“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.