CHAPTER VI.

“You are altogether governed by humours.”--KING HENRY IV.

The crisis did come, though not as Miss Insches anticipated. Helen carefully guarded herself, as they returned home, from the society of the Reverend Robert, and managed that the opportunity he sought should not be afforded to him. She was thoughtful and grave that night, Mrs Buchanan perceived; for the shadow of a selfish pride had darkened for the time the firmament of Helen. The banker showed no sign of courtesy or kindness; the banker’s wife, on the rare occasions when she met her, never mentioned William’s name. William himself, busy in the distant city, seemed to have given up the contest; to have forgotten the romance of his youth; to have left Helen as he had left Fendie, because she was too humble and too quiet. She did not care--she would not care! she protested to herself, with a proud flush on her cheek, and proud tears in her eyes, that it was nothing to her; but involuntarily an evil, angry feeling had sprung up in her mind--she could avenge herself!

A week ago she had felt painfully that it was just possible that even she might be inconstant--that the Reverend Robert might some time glide into William’s place. She felt now that this was impossible; that her own rapid pace could never harmonize with that slightly ostentatious dignity of the Reverend Robert’s; that her impetuous mind must be chafed and irritated beyond measure, if it ever were yoke-fellow with his; yet the very discovery goaded her to go blindly on. In the bitterness of her pride she thought she could not reject the only man who thought her good enough to be his equal; and when she remembered how long a time it took before even he ceased to be ashamed of his incipient tenderness for the poor schoolmistress, the bitterness increased until it flooded her very heart. There was a gloom upon the world; the evil and misery over which she had spread the golden tissue of young hope began to appear darkly exaggerated to the opposite extreme. Those whom she would have remembered for ever, forgot her, and those who made her their choice, were ashamed of the power which compelled them so to do. Her deep melancholy fell upon Helen, as it had never fallen before; the coming of a new day did not dispel it. It was such a sorrow as she could not tell, and so she bore it proudly, bitterly, and in silence.

At the mid-day interval the watchful Mrs Buchanan prevailed on her daughter to go out, to do some simple errands in the town. She generally managed all these matters herself; but the good mother was a skilled physician, and knew how something, trivial enough in itself, might clear the atmosphere in a moment and bring out the sunshine. Mrs Buchanan too was anxious and uneasy: when it seemed now sure that the Reverend Robert must succeed, she thought remorsefully of William, the son of her own training, to whom her house had been so long a second home. She remembered the confidence that there had been between them, and how old ties would have been made stronger and tenderer, had it been he who was the new son; and then she began to feel that Mr Insches, with all his good qualities, was a stranger; that he would introduce a new intruding element--that her sole child would be no more her own.

So the mother sent Helen forth with quiet sighs, and Helen went about her errand sadly, the gloom in her heart obscuring the gentle skies of May.

She walked slowly as her manner was in her times of depression, taking in the common sights and sounds around her into the mist in her own heart, where they remained to bring back in other moods remembrances of that dark hour. She had executed all her mother’s commissions, and concluded her business by a visit to Maxwell Dickson’s low dark shop, on her way home. She got such literature as he had from the librarian of Fendie, and it served now and then to enliven the long solitary evenings--the evenings which were not sufficiently solitary now.

On Maxwell Dickson’s counter lay an unbound book, very clean and very new. Helen took it up as she put the volumes which she brought with her into the librarian’s dingy hands. It was still damp from the press; no one had opened it before. The subject attracted her; it was one of the publications of the New Crusade.

The social science--how to make men better, nobler, purer: how to attack in their own camp the declared evils of our land and time--was the subject of this book; the science of that great discontent which has seized upon so many able minds, happily, now--the science of aggression against all vileness, all pollution. This was the subject of the book, and the name of it kindled a little the dim light in the eyes of Helen. She turned it over rapidly to glean what she could of its contents.

Maxwell Dickson in vain tries to make his young customer hear what he is saying to her. A sudden flush has covered her face--a sudden thrill springs up through the bounding pulses which were so languid a moment before; the slight nervous start--the head lifted so swiftly--the motion of the eager fingers which hold these pages open. From some unseen hand the electric touch is given: what is the cause? Helen is reading in the new book.

“The writer remembers well the arguments urged upon him once with the enthusiastic faith of youth, by one who desired a new order of chivalry vowed and dedicated to the service of God and the poor. ‘It is not well--surely it is not well to withdraw from the evils which are in us and around us. I say we are bound to do battle with them--not to stand on our defence alone, but to carry the war into the camp of the enemies. I think sometimes that the state of war must be the only good state for those who have sin natural to them as we have, and that if these words, resist and struggle, were withdrawn from our language we would be no longer human; for when we let our arms fall, our hearts fall, and weariness comes upon us, and distrust and gloom; and out of the living world we come into the narrow chamber of ourselves, and the sun sets upon us--’ It is the philosophy of a young heart; of one who has not yet travelled far from the East, and whom the vision splendid still attends upon the way; but because it is youthful and has the breath of enthusiasm in it, it is no less true.”

Maxwell Dixon is impatient; he pulls Miss Buchanan’s sleeve, and with that thrill of nervous strength upon her she is compelled to withdraw those new damp pages from their office of shading her flushed cheek and moving features; but Helen is not angry; she lifts her eyes, which dazzle him with their unusual brightness, to the honest man’s stolid face. He does not know what to make of this variable visitor of his; he thinks she looked very different when she entered the shop, but he fancies it must just be one of the whims of “thae women.”

“I’m saying,” said Maxwell Dixon, “that the new books have come noo, for this month, Miss Buchanan. This is the twalt--I got Blackwood and the rest o’ them the day--and the minister’s got Blackwood; but ye may hae your pick o’ the rest.”

The rest were not very tempting; edifying serials, cheap travesties of the Copperfields and Pendennises of the time; the adventures of London “gents,” who had not any compensating good quality to make amends for the miserable life which they recorded; vile books with which, because they are cheap, the libraries of country towns infest the minds of the young, and impress the “gent” character upon the young men who patronise them. Helen did not look at the books. It was a clumsy feint of the pawkie Maxwell; he thought she would forgive him the breach of his promise to keep the one especial Blackwood for her, when she heard it was given to the minister.

But Helen had no thought of Blackwood, nor even of the minister; he had left her mind as the cloud left it. In her happy tremor she forgot the Reverend Robert. She thought only of this in her hand, this messenger of the true heart which she had so vainly doubted.

“Ay,” said the librarian, “that’s a new thing; a gentleman brocht it in here, that’s come frae Edinburgh this morning. I dinna ken what it’s aboot mysel’, but he said it was grand, and something aboot a Fendie man that wrote it. I didna tak particular notice, but--Maggie, didna yon gentleman say that it was a Fendie man that made the new book on the counter?”

“Ay, faither,” said the more polite Maggie, Maxwell’s buxom daughter. “He said it was a Fendie young gentleman; but he wadna tell us wha.”

“And you do not know?” said Helen, with her wavering blush and smile.

“Na,” said the stolid Maxwell, “except it be, maybe, Dr Elliot’s son, that’s at the college learning to be a doctor, or Maister Nicol Shaw, the writer, or the minister, or--I’m sure I dinna ken. It’s no in the library, Miss Buchanan, and it’s no my ain either, or ye micht get a reading o’t, if ye wad promise no’ to cut up the leaves, and to keep it out o’ the gate o’ the bairns; but it’s no’ my ain. I durstna even sell’t if I had a customer.”

And Helen durst not buy it, even if it had been Maxwell’s own; but she stood and looked at it with longing eyes. She remembered her own words so well; she remembered the winter night when William in his corner by the fireside announced to her his going to Edinburgh, his entrance on the man’s work, of which so often in her eager, ambitious mind she had dreamed; and he too remembered it. The romance of the old times will never die. She had belted on his spurs and his sword in yonder quiet evening, and now the lady’s colour was on the lance of the true knight!

And Helen returned along the main street, her heart within her singing like a bird, and the heavens and the earth bright with a sunshine more radiant than the smiles of May. He was a wise man, that grave resolute William; if his blow were long of coming, it was a mighty blow when it came, and cast down all defences. The hopes of the Reverend Robert perished as incautious buds perish in a night’s frost. He was forgotten.

Mrs Buchanan in the little parlour heard the light, quick step without, and knew by its pace that the gloom was gone; but she also was occupied within, and somewhat puzzled, was turning over the damp, uncut pages of a new book too.

“I do not know what this is, Helen,” said Mrs Buchanan, as her daughter entered the room, “but I suppose William thought it would please you. It came by the coach, my dear, and it is directed in William’s hand.”

Helen sat down by the table to look at that especial passage again. Her heart was full; she wanted to say something, but could not say it, her shyness veiling the new joy, as well as the emotions of so frank a face could be veiled; but that was not saying much. At last she rose and laid the book before her mother, and stood half behind her leaning upon her shoulder.

“Mother, William would be right if he thought this would please me almost better than anything else in the world--it is William’s own.”

Mrs Buchanan took her daughter’s hands and looked into her face. The head drooped, the eyes were cast down. Helen could not meet the scrutinizing glance; but they understood each other, and in the misty, tremulous period which followed, the heart of the good mother lightened too. She dismissed the Reverend Robert with a gentle sigh, and she received again the old friend, the son William, feeling sure now that there could be no competitor for the place he had held so long.

When her scholars were finally dismissed that day--and Mrs Buchanan heard Helen’s voice singing snatches of old songs before the last little one had made her farewell curtsey at the school-room door--Helen took her book in her hand and went away over the bridge and through the long, waving grass to the Waterside. She chose one little dell, her favourite spot, where the trees, closely circling it round, left one green, swelling bank, upon the brink of the water, on which the sunshine fell through a network of boughs and leaves. On the opposite side of the river, within sight of her resting-place, burns were running down like so many choristers into the broad stream, and in the middle of the strong brown current eddies played fantastically, and by the bank branches of long willows swept the tide, and the dark alder and the delicate ash leaned over, glassing their foliage in its waves. And there the young dreamer sat absorbed, lingering over the kindred thoughts which kept pace so truly to the music of her own, and starting now and then as the rapid fancies poured upon her like a flood, and she shaped the future in that fairy loom--a future not such as common dreamers choose. Noble labour, keeping time to the great universal harmonies which God has planted in his world--work such as befits His followers, who for men became a man.

She seemed to hear the grand and noble chimes with which all nature accompanies the work of those who seek to speed the coming of His kingdom. The light of common day was radiant to her with the sunshine of promise; it should yet shine upon a purer world, a country ransomed by its King; and she forgot the pain, and difficulty, and miseries that intervened for joy of the certain end.

But amid the dreamings of Helen, there came the interrupting sound of a hurried, bounding footstep, and almost before she could look up to see who the intruder was, Hope Oswald plunged down upon her, out of breath. Hope had arrived in Fendie only that morning, and had been seeking Helen at home. She was overjoyed to find her here.

“I saw you reading a book,” exclaimed Hope, when the first greeting was over. “I am quite sure you were reading a book--Helen, may I not see it? Why did you put it away?”

“It is a grave book, Hope, not such as you would like,” said Helen, looking as she felt, embarrassed and conscious.

“But I like grave books--sometimes,” said Hope. “I am fifteen--I am not a girl now, Helen; but do you mind what Tibbie said, last Hallowe’en? You were to get your fortune out of a book. Oh, Helen, will you tell me? Have you ever got your fortune yet?”

Helen fairly turned her burning cheek away, with a nervous start. So it was fulfilled, the simple prophecy of Tibbie; the hour and the book had come, and this was “the fortune” of Helen. She did not make any answer. She held her precious volume under her shawl and looked over the wan water, away into the vacant air, with her changeful smile.

“I think I know,” said the sagacious Hope.

“What do you know, Hope?” said Helen.

But Hope was perverse.

“Helen, Miss Swinton is coming, but only for a day, and little Mary Wood is to stay all the vacation. Miss Swinton wants to see you, Helen, and she said she would take you to Edinburgh; but I think you should not go, Helen.”

“Why?”

Hope paused, and as she could think of no satisfactory answer, went on, on another course.

“Helen, William is perhaps coming home--only for awhile; you don’t know how much William has to do now; and, Helen, people say he is clever. Do you think he is?”

There was some pleasant moisture subduing the unusual brightness of Helen’s eyes. Her voice was lower than usual too, and the sensible Hope observed keenly.

“No, Hope,” said Helen, with some tremor. “I think he is not clever. I think--”

“I don’t care for that,” said Hope, bravely. “Are you going home, Helen? Will you let me go too? It is only other people who call him clever, you know, Helen; but he is _our_ William.”