not tell me why; will you let me say anything--do anything for you?”

“Yes, Helen.” Lilias rested her head silently upon her companion’s shoulder, and closed her eyes. It was a relief to her; her heart was sick--she could not speak of it, but here in silent confidence she could lean for a moment the weight of her trouble. “I have heard nothing; I have had no word this long, long, weary time--and the day is coming near again. To-morrow--after to-morrow will be the day.”

There was nothing more said, for the sickness rose up blank over the heart of Lilias, and the tears were in Helen’s eyes; but the drooping head of the Lily of Mossgray, overcharged with heavy rain, leaned on the friend’s breast, and was comforted. She remembered the moment long after, and so did Helen. More than many words--more than much bewailing together of a sorrow more openly confessed, did that silent confidence bind them together.

The conversation going on in the room was not in the least abstract; local and individual were all the subjects under discussion, and the talk about them might have been called gossip. It certainly was of the genus if not of the species to which that unpopular name is given. In a “countryside,” and above all in a little town, metropolis of a country-side, where each family has a certain connection with all, conversation, unless galvanically kept up in the region of books, must glide into this channel; and the clerical character which this little company of ladies possessed, as strongly marked as their husbands below, increased the necessity. Having satisfactorily dismissed the children of the respective Manses, and ascertained who had had hooping cough, and which it was who had come so easily through the measles, the respective parish over which she presided was the next grand object before the mind of the clerical lady. Its successes, its adversities, its sins, its great people and its small; and each parish lady was interested in her neighbour’s dominions.

Now it happened that this chapter of backslidings was a peculiarly sad and melancholy one; revealing under the healthful rural air and sweet fresh sunshine, a moral atmosphere, dense, unwholesome, and heavy. While one listened to what those lamenting people said, one’s arcadian visions of rural purity sorrowfully vanished. Follies of youth, the world said; alas! not follies, but sins, dark, far-spreading, unregarded; and public opinion had even ceased in the peasant class to brand them with the unutterable disgrace which is their fate in others. Young, fresh girls heard of those vices--heard them lightly spoken of by older lips grown callous--and saw the sinner scarcely disgraced at all; it was a great evil, shadowing the souls of many as with a low, spreading, deadly tree, between them and the sun.

“Could nothing be done,” whispered Helen in Mrs Whyte’s ear, as, trembling with bitter shame and pain, she had listened to some story of the fallen, “you who have influence; who may dare interfere in such matters; could the air not be purified in some way--could nothing be done?”

“My dear,” said Mrs Gray, “it is nothing but our evil nature; we cannot mend it; what can we do?”

“We cannot mend it,” said Helen in her low, vehement voice; “but we can strive, endeavour, fight--do anything, anything to change such a state of things. It is our work in the world; the other things are only by the way; this is our work--what we were born for. To pull away all obstructions, to let in, everywhere, the light of heaven. If we once did that, this evil could not be--surely it could not be.”

“I think so, Helen,” said the kind Mrs Whyte; “we, in our position, might do much more than we are doing; but at least, we all lament these evils bitterly--you believe that?”

Helen did not answer; she wanted that experience of the maturer mind which could discriminate between an exceptional and an ordinary case, and refrain from sweeping judgments. The shock of pain with which she heard of evil was always with her, a spur to endeavour something against it; but while others lacked will, she lacked power. She could not cast herself into the crusading ranks and assail the powers of darkness as she thirsted to do; but the impulse of warfare was strong upon her--she could not rest.

“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs Gray, “you do not know yet as you will know the misery of this wicked world, and how vain it is striving with it; every day I live I see it more and more.”

“Yet it is to be pure,” said Helen, with her head erect and her eye kindling, “it is to be filled with the knowledge of Him--it is to be made fit for His reign. I do not know--no one living may see that day--but I think sometimes that if we believed that, we could have no doubt, no fear. We should look to the great hope which lies upon the world like sunshine, and not to the misery which it earns every day. It is to be pure--God is pledged to us that it shall be so; but our arms rust, and we use them not--our days pass and we do nothing; yet we are to labour for it--it is so ordained--and it is to be pure!”

Helen’s eyes suddenly fell, her head drooped. The gentlemen, some of them, had already strayed upstairs, and close beside her stood the Reverend Robert listening with ostentatious attention.

“Yes,” said the somewhat rough voice of Mr Wright of Fairholm; “a minister’s life is a very hard life, Miss Buchanan; we have to labour as you say; the very Sabbath, which is a resting day to everybody else, is a hard-working day to a minister.”

Helen turned rapidly away; it was a strange anticlimax.

“Miss Buchanan did not mean that,” said Mrs Whyte. “Miss Buchanan likes the good, wholesome work. She thinks we do too little, instead of too much, Mr Wright.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the cumbrous, heavy man, “there is a great deal of truth in that. The people ought to know their own duty, and not leave the work entirely to us as they do; and the elders really need stirring up; but a minister--few people know how much is laid on the shoulders of a minister.”

“And you, Mr Insches?” asked Mrs Whyte, smiling, as her quick eye glanced over the great, stooping, uncouth figure of the strong man beside her in whom was no impulse to work, and who actually felt fatigue more easily than would the nervous delicate girl.

Mr Insches hesitated; it was not his policy to differ with Helen; but he had not received the inspiration much more than his sluggish brother. He was still, to a considerable extent, a matter-of-course man, doing what he must do, and not very much more.

“The ministerial life,” said the Reverend Robert, with some dignity, “is a life of great exertion. We are never perfect of course, but it is a most laborious life, the life of a conscientious minister.”

It was a compromise--it pleased nobody. Helen turned away, unconsciously disappointed. She had expected something better.

“’Deed, Robert,” said Miss Insches, “I’m aye feared the ither way about you. It’s my terror, Mrs Whyte, that he’ll just wear himsel out, and I’m sure if he was to get a wife and I kent beforehand wha she was to be, I would warn her no to put such nonsense notions into his head; for ye see, Miss Buchanan--Eh! Robert, is there onything ails ye?--are ye no weel?”

But Robert was not “no weel”--he was only frowning upon his too-honest sister, and making an elaborate face. It was too late; all the eyes in the room were turned to the blushing, angry countenance of the Reverend Robert, and he heard tittering in the corners. He turned away full of wrath--it would not do; there was no putting the restraints of delicacy or prudence over the simplicity of Janet.