Mrs. Buchanan took it much more sweetly. She looked at Elsie with caressing eyes. “She is the only girlie at home now,” she said, with a little sigh, “and she will have to learn to be a woman. Marion was always the greatest help—my right hand—since she was little more than a baby. And now Elsie will have to learn to take her place.”
“I don’t care so much for them being useful when they are ornamental,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “for that is the woman’s part in the world is it not? The men may do all the hard work, but they can’t do the decoration, can they? We want the girls for that.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “I am not sure that I ever looked upon it in that light. There is a great deal to be done, when there is a family of laddies; you cannot expect them to do things for themselves, and when there is only one sister, it is hard work.”
“Oh, I do not hold with that,” said the other lady. “I turn all that over to my maid. I would not make the girls servants to their brothers: quite the contrary. It is the boys that should serve the girls, in my opinion. Frank would no more let a young lady do things for him!—I consider it quite wrong for my part.”
Mrs. Buchanan was a little abashed.
“When you have plenty of servants and a small family, it is of course quite different, but you know what the saying is, ‘a woman’s work is never done’——”
“My dear Mrs. Buchanan, you are simply antediluvian,” said her visitor.
(Oh, if she would only go away, instead of standing havering there!) The minister’s wife was more tired than words could say. “Claude,” she said, clutching at her husband’s arm as he passed her, “Mrs. Mowbray has not seen our garden, and you know we are proud of our garden. Perhaps she would like to take a turn and look at the view.”
“I am so glad to get you for a little to myself, Mr. Buchanan,” said Mrs. Mowbray. “Oh yes, let us go to the garden. I have been so longing to speak to you. There are so many things about poor Mr. Anderson’s estate, and other matters, that I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Mowbraytook the minister’s arm with a little eagerness. “I am so glad,” she said, “so very glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you alone. I want so much to consult you, Mr. Buchanan. I should have ventured to come over in the morning to ask for you, if I had not this opportunity; but then your wife would have had to know, and just at first I don’t want anyone to know—so I am more glad of this opportunity than words can say——”
“I am sure,” said Mr. Buchanan, steadily, “that I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you. I am afraid you will not find much to interest you in our homely garden. Vegetables on one side, and flowers on the other, but at the east corner there is rather a pretty view. I like to come out in the evening, and see the lighthouses in the distance slowly twirling round. We can see the Bell Rock——”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “I have no doubt it is very fine, but take me to the quietest corner, never mind about the view—other people will be coming to see the view, and to talk is what I want.”
“I don’t think anyone will be coming,” said the minister, and he led her among the flower-beds, andacross what was then, in homely language, called not the lawn, but the green, to the little raised mound upon which there was a little summer-house, surrounded with tall lilac bushes—and the view. Mrs. Mowbray gave but a passing glance at the view.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “the same as you see from the cliffs, the Forfarshire coast and the bay. It is very nice, but not remarkable—whereas what I have got to say to you is of the gravest importance—at least to Frank and me. Mr. Buchanan, as the clergyman, you must know of everything that is going on—you knew the late Mr. Anderson, my husband’s uncle, very well, didn’t you? Well, you know Frank has always been brought up to believe himself his great-uncle’s heir. And we believed it would be something very good. My poor husband, in his last illness, always said, ‘Uncle John will provide for you and the boy.’ And we thought it would be quite a good thing. Now you know, Mr. Buchanan, it is really not at all a good thing.”
In the green shade of the foliage, Mr. Buchanan’s face looked gray. He said, “Indeed, I am sorry,” in a mechanical way, which seemed intended to give the impression that he was not interested at all.
“Oh, perhaps you think that is not of much importance,” said the lady. “Probably you imagine that we have enough without that. But it is not really so—it is of the greatest importance to Frank and me. Oh, here are some people coming! I knew other peoplewould be coming to see this stupid view—when they can see it from the road just as well, any time they please.”
It was a young pair of sweethearts who came up the little knoll, evidently with the intention of appropriating the summer-house, and much embarrassed to find their seniors in possession. They had, however, to stay a little and talk, which they all did wildly, pointing out to each other the distant smoke of the city further up, and the white gleam of the little light-house opposite. Mrs. Mowbray said scarcely anything, but glared at the intrusive visitors, to whom the minister was too civil. Milly Beaton, who was one of these intruders, naturally knew every point of the view as well as he did, but he pointed out everything to her in the most elaborate way, at which the girl could scarcely restrain her laughter. Then the young people heard, or pretended to hear, some of their companions calling them, and hurried away.
“I knew,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “that we should be interrupted here——”
“No, I don’t think so: there will be no more of it,” said the minister.
He was not so unwilling to be interrupted as she was. Then it occurred to her, with a knowledge drawn from other regions than St. Rule’s, that she was perhaps compromising the minister, and this idea gave her a lively pleasure.
“They will be wondering what we have to say toeach other,” she cried with a laugh, and she perceived with delight, or thought she perceived, that this idea discomposed Mr. Buchanan. He changed colour, and shuffled from one foot to the other, as he stood before her. She had placed herself on the garden-seat, within the little chilly dark green bower. She had not contemplated any such amusement, but neither had she time to indulge in it, which might have been done so very safely with the minister. For it was business that was in her mind, and she felt herself a business woman before all.
“Fortunately,” she went on, “nobody can the least guess what I want to consult you about. Oh! here is another party! I knew how it would be. Take me to see your cabbages, Mr. Buchanan, or anywhere. I must speak to you without continual interruptions like this.”
Her tone was a little imperative, which the minister resented. He was not in the habit of being spoken to in this way, and he was extremely glad of the interruption.
“It is only a parcel of boys,” he said, “they will soon go.” Perhaps he did not perceive that the carefully-attired Frank was among the others, led by his own older son John, who, Mr. Buchanan well knew, would not linger when he saw how the summer-house was occupied. Frank, however, came forward and made his mother a satirical bow.
“Oh, this is where you are, mater?” he said. “Icouldn’t think where you had got to. My compliments, I wouldn’t interrupt you for the world.”
“You ridiculous boy!” Mrs. Mowbray said; and they both laughed, for what reason neither Mr. Buchanan nor his serious son John could divine.
“So you have come up, too, to see the view,” said the lady; “I never knew you had any love for scenery and the beauties of nature.”
“Do you call this scenery?” said Frank, who, in his mother’s presence, felt it necessary to be superior as she was. “If you could only have the ruins in the foreground, instead of this great bit of sea, and those nasty little black rocks.”
“They may be little,” said John, with all the sudden heat of a son of St. Rule’s, “but they’re more dangerous than many that are far bigger. I would not advise you to go near them in a boat. Father, isn’t that true?”
“It is true that it is a dangerous coast,” said Mr. Buchanan, “that is the reason why no ship that can help it comes near the bay.”
“I don’t care for that kind of boating,” said Frank. “Give me a wherry on the river.”
“Give you a game—a ball, or something,” said his mother, exasperated. “You ought to get up something to amuse the young ladies. Doesn’t Mrs. Buchanan allow dancing? You might teach them, Frank, some of the new steps.”
“We want you for that, mater,” said the lad.
“Oh, I can’t be bothered now. I’ve got some business to talk over with Mr. Buchanan.”
Frank looked malicious and laughed, and Mrs. Mowbray laughed, too, in spite of herself. The suggestion that she was reducing the minister to subjection was pleasant, even though it was an interruption. Meanwhile, Mr. Buchanan and his son stood gazing, absolutely unable to understand what it was all about. John, however, not used to badinage, seized with a firm grip the arm of the new-comer.
“Come away, and I’ll take you into the Castle,” he said, giving a drag and push, which the other, less vigorous, was not able to resist.
“I cannot stand this any longer,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “take me please somewhere—into your study, Mr. Buchanan, where I can talk to you undisturbed. I am sure for once your wife will not mind.”
“My wife!” the minister said, in great surprise, “why should my wife mind?” But it was certain, that he did himself mind very much, having not the faintest desire to admit this intruder into his sanctum. But it was in vain to resist. He took her among the cabbages as she had suggested, but by this time the garden was in the possession of a young crowd penetrating everywhere, and after an ineffectual attempt among those cabbages to renew the conversation, Mrs. Mowbray so distinctly declared her desire to finish her communication in the study, that he could no longer resist. Mrs. Mowbray looked about her, before shehad taken her seat, and went into the turret-room with a little curiosity.
“I suppose you never admit anyone here,” she said.
“Admit! No, but the two younger children used to be constantly here,” said Mr. Buchanan. “They have left some of their books about still. There was a great alliance between them a few years ago, but since Rodie grew more of a school-boy, and Elsie more of a woman——”
“Elsie! why, she is quite grown-up,” said the visitor. “I hope you don’t let her come here to hear all your secrets. I shouldn’t like her to hear mine, I am sure. Is there any other door?”
“There is neither entrance nor exit, but by my study door,” Mr. Buchanan said, somewhat displeased.
“Well, that is a good thing. I hope you always make sure when you receive your penitents that there is nobody there.”
The minister made no reply. He thought her a very disagreeable, very presuming and impertinent woman; but he placed a chair for her with all the patience he could muster. He had a faint feeling as if she had lodged an arrow somewhere in him, and that he felt it quivering, but did not inquire into his sensations. The first thing seemed to be to get rid of her as quickly as he could.
“Now we can talk at last,” she said, sinking down into the arm-chair, stiff and straight as it was—for the luxury of modern days had scarcely yet begunand certainly had not come as far as St. Rule’s—which Mrs. Buchanan generally occupied when she came upstairs to talk over their “whens and hows” with her husband.
“It is very serious indeed, and I am very anxious to know if you can throw any light upon it. Mr. Morrison, the man of business, tells me that old Mr. Anderson had lent a great deal of money to various people, and that it proved quite impossible to get it back. Was that really the case? or is this said merely to cover over some defalcations—some——”
“Morrison,” cried the minister, almost angrily, “is as honourable a man as lives; there have been no defalcations, at least so far as he is concerned.”
“It is very satisfactory to hear that,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “because of course we are altogether in his hands; otherwise I should have got my English solicitor to come down and look into matters. But you know one always thinks it must be the lawyer’s fault—and then so many men go wrong that have a very good reputation.”
Mr. Buchanan relieved his heart with a long painful breath. He said:
“It is true; there are such men: but Morrison is not one of them.”
“Well, that’s satisfactory at least to hear,” she said doubtfully, “but tell me about the other thing. Is it true that our old uncle was so foolish, so mad—I really don’t know any word sufficiently severe to use—so unjustto us as to give away his money on all hands, and lend to so many people without a scrap of acknowledgment, without so much as an I.O.U., so that the money never could be recovered; is it possible this can be true?”
Mr. Buchanan was obliged to clear his throat several times before he could speak.
“Mr. Anderson,” he said, “was one of the men who are so highly commended in Scripture, though it is perhaps contrary to modern ideas. The merciful man is merciful and lendeth. He was a providence to many troubled persons. I had heard——”
“But, Mr. Buchanan,” cried the lady, raising herself up in her chair, “you cannot think that’s right; you cannot imagine it is justifiable. Think of his heirs.”
“Yes,” he replied, “perhaps at that time he did not think of his heir. If it had been his own child—but we must be fair to him. Your son was not a very near relation, and he scarcely knew the boy.”
“Not a near relation!” exclaimed Mrs. Mowbray, “but he was the nearest relation. There was no one else to count at all. A man’s money belongs to his family. He has no right to go and alienate it, to give a boy reason to expect a good fortune, and then to squander the half of it, which really belonged to Frank more than to him.”
“You must remember,” said the minister, with a dreadful tightening at his throat, feeling that he waspleading for himself as well as for his old benefactor, “you must remember that the money did not come from the family—in which case all you say might be true—but from his own exertions; and probably he believed what is also written in Scripture, that a man has a right to do what he will with his own.”
“Oh, Mr. Buchanan!” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “that I should hear a clergyman speak like this. Who is the widow and the orphan to depend upon, if not on the clergy, to stand up for them and maintain their rights? I should have thought now that instead of encouraging people who got round this old man—who probably was not very clear in his head at the end of his life—and got loans from him, you would have stood up for his heirs and let them know—oh! with all the authority of the church, Mr. Buchanan—that it was their duty before everything to pay their debts, all the more,” cried the lady, holding up an emphatic finger, “all the more if there was nothing to show for them, no way of recovering them, and it was left to their honour to pay.”
The minister had been about to speak; but when she put forth this argument he sat dumb, his lips apart, gazing at her almost with a look of terror. It was a full minute before he attempted to say anything, and that in the midst of a discussion of this sort seems a long time. He faltered a little at last, when he did speak.
“I am not sure,” he said, “that I had thought ofthis: but no doubt you are right, no doubt you are right.”
“Certainly I am right,” she cried, triumphant in her victory. “I knew you would see the justice of it. Frank has always been brought up to believe that he would be a rich man. He has been brought up with this idea. He has the habits and the notions of a man with a very good fortune; and now that I am here and can look into it, what is it? A mere competence! Nothing that you could call a fortune at all.”
Oh, what it is to be guilty! The minister had not a word to say. He looked piteously in her face, and it seemed to him that it was an injured woman who sat before him, injured by his hand. He had never wronged any one so far as he knew before, but this was a woman whom he had wronged. She and her son, and her son’s children to all possible generations,—he had wronged them. Though no one else might know it, yet he knew it himself. Frank Mowbray’s fortune, which was not a fortune, but a mere competence, had been reduced to that shrunken measure by him. His conscience smote him with her voice. There was nothing to show for it, no way of recovering it; it was a debt of honour, and it was this that he refused to pay. He trembled under her eye. He felt that she must be able to read to the bottom of his soul.
“I am very sorry,” he said; “I am afraid that perhaps none of us thought of that. But it is all past—I don’t know what I could do, what you would wish me to do.”
“I would wish you,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “to talk to them about it. Ah! I knew I should not speak in vain when I spoke to you. It is a shameful thing, is it not, to defraud a truthful, inexperienced boy, one that knows nothing about money nor how to act in such circumstances. If he had not his mother to speak for him, what would become of Frank? He is so young and so peace-making. He would say don’t bother if he heard me speaking about it. He would be content to starve himself, and let other people enjoy what was his. I thought you would tell me perhaps who were the defaulters.”
“No, I certainly could not do that,” he said harshly, with a sound in his voice which made him not recognise it for his. He had a momentary feeling that some one else in the room, not himself, had here interposed and spoken for him.
“You could not? you mean you would not. And you the clergyman, the minister that should protect the orphan! Oh, Mr. Buchanan, this is not what I expected when I braced up my nerves to speak to you. I never thought but that you would take up my cause. I thought you would perhaps go round with me to tell them they must pay, and how badly my poor boy had been left: or that at least you would preach about it, and tell the people what was their duty. He must have lent money to half St. Rule’s,” cried Mrs. Mowbray;“those people that all look so decent and so well-dressed on Sunday at church. They are all as well-dressed (though their clothes are not well made) as any one need wish to be: and to think they should be owing us hundreds, nay, thousands of money! It is a dreadful thing for my poor Frank.”
“Not thousands,” said the minister, “not thousands. A few hundreds perhaps, but not more.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I have heard there was one that got four hundred out of him; at interest and compound interest, what does that come to by this time? Not much short of thousands, Mr. Buchanan, and there may be many more.”
“Did Morrison tell you that?” he asked hastily.
“No matter who told me. How am I to get at that man? I should make him pay up somehow, oh trust me for that, if I could only make out who he was.”
“There was no such man,” said the minister. There breathed across his mind, as he spoke, the burden of the parable: “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore.” “I have not heard of any of Mr. Anderson’s debtors who had got so large a loan as that: but Morrison expressly said that it was in the will he had freely forgiven them all.”
“I should not forgive them,” cried the lady, harshly. “Get me a list of them, Mr. Buchanan, give me a list of them, and then we shall see what the law will say. Get me a list of them, Mr. Buchanan! I am sure that you must know them all.”
“I don’t know that I could tell you more than one of them.”
“That will be the four hundred man!” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “Tell me of him, tell me of him, Mr. Buchanan, and I shall always be grateful to you. Tell me the one you know.”
“I must first think it over—and—take counsel,” the minister said.
“Whatdid that woman want with you, Claude?” said Mrs. Buchanan, coming in with panting breath, and depositing herself in the chair from which Mrs. Mowbray had risen but a little while before.
The minister sat with his head in his hands, his face covered, his aspect that of a man utterly broken down. He did not answer for some time, and then:
“I think she wants my life-blood,” he said.
“Your life-blood! Claude, my man, are you taking leave of your senses—or what is it you mean?”
Once more there was a long pause. His wife was not perhaps so frightened as she might have been in other circumstances. She was very tired. The satisfaction of having got rid of all her guests was strong in her mind. She had only just recovered her breath, after toiling upstairs. Lastly, it was so absurd that any one should want the minister’s life-blood; last of all, the smiling and flattering Mrs. Mowbray, that she was more inclined to laugh than to be alarmed.
“You may laugh,” said Mr. Buchanan, looking up at her from below the shadow of his clasped hands, with hollow eyes, “but it is death to me. She wantsme to give her a list of all old Anderson’s debtors, Mary. I told her I only knew one.”
“Goodness, Claude! did you say it was yourself?”
“Not yet,” he said, with a deep sigh.
“Not yet! do you mean that after the great deliverance we got, and the blessed kindness of that old man, you are going to put your head under the yoke again? What has she to do with it? He thought nothing of her. He let the boy get it because there was nobody else, but he never took any interest even in the boy. He never would have permitted—Claude! those scruples of yours, they are ridiculous; they are quite ridiculous. What, oh! what do you mean? To ruin your own for the sake of that little puppy of a boy? God forgive me; it is probably not the laddie’s fault. He is just the creation of his silly mother. And they are well off already. If old Anderson had left them nothing at all, they were well off already. Claude, if she has come here to play upon your weakness, to get back what the real owner had made you a present of——”
“Mary, I have never been able to get it out of my mind that it was the smaller debtors he wanted to release, but not me.”
“Had you any reason to mistrust the old man, Claude?”
He gave her a look, still from under his clasped hands, but made no reply.
“Which of them were more to him than you,” saidMrs. Buchanan, vehemently; “the smaller debtors? Joseph Sym, the gardener, that he set up in business, or the Horsburghs, or Peter Wemyss? Were they more to him than you?—was this woman, with her ringlets, and her puffed sleeves more to him than you? Or her silly laddie, no better than a bairn, though he may be near a man in years? I have reminded you before what St. Paul says: ‘Albeit, I do not say to thee how thou owest me thine own self besides.’ He was not slow to say that, the old man, when you would let him. And you think he was more taken up with that clan-jamfry than with you?”
“No—no; I don’t say that, Mary. I know he was very favourable to me, too favourable; but I have never felt at rest about this. Morrison would not let me speak; perhaps he thought I had got less than I really had. This has always been in my head.” The minister got up suddenly and began to walk about the room. “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore,” he said, under his breath.
“What is that you are saying, Claude? That is what Elsie heard you saying the day of Mr. Anderson’s death. She said, quite innocent, it gave you a great deal of trouble, your sermon, that you were always going over and over——”
“What?” said Mr. Buchanan, stopping short in his walk, with a scared face.
“Dear me, Claude! no harm, no harm, onlythat, that you are saying now—about writing fourscore.Oh, Claude, my dear, you give it far more thought than it deserves. We could have almost paid it off by this time, if it had been exacted from us. And when that good, kind, auld man said—more than saying—when he wrote down in his will—that it was to be a legacy, God bless him! when I heard that, with thanksgiving to the Lord, I just put it out of my mind—not to forget it, for it was a great deliverance—but surely not to be burdened by it, or to mistrust the good man in his grave!”
The eyes of the minister’s wife filled with tears. It was she who was the preacher now, and her address was full of natural eloquence. But, like so many other eloquent addresses, her audience paid but little attention to it. Mr. Buchanan stopped short in his walk; he came back to his table and sat down facing her. When she ceased, overcome with her feelings, he began, without any pretence of sharing them, to question her hastily.
“Where was Elsie, that she should hear what I said? and what did she hear? and how much does she know?” This new subject seemed to occupy his mind to the exclusion of the old.
“Elsie? oh, she knows nothing. But she was in the turret there, where you encouraged them to go, Claude, though I always thought it a dangerous thing; for the parents’ discussions are not always for a bairn’s ears, and you never thought whether they were there or not. I have thought upon it many a day.”
“And she knows nothing?” said Mr. Buchanan. “Well, I suppose there is no harm done; but I dislike anyone to hear what I am saying. It is inconvenient; it is disagreeable. You should keep a growing girl by your own side, Mary, and not let her stray idle round about the house.”
He had not heard her complain against himself as encouraging the children to occupy the turret. His wife was well enough accustomed with his modes of thought. He ignored this altogether, as if he had no responsibility. And the thought of Elsie thus suggested put away the other and larger thought.
“I should like exactly to know how much she heard, and whether she drew any conclusions. You can send her to me when you go down down-stairs.”
“Claude, if you will be guided by me, no—do not put things into the bairn’s head. She will think more and more if her thoughts are driven back upon it. She will be fancying things in her mind. She will be——”
“What things can she fancy in her mind? What thoughts can she have more and more, as you say? What are you attributing to me, Mary? You seem to think I have been meditating—or have done—something—I know not what—too dark for day.”
He looked at her severely, and she looked at him with deprecating anxiety.
“Claude,” she said, “my dear, I cannot think what has come over you. Am I a person to make outreproaches against you? I said it was a pity to get the bairns into a habit of sitting there, where they could hear everything. That was no great thing, as if I was getting up a censure upon you, or hinting at dark things you have done. I would far easier believe,” she said, with a smile, laying her hand upon his arm, “that I had done dark deeds myself.”
“Well, well,” he said, “I suppose I am cranky and out of sorts. It has been a wearying day.”
“That it has,” cried Mrs. Buchanan, with warm agreement. “I am not a woman for my bed in the daytime; but, for once in a way, I was going to lie down, just to get a rest, for I am clean worn out.”
“My poor Mary,” he said, with a kind smile. When she felt her weakness, then was the time when he should be strong to support her. “Go and lie down, and nobody shall disturb you, and dismiss all this from your mind, my dear; for, as far as I can see, there is nothing urgent, not a thing for the moment to trouble your head about.”
“It is not so easy to dismiss things from your mind,” she said, smiling too, “unless I was sure that you were doing it, Claude; for when you are steady and cheery in your spirits, I think there is nothing I cannot put up with, and you may be sure I will not make a fuss, whatever you may think it a duty to do. And it is not for me to preach to you; but mind, there are many things that look like duty, and are not duty at all, but just infatuation, or, maybe, pride.”
“You have not much confidence in the clearness of my perceptions, Mary.”
“Oh, but I have perfect confidence.” She pronounced this word “perfitt,” and said it with that emphasis which belongs to the tongue of the North. “But who could ken so well as me that your spirit’s a quick spirit, and that pride has its part in you—the pride of aye doing the right thing, and honouring your word, and keeping your independence. I agree with it all, but in reason, in reason. And I would not fly in that auld man’s face, and him in his grave, Claude Buchanan, not for all the women’s tongues in existence, or their fleeching words!”
He had been standing by the table, from which she had risen too, with an indulgent smile on his face; but at this his countenance changed, and, as Mrs. Buchanan left the room, he sat down again hastily, with his head in his hands.
Was she right? or was his intuition right? That strong sense, that having meant wrong he had done wrong, whether formally or not. Many and many a day had he thought over it, and he had come to a moral conviction that his old friend had intended him to have the money, that he was the last person in the world from whom Anderson would have exacted the last farthing. Putting one thing to another he had come to that conviction. Of all the old man’s debtors, there was none so completely his friend. It was inconceivable that all the other people should befreed from the bonds, and only he kept under it. He had quite convinced himself rather that it was for his sake the others had been unloosed, than that it was he alone who was exempt from relief. But it only required Mrs. Mowbray’s words to overset this carefully calculated conclusion. His conscience jumped up with renewed force, and, as his wife had divined, his pride was up in arms. That this foolish woman and trifling boy had a right to anything that had been consumed and alienated by him, was intolerable to think of. Mary was right. It was an offence to his pride which he could not endure. His honest impulses might be subdued by reason, but his pride of integrity—no, that was not to be subdued.
The thought became intolerable to him as he pondered seriously, always with his head between his hands. He began once more to pace up and down the room heavily, but hastily—with a heavy foot, but not the deliberate quietness of legitimate thought. Such reflections as these tire a man and hurry him; there is no peace in them. Passing the door of the turret-room, he looked in, and a sudden gust of anger rose. A stool was standing in the middle of the room, a book lying open on the floor. I do not know how they had got there, for Elsie very seldom now came near the place of so many joint readings and enjoyments. The minister went in, and kicked the stool violently away. It should never, at least, stand there again to remind him that he had betrayed himself;and then it returned to his mind that he desired to see Elsie, and discover how much she knew or suspected. Her mother had said no, but he was not always going to yield to her mother in everything. This was certainly his affair. He went down-stairs immediately to find Elsie, walking very softly on the landing not to disturb his wife, who had, indeed, a good right to be tired, and ought to get a good rest now that everybody was gone; which was quite true. He never even suggested to himself that her door was open; that she might hear him, and get up and interrupt him. There was nobody to be found down-stairs. The rooms lay very deserted, nothing yet cleared from the tables, the flowers drooping that had decorated the dishes (which was the fashion in those days); the great white bride-cake, standing with a great gash in it, and roses all round it. There was nothing, really, to be unhappy about in what had taken place to-day. Marion was well, and happily provided for. That was a thing a poor man should always be deeply thankful for, but the sight of “the banquet-hall deserted” gave him a pang as if it had been death, instead of the most living of all moments, that had just passed over his house. He went out to the garden, where he could see that some of the younger guests were still lingering; but it was only Rodie and the boys who were his boon companions that were to be seen. Elsie was not there.
He found her late in the afternoon, when he was returning from a long walk. Walks were things thatneither he himself nor his many critics and observers would have thought a proper indulgence for a minister. He ought to be going to see somebody, probably “a sick person,” when he indulged in such a relaxation; and there were plenty of outlying invalids who might have afforded him the excuse he wanted, with duty at the end. But he was not capable of duty to-day, and the sick persons remained unvisited. He turned his face towards home, after treading many miles of the roughest country. And it was then, just as he came through the West Port, that he saw Elsie before him, in her white dress, and fortunately alone. The minister’s thoughts had softened during his walk. He no longer felt disposed to take her by the shoulders, to ask angrily what she had said to her mother, and why she had played the spy upon him; but something of his former excitement sprang up in him at the sight of her. He quickened his pace a little, and was soon beside her, laying his hand upon her shoulder. Elsie looked up, not frightened at all, glad to be joined by him.
“Oh, father, are you going home?” she said, “and so am I.”
“We will walk together, then; which will be a good thing, as I have something to say to you,” he said.
Elsie had no possible objection. She looked up at him very pleasantly with her soft brown eyes, and he discovered for the first time that his younger daughter had grown into a bonnie creature, prettier than Marion.To be angry with her was impossible, and how did he know that there was anything to be angry about?
“Elsie,” he said, “your mother has been telling me of something you heard me say in my study a long time ago, something that you overheard, which you ought not to have overheard, when you were in the turret, and I did not know you were there.”
Elsie grew a little pale at this unexpected address.
“Oh, father,” she said, “you knew we were always there.”
“Indeed, I knew nothing of the kind. I never supposed for a moment that you would remain to listen to what was said.”
“We never did. Oh, never, never!” cried Elsie, now growing as suddenly red.
“It is evident you did on this occasion. You heard me talking to myself, and now you have remembered and reported what I said.”
“Oh, father!” cried Elsie, with a hasty look of remonstrance, “how can you say I did that?”
“What was it, then, you said?”
He noticed that she had no need to pause, to ask herself what it was. She answered at once.
“It was about the parable. They said you had preached a sermon on it, and I said I thought your mind had been very full of it; because, when Rodie and me were in the turret, we heard you.”
“Oh, there were two of you,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a pucker in his forehead.
“There were always, always two of us then,” said Elsie, with a sudden cloud on hers; “and what you said was that verse about taking your bill and writing fourscore. I did not quite understand it at the time.”
“And do you understand it now?”
“No, father, for it was a wrong thing,” said Elsie, sinking her voice. “It was cheating: and to praise a man for doing it, is what I cannot understand.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you about that; I will show you what it means,” he said, with the instinct of the expositor, “but not at this moment,” he added, “not just now. Was that all that you thought of, when you heard me say those words to myself?”
Elsie looked up at him, and then she looked all round; a sudden dramatic conflict took place in her. She had thought of that, and yet she had thought of something more than that, but she did not know what the something more was. It had haunted her, but yet she did not know what it was. She looked up and down the street, unconsciously, to find an answer and explanation, but none came. Then she said, faltering a little:—
“Yes, father, but I was not content; for I did not understand: and I am just the same now.”
“I will take an opportunity,” he said, “of explaining it all to you” and then he added, in a different tone, “it was wrong to be there when I did not know you were there, and wrong to listen to what I said to myself, thinking nobody was near; but what would bemost wrong of all, would be to mention to any living creature a thing you had no right to overhear. And if you ever do it again, I will think you are a little traitor, Elsie, and no true child of mine. It would set you better to take care not to do wrong yourself, than to find fault with the parable.”
He looked at her with glowing, angry eyes, that shone through the twilight, while Elsie gazed at him with consternation. What did he mean? Then and now, what did he mean?
Allthat evening Elsie tried in vain to secure the attention of Rodie, her brother, her own brother, whom life had already swept away from her, out of her feminine sphere. To be so intimately allied as that in childhood, which is a thing which doubles every joy, at least for the girl, and probably at that early age for the boy also—generally involves the first pang of existence to one at least of these sworn companions. It is, I think, always the girl who suffers, though sometimes no doubt the girl is carried away on the wave of new friendships, especially if she goes to school, and is swept up into the whirl of feminine occupations, before the boy is launched into the circle of contemporaries, who are more absorbing still. But Rodie among “his laddies,” had left his sister more completely “out of it” than any boy in possession of all his faculties can ever be. He was always busy with something, always wandering somewhere with the Seatons, or the Beatons, when he was not in the still more entrancing company of Johnny Wemyss. And they never seemed to be tired of each other’s company, day or night. There were times when he did not even come in to hismeals, but went along with his cronies, in the freedom of his age, without invitation or preparation; even he had been known to sit down to the stoved potatoes in the Wemyss’s cottage, though they were not in a class of life to entertain the minister’s son; but what did Rodie care? When he brought in Johnny Wemyss in his turn to supper, Mrs. Buchanan could not shame the rules of hospitality, by giving the fisher lad a bad reception, but her notice of him was constrained, if kind, so that none of the young ones were very comfortable. But Alick Seaton and Ralph Beaton were frequent visitors, taken as a matter of course, and would sit at the end of the table, with Rodie between them, making their jokes, and shaking with convulsions of private laughter, which broke out now and then into a subdued roar, making the elders ask “what was the fun now?” John in special, who was “at the College,” and sported a red gown about the streets, being gruff in his critical remarks: for he had now arrived at an age when you are bound to behave yourself, and not to “carry on” like the laddies. This being the state of affairs, however, it was very difficult to long hold of Rodie, who often “convoyed” his friends home, and came back at the latest moment practicable, only escaping reprimand by a rush up-stairs to bed. It was not therefore till the Sunday following that Elsie had any opportunity of seeing her brother in private, which even then was not with his will: but there was an interval between breakfast and church, which Rodie,with the best will in the world, could not spend with “his laddies,” and which consequently lay undefended, liable to the incursions of his sister. This moment was usually spent in the garden, and often in calculating strokes by which, teeing at a certain spot, he might make sure or almost sure, as sure as the sublime uncertainty of the game permitted, of “holeing” his ball. Naturally, to have taken out a club on Sunday morning, even to the hole in the garden, would have been as good as devoting one’s self to the infernal gods: but thought is free. Rodie had a conviction that Elsie would come bouncing along, through the lilac bushes, to spoil his calculations, as she usually did; but this did not lessen the frown with which he perceived that his anticipation had come to pass. “What are you wantin’ now?” he said gloomily, marking imaginary distances upon the grass.
“Oh, nothing—if you are so deep engaged,” said Elsie, with a spark of natural pride.
“I’m no deep engaged!” said Rodie, indignantly; for he knew father would not smile upon his study, neither would it be appreciated by Alick or Ralph (though they were probably engaged in the same way themselves), that he should be studying the strokes which it was their pride to consider as spontaneous or, indeed, almost accidental. He threw down the cane he had in his hand, and turned away towards the summer-house, whither Elsie followed him.
“I want awfully to speak to you, Rodie——”
“You are always wanting to speak to me,” said the ungrateful boy.
“I’m nothing of the kind; and if I were, want would be my master,” cried Elsie, “for there’s never a moment when you’re free of these laddies. You’re just in their arms and round their necks every moment of your life.”
“I’m neither in their arms nor round their necks,” cried Rodie furious, being conscious that he was not weaned from a certain “bairnly” habit of wandering about with an arm round his cronies’ shoulders. Elsie, however, not sorry for once in a way to find him at a disadvantage, laughed.
“It’s Ralph and Alick, Ralph and Alick, just day and night,” she cried, “or else Johnny Wemyss—but you’re not so keen about Johnny Wemyss because they say he’s not a gentleman; butIthink he’s the best gentleman of them all.”
“It’s much you ken!” cried Rodie. His laddies had made him much more pronounced in his Fife sing-song of accent, which the minister, being from the West Country (though it is well known in Fife that the accent of the West Country is just insufferable), objected to strongly.
“I ken just as well as you—and maybe better,” said Elsie. Then she remembered that this passage of arms, however satisfactory in itself, was not quite in accordance with the object of the interview which she desired. “I am not wanting to quarrel,” she said.
“It was you that began,” said Rodie, with some justice. They had by this time reached the summer-house, with its thick background of lilac bushes. The bay lay before them, in all that softened splendour of the Sabbath morning, concerning which so many of us hold the fond tradition that in its lustre and its glory there is something distinct from all other days. The Forfarshire coast lay dim and fair in a little morning haze, on the other side of the blue and tranquil sea, with faint lines of yellow sand, and here and there a white edge of foam, though all was so still, lighting up the distance. The hills, all soft with light and shadow, every knowe and howe visible under the caress of the mild and broad sunshine, the higher rocks upon the near shore half-draped with the intense greenery of the delicate sea-weed, the low reefs, lying dark in leathery clothing of dulse, like the teeth of some great sea monster, half hidden in the ripples of the water, the horizon to the east softening off into a vague radiance of infinity in the great breadth of the German Ocean. I have always thought and often said, that if there is a spot on earth in which one can feel the movement of the great round world through space, though reduced by human limitations to a faint rhythm and swaying, it is there under the illimitable blue of the northern sky, on the shores and links of St. Rule’s.
The pair who came thus suddenly in sight of this landscape, were not of any sentimental turn, and weredeeply engaged in their own immediate sensations; but the girl paused to cry, “Oh, how bonnie, how bonnie!” while the boy sat down on the rough seat, and dug his heels into the grass, expecting an ordeal of questioning and “bothering,” in which the sky and the sea could give him but little help. Elsie was much of the mind of the jilted and forsaken everywhere. She could not keep herself from reproaches, sometimes from taunts. But the sky and sea did help Rodie after all, for they brought her back by the charm of their aspect, an effect more natural at sixteen than at fifteen, and to a girl rather than a boy.
“I am not wanting to quarrel, and it’s a shame and a sin on the Sabbath, and such a bonnie day as this. Oh, but it’s a bonnie day! there is the wee light-house that is like a glow-worm at night; it is nothing but a white line now, as thin as an end of thread: and muckle Dundee nothing but a little smoke hanging above the Law——”
“I suppose,” said Rodie, scornfully, “you have seen them all before?”
“Oh, yes, I have seen them all before: but that is not to say that they are not sometimes bonnier at one time than another. Rodie, you and me that are brother and sister, we never should be anything less than dear friends.”
“Friends enough,” said Rodie, sulkily. “I am wanting nothing but just that you’ll let me be.”
“But that,” said Elsie, with a sigh, “is just thehardest thing! for I’m wanting you, and you’re no wanting me, Rodie! But I’ll say no more about that; Marion says it’s always so, and that laddies and men for a constancy they like their own kind best.”
“I didna think Marion had that much sense,” the boy said.
“Oh, dinna anger me over again with your conceit,” cried Elsie, “and me in such a good frame of mind, and the bay so bonnie, and something so different in my thoughts.”
Rodie settled himself on the rude bench, as though preparing to endure the inevitable: he took his hands out of his pockets and began to drum a faint tune upon the rustic table. The attitude which many a lover, many a husband, many a resigned male victim of the feminine reproaches from which there is no escape, has assumed for ages past, came by nature to this small boy. He dismissed every kind of interest or intelligence from his face. If he had been thirty, he could not have looked more blank, more enduring, more absolutely indifferent. Since he could not get away from her, she must have her say. It would not last for ever, neither could it penetrate beyond the very surface of the ear and of the mind. He assumed his traditional attitude by inheritance from long lines of forefathers. And perhaps it was well that Elsie’s attention was not concentrated on him, or it is quite possible that she might have assumed the woman’s traditional attitude, which is as well defined as theman’s. But she was fortunately at the visionary age, and had entered upon her poetry, as he had entered into the dominion of “his laddies.” Her eye strayed over the vast expanse spread out before her, and the awe of the beauty, and the vast calm of God came over her heart.
“Rodie, I want to speak to you of something. It’s long past, and it has nothing to do with you or me. Rodie, do you mind yon afternoon, when we were shut up in the turret, and heard papa studying his sermon?”
“What’s about that? You’ve minded me of it many a time: but if I was to be always minding like you, what good would that do?”
“I wanted to ask you, Rodie—sometimes you mind better than me, sometimes not so well. Do you mind what he was saying? I want to be just sure for once, and then never to think upon it again.”
“What does it matter what he was saying? It was just about one of the parables.” I am afraid the parables were just “a thing in the Bible” to Rodie. He did not identify them much, or think what they meant, or wherein one differed from another. This, I need not say, was not for want of teaching: perhaps it was because of too much teaching, which sometimes has a similar effect. “I mind,” he said with a laugh, “we were just that crampit, sitting so long still, that we couldn’t move.”
“Yes, yes,” said Elsie, “but I want to remember quite clear what it was he said.”
“It did not matter to us what he said,” said Rodie. “Papa is sometimes a foozle, but I am not going to split upon him.” This was the slang of those days, still lingering where golf is wont to be played.
“Do you think I would split upon him?” cried Elsie with indignation.
“I don’t know, then, what you’re carrying on about. Yes, I mind he said something that was very funny; but then he often does that. Fathers are so fond of saying things, that you don’t know what they mean, and ministers worse than the rest. There’s the first jow of the bell, and it’s time to get your bonnet on. I’m not for biding here havering; and then that makes us late.”
“You’re keen about being in time this morning, Rodie!”
“I’m always keen for being in time. When you come in late, you see on all their faces: ‘There’s the minister’s family just coming in—them that ought to set us an example—and we’ve been all here for a quarter of an hour.’”
“We are never so late as that,” cried Elsie, indignantly.
“You will be to-day, if you do not hurry,” he said, jumping up himself and leading the way.
And it was quite true, Elsie could not but allow to herself, that the minister’s family were sometimes late. It had originated in the days when there were so many little ones to get ready; and then, as Mrs. Buchanansaid, it was a great temptation living so near the church. You felt that in a minute you could be there; and then you put off your time, so that in the end, the bell had stopped ringing, and you had to troop in with a rash, which was evidently a very bad example to the people. And they did look up with that expression on their faces, as if it were they who were the examples! But the fact that Rodie was right, did not make what he said more agreeable. It acted rather the contrary way. She had wished for his sympathy, for his support of her own recollections, perhaps for surer rectification of her impressions; and she found nothing but high disapproval, and the suggestion that she was capable of splitting upon papa. This reproach broke Elsie’s heart. Nothing would have induced her to betray her father. She would have shielded him with her own life, she would have defended him had he been in such danger, for instance, as people, and especially ministers, were long ago, in Claverhouse’s time—or dug out with her nails a place to hide him in, like Grizel Home. But to fathom the present mystery, and remember exactly what he said, and find out what it meant, had not seemed to her to be anything against him. That it was none of her business, had not occurred to her. And she did not for the moment perceive any better sense in Rodie. She thought he was only perverse, as he so often was now, contrary to whatever she might say, going against her. And she was very sure it was no enthusiasm forpunctuality, or for going to church, which made him hasten on before to the house, where his Sunday hat, carefully brushed, was on the hall-table, waiting for him. That was a thing that mother liked to do with her own hands.
The thought of Rodie in such constant opposition and rebellion, overshadowed her through all the early service, and it was not really till the middle of the sermon that a sudden perception caught her mind. Was that what Rodie meant? “He may be a foozle, but I will never split on him.” But papa was no foozle. What was he? A good kind man, doing nobody any wrong. There was nothing to say against him, nothing for his children to betray. Even Elsie’s half-developed mind was conscious of other circumstances, of children whose father might have something to betray. And, in that dreadful case, what would one do? Oh, decline to hear, decline to know of anything that could be betrayed, shut your ears to every whisper, believe not even himself to his own undoing! This idea leapt into her mind in the middle of the sermon. There was nothing in the sermon to make her think of that. It was not Mr. Buchanan who was preaching, but the other minister, his colleague, who did not preach very good sermons, not like father’s! And Elsie’s attention wandered in spite of herself. And then, all in a moment, this thought leapt into her mind. In these circumstances, so different from her own, that would have been the onlything for a child to do. Oh, never to listen to a word against him, not even if it came from himself. Elsie’s quick mind sprang responsive to this thought. This was far finer, far higher than her desire to remember, to fathom what he had meant. And from whence was it that this thought had come? From Rodie, her brother, the boy whom she had been accusing in her mind, not only of forsaking her, but of becoming more rough, more coarse, less open to fine thoughts. This perception surprised Elsie so, that it was all she could do, not to jump up in her place, to clap her hands, to cry out: “It was Rodie.” And she who had never known that Rodie was capable of that! while all St. Rule’s, and the world besides, had conceived the opinion of him that he was a foolish callant. Elsie’s heart swelled full of triumph in Rodie. “He may be a foozle”—no, no, he was no foozle—well did Rodie know that. But was not Elsie’s curiosity a tacit insult to papa, as suggesting that he might have been committing himself, averring something that was wrong? Elsie would have condemned herself to all the pangs of conscience, to all the reproaches against the ungrateful child, who in her heart was believing her father guilty of some unknown criminality, if it had not been that her heart was flooded with sudden delight, the enchantment of a great discovery that Rodie had chosen the better part. There was a true generosity in her, notwithstanding her many foolishnesses. That sudden flash of respect for Rodie, andhappy discovery that in this one thing at least he was more faithful than she, consoled her for appearing to herself by comparison in a less favourable light.
And the effect was, that she was silenced even to herself. She put no more questions to Rodie, she tried to put out of her own mind her personal recollections, and every attempt to understand. Did not Rodie say it was not their business, that it did not matter to them what papa said? Elsie could not put away her curiosity out of her heart, but she bowed her head to Rodie’s action. After all, what a grand discovery it was that Rodie should be the one to see what was right.
Thiswas the last incident in the secret history of the Buchanan family for the moment. The sudden, painful, and unexpected crisis which had arisen on Marion’s wedding day ceased almost as suddenly as it arose. The Mowbrays, after staying a short time in St. Rule’s, departed to more genial climes, and places in which more amusement was to be found—for though even so long ago, St. Rule’s had become a sort of watering-place, where people came in the summer, it was not in the least a place of organised pleasure, or where there was any whirl of gaiety; nothing could be more deeply disapproved of than a whirl of gaiety in these days.
There were no hotels and few lodgings of the usual watering-place kind. People who came hired houses and transported themselves and all their families, resuming all their usual habits with the sole difference that the men of the family, instead of going out upon their usual avocations every day, went out to golf instead: which was then a diversion practised only in certain centres of its own, where most of the people could play—a thing entirely changed nowadays, as everybody is aware, when it is to be found everywhere,and practised by everybody, the most of whom do not know how to play.
Mrs. Mowbray did not find the place at all to her mind. Mr. Anderson’s house, to which her son had succeeded, was old-fashioned, with furniture of the last century, and large rooms, filled with the silence and calm of years. Instead of being surrounded by “grounds,” which were the only genteel setting for a gentleman’s house, it had the ruins of the cathedral on one hand, and on the other the High Street. The picturesque was not studied in those days: unless it might be the namby-pamby picturesque, such as flourished in books of beauty, keepsakes, and albums, when what was supposed to be Italian scenery was set forth in steel engravings, and fine ladies at Venetian windows listened to the guitars of their lovers rising from gondolas out of moonlit lakes. To look out on the long, broad, sunny High Street, with, perhaps, the figure of a piper in the distance, against the glow of the sunset, or a wandering group, with an unhappy and melancholy dancing bear—was very vulgar to the middle-class fine lady, a species appropriate to that period, and which now has died away; and, to look out, on the other hand, upon the soaring spring of a broken arch in the ruins, gave Mrs. Mowbray the vapours, or the blues, or whatever else that elegant malady was called. We should say nerves, in these later days, but, at the beginning of the century, nerves had scarcely yet been invented.
For all these reasons, Mrs. Mowbray did not stay long in St. Rule’s—she complained loudly of everything she found there, of the house, and the society which had paid her so little attention: and of the climate, and the golf which Frank had yielded to the fascination of, staying out all day, and keeping her in constant anxiety! but, above all, she complained of the income left by old Mr. Anderson, which was so much less than they expected, and which all her efforts could not increase. She said so much about this, as to make the life of good Mr. Morrison, the man of business, a burden to him: and at the same time to throw upon the most respectable inhabitants of St. Rule’s a sort of cloud or shadow, or suspicion of indebtedness which disturbed the equanimity of the town. “She thinks we all borrowed money from old Anderson,” the gentlemen said with laughter in many a dining-room. But there were a few others, like Mr. Buchanan, who did not like the joke.
“The woman is daft!” they said; but it was remarked by some keen observers that the minister gave but a sickly smile in response. And it may be supposed that this added to the contempt of the ladies for the pretensions of a woman of whom nobody knew who was her father or who her mother, yet who would fain have set herself up as a leader of fashion over them all. In general, when the ladies disapprove of a new-comer, in a limited society like that of St. Rule’s, the men are apt to take her part—but, in this case, nobodytook her part; and, as there was nothing gay in the place, and no amusement to be had, even in solemn dinner-parties, she very soon found it was not suitable for her health.
“So cold, even in summer,” she said, shivering—and everybody was glad when she went away, taking that little mannikin, Frank—who, perhaps, might have been made into something like a man on the links—with her, to the inanity of some fashionable place. To like a fashionable place was then believed to be the very top, or bottom, of natural depravity in St. Rule’s.
This had been a very sore ordeal to Mr. Buchanan: his conscience upbraided him day by day—he had even upon him an aching impulse to go and tell somebody to relieve his own mind, and share the responsibility with some one who might have guided him in his sore strait. Though he was a very sound Presbyterian, and evangelical to his finger-tips, the wisdom of the Church of Rome, in the institution of confession, and of a spiritual director to aid the penitent, appeared to him in a far clearer light than he had ever seen it before. To be sure, in all churches, the advantage of telling your difficulties to an adviser conversant with the spiritual life, has always been recognised: but there was no one whom Mr. Buchanan could choose for this office—they were all married men, for one thing, and who could be sure that the difficulty might not ooze out into the mind of a faithful spouse, in no waybound to keep the secrets of her husband’s penitents—and whom, at all events, even though her lips were sealed by strictest honour, the penitent had no intention of confiding his secret to. No; the minister felt that his reverend brethren were the last persons to whom he would like to confide his hard case. If there had been some hermit now, some old secluded person, some old man, or even woman, in the sanctuary of years and experience, to whom a man could go, and, by parable or otherwise, lay bare the troubles of his soul. He smiled at himself even while the thought went through his mind: the prose part of his being suggested an old, neglected figure, all overgrown with beard and hair, in the hollow of St. Rule’s cave, within the dashing of the spray, the very place for a hermit, a dirty old man, hoarse and callous, incapable of comprehending the troubles of a delicate conscience, though he might know what to say to the reprobate or murderer: no, the hermit would not do, he said to himself, with a smile, in our days.
To be sure, he had one faithful confidant, the wife of his bosom; but, least of all, would Mr. Buchanan have poured out his troubles to his wife. He knew very well what she would say—“You accepted an indulgence that was not meant for you; you took your bill and wrote fourscore when it was hundreds you were owing; Claude, my man, that cannot be—you must just go this moment and tell Mr. Morrison the whole truth; and, if I should sell my flannel petticoat,we’ll pay it off, every penny, if only they will give us time.” He knew so well what she would say, that he could almost hear the inflections of her voice in saying it. There was no subtlety in her—she would understand none of his hesitations. She would see no second side to the question. “Own debt and crave days,” she would say; she was fond of proverbs—and he had heard her quote that before.
There are thus difficulties in the way of consulting the wife of your bosom, especially if she is a practical woman, who could, in a manner, force you to carry out your repentance into restitution, and give you no peace.
During this time of reawakened feeling, Mr. Buchanan had a certain distant sentiment, which he did not know how to explain to himself, against his daughter Elsie. She had a way of looking at him which he did not understand—not the look of disapproval, but of curiosity, half wistful, half pathetic—as if she wanted to know something more of him, to clear up some doubt in her own mind. What cause could the girl have to want more knowledge of her own father? She knew everything about him, all his habits, his way of looking at things—as much as a girl could know about a man so much older and wiser than herself. It half amused him to think that one of his own family should find this mystery in him. He was to himself, always excepting that one thing, as open as the day—and yet the amusement was partial,and mingled with alarm. She knew more of that one thing than any one else; could it be that it was curiosity and anxiety about this that was in the girl’s eyes?
Sometimes he thought so, and then condemned himself for entertaining such a thought, reminding himself that vague recollections like that of Elsie do not take such shape in a young mind, and also that it was impossible that one so young, and his affectionate and submissive child, should entertain any such doubts of him.
The curious thing was that, knowing all he did of himself, and that he had done—or intended to do, which was the same—this one thing which was evil, he still felt it impossible that any doubt of him should lodge in his daughter’s mind.
In this way the years which are, perhaps, most important in the development of the young, passed over the heads of the Buchanans. From sixteen, Elsie grew to twenty, and became, as Marion had been, her mother’s right hand, so that Mrs. Buchanan, more free from domestic cares than formerly, was able to take an amount of repose which, perhaps, was not quite so good for her as her former more active life; for she grew stout, and less willing to move as her necessities lessened. John was now in Edinburgh, having very nearly obtained the full-fledged honours of a W.S. And Rodie, nearly nineteen, was now the only boy at home. Perhaps, as the youngest, and thelast to be settled, he was more indulged than the others had been; for he had not yet decided upon his profession, and still had hankerings after the army, notwithstanding that all the defects of that service had been put before him again and again—the all but impossibility of buying him a commission, the certainty that he would have to live on his pay, and many other disadvantageous things.
Rodie was still not old enough to be without hopes that something might turn up to make his desires possible, however little appearance of it there might be. Getting into the army in those days was not like getting into the army now. With us it means, in the first place, examinations, which any boy of moderate faculties and industry can pass: but then it meant so much money out of his father’s pocket to buy a commission: to put the matter in words, the present system seems the better way—but it is doubtful whether the father’s pocket is much the better, seeing that there is often a great deal of “cramming” to be done before the youth gets through the ordeal of examinations, and sometimes, it must be allowed, boys who are of the most perfect material for soldiers do not get through that narrow gate at all.
But there was no cramming in Roderick Buchanan’s day; the word had not been invented, nor the thing. A boy’s education was put into him solidly, moderately, in much the same way as his body was built up, by the work of successive years—he was not put into awarm place, and filled with masses of fattening matter, like the poor geese of Strasburg.
Rodie’s eyes, therefore, not requiring to be for ever bent on mathematics or other abstruse studies, were left free to search the horizon for signs of anything that might turn up; perhaps a cadetship for India, which was the finest thing that could happen—except in his mother’s eyes, who thought one son was enough to have given up to the great Moloch of India: but, had the promise of the cadetship arrived any fine morning, I fear Mrs. Buchanan’s scruples would have been made short work with. In the meantime, Rodie was attending classes at the College, and sweeping the skies with the telescope of hope.
Rodie and his sister had come a little nearer with the progress of the years. From the proud moment, when the youth felt the down of a coming moustache upon his upper lip, and began to perceive that he was by no means a bad-looking fellow, and to feel inclinations towards balls and the society of girls, scorned and contemned so long as he was merely a boy, he had drawn a little closer to his sister, who had, as it were, the keys of that other world. It was a little selfish, perhaps; but, in a family, one must not look too closely into motives; and Elsie, faithful to her first affection, was glad enough to get him back again, and to find that he was, by no means, so scornful of mere “lassies,” as in the days when his desertion had made her little heart so sore. Perhaps it had somethingto do with his conversion, that “his laddies,” the Alicks and Ralphs of his boyish days, had all taken (at least, as many as remained of them, those who had not yet gone off to the army, or the bar, or the W.S.’s office) to balls also, and now danced as vigorously as they played.