“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only good state for those who have sin natural to them as we have, and that if these words, resist and struggle, were withdrawn from our language we would be no longer human; for when we let our arms fall, our hearts fall, and weariness comes upon us, and distrust and gloom; and out of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!