One of the strangest things, however, in all that juvenile band, was the change which had come over Johnny Wemyss, who, the reader will remember, was only a fisherman’s son, and lived east the town in a fisher’s cottage, and was not supposed the best of company for the minister’s son. Johnny, the romantic, silent boy, who had put down his flowers on the pavement that the bride’s path might be over them, had taken to learning, as it was easy for the poorest boy, in such a centre of education, to do. As was usual, when a lad of his class showed this turn, which was by no means extraordinary, it was towards the Church that the parents directed their thoughts, and Johnny had taken all his “arts” classes, his “humanities,” the curriculum of secular instruction, and was pondering doctrine and exegesis in the theological branch, on his way to be a minister, at the moment in their joint history at which we have now arrived. I am not sure that even then he was quite sure that he himself intended to be a minister; for, being a serious youth by nature, he had much loftier views of that sacred profession than, perhaps, it was possible for a minister’s son, trained up in over-much familiarity with it,to have. But his meaning was, as yet, not very clear to himself; he was fonder of “beasts,” creatures of the sea-coast, fishes, and those half-inanimate things, which few people, as yet, had begun to think of at all, than of anything else in the world, except.... I will not fill in this blank; perhaps the young reader will guess what was the thing Johnny Wemyss held in still higher devotion than “his beasts;” at all events, if he follows the thread of this story, he will in time find out.
Johnny was no longer kept outside the minister’s door. In his red gown, as a student of St. Rule’s, he was as good as anyone, and the childish alliance, which had long existed between him and Rodie, was still kept up, although Rodie’s fictitious enthusiasm for beasts, which was merely a reflection from his friend’s, had altogether failed, and he was as ready as any one to laugh at the pottering in all the sea-pools, and patient observation of all the strange creatures’ ways, which kept Wemyss busy all the time he could spare from his lectures and his essays, and the composition of the sermons which a theological student at St. Mary’s College was bound, periodically, to produce. Those tastes of his were already recognised as very absurd and rather amusing, but very good things to keep a laddie out of mischief, Mrs. Buchanan said; for it was evident that he could not be “carrying on” in any foolish way, so long as he spent his afternoons out on the caller sands, with his wee spy-glass, examiningthe creatures, how they were made, and all about them, though it was a strange taste for a young man. Several times he had, indeed, brought a basin full of sea-water—carrying it through the streets, not at all put out by the amusement which surrounded him, the school-boys that followed at his heels, the sharp looks which his acquaintances gave each other, convinced now that Johnny Wemyss had certainly a bee in his bonnet—to the minister’s house, that Miss Elsie might see the wonderful white and pink creatures, like sea-flowers, the strange sea-anemones, rooted on bits of rock, and waving their tentacles, or shutting them up in a moment at a rude touch.
Elsie, much disposed to laugh at first, when the strange youth brought her this still stranger trophy, gradually came to admire, and wonder, and take great notice of the sea-anemones, which were wonderfully pretty, though so queer—and which, after all, she began to think, it was quite as clever of Johnny Wemyss to have discovered, as it was of the Alicks and Ralphs to shoot the wild-fowl at the mouth of the Eden. It was even vaguely known that he wrote to some queer scientific fishy societies about them, and received big letters by the post, “costing siller,” or sometimes franked in the corner with long, sprawling signatures of peers, or members of parliament. People, however, would not believe that these letters could be about Johnny Wemyss’s beasts; they thought that this must simply be a pretence to make himself and hisrubbish of importance, and that it must be something else which procured him these correspondents, though what, they could not tell.
Wemyss was the eldest of the little society. He was three-and-twenty, and ought to be already settled in life, everybody thought. He had, for some time, been making his living, which was the first condition of popular respect, and had already been tutor to a number of lads before he had begun his theological course. This age was rather a late age in Scotland for a student of divinity—most of those who had any interest were already sure of a kirk, and even those who had none were exercising their gifts as probationers, and hoping to attract somebody’s notice who could bestow one. But Johnny somehow postponed that natural consummation: he went on with his tutor’s work, and made no haste over his studies, continuing to attend lectures, when he might have applied to the Presbytery for license. It was believed, and not without truth, that not even for the glory of being a placed minister, could he make up his mind to give up his beloved sea-pools, where he was always to be found of an afternoon, pottering in the sea-water, spoiling his clothes, and smelling of the brine, as if he were still one of the fisher folk among whom he had been born. He no longer dwelt among them, however, for his father and mother were both dead, and he himself lived in a little lodging among those cheap tenements frequented by studentsnear the West, out at the other end of the town. He did not go to the balls, nor care for dancing like the others,—which was a good thing, seeing he was to be a minister,—but, notwithstanding, there were innumerable occasions of meeting each other, common to all the young folk of the friendly, little, old-fashioned town.
Mrs. Mowbrayand her son had reappeared for a short time on several occasions during these silent years. They had come at the height of the season for “the gowff,” which Frank, not having been a St. Rule’s boy, nor properly brought up to it, played badly like an Englishman. It must be understood that this was generations before golf had penetrated into England, and when it was, in fact, thought of contemptuously by most of the chance visitors, who considered it a game for old gentlemen, and compared it scornfully with cricket, and called the clubs “sticks,” to the hot indignation of the natives. Since then “the gowff” has had its revenges, and it is now the natives who are scornful, and smile grimly over the crowds of the strangers who are so eager, but never can get over the disabilities of a childhood not dedicated to golf. Not only Rodie, and Alick, and Ralph, but even Johnny Wemyss, who, though he rarely played, had yet a natural understanding of the game, laughed at the attempts of Frank, and at his dandyism, and his “high English,” and many other signs of the alien, who gave himself airs, or was supposed to do so. But, at the period of which I am nowspeaking, Frank had become a man, and had learned several lessons in life. He was, indeed, older than even Johnny Wemyss; he was nearly twenty-five, and had been at an English University, and had had a large pair of whiskers, and was no longer a dandy. The boys recognised him as a fellow-man, even as a man in an advanced stage, who knew some things they did not, but no longer gave himself airs. He had even learned that difficult lesson, which many persons went through life without ever learning, that he could not play golf. And when he settled himself with his mother in the old house which belonged to him, in the beginning of summer, and addressed himself seriously to the task of making up his deficiencies, his youthful acquaintances rallied round him, and forgot their criticisms upon his neckties, and his spats, and all the ornamental particulars of “the fashion,” which he brought with him; nay, they began secretly to make notes of these points, and shyly copied them, one after another, with a great terror of being laughed at, which would have been completely justified by results, but for the fact that they were all moved by the same temptation. When, however, Rodie Buchanan and Alick Seaton, both stepping out, with much diffidence, on a fresh Sunday morning, in their first spats, red with apprehension, and looking about them suspiciously, with a mingled dread of and desire to be remarked, suddenly ran upon each other, they both paused, looked at each other’s feet, and, with unspeakablerelief, burst into a roar of laughter, which could be heard both east and west to the very ends of the town; not very proper, many people thought, on the Sunday morning, especially in the case of a minister’s son. They were much relieved, however, to find themselves thus freed from the terror of ridicule, and when all the band adopted the new fashion, it was felt that the High Street had little to learn from St. James’s, as well as—which was always known—much that it could teach that presumptuous locality. Johnny Wemyss got no spats, he did not pretend to follow the fashion; he smiled a little grimly at Frank, and had a good hearty roar over the young ones, when they all defiled before him on the Sunday walk on the links, shamefaced, but pleased with themselves, and, in the strength of numbers, joining in Johnny’s laugh without bitterness. Frank wasbon prince, even in respect to Johnny; he went so far as to pretend, if he did not really feel, an interest in the “beasts,” and never showed any consciousness of the fact that this member of the community had a different standing-ground from the others, a fact, however, which, I fear, Mrs. Mowbray made very apparent, when she in any way acknowledged the little company of young men.
Mrs. Mowbray herself had not improved in these years. She had a look of care which contracted her forehead, and gave her an air of being older than she was, an effect that often follows the best exertions ofthose who desire to look younger than they are. She talked a good deal about her expenses, which was a thing not common in those days, and about the difficulty of keeping up a proper position upon a limited income, with all Frank’s costly habits, and her establishment in London, and the great burden of keeping up the old house in St. Rule’s, which she would like to sell if the trustees would permit her. By Mr. Anderson’s will, however, Frank did not come of age, so far as regarded the Scotch property, till he was twenty-five, and thus nothing could be done. She had become a woman of many grievances, which is not perhaps at any time a popular character, complaining of everything, even of Frank; though he was the chief object of her life, and to demonstrate his superiority to everybody else, was the chief subject of her talk, except when her troubles with money and with servants came in, or the grievance of Mr. Anderson’s misbehaviour in leaving so much less money than he ought, overwhelmed all other subjects. Mrs. Mowbray took, as was perhaps natural enough, Mr. Buchanan for her chief confidant. She had always, she said, been in the habit of consulting her clergyman; and though there was a difference, she scarcely knew what, between a clergyman and a minister, she still felt that it was a necessity to have a spiritual guide, and to lay forth the burden of her troubles before some one, who would tell her what it was her duty to do in circumstances so complicated and trying. Shelearned the way, accordingly, to Mr. Buchanan’s study, where he received all his parish visitors, the elders who came on the business of the Kirk session, and any one who wished to consult him, whether upon spiritual matters, or upon the affairs of the church, or charitable institutions. The latter were the most frequent, and except a poor widow-woman in search of aid for her family, or, with a certificate for a pension to be signed, or a letter for a hospital, his visitors were almost always rare. It was something of a shock when a lady, rustling in silk, and with all her ribbons flying, was first shown in by the half-alarmed maid, who had previously insisted, to the verge of ill-breeding, that Mrs. Buchanan was in the drawing-room: but as time went on, it became a very common incident, and the minister started nervously every time a knock sounded on his door, in terror lest it should be she.
In ordinary cases, I have no doubt Mr. Buchanan would have made a little quiet fun of his visitor, whose knock and step he had begun to know, as if she had been a visitor expected and desired. But what took all the fun out of it and prevented even a smile, was the fact that he was horribly afraid of her all the time, and never saw her come in without a tremor at his heart. It seemed to him on each repeated visit that she must in the interval since the last have discovered something: though he knew that there was nothing to discover, and that the proofs of his own culpabilitywere all locked up in his own heart, where they lay and corroded, burning the place, and never permitting him to forget what he had done, although he had done nothing. How often had he said to himself that he had done nothing! But it did him no good, and when Mrs. Mowbray came in with her grievances, he felt as if each time she must denounce him, and on the spot demand that he should pay what he owed. Oh, if that only could be, if she had denounced him, and had the power to compel payment, what a relief it would have been! It would have taken the responsibility off his shoulders, it would have brought him out of hell. There would then have been no possibility of reasoning with himself, or asking how it was to be done, or shrinking from the shame of revealing even to his wife, what had been his burden all these years. He had in his imagination put the very words into her mouth, over and over again. He had made her say: “Mr. Buchanan, you were owing old Mr. Anderson three hundred pounds.” And to this he had replied: “Yes, Mrs. Mowbray,” and the stone had rolled away from his heart. This imaginary conversation had been repeated over and over again in his mind. He never attempted to deny it, never thought now of taking his bill and writing fourscore. Not an excuse did he offer, nor any attempt at denial. “Yes, Mrs. Mowbray:” that was what he heard himself saying: and he almost wished it might come true.
The condition of strange suspense and expectationinto which this possibility threw him, is very difficult to describe or understand. His wife perceived something, and perhaps it crossed her mind for a moment that he liked those visits, and that there was reason of offence to herself in them: but she was a sensible woman and soon perceived the folly of such an explanation. But the mere fact that an explanation seemed necessary, disturbed her, and gave her an uncomfortable sensation in respect to him, who never had so far as she knew in all their lives kept any secret from her. What was it? The most likely thing was, that the secret was Mrs. Mowbray’s which she had revealed to him, and which was a burden on his mind because of her, not of himself.Thatwoman—for this was the way in which Mrs. Buchanan began to describe the other lady in her heart—was just the sort of woman to have a history, and what if she had burdened the minister’s conscience with it to relieve her own? “I wonder,” she said to Elsie one day, abruptly, a remark connected with nothing in particular, “what kind of mind the Catholic priests have, that have to hear so many confessions of ill folks’ vices and crimes. It must be as if they had done it all themselves, and not daring to say a word.”
“What makes you think of that, mother?” said Elsie.
“It is no matter what makes me think of it,” said Mrs. Buchanan, a little sharply. “Suppose you were told of something very bad, and had to see the personcoming and going, and never knowing when vengeance might overtake them by night or by day.”
“Do you mean, mother, that you would like to tell, and that they should be punished?” Elsie said.
“It would not be my part to punish her,” said the mother, unconsciously betraying herself. “No, no, that would never be in my mind: but you would always be on the outlook for everything that happened if you knew—and specially if she knew that you knew. Whenever a stranger came near, you would think it was the avenger that was coming, or, at the least, it was something that would expose her, that would be like a clap of thunder. Bless me, Elsie, I cannot tell how they can live and thole it, these Catholic priests.”
“They will hear so many things, they will not think much about them,” Elsie said, with philosophy.
“No think about them! when perhaps it is life or death to some poor creature, and her maybe coming from time to time looking at you very wistful as if she were saying: ‘Do you think they will find me out? Do you think it was such a very bad thing? do you think they’ll kill me for it?’ I think I would just go and say it was me that did it, and would they give me what was my due and be done with it, for ever and ever. I think if it was me, that is what I would do.”
“But it would not be true, mother.”
“Oh, lassie,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “dinna fash me with your trues and your no trues! I am saying whatI would be worked up to, if my conscience was bowed down with another person’s sin.”
“Would it be worse than if it was your own?” asked Elsie.
“A great deal worse. When you do what’s wrong yourself, everything that is in you rises up to excuse it. You say to yourself, Dear me, what are they all making such a work about? it is no so very bad, it was because I could not help it, or it was without meaning any harm, or it was just—something or other; but when it is another person, you see it in all its blackness and without thinking of any excuse. And then when it’s your own sin, you can repent and try to make up for it, or to confess it and beg for pardon both to him you have wronged, and to God, but especially to him that is wronged, for that is the hardest. And in any way you just have it in your own hands. But you cannot repent for another person, nor can you make up, nor give her the right feelings; you have just to keep silent, and wonder what will happen next.”
“You are meaning something in particular, mother?” Elsie said.
“Oh, hold your tongue with your nonsense, everything that is, is something in particular,” Mrs. Buchanan said. She had been listening to a rustle of silk going past the drawing-room door; she paused and listened, her face growing a little pale, putting out her hand to hinder any noise, which would preventher from hearing. Elsie in turn watched her, staring, listening too, gradually making the strange discovery that her mother’s trouble was connected with the coming of Mrs. Mowbray, a discovery which disturbed the girl greatly, though she could not make out to herself how it was.
Mrs. Buchanan could not refrain from a word on the same subject to her husband. When she went to his room after his visitor was gone, she found him with his elbows supported on his table and his face hidden in his hands. He started at her entrance, and raised his head suddenly with a somewhat scared countenance towards her: and then drawing his papers towards him, he began to make believe that he had been writing. “Well, my dear,” he said, turning a little towards her, but without raising his eyes.
“Claude, my dear, what ails you that you should start like that—when it’s just me, your own wife, coming into the room?”
“Did I start?” he said; “no, I don’t think I started: but I did not hear you come in.” Then with a pretence at a smile he added, “I have just had a visit from that weariful woman, Mrs. Mowbray. It was an evil day for me when she was shown the way up here.”
“But surely, Claude,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “it was by your will that she ever came up here.”
“Is that all you know, Mary?” he said, with a smile. “Who am I, that I can keep out a womanwho is dying to speak about herself, and thinks there is no victim so easy as the minister. It is just part of the day’s duty, I suppose.”
“But you were never, that I remember, taigled in this way before,” Mrs. Buchanan said.
“I was perhaps never brought face to face before with a woman determined to say her say, and that will take no telling. My dear, if you will free me of her, you will do the best day’s work for me you have ever done in your life.”
“There must be something of the first importance in what she has to say.”
“To herself, I have no doubt,” said the minister, with a deep sigh. “I am thinking there is no subject in the world that has the interest our own affairs have to ourselves. She is just never done: and all about herself.”
“I am not a woman to pry into my neighbour’s concerns: but this must be some sore burden on her conscience, Claude, since she has so much to say to you.”
“Do you think so?” he cried. “Well, that might perhaps be an explanation: for what I have to do with her small income, and her way of spending her money, and her house, and her servants, I cannot see. There is one thing that gives it a sting to me. I cannot forget that we have something to do with the smallness of her income,” Mr. Buchanan said.
“We to do with smallness of her income! I willalways maintain,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “that the money was the old man’s, and that he had the first right to give it where he pleased; but, dear Claude, man, you that should ken—what could that poor three hundred give her? Fifteen pound per annum; and what is fifteen pound per annum?—not enough to pay that English maid with all her airs and graces. If it had been as many thousands, there might have been some justice it.”
“That is perhaps an idea,” said the harassed minister, “if we were to offer her the interest, Mary? My dear, what would you say to that? It would be worse than ever to gather together that money and pay it back; but fifteen pounds a year, that might be a possible thing; you might put your shoulder to the wheel, and pay her that.”
“Claude,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “are you sure that is all the woman is wanting? I cannot think it can be that. It is just something that is on her conscience, and she wants to put it off on you.”
“My dear,” said the minister, “you’re a very clever woman, but you are wrong there. I have heard nothing about her conscience, it is her wrongs that she tells to me.” The conversation had eased his mind a little, and his wife’s steady confidence in his complete innocence in the matter, and the perfect right of old Anderson to do what he liked with his own money, was always, for the moment at least, refreshing to his soul: though he soon fell back on the reflection that the only fact ofany real importance in the matter was the one she never knew.
Mrs. Buchanan was a little disconcerted by the failure of her prevision, but she would not recede. “If she has not done it yet, she will do it sometime. Mind what I am saying to you, Claude: there is something on her conscience, and she wants to put it off on you.”
“Nonsense, Mary,” he said. “What should be on the woman’s conscience? and why should she try to put it upon mine? Dear me, my conscience would be far easier bearing the weight of her ill-doing than the weight of my own. We must get this beam out of our own eye if we can, and then the mote in our neighbour’s—if there is a mote—will be easy, oh, very easy, to put up with. It is my own burden that troubles me.”
“Toot,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “you are just very exaggerated. It was most natural Mr. Anderson should do as he did, knowing all the circumstances—and you, what else should you do, to go against him? But you will just see,” she added, confidently, “that I will prove a true prophet after all. If it has not been done, it will be done, and you will get her sin to bear as well as your own.”
Meanwhile, the reader shall judge by the turn of one of these conversations whether Mrs. Buchanan was, or was not, justified in her prevision. Mrs. Mowbray came tripping up the long stair, which was of stone, and did not creak under foot, though she was betrayed by the rustle of her silk dress, which was in those days a constant accompaniment of a woman’s movements. When she approached nearer, there were other little sounds that betrayed her,—a little jingle of bracelets and chains, and the bugles of her mantle. She was naturally dressed in what was the height of the fashion then, though we should think it ridiculous now, as we always think the fashions that are past. When Mr. Buchanan heard that little jingle and rattle, his heart failed him. He put down his pen or his book, and the healthful colour in his cheek failed. A look of terror and trouble came into his face.
“Here isthatwoman again,” he said to himself. Mrs. Mowbray, on her side, was very far from thinking herselfthatwoman; she rather thought the minister looked forward with pleasure to her visits, that she brought a sort of atmosphere of sunshine and thegreat world into that sombre study of his, and that the commonplace of his life was lighted up by her comings and goings. There are a great many people in the world who deceive themselves in this way, and it would have been a shock to Mrs. Mowbray if she had seen the appalled look of the minister’s face when his ear caught the sound of her coming, and he looked up to listen the better, with a gesture of impatience, almost despair, saying to himself, “that woman again.”
She came in, however, all smiles, lightly tapping at the door, with a little distinctive knock, which was like nobody else’s, or so at least she thought. She liked to believe that she did everything in a distinctive way, so that her touch and her knock and all her movements should be at once realised as hers. She had been a pretty woman, and might still indeed have been so, had she not been so anxious to preserve her charms that she had undermined them for a long time, year by year. She had worn out her complexion by her efforts to retain it and make it brighter, and frizzed and tortured her hair till she had succeeded in making it of no particular colour at all. The effort and wish to be pretty were so strong in her, and so visible, that it made her remaining prettiness almost ridiculous, and people laughed at her as an old woman struggling to look young when she was not really old at all. Poor Mrs. Mowbray! looking at her from one point of view, her appearancewas pathetic, for it was as much as to say that she felt herself to have no recommendation at all but her good looks, and therefore would fight for them to the death—which is, if you think of it, a kind of humility, though it gets no credit for being so. She came in with a simper and jingle of all the chains and adornments, as if she felt herself the most welcome of visitors, and holding out her hand, said:
“Here I am again, Mr. Buchanan. I am sure you must be getting quite tired of me.” She expected him to contradict her, but the minister did not do so. He said:
“How do you do, Mrs. Mowbray?” rising from his chair, but the muscles of his face did not relax, and he still held his pen in his hand.
“I am so afraid you are busy, but I really will not detain you above a few minutes. It is such a comfort amid all the troubles of my life to come to this home of peace, and tell you everything. You don’t know what a consolation it is only to see you, Mr. Buchanan, sitting there so calm, and so much above the world. It is a consolation and a reproach. One thinks, Oh, how little one’s small troubles are in the light that comes from heaven!”
“I am afraid you are giving me credit for much more tranquillity than I can claim,” said the minister. “I am not without my cares, any more than other men.”
“Ah, but what are those cares?” cried the lady.“I know; the care of doing what you can for everybody else, visiting the poor and widows in their affliction, and keeping yourself unspotted from the world. Oh, how different, how different from the things that overwhelm us!”
What could the poor minister do? It seemed the most dreadful satire to him to be so spoken to, conscious as he was of the everlasting gnawing at his heart of what he had done, or at least left undone. But if he had been ever so anxious to confess his sins, he could not have done it to her; and accordingly he had to smile as best he could, and say that he hoped he might preserve her good opinion, though he had done so very little to deserve it. Perhaps if he had been less conscious of his own demerits, he would have perceived, as his wife had done, that there was a line in Mrs. Mowbray’s forehead which all her little arts could not conceal, and which meant more than anything she had yet told him. Mrs. Buchanan had divined this, but not the minister, who was too much occupied with his own purgatory to be aware that amid all her rustlings and jinglings, and old-fashioned coquetries, there was here by his side another soul in pain.
“You cannot imagine,” said Mrs. Mowbray, spreading out her hands, “what it is to me to think of my poor Frank deceived in his hopes, and instead of coming into a fortune, having next to no money when he comes of age. Oh, that coming of age, I am so frightened,so frightened for it! It is bad enough now to deny him so many things he wants.”
“Do you deny him many things he wants?” said the minister. The question was put half innocently, half satirically, for Frank indeed seemed a spoilt child, having every possible indulgence, to the sturdy sons of St. Rule’s.
Mrs. Mowbray laughed, and made a movement as of tapping the minister’s arm with a fan.
“Oh, how unkind of you,” she said, “to be so hard on a mother’s weakness! I have not denied him much up to this time. How could I, Mr. Buchanan, my only child? And he has such innocent tastes. He never wants anything extravagant. Look at him now. He has no horse, he is quite happy with his golf, and spends nothing at all. Perhaps his tailor’s bill is large, but a woman can’t interfere with that, and it is such a nice thing that a boy should like to be well dressed. I like him to take a little trouble about his dress. I don’t believe he ever touches a card, and betting over his game on the links is nothing, he tells me: you win one day and lose the next, and so you come out quite square at the end. Oh, it all goes on smooth enough now. But when he comes of age! It was bad enough last time when he came of age, for his English money and everything was gone over. Do you think it just, Mr. Buchanan, that a mere man of business, a lawyer, an indifferent person that knows nothing about the family, should go over all your expenses,and tell you you shouldn’t have done this, and you shouldn’t have done that, when he has really nothing to do with it, and the money is all your own?”
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Buchanan, “that the business man is a necessity, and perhaps is better able to say what you ought to spend than you are yourself.”
“Oh, how can you say so? when perhaps he is not even a gentleman, and does not understand anything about what one wants when one is accustomed to good society. This man Morrison, for instance——”
“Morrison,” said the minister, “is a gentleman both by blood and breeding, although he is a simple man in his manners: his family——”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “a small Scotch squire, and they think as much of their family as if they were dukes. I know he is Morrison of somewhere or other, but that does not teach a man what’s due to a lady, or what a young man wants who is entitled to expect his season in town, and all his little diversions. Morrison, Mr. Buchanan, would have put Frank to a trade. He would, it is quite true. I don’t wonder you are surprised. My Frank, with so much money on both sides! He spoke to me of an office in Edinburgh. I assure you he did—for my boy!”
“I am not in the least surprised,” said the minister; “we are all thankful to put our sons into offices in Edinburgh, and get them something to do.”
“I am sure you won’t think I mean anything disagreeable,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “but your sons, Mr. Buchanan, pardon me—you have all so many of them. And I have only one, and money, as I say, on both sides. I had quite a nice fortune myself. I never for a moment will consent that my Frank should go into an office. It would ruin his health, and then he is much too old for anything of that sort. The folly of postponing his majority till he was twenty-five! And oh, Mr. Buchanan,” she cried, clasping her hands, “the worst of it all is, that he will find so little, so very little when he does come into his property at last.”
There was a look almost of anguish in the poor lady’s face, her eyes seemed full of tears, her forehead was cut across by that deep line of trouble which Mrs. Buchanan had divined. She looked at the minister in a sort of agony, as if asking, “May I tell him? Dare I tell him?” But of this the minister saw nothing. He did not look at her face with any interest. He was employed in resisting her supposed efforts to penetrate his secret, and this concealed from him, under impenetrable veils, any secret that she might have of her own. It was not that he was dull or slow to understand in general cases, but in this he was blinded by his own profound preoccupation, and by a certain dislike to the woman who thus disturbed and assailed his peace. He could not feel any sympathy with her; her little airs and graces, her effortsto please, poor soul, which were intended only to make her agreeable, produced in him exactly the opposite sensation, which often happens, alas, in our human perversity. Neither of them indeed understood the other, because each was occupied with himself.
“I don’t think,” said Mr. Buchanan, roused to resistance, “that you will find things nearly so bad as you seem to expect. I am sure the estate has been very carefully administered while in my friend Morrison’s hands. You could not have a more honourable or a more careful steward. He could have no interest but to do the best he could for you, and I am sure he would do it. And property has not fallen in value in Fife so far as I know. I think, if you will permit me to say so, that you are alarming yourself without cause.”
All this time, Mrs. Mowbray had been looking at him through the water in her eyes, her face contracted, her lips a little apart, her forehead drawn together. He glanced at her from time to time while he was speaking, but he had the air of a man who would very gladly be done with the business altogether, and had no ear for her complaints. The poor lady drew from the depths of her bosom a long sigh, and then her face changed from the momentary reality into which some strong feeling had forced it. It was a more artificial smile than ever which she forced upon her thin lips, in which there was a quiver of pain and doubt.
“Ah, Mr. Buchanan, you always stand up for yourown side. Why is it I cannot get you to take any interest in mine?”
“My dear lady,” said the minister with some impatience, “there are no sides in the matter. It is simple truth and justice to Morrison.”
Here she suddenly put her hand on his arm. “And how about the defaulters?” she said.
“The defaulters!” She was as ignorant wherein the sting lay to him as he was of the gnawing of the serpent’s tooth in her. It was now his under lip that fell, his cheek that grew pale. “I don’t know what you mean by defaulters,” he said, almost roughly, feeling as if she had taken advantage when he was off his guard and stabbed him with a sharp knife.
“Oh, dear Mr. Buchanan, the men who borrowed money, and never paid it! I am sure you could tell me about them if you would. The men who cheated my poor Frank’s old uncle into giving them loans which they never meant to pay.”
“Mrs. Mowbray,” he said, slowly, “I remember that you have spoken to me on this subject before.”
“Yes, yes, I have spoken on this subject before. Isn’t it natural I should? You as good as acknowledged it, Mr. Buchanan. You acknowledged, I remember, that you knew one of them: of course you know all of them! Didn’t he tell you everything? You were his minister and his spiritual guide. He did nothing without you.”
“Mr. Anderson never asked any advice from me asto his secular business. Why should he? He understood it much better than I did. His spiritual guide in the sense in which you use the words, I never was, and never could have been.”
“Oh!” cried the lady, waving her hands about in excitement, “what does it matter about words? If you only knew how important a little more money would be to us, Mr. Buchanan! It might make all the difference, it might save me from—from—oh, indeed, I do not quite know what I am saying, but I want you to understand. It is not only for the money’s sake. I know, I am certain that you could help me; only tell me who these men are, and I will not trouble you any more.”
“I do not know what you mean,” he said, “when you talk of those men.”
“Mr. Buchanan, you said you knew one.”
“Perhaps I said I knew one; that was only one, it was not many. And if I did know, and knew that they had been forgiven, do you think it would be right for me to bring those poor men into trouble, and defeat the intentions of my friend—for what, for what, Mrs. Mowbray? I don’t know what you suppose my inducement would be.”
She bent towards him till she almost seemed to be on her knees, and clasping her hands, said:
“For me, Mr. Buchanan, for me!”
There was no doubt that it was genuine feeling that was in her face, and in the gaze of the eager eyes lookingout from their puckered lids; but the poor woman’s idea of pleasing, of overcoming by her personal charms was so strong in her, that underneath those puckered and beseeching eyes which were so tragically real, there was a smile of ingratiating blandishment on her mouth, which was like the stage smile of a ballet dancer, set and fictitious, appealing to heaven knows what of the man’s lower nature. She meant no harm, nor did she think any harm, but those were the days when feminine influence was supposed to lie in blandishment, in flattery, and all the arts of persuasion. Do this for me because I am so pretty, so helpless, so dependent upon your help, but chiefly because I am so pretty, and so anxious that you should think me pretty, and be vanquished by my beauty! This was the sentiment on part of Mrs. Mowbray’s face, while the other was full of eager pain and trouble, almost desperation. That smile and those blandishments might perhaps have moved the man had she been indeed beautiful and young, as she almost thought she was while making that appeal. But Mr. Buchanan’s eyes were calm, and they turned from the ballet-dancer’s smile and ingratiating looks with something more like disgust than yielding. Alas! these feminine arts which were then supposed to be quite independent of common sense, or reason or justice, and to triumph over them all, required real beauty at least and the charms of youth! To attempt to exercise them when the natural spell had failed, was almost an insult to a man’s intelligence.The minister was not conscious of this feeling, but it made him angry in spite of himself.
“For you, Mrs. Mowbray?” he said, “think what you are saying. You would like me to betray my old friend, and balk his intentions, and to disturb a number of families and snatch from them what they have been accustomed to consider as a free gift, and probably in no circumstances expected to refund—for you. For you, for what? that your son, having a great deal already, should have a little more,” (here she attempted to interrupt him to say, “No, no, not having had a great deal, never having had much!” which his stronger voice bore down and penetrated through), “that you should add some luxuries to your wealthy estate. No, Mrs. Mowbray, no. I am astonished that you should ask it of me. If I could do it, I should despise myself.”
What high ground he took! and he felt himself justified in taking it. He was buoyed up over all personal motives of his own by a lofty realisation of the general question. There were many others concerned as well as he. What right would he have to betray the fact that poor Horsburgh, for instance, had received a loan from Mr. Anderson to establish him in business? If Mr. Anderson’s heirs proceeded against Horsburgh, who was still painfully keeping his head above water, the result would be ruin—all to put another hundred pounds, perhaps, in Frank Mowbray’s pocket, an idle lad who already had plenty,and never did a hand’s turn. And she thought to come over him and make him do that by the glamour of a pair of middle-aged eyes, and the flatteries of an antiquated smile? The man was angry with the woman’s folly and revolted by her pretensions. No, he would not betray poor Horsburgh. Was not this the meaning after all, and a nobler meaning than he had ever thought of, of the proceedings of the unjust steward? Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore.Thybill; not mine, did not that make all the difference in the world? Not for me, but for poor Horsburgh. The woman was mad to think that for her, a woman who wanted nothing, he would sacrifice a struggling family: not to say that, even now, poor Horsburgh was, as it were, looking ruin in the face.
Mrs. Mowbrayhad put off all sign of agitation when in the evening she sat down with her son Frank, at the hour of seven, which, in those days, was a pretentiously late, even dissipated hour for dinner, at all events in St. Rule’s, where most people dined early or at least at varying hours in the afternoon, such as four o’clock, five o’clock, the very height of discomfort, but supposed by some reasoning I am unable to account for, to be virtuous and respectable hours, while anything later than six was extravagant and almost wicked. Mrs. Mowbray dined at seven by way of waving a flag of superiority over the benighted town. It was reported commonly, that in London people were beginning to dine at eight, an hour when honest folk were thinking of getting ready for bed, or, at all events, were taking their supper as honest folk ought. I am not able to explain why one hour should be considered more innocent than another; but so it was. Frank Mowbray, half-influenced by his mother, and half-drawn away into different modes of thinking by the young society of St. Rule’s, which thought every way ridiculous that wasnot its own way, was half-proud of the fashionable peculiarities of his mother’s economy, and half-abashed to find himself held to habits which were so different to those of the others. As the nights began to lengthen he was impatient of being kept in at what the others thought the most agreeable time of the evening, when all the young fellows were clustering about the club, making up their matches for the next day. But he had not yet reached the moment of revolt.
Mrs. Mowbray had put off, so far as she could, all appearance of agitation. She was very nicely dressed according to the fashion of the times. Her ringlets were flowing, her smiles freely dispensed, though only her son was present to admire her. But she thought it was part of her duty to make herself as agreeable to Frank as to any other member of society. She listened quite patiently to all his talk about his young men. She was indeed interested in this talk and pleased to hear about everybody, who and what they were, and even whether they were first-class or second-class players: and their special deeds of prowess at the heathery hole or any other of the long list which Frank had at his finger-ends. She liked to hear all the details with which Frank could furnish her of their families as well as their golf. But that was less interesting to him, and helped her but little in her researches.
“You see a great deal of the Buchanans, don’t you, Frank?” she said, in the course of the conversation,not meaning much more by the question than by many others.
But here Mrs. Mowbray instantly perceived a difference in her son’s manner, which betrayed something quite new and unexpected.
Frank made a pause, which, though only for a moment, was noted by her fine and vigilant spirit of observation, looked at her furtively, coloured, and said: “Oh, the Buchanans! Yes, I see them now and then,” in a tone quite different from that in which he had been discoursing about the Seatons and the Beatons, and all the rest of the tribe.
“You see them now and then? Yes, that is all I expected: they are not precisely of ourmonde,” his mother said.
“Why not of ourmonde?” cried Frank, “they are the best people in St. Rule’s, and that is theirmonde; and it is ourmonde, I suppose, as long as we stay here.”
“Yes, dear boy,” said his mother, “but, fortunately, you know we don’t belong to it, and it is only a question of how long we stay here.”
Upon this, Frank cleared his throat, and collecting all his courage, launched forth a suggestion which he had long desired, but, up to this moment, had never had the bravery to make.
“Mother,” he said, “this is a very nice house, don’t you think? The rooms are large, and I know you like large rooms. Just think what a wretched little place the house in Chapel Street was in comparison.And we were nobody there, and you always said you were not appreciated.”
“That is true enough; when you have no title, and are not rich, it is hard, very hard, to get a footing in society,” Mrs. Mowbray said, with a sigh.
“But we are somebody here,” said Frank, “you are looked up to as the glass of fashion and the mould of form, that sort of thing, don’t you know? All the ladies say to me, ‘What does Mrs. Mowbray do?’ or ‘What is your mother going to do?’ They see your superiority and make you their example.”
“Frank,” said his mother, pleased but a little doubtful, “you are flattering me. I don’t know why you should flatter me.”
“I am not flattering you a bit, mother. It is quite true. Now, what I mean to say is, why should we go back again to Chapel Street, where there is not a single thing for a man to do, and the women are so disagreeable to you, because you have no title—when we can be the first people in the place, and so much thought of here.”
“Here!” said Mrs. Mowbray, with a little shriek of dismay.
“You know, mother, you always say how disappointing it is to go through the world, and never know anybody who takes you at your true value,” said Frank. “People are always—I have heard you say it a hundred times—inquiring who we are, and what relation we are to Lord Mowbray, and all that: as if wewere not fit to be visited because we are not related to Lord Mowbray.”
“It is quite true,” said Mrs. Mowbray with indignation, “but I never knew before that you had taken any notice of it, Frank.”
“Oh, I have taken great notice of it,” he said. “I never said anything, for what was the use when I couldn’t do anything; but you don’t suppose it didn’t hurt me very much to see that you were not receiving proper attention, mother? Of course I took notice of it! but words never do any good.”
“What a dear boy you are, Frank!” said his mother, kissing the tips of her fingers to him. It was not very often that she was flattered in this way. The flatter was usually done by herself. She was so well acquainted with it, that she was not so easily convinced of its sincerity, as others might have been; but still, sincere or not, there was no doubt that these were very nice things for Frank to say.
“But here it is your notice that everybody would seek, mother,” he continued. “It is you who would set the example, and everybody would follow. Nobody thinks of asking whether we are related to Lord Mowbray, here. We are just what we are, and the objects of respect. We are the best people in the place,” Frank said.
“That is what you have just said of the Buchanans, Frank—and I told you before—they are not of ourmonde.”
“What is ourmonde?” cried the young man. “It is not Lord Mowbray’smonde, nor themondeof the Rashleighs and those sort of people, mother, whom we used to run after. I am sure they said just what you are doing about us. They used to twist round their necks and thrust out their heads, and screw up their noses, don’t you remember?”
“Oh, and bow with their eyelids and smile with the edge of their lips,” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “I remember! How could I help remembering people not fit to tie our shoes, but with an odious little baronetcy in the family!”
“But nobody could do that here,” said Frank, with a feeling that he had conducted his argument very cleverly, and had carried her with him all along the line.
Mrs. Mowbray burst into a laugh. “Is it all for my benefit, to see me respected, that you would like to shut me up in this little hole for life,” she said.
Poor Frank was very much startled by this issue of his argument. He looked up at her half-piteous, half-angry.
“I don’t call it a little hole,” he said.
“But I do,” said his mother, “a dreadful little hole! where you have to make yourself agreeable to all sorts of people whom you would never speak to, nor look at in society! Why, Frank, there is nobody here in society. Not one that you would like to walk along Bond Street with. Think of going along Rotten Row with any one of those girls on your arm.”
“I should be very proud,” cried Frank, very red, “to go anywhere with one of them on my arm.”
“My poor dear boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “I knew that was what you meant all the time. I always forget that you have come to the age for that sort of thing. Only think how you would look if you were to meet Lady Marion, and she were to begin to ask her questions. ‘Who was the young lady, and who were her friends in town?’ ‘Oh, she doesn’t know anybody in town.’ ‘Where did she come from?’ ‘Oh, not a place you ever heard of in your life, a little town in Scotland.’ ‘Yes, Lord Laidlaw lives near, of course she knows the Laidlaws?’ ‘Oh, no, she never heard of them; oh, no, she knows nobody. She is only a minister’s daughter, and except that she is prettyish——’”
Mrs. Mowbray had the art of a mimic; and she had made her sketch of the Lady Marion who asked questions, very amusing to her son, who had been in his little way cross-examined by Lady Marion many times: but when she described the young lady as prettyish, the young man bounded from his chair.
“Take care, mother! no one, not even you, shall speak so of Elsie. I won’t have it,” he cried.
“You would be obliged to have it, dear, if you had her,” his mother said, composedly. “And as for speaking so, I have no wish to speak so. I think she’s a very nice little girl, for St. Rule’s; you couldnever take her into society, but for St. Rule’s she would do very well.”
“Then, mother,” said Frank, “you understand me, for you make me speak very plain. We’ve got a good house here, and we’re rich enough to be about the first people in the place; and I wish to settle in St. Rule’s.”
“My poor boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “rich, oh, my poor boy!”
And here, without any warning, she suddenly burst into a torrent of tears. This was, perhaps, a proceeding to which her son was not wholly unaccustomed; for he maintained, to a certain extent, his equanimity. He walked up and down the room, striking the backs of the chairs with a paper-knife he held in his hand for some seconds. And then he came back to her, and asked, with a little impatience:
“Why am I a poor boy? and why is it so wonderful that we should be rich? I am—I suppose we are rich—more or less—able at all events to take our place among the best people in St. Rule’s.” He laughed, and went on striking his little ivory toy against the chairs sharply. “It isn’t so great a brag, after all,” he said, laughing, “among the best people in St. Rule’s.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “how am I to tell him? Oh, how am I to tell him? Frank, we have always said, when we came into the Scotch money, all would be well. I thought it was such a fine sum,that we should throw off all our debts, and be really rich as you say. Oh, that is only a dream, Frank, like so many things we have trusted in! There will be scarcely any money. You may well start and stare at me. Oh, Frank, I that thought as soon as it came, all our difficulties would be over, and we should be quite right.”
“What difficulties?” said Frank, “what difficulties, mother? I always thought we were well off.”
“This has been the aim of my life,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “that you should never find out any difficulties, that everything should go as if it were on velvet; and then when the Scotch money came, that all would be right. I did not think then that all Mr. Anderson’s fine fortune had been frittered away—I did not tell you that, Frank—by defaulters.”
She liked the word: there was something vague and large in it: it meant something more than debtors: “defaulters,” she said again, and shook her head.
“What in the world do you mean, mother? Who are the defaulters, and what have they to do with me?”
“Mr. Anderson’s money has been frittered away,” she said. “He lent it to everybody; and instead of preserving their notes, or their bills, or whatever it was, he threw them into the fire, I suppose. And nobody paid. I believe half St. Rule’s is built on old Mr. Anderson’s money, the money that ought to beyours. But he never kept the papers, and none of them have been so honourable as to pay.”
Frank stared at his mother with a bewildered face. He had never managed his own affairs. For a year or two past, he had begun to think that this was foolish, and that he might perhaps, if he tried, learn to understand business as well as his mother; but he had never had the strength of mind to assert himself. He had received an ample allowance from her hands, and he had tacitly agreed that until the Scotch property became his, everything should go on as before. But it had always been understood, that when he attained his Scotch majority, there was to be a change. His Scotch majority was to be a great day. All the hoards of his old uncle were then to come into his hands. Retarded manhood, independence, and wealth were all to be his. And now what was this he heard, that these hoards of money were frittered away? He could not at once understand or grasp what it meant. He stared at his mother with bewildered eyes.
“I wish you would tell me what you mean,” he said. “What has happened? Is it something you have found out? Is there anything that can be done? I cannot believe that all the property is lost.”
“There is one thing that can be done, Frank. If we can find out the defaulters, we can still make them pay up. But we must make haste, for in another year the Statute of Limitations will come in, and they will be beyond our reach.”
“What is the Statute of Limitations? and how can we make them pay up? And what does it mean altogether?” said the disturbed young man. “Mother, you should not have let me go on like this, knowing nothing about it. I ought to have known. And how am I to find them out and make them pay up? You that have always managed everything, you ought to have done it.”
“My son, whom I have always spared and saved from all trouble,” she said, throwing up her hands, “he tells me I should have done that! Oh, Frank, it isn’t very pretty of you to upbraid me, when I have always done everything for the best.”
“Mother, I don’t want to upbraid you. I daresay you have done everything that was right,” he said, “but this is rather a dreadful thing to find out all at once. And there must be something that can be done—tell me whether there isn’t something I could do.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a sudden laugh, “there is one thing to be done, and that is to find out who are the defaulters. There is one man I am sure that knows, and you are, I suppose, in favour with the family, Frank, considering your intentions which you have just been telling me of. The one man is Dr. Buchanan. If you are going, as you say, to be his son-in-law, perhaps he will tell you. I am sure he is one of them himself.”
“Mother, if all this is to set me against——”
“It is not to set you against any one,” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I like Dr. Buchanan myself.I think he is one of them. If you can find out from him who they are, perhaps we may yet be saved.”
“He is one of them! This is nonsense, nonsense! You don’t know what you are saying, mother.”
“I wish everybody were as clear and composed as I am. I believe he is one of them. But make use of your interest with the boy and the girl, and get him to tell you who they are. And then perhaps we may be saved.”
The young man went round and round the room, striking the backs of the chairs with his paper-knife, solemnly, as if he expected to find some hollow place and make a discovery so.
“I don’t understand it. I don’t know what you mean. I can’t believe that this is possible,” he said; and he gave a louder crack to an old armchair, and stood before it, pondering, as if the secret must be out at last.
Frank Mowbraywas one of the young men, fitly described by the unenthusiastic, but just populace, as “no an ill callant.” He was not very wise, not very clever, but he was also not “ill,” in any sense of the word; a good-hearted, good-tempered, easy-going young man, willing to save himself trouble, by letting others, and especially his mother, manage his affairs for him, but no grumbler, accepting the consequences of that situation with great equanimity, allowing himself to be more or less governed, and obeying all the restrictions of his mother’s house, as if he had been the most dependent of sons. This may seem to indicate a want of spirit on his part; but it was rather a spirit of justice and fair dealing, as well as the result of a gentle and contented temperament.
Frank had no desire whatever to revolt. His mother’s sway had been very light upon him: had he been what he was not, inclined towards dissipation, so long as it had been carried on among what she called “the right sort of people,” I am inclined to believe that Mrs. Mowbray would rather have liked it than otherwise; but that would have been perhaps because she did not know what it was, and liked tosee her son’s name among the names of the great, on whatsoever excuse. She would rather have had Frank conspicuous by the side of a young duke, than known to the world in the most virtuous circumstances, as the companion of lesser men; but Frank did not accept, nor was he even aware of, this tacit license to do evil, so long as it was fashionably done. He had not the slightest leaning towards dissipation—he was one of those young men whom perhaps we undervalue in theory, though in action they are the backbone of the race, who seem to be inaccessible to the ordinary temptations. Had he been offered the choice of Hercules, he would certainly, by inclination, have offered his arm to Madam Virtue, and waved away dishevelled Pleasure, however pretty, with the most unfeigned indifference: he did not care for that sort of thing, he would have said: and this insensibility was better than coat armour to him. It is common to believe that a boy, brought up as he had been, at the apron-strings of his mother, is open to every touch of temptation, and apt to find the fascination of a disorderly life irresistible; but, howsoever Frank had been brought up, the issue would have been the same—he was “no an ill callant”—he was not led away by fancies, either for good or evil, quite disposed to be kind, but never lavish in generosity; not prodigal in anything, able to balance the pros and the cons, and to accept the disadvantages with the advantages. Perhaps it was not a character to excite any great enthusiasm,but it was one that was very easy to live with, and could not have inspired any serious anxiety in the most fanciful and susceptible of minds.
Frank went out that evening to meet some of his daily companions with a great deal in his mind, but not any panic or dismay. He would not believe that the “Scotch property” could have been all frittered away by the loans which his old uncle had made, however imprudent or foolish the old man might have been in that way. He had, indeed, so just and calm a mind, that he did not harshly condemn Mr. Anderson for making these loans as his mother did; he was even willing to allow that a man had a right to do what he liked with his own, even if he had a grand-nephew to provide for, especially one who was not entirely dependent upon him, but had already a comfortable provision of his own. As he went out into the evening air, and strolled towards the club of which he was a member, and where, as I have said, the young men, who were not yet members, had a way of meeting outside, and under the verandah, arranging their matches for next day, and talking out their gossip like their elders within—he turned over the matter in his mind, and reconciled himself to it. It is foolish, he said to himself, to lend your money without interest, and without a proper certainty of one day getting it back—but still the old gentleman had no doubt his reasons for doing this, and might have had his equivalent or even been paid back withoutanybody knowing, as nobody knew who the borrowers were: and at the worst, if the money was lost, it was lost, and there was an end of it, and no need to upbraid poor old uncle, who probably thought himself quite entitled to do what he liked with his own. He did not believe that the estate could have been seriously impoverished in any such manner; but he thought that he might perhaps make inquiries in his own way, and even consult Mr. Buchanan, who probably would be willing enough to help him, though he might not perhaps feel disposed to respond to Mrs. Mowbray’s more urgent appeals. Frank, of course, knew his mother’s weak points, as all our children do, with an unerring certainty produced by the long unconscious study of childhood of all we say and do. His affection for her was quite unimpaired, but he knew exactly how she would address herself to the minister, with a vehemence and an indignation against Uncle Anderson, which Frank was impartial enough to feel, was not deserved. He would approach him quite differently—as a man to a man, Frank said to himself—and if there was really anything to be done in that way, any bloated debtor, as his mother supposed, who had grown fat on Uncle Anderson’s bounty, and was not honourable enough to pay back what had been the origin of his fortune—why, the minister would probably tell him, and that would be so much gained.
When he thought, however, of thus meeting the minister in private session, Frank’s orderly and steadyheart beat a little higher. Before all questions of Uncle Anderson’s debtors, there was one of much more importance—and that was the question of Elsie, which meant far more to Frank than money, or even the whole of the Scotch property—at least he thought so for the moment: but things were by no means so far advanced as to justify him in asking an interview with Mr. Buchanan on that subject. Alas! no, Elsie was never in the same mind (he thought) for any two meetings. Sometimes she was delightful to him, accepting his attentions; which, however, were no more than were paid to her by several other admirers as if she liked them, and giving him dances, almost as many as he asked, and allowing him to walk by her side in the weekly promenade on the Links, and talking to him sweetly, whatever his company might be: but next time they met, Elsie would be engaged for every dance, she would be flanked by other competitors on each side, and if she gave Frank a bow and a smile in passing, that would be all he obtained from her—so that if he were sometimes high in hope, he was at others almost in despair. Should he ever be allowed to see Mr. Buchanan on the subject, to ask his daughter from him? Ah, that depended! not upon Frank, but upon Elsie, who was no longer a little girl, but at the height of her simple sway, one of the prettiest girls in St. Rule’s, and enjoying the position, and with no intention of cutting it short. Frank breathed a sigh, that almost blew out the lamps in the High Street,lamps already lighted, and shining in the lingering daylight, like strange little jewelled points, half green, half yellow. The electric light shines white in that street now, and makes the whole world look dead, and all the moving people like ghosts. But the lamps then were like jewels, with movement and consciousness in them, trembling in the colourless radiance of the long evening: for it was now summer weather, and already the days were long.
When the assembly outside the club dispersed, it happened to be Frank’s luck to walk up the town with Rodie Buchanan, whose way was the same as his own. They went round by the West Port, though it was out of their way, to convoy Johnny Wemyss to his lodgings. Johnnie did not make matches for next day, except at rare intervals, for he was busy, either “coaching” his pupils (but that word had not then been invented), or working (as he called it) on the sands with his net and his “wee spy-glass,” playing himself, the natives called it: or else he was reading theology for the next examination; but he allowed himself to walk down to the club in the evening, where all the young men met.
Johnny was not much younger than Frank, but he was paternal to the others, having the airs and aims of a man, and having put, chiefly by necessity, but a little also by inclination, boyish things from him; he was as much in advance of Frank as he was of Rodie, who had not yet attained his twentieth year.
The night was lovely, clear, and mild, and they made the round by the West Port very pleasantly together, and stood for a long time at the stairfoot of Johnny’s humble lodging, which was in one of the old-fashioned square two-storied houses at that end of the town, which still retained the picturesque distinction of an outside stair. It was not thought picturesque then, but only old-fashioned, and a mark of poverty, everybody’s ambition being to have a more modern and convenient house. The young men continued to discuss the matches past and present, and how Alick Seaton was off his game, and Bob Sinclair driving like fire, and the Beatons in force playing up to each other, so that they were awfully hard to beat in a foursome. Johnny took the interest of a born golfer in these particulars, though he himself played so little; and Frank, on ordinary occasions, had all the technicality of a neophyte, and outdid his more learned companions in all the terms of the game.
But when they had left Johnny at his stairfoot, and, looking back, had seen the light of his candles leap into the darkness of the window, and wondered for a moment how he could sit down to work at this hour, they proceeded along the long line of the High Street for a minute or two in silence. Rodie was taller, stronger, and heavier than Frank, though so much younger, and had a little compassionate sympathy for the fellow, who, at his antiquated age, four-and-twenty, was still only a beginner at golf.
The big youth was considering how to break down certain well considered advices for future play into terms adapted for the intellect of his elder, when Frank suddenly took the word, and began thus:
“I say, Rodie! do you remember my old Uncle Anderson, and do you know anything about him? he must have been a queer old chap, if what my mother has been telling me is true about him.”
“Ten to one——” said Rodie: but paused in time—he was about to say “ten to one it isn’t true”—for he heard of Mrs. Mowbray’s paint and powder (which at the worst was only powder), and knew her over-civility and affectations, and therefore concluded frankly, as became his age, that nothing about her could be true. But he remembered in time that this could not fitly be said to her son. “Ten to one it’s just stories,” Rodie said; “there’s stories about everybody; it is an awful town for stories, St. Rule’s.”
“I daresay that is true enough,” said Frank; “but it seems that this is more than stories. They say he lent money to everybody, and never took any note or acknowledgment: and the people have never paid. They certainly should have paid; especially as, having no acknowledgment, it became, don’t you see, a debt of honour. There is something which I don’t quite understand about some Statute of Limitations that makes it impossible to recover money after a certain number of years. I don’t know much about the law myself; but my mother’s a great hand. Do youknow anything about the Statute of Limitations, you that are going to be a W. S.?”
“Who said I was going to be a W. S.?” cried Rodie, red with indignation. “Nothing of the sort: I’m going into the army. It’s John that is the W. S.; but I think I’ve heard of it,” he added sulkily, after a moment, “sometimes he tells us about his cases. If you’re not asked for the money for so many years, it’s considered that you have been forgiven: but on the other hand if they asked for it, you’re still bound; I’ve heard something like that from John.”