“‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I’ll no say but I am vexed that my father gaed to his grave wi’ a grudge against me, the mair sae, as when he squeezed my hand on his death-bed I thought a’ was forgotten. But siller is but warld’s gear, and I could thole the want o’t, an’ it had nae been for Helen Ormiston, that I hoped to hae gotten to share it wi’ me. She may sune do better now, wi’ that bonnie face and kind heart o’ hers!’
“‘It is indeed a kind heart, Willie,’ answered I: ‘if ever I doubted it, this would have put me to shame!’——So saying, I reached him the letter, and oh, that Helen could have seen the flush of grateful surprise that crossed his manly brow as he read it! It passed away, though, quickly, and he said, with a sigh, ‘Very kind, Mr Monteith, and very like hersel; but I canna take advantage o’ an auld gude will, now that I canna reward it as it deserves!’”
‘And what if ye could, Willie?’ said I, ‘as far, at least, as worldly wealth can requite true affection? There is your father’s will, made when it pleased God to touch his heart, and you are as rich a man as you were when Helen Ormiston first refused to make you a beggar.’
“Willie was not insensible to this happy change in his prospects; but his kind heart was chiefly soothed by his father’s altered feelings, and at the honourable mention of Helen’s name he fairly began to greet.
“The sequel is easily told; but I think the jaunt I made to Tweeddale with Willie, to bring back Helen Ormiston in triumph, was the proudest journey of my life.
“A year ago I married them at the manse, amid much joy, but abundance of tears in the nursery. To-day, when, according to an old promise, I am to christen my name-son Charlie, I expect to be fairly deaved with the clamorous rejoicings of my young fry, who, I verily believe, have not slept this week for thinking of it. But” (pulling out his watch), “it is near four o’clock: sad quality hour for Blinkbonnie! The hotch-potch will be turned into porridge, and the how-towdies burnt to sticks, if we don’t make haste!”
I wish, my dear reader, you could see the farm of Blinkbonnie, lying as it does on a gently sloping bank, sheltered from the north by a wooded crag or knoll, flanked upon the east by a group of venerable ashes, enlivened and perfumed on the west by a gay luxuriant garden, and open on the south to such a sea-view, as none but dwellers on the Firth of Forth have any idea of. Last Saturday, it was the very beau ideal of rural comfort and serenity. The old trees were reposing, after a course of somewhat boisterous weather, in all the dignity and silence of years. The crows, their usual inhabitants, having gone on their Highland excursion, those fantastic interlopers, Helen’s peacocks (a present from the children at the manse), were already preparing for their “siesta” on the topmost boughs. Beneath the spreading branches the cows were dreaming delightfully, in sweet oblivion of the heats of noon. In an adjoining paddock, graceful foals, and awkward calves, indulged in their rival gambols; while shrieks of joy from behind the garden hedge, told these were not the only happy young things in creation.
We deposited our horses in a stable, to whose comforts they bore testimony by an approving neigh, and made our way by a narrow path, bordered with sweet-brier and woodbine, to the front of the house. Its tall, good-looking young master came hastily to meet us, and I would not have given his blushing welcome, and the bashful scrape that accompanied it, for all the most elaborate courtesies of Chesterfield.
No sooner were our footsteps heard approaching, than out poured the minister’s whole family from the little honey-suckled porch, with glowing faces and tangled hair, and frocks, probably white some hours before, but which now claimed affinity with every bush in the garden.
Mrs Monteith gently joined in the chorus of reproaches to papa for being so late; but the look with which she was answered seemed to satisfy her, as it usually did, that he could not be in fault. We were then ushered into the parlour, whose substantial comforts, and exquisite consistency, spoke volumes in favour of its mistress. Opulence might be traced in the excellent quality of the homely furniture—in the liberal display of antique china (particularly the choice and curious christening-bowl)—but there was nothing incongruous, nothing out of keeping, nothing to make you for a moment mistake this first-rate farmhouse parlour for a clumsy, ill-fancied drawing-room. A few pots of roses, a few shelves of books, bore testimony to Helen’s taste and education; but there were neither exotics nor romances in the collection; and the piece of furniture evidently dearest in her eyes was the cradle, in which reposed, amid all the din of this joyous occasion, the yet unchristened hero of the day. It is time to speak of Helen herself, and she was just what, from her story, I knew she must be. The actors, in some striking drama of human life, often disappoint us by their utter dissimilitude to the pictures of our mind’s eye, but Helen was precisely the perfection of a gentle, modest, self-possessed Scottish lassie,—the mind, in short, of Jeanie Deans, with the personal advantages of poor Effie. Her dress was as suitable as anything else. Her gown, white as snow, and her cap of the nicest materials, were neither of them on the pattern of my lady’s; but they had a matronly grace of their own, worth a thousand second-hand fashions; and when Helen, having awakened her first-born, delivered him, with sweet maternal solicitude, into the outstretched arms of the minister’s proud and favoured youngest girl, I thought I never saw a picture worthier the pencil of Correggio. It was completed, when, bending in all the graceful awkwardness of a novice over the group, Willie received his boy into his arms, and vowed before his pastor and his God to discharge a parent’s duty, while a parent’s transport sparkled in his eyes.