In Mrs Buchanan’s little parlour those long November evenings were less busy now; the dreaded Martinmas came and went; the work was finished and the rent paid.
Six pounds—how small a sum it was—and yet it had swallowed up the whole half-yearly dividend, and the whole produce of their hard labours. Helen began to look discontentedly at her best gown, that long-preserved black silk one, which now that her brown merino was so far gone, must be worn every day, and for which no substitute could be obtained; and Mrs Buchanan sighed over the thin shawl as she daintily darned the places where it began to give way, and smoothed her daughter’s hair tenderly, in an unconscious endeavour to console her. Mrs Buchanan comforted herself by thinking that, in spite of the old shawl and the one much-worn gown, her poor Helen looked a gentlewoman still; but the days grew chill, and other people were wearing cloaks and plaids and furs. Mrs Buchanan sighed—she could not venture to make any addition to Helen’s stock, for the next half-year’s rent began to lour upon her gloomily already. How was it to be met?
Helen was a good deal overcast with those cares too, but the clouds never settled down upon her firmament; they came and went, as the ceaseless breezes drove them hither and thither, a hundred times in a day; and between every pang of heart-sickness, between those weary sighings for something happier, which could not choose but fall upon her sometimes, there always intervened bright glimpses of wayward sunshine, stirrings of the young uncontrollable life, the nervous strength and daring of her nature, which rose to meet the struggle when it came, and when it was not present, happily forgot it all.
It was Saturday, the first Saturday for a long time which she had not spent with Lilias. But Lilias was joyfully engrossed with the strangers, and Helen shyly kept herself apart, and felt a shadow of contrast upon her own sombre, unchanging lot; but just as she began to sink under her natural dimness, an appearance crossed her eyes, which brought out the merry, ringing laugh, and flushed her sky with the sunshine of gay impulse. The appearance was the Reverend Robert Insches escorting a lady—a very young, very bashful, very pretty little lady, who seemed to see a good deal of fascination in the handsome head which bent down to her so graciously. If he was beginning to be cured of the more serious wound, the Reverend Robert was not cured of the mortification. The pretty little girl was a Laird’s daughter, by no means disinclined to smile upon the handsome minister. He was escorting her home—the traitor, on a Saturday! and chose this road out of the remaining anger and malice aforethought, which still testified the power of Helen, to try if he could not mortify her as she had mortified him.
There never was a more lamentable failure. Mrs Buchanan upstairs heard the ringing laugh break the silence, and then the new impulse of mirth made itself a voice. The good mother listened with a smile. Helen was moving about below. Helen was singing, and in another moment the gay voice and the light foot came upstairs, keeping time with each other in the pleasant caprice of a cheerful heart.
Mrs Buchanan was working at a particular “fancy work” of her own. She was darning the carpet. The carpet had been new once, but that was so very many years ago, that it was growing aged now, and feeble like other things. There is a pleasure in doing what one knows one can do well. Mrs Buchanan had a modest pride in her skill for repairing these dilapidations of time; and the natural delicacy of mind which could not be at ease while there was anything ungraceful or imperfect around it, expressed itself after this homely fashion. She did not patronize finery at all, but the aesthetical feelings were delicately developed in the good mother’s mind nevertheless, and there was art in her darned carpet.
“Will you come with me, mother, to the Waterside?” said Helen.
“I must have this done: I don’t want to begin to it again, my dear,” said Mrs Buchanan, looking up from her work; “and besides, it is very frosty and cold, Helen; wrap yourself up as well as you can, and I will have a cup of tea for you when you come in again.”
So Helen drew the shawl, which fortunately had been of very sober colours in its far-distant youth, over her merino gown, and tieing on her little straw bonnet with its plain brown ribbon, went down-stairs again, and out into the clear, chill November air. It was rather cold, but bright and exhilarating, and singing snatches of old songs under her breath, Helen went happily down the steps of the bridge till she reached the river-side, far down, towards the waterfoot.
Yonder, quivering under the red, bold, frosty sun, the great Firth thrills through its full veins with the joyous impulse of life. Far away among some quiet clouds is Skiddaw and his humbler brother, vigilant, far-seeing, watching over “the English side,” as it slopes down, in the serene evening atmosphere, to the brink of the great waves; and there the winding Fendie water glides into the estuary, and cold at that point looks the round hillock from which the sun has quite withdrawn, while in the west that great bluff hill which defies Skiddaw has a glory on him almost too grand to look at, and the range of far-withdrawing hills, of which he is the last and greatest, open away in the distance, with cloudy peaks ascending behind, and clear intervals of sky, like lakes, between.