Mrs. Mowbraywas more restless than her maid, who had been with her for many years, had ever seen her before. She was not at any time a model of a tranquil woman, but ever since her arrival in St. Rule’s, her activity had been incessant, and very disturbing to her household. She was neither quiet during the day nor did she sleep at night. She was out and in of the house a hundred times of a morning, and even when within doors was so continually in motion, that the maids who belonged to the house, and had been old Mr. Anderson’s servants, held a meeting, and decided that if things went on like this, they would all “speak” when the appointed moment for speaking came, and leave at the next term. Mrs. Mowbray’s own maid, who was specially devoted to her, had a heavier thought on her mind; for the mistress was so unlike herself, that it seemed to this good woman that she must be “off her head,” or in a fair way of becoming so. There was no one to take notice of this alarming condition of affairs, for what was to be expected from Mr. Frank? He was a young man: he was taken up with his own concerns. It was not to be supposed that his mother’s state would call forth anyanxiety on his part, until it went much further than it yet had gone. And there were no intimate friends who could be appealed to. There was no one to exercise any control, even if it had been certain that there was occasion for exercising control. And that had not occurred as yet. But she was so restless, that she could not keep still anywhere for half-an-hour. She was constantly on the stairs, going up and down, or in the street, taking little walks, making little calls, staying only a few minutes. She could not rest. In the middle of the night, she might be seen up wandering about the house in her dressing-gown, with a candle in her hand: though when any one was startled, and awakened by the sound of her nocturnal wanderings, she was always apologetic, explaining that she had forgotten something in the drawing-room, or wanted a book.
But on the day when she had spoken to Frank, as already recorded, her restlessness was more acute than ever. She asked him each time he came in, whether he had “taken any steps;” though what step the poor boy could have taken, he did not know, nor did she, except that one step of consulting the minister, which was simple enough, but which, as has been seen, was rendered difficult to Frank on the other side. The next day, that morning on which Frank lost all his time on the East Sands, with Johnny Wemyss, and his new beast, the poor lady could not contain herself at all. She sat down at the windowfor a minute, and gazed out as if she were expecting some one; then she jumped up, and went over all the rooms up-stairs, looking for something, she said, which she could not find. She could not keep still. The other servants began to compare opinions and to agree with the lady’s maid. At last before twelve o’clock Mrs. Mowbray put on her “things,” for the third or fourth time, and sallied forth, not dressed with her usual elaborate nicety, but with a shawl too heavy for the warm day, and a bonnet which was by no means her best bonnet. Perhaps there is no greater difference between these times and ours, than the fact of the bonnet and shawl, as opposed to the easier hat and jacket, which can be put on so quickly. Mrs. Mowbray generally took a long time over the tying of her bonnet strings, which indeed was a work of art. But in the hasty irregularity of that morning she could not be troubled about the bonnet strings, but tied them anyhow, not able to give her attention to the bows. It may easily be seen what an agitation there must have been in her bosom, when she neglected so important a point in her toilet. And her shawl was not placed carefully round her shoulders, in what was supposed to be the elegant way, but fastened about her neck like the shawl of any farmer’s wife. Nothing but some very great disturbance of mind could account for an outward appearance so incomplete.
“She’s going to see the minister,” said Hunter, her woman, to Janet, the cook. Hunter had been unableto confine her trouble altogether to her own breast. She did not indeed say what she feared, but she had confided her anxiety about her mistress’s health in general to Janet, who was of a discreet age, and knew something of life.
“Weel, aweel,” said Janet, soothingly, “she can never do better than speak to the minister. He will soothe down her speerits, if onybody can; but that’s not the shortest gait to the minister’s house.”
They stood together at the window, and watched her go up the street, the morning sunshine throwing a shadow before her. At the other end of the High Street, Johnny Wemyss had almost reached his own door, with ever a new crowd following at his heels, demanding to see the new beast. And Frank had started with his foursome in high spirits and hope, with the remembrance of Elsie’s smile warm around him, like internal sunshine, and the consciousness of an excellent drive over the burn, to add to his exhilaration. Elsie had gone home, and was seated in the drawing-room, at the old piano “practising,” as all the household was aware: it was the only practicable time for that exercise, when it least disturbed the tranquillity of papa, who, it was generally understood, did not begin to work till twelve o’clock. And Mrs. Buchanan was busy up-stairs in a review of the family linen, the napery being almost always in need of repair. Therefore the coast was perfectly clear, and Mrs. Mowbray, reluctantly admitted by the maid, who knew her visitswere not over-welcome, ran up the stairs waving her hand to Betty, who would fain have gone before her to fulfil the requirements of decorum, and because she had received “a hearing” on the subject from her mistress. “It is very ill-bred to let a visitor in, and not let me or the minister know who’s coming. It is my desire you should always go up-stairs before them, and open the door.” “But how could I,” Betty explained afterwards, “when she just ran past me? I couldna put forth my hand, and pull her down the stairs.”
Mrs. Mowbray had been walking very fast, and she ran up-stairs to the minister’s study, which she knew so well, as rapidly and as softly as Elsie could have done it. In consequence, when she opened the door, and asked, breathless, “May I come in?” her words were scarcely audible in the panting of her heart. She had to sit down, using a sort of pantomime to excuse herself for nearly five minutes before she could speak.
“Oh, Mr. Buchanan! I have been so anxious to see you! I have run nearly all the way.”
The minister pushed away the newspaper, which he had been caught reading. It was theCourantday, when all the bottled-up news of the week came to St. Rule’s. He sighed to be obliged to give it up in the middle of his reading, and also because being found in no more serious occupation, he could not pretend to be very busy, even if he had wished to do so.
“I hope it is nothing very urgent,” he said.
“Yes, it is urgent, very urgent! I thought Frankwould have seen you yesterday. I thought perhaps you would have paid more attention to him, than you do to me.”
“My dear Mrs. Mowbray! I hope you have not found me deficient in—in interest or in attention,” the minister said.
He had still kept hold of theCourantby one corner. Now he threw it away in a sort of despair. The same old story, he said to himself grievously, with a sigh that came from the bottom of his heart.
“Do you know,” said the visitor, clasping her hands and resting them on his table, “that Frank’s twenty-fifth birthday is on the fifth of next month?”
She looked at him as she had never done before. Her eyes might have been anxious on previous occasions, but they were also full of other things: they had light glances aside, a desire to please and charm, always the consciousness of an effort to secure not only attention, but even admiration, a consciousness of herself, of her fine manners, and elaborate dress, finer than anything else in St. Rule’s. Now there was nothing of all this about her. Her eyes seemed deepened in their sockets, as if a dozen years had passed over her since she last looked thus at the minister. And she asked him that question as if the date of her son’s birthday was the most tragic of facts, a date which she anticipated with nothing less than despair.
“Is it really?” said the perplexed minister. “No, indeed, I did not know.”
“And you don’t seem to care either,” she cried, “you don’t care!”
Mr. Buchanan looked at her with a suspicious glance, as if presaging some further assault upon his peace. But he said:
“I am very glad my young friend has come to such a pleasant age. Everything has gone well with him hitherto, and he has come creditably through what may be called the most perilous portion of his youth. He has now a little experience, and power of discrimination, and I see no reason to fear but that things will go as well with him in the future, as they seem——”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, raising her clasped hands with a gesture of despair, “is that all you have got to say, just what any old woman might say! And what about me, Mr. Buchanan, what about me?”
“You!” he cried, rather harshly, for to be called an old woman is enough to upset the patience of any man. “I don’t know what there is to think of about you, except the satisfaction you must have in seeing Frank——”
She stamped her foot upon the floor; her eyes, which looked so hollow and tragic, flamed up for a moment in wrath.
“Oh, Frank, Frank! as if it were only Frank!” She paused a moment, and then began again drawing a long breath. “I came to you in my despair. If you can help me, I know not, or if any one can help me. It is that, or the pierhead, or the Spindle rock,where a poor creature might slip in, and it would be thought an accident, and she would never be heard of more.”
“Mrs. Mowbray! For God’s sake, what do you mean?”
“Ah, you ask me what I mean now? When I speak of the rocks and the sea, then you begin to think. That is what must come, I know that is what must come, unless,” she said, “unless”—holding out her hands still convulsively clasped to him, “you can think of something. Oh, Mr. Buchanan, if you can think of something, if you can make it up with that money, if you can show me how I am to get it, how I can make it up! Oh, will you save me, will you save me!” she cried, stumbling down upon her knees on the other side of his table, holding up her hands, fixing her strained eyes upon his face.
“Mrs. Mowbray!” he cried, springing up from his chair, “what is this? rise up for Heaven’s sake, do not go on your knees to me. I will do anything for you, anything I can do, surely you understand that—without this——”
“Oh, let me stay where I am! It is like asking it from God. You’re God’s, minister, and I’m a poor creature, a poor nervous weak woman. I never meant to do any harm. It was chiefly for my boy, that he might have everything nice, everything that he wanted like a gentleman. Oh, Mr. Buchanan! you may think I spent too much on my dress. So I did. Ihave been senseless and wicked all round, but I never did more than other women did. And I had no expenses besides. I never was extravagant, nor played cards, nor anything. And that was for Frank, too, that he might not be ashamed of his mother. Mr. Buchanan!”
“Rise up,” he said, desperately, “for goodness’ sake, don’t make us both ridiculous. Sit down, and whatever it is, let us talk it over quietly. Oh, yes, yes, I am very sorry for you. I am shocked and distressed beyond words. Sit down rationally, for God’s sake, and tell me what it is. It is a matter, of course,” he cried, sharply, with some impatience, “that whatever I can do, I will do for you. There can be no need to implore me like this! of course I will do everything I can—of course. Mrs. Mowbray, sit down, for the love of heaven, and let me know what it is.”
She had risen painfully to her feet while he was speaking. Going down on your knees may be a picturesque thing, but getting up from them, especially in petticoats, and in a large shawl, is not a graceful operation at all, and this, notwithstanding her despair, poor Mrs. Mowbray was vaguely conscious of. She stumbled to her feet, her skirts tripping her up, the corners of her shawl getting in her way. The poor woman had begun to cry. It was wonderful that she had been able to restrain herself so long; but she was old enough to be aware that a woman’s tears are just as often exasperating as pathetic to a man, and hadheroically restrained the impulse. But when she fell on her knees, she lost her self-control. That was begging the question altogether. She had given up her position as a tragic and dignified appellant. She was nothing but a poor suppliant now, at anybody’s mercy, quite broken down, and overmastered by her trouble. It did not matter to her any longer what anyone thought. The state of mind in which she had dared to tell the minister that he spoke like an old woman, was gone from her completely. He was like God, he could save her, if he would; she could not tell how, there was no reason in her hope, but if he only would, somehow he could, save her—that was all her thought.
“Now, tell me exactly how it is,” she heard him saying, confusedly, through the violent beating of her heart.
But what unfortunate, in her position, ever could tell exactly how such a thing was? She told him a long, broken, confused story, full of apology, and explanation, insisting chiefly upon the absence of any ill meaning on her part, or ill intention, and the fatality which had caught her, and compelled her actions, so often against her will. She had been led into this and that, it had been pressed upon her—even now she did not see how she could have escaped. And it was all for Frank’s sake: every step she had taken was for Frank’s sake, that he might want for nothing, that he might have everything the others had,and feel that everything about him—his home, his mother, his society—were such as a gentleman ought to have.
“This long minority,” Mrs. Mowbray said, through her tears, “oh, what a mistake it is; instead of saving his money, it has been the destruction of his money. I thought always it was so hard upon him, that I was forced to spend more and more to make it up to him. I spent everything of my own first. Oh, Mr. Buchanan! you must not think I spared anything of my own—that went first. I sold out and sold out, till there was nothing left; and then what could I do but get into debt? And here I am, and I have not a penny, and all these dreadful men pressing and pressing! And everything will be exposed to Frank, all exposed to him on the fifth of next month. Oh, Mr. Buchanan, save me, save me. My boy will despise me. He will never trust me again. He will say it is all my fault! So it is all my fault. Oh, I do not attempt to deny it, Mr. Buchanan: but it was all for him. And then there was another thing that deceived me. I always trusted in you. I felt sure that at the end, when you found it was really so serious, you would step in, and compel all these people to pay up, and all my little debts would not matter so much at the last.”
Mr. Buchanan had forgotten the personal reference in all this to himself. It did not occur to him that the money which rankled so at his own heart, andwhich had already cost him so much, much more than its value, was the thing upon which she depended, from which she had expected salvation. What was it she expected? thousands, he supposed, instead of fifties, a large sum sufficient to re-establish her fortunes. It was with a kind of impatient disdain that he spoke.
“Are these really little debts you are telling me of? Could a hundred pounds or two clear them off, would that be of real use?”
“Oh, a hundred pounds!” she cried, with a shriek. “Mr. Buchanan, a hundred pence would, of course, be of use, for I have no money at all, and a hundred is a nice little bit of money, and I could stop several mouths with it: but to clear them off! Oh no, no, alas, alas! It is clear that you never lived in London. A hundred pounds would be but a drop in the ocean. But when it is thousands, Mr. Buchanan, which is more like facts—thousands, I am sure, which you know of, which you could recover for Frank!”
“Mrs. Mowbray, I don’t know what can have deceived you to this point. It is absolute folly: all that Mr. Anderson lent to people at St. Rule’s was never above a few hundred pounds. I know of nothing more. There is nothing more. There was one of three hundred—nothing more. Be composed, be composed and listen to me. Mrs. Mowbray!”
But she neither listened nor heard him, her excitement had reached to a point beyond which flesh andblood overmastered by wild anxiety and disappointment could not go.
“It can’t be true,” she shrieked out. “It can’t be true, it mustn’t be true.” And then, with a shriek that rang through the house, throwing out her arms, she fell like a mass of ruins on the floor.
Mrs. Buchanan was busy with her napery at some distance from the study. She had heard the visitor come in, and had concluded within herself that her poor husband would have an ill time of it with that woman. “But there’s something more on her mind than that pickle siller,” the minister’s wife had said to herself, shaking her head over the darns in her napery. She had long been a student of the troubled faces that came to the minister for advice or consolation, and, having only that evidence to go upon, had formed many a conclusion that turned out true enough, sometimes more true than those which, with a more extended knowledge, from the very lips of the penitents, had been formed by the minister himself: for the face, as Mrs. Buchanan held, could not make excuses, or explain things away, but just showed what was. She was pondering over this case, half-sorry and, perhaps, half-amused that her husband should have this tangled skein to wind, which he never should have meddled with, so that it was partly his own fault—when the sound of those shrieks made her start. They were far too loud and too terrible to ignore. Mrs. Buchanan threw down the linen she was darning, seized abottle of water from the table, and flew to her husband’s room. Already there were two maids on the stairs hurrying towards the scene of the commotion, to one of whom she gave a quick order, sending the other away.
“Thank God that you’ve come,” said Mr. Buchanan, who was feebly endeavouring to drag the unfortunate woman to her feet again.
“Oh, go away, go away, Claude, you’re of no use here. Send in the doctor if you see him, he will be more use than you.”
“I’ll do that,” cried the minister, relieved. He was too thankful to resign the patient into hands more skilful than his own.
“Thenit is just debt and nothing worse,” Mrs. Buchanan said. There was a slight air of disappointment in her face; not that she wished the woman to be more guilty, but that this was scarcely an adequate cause for all the dramatic excitement which had been caused in her own mind by Mrs. Mowbray’s visits and the trouble in her face.
“Nothing worse! what is there that is worse?” cried the minister, turning round upon her. He had been walking up and down the study, that study which had been made a purgatory to him by the money of which she spoke so lightly. It was this that was uppermost in his mind now, and not the poor woman who had thrown herself on his mercy. To tell the truth, he had but little toleration for her. She had thrown away her son’s substance in vanity, and to please herself: but what pleasure had he, the minister, had out of that three hundred pounds? Nothing! It would have been better for him a thousand times to have toiled for it in the sweat of his brow, to have lived on bread and water, and cleared it off honestly. But he had not been allowed to do this; he had been forced into the position he now held, adefaulter as she had said—an unjust steward according to the formula more familiar to his mind.
“Oh, yes, Claude, there are worse things—at least to a woman. She might have misbe—— We’ll not speak of that. Poor thing, she is bad enough, and sore shaken. We will leave her quiet till the laddies come home to their lunch; as likely as not Rodie will bring Frank home with him, as I hear they are playing together: and then he must just be told she had a faint. There are some women that are always fainting; it is just the sort of thing that the like of her would do. If I were you, I would see Mr. Morrison and try what could be done to keep it all quiet. I am not fond of exposing a silly woman to her own son.”
“Better to her son than to strangers, surely—and to the whole world.”
“I am not so sure of that,” Mrs. Buchanan said, thoughtfully: but she did not pursue the argument. She sat very still in the chair which so short a time before had been occupied by poor Mrs. Mowbray in her passion and despair: while her husband walked about the room with his hands thrust into his pockets, and his shoulders up to his ears, full of restless and unquiet thoughts.
“There’s one thing,” he said, pausing in front of her, but not looking at her, “that money, Mary: we must get it somehow. I cannot reconcile it with my conscience, I can’t endure the feeling of it: if it should ruin us, we must pay it back.”
“Nothing will ruin us, Claude,” she said, steadily, “so long as it is all honest and above board. Let it be paid back; I know well it has been on your mind this many a day.”
“It has been a thorn in my flesh; it has been poison in my blood!”
“Lord bless us,” cried Mrs. Buchanan, with a little fretfulness, “what for? and what is the use of exaggeration? It is not an impossibility that you should rave about it like that. Besides,” she added, “I said the same at first—though I was always in favour of paying, at whatever cost—yet I am not sure that I would disappoint an old friend in his grave, for the sake of satisfying a fantastic woman like yon.”
“I must get it clear, I must get it off my mind! Not for her sake, but for my own.”
“Aweel, aweel,” said Mrs. Buchanan, soothingly; and she added, “we must all set our shoulders to the wheel, and they must give us time.”
“But it is just time that cannot be given us,” cried her husband, almost hysterically. “The fifth of next month! and this is the twenty-fourth.”
“You will have to speak to Morrison.”
“Morrison, Morrison!” cried the minister. “You seem to have no idea but Morrison! and it is just to him that I cannot speak.”
His wife gazed at him with surprise, and some impatience.
“Claude! you are just as foolish as that woman.Will ranting and raving, and ‘I will not do that,’ and ‘I will not do this,’ pay back the siller? It is not so easy to do always what you wish. In this world we must just do what we can.”
“In another world, at least, there will be neither begging nor borrowing,” he cried.
“There will maybe be some equivalent,” said Mrs. Buchanan, shaking her head. “I would not lippen to anything. It would have been paid long ago if you had but stuck to the point with Morrison, and we would be free.”
“Morrison, Morrison!” he cried again, “nothing but Morrison. I wish he and all his books, and his bonds, and his money, were at the bottom of the sea!”
“Claude, Claude! and you a minister!” cried Mrs. Buchanan, horrified. But she saw that the discussion had gone far enough, and that her husband could bear no more.
As for the unfortunate man himself, he continued, mechanically, to pace about the room, after she left him, muttering “Morrison, Morrison!” between his teeth. He could not himself have explained the rage he felt at the name of Morrison. He could see in his mind’s eye the sleek figure of the man of business coming towards him, rubbing his hands, stopping his confession, “Not another word, sir, not another word; our late esteemed friend gave me my instructions.” And then he could hear himself pretending to insist, putting forward “the fifty:” “Thefifty,” with the liebeneath, as if that were all: and again the lawyer’s refusal to hear. Morrison had done him a good office: he had stopped the lie upon his lips, so that, formally speaking, he had never uttered it; he ought to have been grateful to Morrison: yet he was not, but hated him (for the moment) to the bottom of his heart.
Frank Mowbray came to luncheon (which was dinner) with Rodie, as Mrs. Buchanan had foreseen, and when he had got through a large meal, was taken up-stairs to see his mother, who was still lying exhausted in Elsie’s bed, very hysterical, laughing and crying in a manner which was by no means unusual in those days, though we may be thankful it has practically disappeared from our experiences now—unfortunately not without leaving a deeper and more injurious deposit of the hysterical. She hid her face when he came in, with a passion of tears and outcries, and then held out her arms to him, contradictory actions which Frank took with wonderful composure, being not unaccustomed to them.
“Speak to Mr. Buchanan,” she said, “oh, speak to Mr. Buchanan!” whispering these words into his ear as he bent over her, and flinging them at him as he went away. Frank was very reluctant to lose his afternoon’s game, and he was aware, too, of the threatening looks of Elsie, who said, “My father’s morning has been spoiled; he has had no peace all the day. You must see him another time.” “Speak to Mr. Buchanan, oh, speak to Mr. Buchanan,” criedhis mother. Frank did not know what to do. Perhaps Mrs. Mowbray in her confused mind expected that the minister would soften the story of her own misdemeanours to Frank. But Frank thought of nothing but the previous disclosure she had made to him. And he would probably have been subdued by Elsie’s threatening looks, as she stood without the door defending the passage to the study, had not Mr. Buchanan himself appeared coming slowly up-stairs. The two young people stood silent before him. Even Elsie, though she held Frank back fiercely with her eyes, could say nothing: and the minister waved his hand, as if inviting him to follow. The youth went after him a little overawed, giving Elsie an apologetic look as he passed. It was not his fault: without that tacit invitation he would certainly not have gone. He felt the situation very alarming. He was a simple young soul, going to struggle with one of the superior classes, in deadly combat, and with nobody to stand by him. Certainly he had lost his afternoon’s game—almost as certainly he had lost, altogether lost, Elsie’s favour. The smiles of the morning had inspired him to various strokes, which even Raaf Beaton could not despise. But that was over, and now he had to go on unaided to his fate.
“Your mother has been ill, Frank.”
“I am very sorry, sir: and she has distressed and disturbed you, I fear. She sometimes has those sort of attacks: they don’t mean much, I think,” Frank said.
“They mean a great deal,” replied Mr. Buchanan. “They mean that her mind is troubled about you and your future, Frank.”
“Without any reason, I think,” said Frank. “I am not very clear about money; I have always left it in my mother’s hands. She thought it would be time enough to look after my affairs when I attained my Scotch majority. But I don’t think I need trouble myself, for there must be plenty to go on upon. She says the Scotch estate is far less than was thought, and indeed she wanted me to come to you about some debts. She thinks half St. Rule’s was owing money to old Uncle Anderson. And he kept no books, or something of that sort. I don’t understand it very well; but she said you understood everything.”
“There was no question of books,” said Mr. Buchanan. “Mr. Anderson was kind, and helped many people, not letting his right hand know what his left hand did. Some he helped to stock a shop: some of the small farmers to buy the cattle they wanted: some of the fishers to get boats of their own. The money was a loan nominally to save their pride, but in reality it was a gift, and nobody knew how much he gave in this way. It was entered in no book, except perhaps,” said the minister, with a look which struck awe into Frank, and a faint upward movement of his hand “in One above.” After a minute he resumed: “I am sure, from what I know of you, you would not disturb these poor folk, who most of them are now enjoyingthe advantage of the charity that helped them rather to labour than to profit at first.”
“No, sir, no,” cried Frank, eagerly. “I am not like that, I am not a beast; and I am very glad to hear Uncle Anderson was such a good man. But,” he added after a pause, with a little natural pertinacity, “there were others different from that, or else my mother had wrong information—which might well be,” he continued with a little reluctance. He was open to a generous impulse, but yet he wished to reserve what might be owing to him on a less sentimental ground.
“Yes, there are others different from that. There are a few people of a different class in St. Rule’s, who are just as good as anybody, as people say; you will understand I am speaking the language of the world, and not referring to any moral condition, in which, as we have the best authority for saying, none of us are good, but God alone. As good as anybody, as people say—as good blood so far as that counts, as good education or better, as good manners: but all this held in check, or indeed made into pain sometimes, by the fact that they are poor. Do you follow what I mean?”
“Yes, sir, I follow,” said Frank: though without the effusiveness which he had shown when the minister’s talk was of the actual poor.
“A little money to such people as these is sometimes almost a greater charity than to the shopkeepers and the fishermen. They are far poorer with theirpride, and the appearance they have to keep up, than the lowest. Mind I am not defending pride nor the keeping up of appearances. I am speaking just the common language of the world. Well, there were several of these, I believe, who had loans of money from Mr. Anderson.”
“I think,” said Frank, respectfully, yet firmly too, “that they ought to pay, Mr. Buchanan. They have enjoyed the use of it for years, and people like that can always find means of raising a little money. If it lies much longer in their hands, it will be lost, I am told, by some Statute of—of Limitation I think it is. Well then, nobody could force them in that case; but I think, Mr. Buchanan, as between man and man, that they ought to pay.”
“I think,” said the minister, in a voice which trembled a little, “that you are right, Frank: they ought to pay.”
“That is certainly my opinion,” said Frank. “It would not ruin them, they could find the money: and though it might harass them for the moment, it would be better for them in the end to pay off a debt which they would go on thinking must be claimed some time. And especially if the estate is not going to turn out so good as was thought, I do think, Mr. Buchanan, that they should pay.”
“I think you are right, Frank.” The minister rose and began to walk up and down the room as was his habit. There was an air of agitation about him whichthe young man did not understand. “It is no case of an unjust steward,” he said to himself; “if there’s an unjust steward, it is—and to take the bill and write fourscore would never be the way with—Well, we have both come to the same decision, Frank, and we are both interested parties; I am, I believe, the largest of all Mr. Anderson’s debtors. I owe him——”
“Mr. Buchanan!” cried Frank, springing to his feet. “Mr. Buchanan, I never thought of this. You! for goodness’ sake don’t say any more!”
“I owe him,” the minister repeated slowly, “three hundred pounds. If you were writing that, you know,” he said, with a curious sort of smile, “you would repeat it, once in figures and once in letters, £300—and three hundred pounds. You are quite right; it will be much better to pay it off, at whatever sacrifice, than to feel that it may be demanded from one at any time, as you have demanded it from me!”
“Mr. Buchanan,” cried Frank, eagerly (for what would Elsie say? never, never would she look at him again!), “you may be sure I had never a notion, not an idea of this, not a thought! You were my uncle’s best friend; I can’t think why he didn’t leave you a legacy, or something, far more than this. I remember it was thought surprising there were no legacies, to you or to others. Of course I don’t know who the others may be,” he added with a changed inflection in his voice (for why should he throw any money, that was justly his, to perhaps persons of no importance, unconnectedwith Elsie?) “but you, sir, you! It is out of the question,” Frank cried.
Mr. Buchanan smiled a little. I fear it did not please him to feel that Frank’s compassion was roused, or that he might be excused the payment of his debt by Frank. Indeed that view of the case changed his feelings altogether. “We need not discuss the question,” he said rather coldly. “I have told you of the only money owing to your uncle’s estate which I know of. I might have stated it to your mother some time since, but did not on account of something that passed between Morrison and myself, which was neither here nor there.”
“What was it, Mr. Buchanan? I cannot believe that my uncle——”
“You know very little about your uncle,” said the minister, testily. “Now, I think I shall keep you no longer to-day: but before your birthday I will see Morrison, and put everything right.”
“It is right as it is,” cried Frank; “why should we have recourse to Morrison? surely you and I are enough to settle it. Mr. Buchanan, you know this never was what was meant. You! to bring you to book! I would rather have bitten out my tongue—I would rather——”
“Come, this is all exaggerated, as my wife says,” said the minister with a laugh. “It is too late to go back upon it. Bring a carriage for your mother, Frank, she will be better at home. You can tell herthis if you please: and then let us hear no more of it, my boy. I will see Morrison, and settle with him, and there is no need that any one should think of it more.”
“Only that it is impossible not to think of it,” cried Frank. “Mr. Buchanan——”
“Not another word,” the minister said. He came back to his table and sat down, and took his pen into his fingers. “Your foursome will be broken up for want of you,” he said with a chilly smile. The poor young fellow tried to say something more, but he was stopped remorselessly. “Really, you must let me get to my work,” said the minister. “Everything I think has been said between us that there is to say.”
And it was Elsie’s father whom he had thus offended! Frank’s heart sank to his boots, as he went down-stairs. He did not go near his mother, but left her to be watched over and taken home by her maid, who had now appeared. He felt as if he could never forgive her for having forced him to this encounter with the minister. Oh! if he had but known! He would rather have bitten out his tongue, he repeated to himself. The drawing-room was empty, neither Elsie nor her mother being visible, and there was no Rodie kicking his heels down-stairs. A maid came out of the kitchen, while he loitered in the hall to give him that worthy’s message. “Mr. Rodie said he couldna wait, and you were just to follow after him: but you were not to be surprised if they started without waiting foryou, for it would never do to keep all the gentlemen waiting for their game.” Poor Frank strolled forth with a countenance dark as night; sweetheart and game, and self-respect and everything—he had lost them all.
“Whatis the matter, mother?” Elsie said, drawing close to her mother’s side. The minister had come to dinner, looking ill and pale. He had scarcely spoken all through the meal. He had said to his wife that he was not to be disturbed that evening, for there was a great deal to settle and to think of. Mrs. Buchanan, too, bore an anxious countenance. She went up to the drawing-room without a word, with her basket of things to mend in her arms. She had always things to mend, and her patches were a pleasure to behold. She lighted the two candles on the mantelpiece, but said with a sigh that it was a great extravagance, and that she had no right to do it: only the night was dark, and her eyes were beginning to fail. Now the night was no darker than usual, and Mrs. Buchanan had made a brag only the other evening, that with her new glasses she could see to do the finest work, as well as when she was a girl.
“What is the matter, mother?” Elsie said. She came very close to her mother, putting a timid arm round her waist. They were, as belonged to their country, shy of caresses, and Elsie was half afraid of being thrown off with an injunction not to be silly;but this evening Mrs. Buchanan seemed to be pleased with the warm clasp of the young arm.
“Nothing that was not yesterday, and for years before that. You and me, Elsie, will have to put our shoulders to the wheel.”
“What is it, mother?” The idea of putting her shoulder to the wheel was comforting and invigorating, far better than the vague something wrong that clouded the parents’ faces. Mrs. Buchanan permitted herself to give her child a kiss, and then she drew her chair to the table and put on her spectacles for her evening’s work.
“Women are such fools,” she said. “I am not sure that your father’s saying that he was not to be disturbed to-night, you heard him?—which means that I am not to go up to him as I always do—has cast me down more than the real trouble. For why should he shut himself up from me? He might know by this time that it is not brooding by himself that will pay off that three hundred pounds.”
“Three hundred pounds!”
“It is an old story, it is nothing new,” said the minister’s wife. “It is a grand rule, Elsie, not to let your right hand know what your left doeth in the way of charity; but when it’s such a modern thing as a loan of money, oh, I’m afraid the worldly way is maybe the best way. If Mr. Anderson had written it down in his books, The Rev. Claude Buchanan, Dr.—as they do, you know, in the tradesmen’s bills—toloan £300—well, then, it might have been disagreeable, but we should have known the worst of it, and it would have been paid off by this time. But the good old man kept no books; and when he died, it was just left on our consciences to pay it or not. Oh, Elsie, siller is a terrible burden on your conscience when you have not got it to pay! God forgive us! what with excuses and explanations, and trying to make out that it was just an accident and so forth, I am not sure that I have always been quite truthful myself.”
“You never told lies, mother,” said Elsie.
“Maybe not, if you put it like that; but there’s many a lee that is not a lee, in the way of excuses for not paying a bill. You’ll say, perhaps, ‘Dear me, I am very sorry; I have just paid away the last I set aside for bills, till next term comes round;’ when, in fact, you had nothing set aside, but just paid what you had, and as little as you could, to keep things going! It’s not a lee, so to speak, and yet it is a lee, Elsie! A poor woman, with a limited income, has just many, many things like that on her mind. We’ve never wronged any man of a penny.”
“No, mother, I’m sure of that.”
“But they have waited long for their siller, and maybe as much in want of it as we were,” Mrs. Buchanan said, shaking her head. “Anyway, if it’s clear put down in black and white, there is an end of it. You know you have to pay, and you just makeup your mind to it. But, when it is just left to your conscience, and you to be the one to tell that you are owing—oh, Elsie! Lead us not into temptation. I hope you never forget that prayer, morning nor evening. If you marry a man that is not rich, you will have muckle need of it day by day.”
Elsie seemed to see, as you will sometimes see by a gleam of summer lightning, a momentary glimpse of a whole country-side—a panorama of many past years. The scene was the study up-stairs, where her father was sitting, often pausing in his work, laying down his pen, giving himself up to sombre thoughts. “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore,” she said to herself, under her breath.
“What are you saying, Elsie? Fourscore? Oh, much more than fourscore. It is three hundred pounds,” said Mrs. Buchanan. “Three hundred pounds,” she repeated deliberately, as if the enormity of the sum gave her, under the pain, a certain pleasure. “I have told you about it before. It was for Willie’s outfit, and Marion’s plenishing, and a few other things that were pressing upon us. Old Mr. Anderson was a very kind old man. He said: ‘Take enough—take enough while you are about it: put yourself at your ease while you are about it!’ And so we did, Elsie. I will never forget the feeling I had when I paid off Aitken and the rest who had just been very patient waiting. I felt like Christian in thePilgrim’s Progress, when the burden rolled off his back. Oh, mydear! a poor woman with a family to provide, thinks more of her bills than her sins, I am sore afraid!”
“Well, mother, those that have to judge know best all about it,” said Elsie, with tears in her voice.
“My bonnie dear! You’ll have to give up the ball, Elsie, and your new frock.”
“What about that, mother?” cried Elsie, tossing her young head.
“Oh, there’s a great deal about it! You think it is nothing now: but when you hear the coaches all driving past, and not a word said among all the young lassies but who was there and what they wore, and who they danced with: and, maybe, even you may hear a sough of music on the air, if the wind’s from the south: it will not be easy then, though your mind’s exalted, and you think it matters little now.”
“It will be, maybe—a little—hard,” Elsie assented, nodding her head; “but, if that’s all, mother?”
“It will not be all,” said Mrs. Buchanan, once more shaking her head. “It will be day by day, and hour by hour. We will have to do without everything, you and me. Your father, he must not be disturbed, more than we can help; or how is he to do his work? which is work far more important than yours or mine. And Rodie is a growing laddie, wanting much meat, and nothing must interfere with his learning either, or how could we put him out creditably in the world? I tell you it is you and me that will have to put our sheulders to the wheel. Janet is a good, sensiblewoman, I will take her into my confidence, and she’ll not mind a little more work; but, Betty—oh, my dear, I think we’ll have to give up Betty: and you know what that means.”
“It means just the right thing to mean!” cried Elsie, with her countenance glowing. “I am nearly as old as Betty, and I have never done a hand’s turn in my life. It would be strange if I couldn’t do as much for love, as Betty does for wages.”
“Ten pounds a year and her keep, which will count, maybe, for fifteen more. Oh Elsie, my dear, to think that I should make a drudge of my own bairn for no more saving than that.”
“It is a pity it is not a hundred pounds,” cried Elsie, half-laughing, half-crying; “but in four years, mother, it would make up a hundred pounds. Fancy me making up a hundred pounds! There will be no living with me for pride.”
Mrs. Buchanan shook her head, and put her handkerchief to her eyes, but joined in, too, with a tremulous laugh to this wonderful thought.
“And there’s your father all his lane up the stair,” she said, regretfully, “with nobody to speak to! when you and me are here together taking comfort, and making a laugh at it. There’s many things, after all, in which we are better off than men, Elsie. But why he should debar himself from just the only comfort there is, talking it over with me—what’s that?”
It was a noise up-stairs, in the direction of Mr. Buchanan’s study, and they both sprang to their feet: though, after all, it was not a very dreadful noise, only the hasty opening of a window, and the fall of a chair, as if knocked down by some sudden movement. They stood for a moment, looking into each other’s suddenly blanched faces, an awful suggestion leaping from eye to eye. Had it been too much for his brain? Had he fallen? Had something dreadful happened? Elsie moved to open the door, while her mother still stood holding by the table; but the momentary horror was quieted by the sound of his steps overhead. They heard him come out of his room to the head of the stairs, and held their breath. Then there was a cry, “Mary! Mary!” Mrs. Buchanan turned upon her daughter, with a sparkle in her eye.
“You see he couldna do without me after all,” she said.
When Elsie sat down alone she did not take her work again all at once, but sat thinking, thoughts that, perhaps, were not so sweet as they had been in the first enthusiasm of self-sacrifice. Her mother had left her for a still more intimate conference and sharing of the burden, which, when two people looked at it together, holding by each other, seemed so much lighter than when one was left to look at it alone. There swept across Elsie’s mind for a moment, in the chill of this desertion, the thought that it was allvery well for mamma. She had outgrown the love of balls and other such enjoyments; and, though she liked to be well dressed, she had the sustaining conviction that she was always well dressed in her black silk; which, one year with another, if it was the most enduring, was also one of the most becoming garments in St. Rule’s. And she had her partner by her side always, no need to be wondering and fancying what might happen, or whom she might see at the ball, perhaps at the next street corner. But at nineteen it is very different; and, it must be owned, that the prospect of the four years which it would take for Elsie, by all manner of labours and endurances, to make up the hundred pounds, which, after all, was only a third part of what was wanted—was not so exhilarating when looked at alone, as it was when the proud consciousness of such power to help had first thrilled her bosom. Elsie looked at her own nice little hands, which were smooth, soft, and reasonably white—not uselessly white like those of the people who never did a hand’s turn—but white enough to proclaim them a lady’s hands, though with scars of needlework on the fingers. She looked at her hands, and wondered what they would look like at the end of these four years? And she thought of the four balls, the yearly golf balls, at not one of which was she likely to appear, and at all the other things which she would have to give up. “What about that?” she said to herself, with indignation,meaning, what did it matter, of what consequence was it? But it did matter after all, it was of consequence. Whatever amount of generous sophistry there may be in a girl’s mind, it does not go so far as to convince her that four years out of her life, spent in being housemaid, in working with her hands for her family, does not matter. It did matter, and a tear or two dropped over her work. It would be hard, but Elsie knew, all the same, that she had it in her to go through with it. Oh, to go through with it! however hard it might be.
She was drying away her tears indignantly, angry with herself and ashamed, and resolute that no such weakness should ever occur again, when she became aware of several small crackling sounds that came from the direction of the turret, the lower story of which formed an appendage to the drawing-room, as the higher did to the study. Elsie was not alarmed by these sounds. It was, no doubt, some friend either of Rodie’s or her own, who was desirous of making a private communication without disturbing the minister’s house by an untimely visit, and calling attention by flinging gravel at the window. She could not think who it was, but any incident was good to break the current of her thoughts. There was a little pale moonlight, of that misty, milky kind, which is more like a lingering of fantastic day than a fine white night with black shadows, and there was a figure standing underneath, which she didnot recognise till she had opened the window. Then she saw it was Johnny Wemyss. He had a packet in his hand.
“I thought,” he said, “that I would just come and tell you before I sent it off by the night-coach. Elsie! I am sure—that is to say, I am near sure, as sure as you dare to think you are, when it’s only you——”
“What?” she cried, leaning out of the window.
“That yonisa new beast,” said the young man. His voice was a little tremulous. “I never lifted my head till I had it all out with it,” he said, with a nervous laugh; “and I’m just as near sure—oh, well, some other idiot may have found it out yesterday! but, barring that—I’m sure—I mean as near sure——”
“Oh, you and your beasts!” cried Elsie. Her heart had given a jump in her breast, and she had become gay and saucy in a moment; “and you never were more thannearsure all your life.Iknew it was, all the time.”
They laughed together under the gray wall, the girl lightly triumphant, the boy thrilling in every nerve with the certainty which he dared not acknowledge even to himself.
“I have called it ‘Princess Elsie,’”he said, “in Latin, you know: that is, if it is really a new beast.”
“There is nine striking,” said she; “you will have to run if you are to catch the night-coach.”
“I will—but I had to come and tell you,” he cried over his shoulder.
“As if there was any need! when I knew it all the time.”
This was enough, I am glad to say, to turn entirely the tide of Elsie’s thoughts. She stood listening to the sound of his heavy shoes, as he dashed along the rough cobbles of the pavement, towards the centre of the town from which the coach started. And then she came in with a delightful, soft illumination on her face, laughing to herself, and sat down at the table and took up her seam. Four years! four strokes of the clock, four stitches with the needle! That was about all it would come to in the long stretching, far panorama of endless and joyous life.
Thehour was heavier to the parents up-stairs, where the minister was so despondent and depressed that his wife had hard ado to cheer him. The window which down-stairs they had heard him throw open, stood wide to the night, admitting a breeze which blew about the flame of the candles, threatening every moment to extinguish them; for the air, though soft and warm, blew in almost violently fresh from the sea. Mrs. Buchanan put down the window, and drew the blind, restoring the continuity and protecting enclosure of the walls; for there are times and moods when an opening upon infinite air and space is too much for the soul travailing among the elements of earth. She went to his side and stood by him, with her hand on his shoulder.
“Dinna be so down-hearted, Claude, my man,” she said, with her soft voice. Her touch, her tone, the contact of her warm, soft person, the caressing of her hand came on him like dew.
“Mary,” he said, leaning his head back upon her, “you don’t know what I have done. I did it in meaning, if not in fact. The thought of you kept me back, my dear, more than the thought of my Maker. I am a miserable and blood-guilty man.”
“Whisht, whisht,” she said, trembling all over, but putting now a quivering arm round him; “you are not thinking what you say.”
“Well am I thinking, well am I knowing it. Me, His body-servant, His man—not merely because He is my Saviour, as of all men, but my Master to serve hand and foot, night and day. For the sake of a little pain, a little miserable money, I had well-nigh deserted His service, Mary. Oh, speak not to me, for I am a lost soul——”
“Whisht, Claude! You are a fevered bairn. Do you think He is less understanding, oh, my man, than me? What have you done?”
He looked up at her with large, wild eyes. Then she suddenly perceived his hand clenched upon something, and darting at it with a cry forced it open, showing a small bottle clasped in the hollow of his palm. She gripped his shoulder violently, with a low shriek of horror.
“Claude, Claude! you have not—you did not——”
“I poured it out before the Lord,” he said, putting the phial on the table; “but the sin is no less, for I did it in meaning, if not in deed. How can I ever lift my head or my hand before His presence again?”
“Oh, my laddie! my man!” cried his wife, who was the mother of every soul in trouble, “oh, my Claude! Are you so little a father, you with your many bairns, that you do not know in your heart how He is looking at you? ‘Such pity as a father hath unto His childrendear.’ You are just fevered and sick with trouble. You shut out your wife from you, and now you would shut out your Lord from you.”
“No,” he said, grasping her hand, “never again, Mary, never again. I am weak as water, I cannot stand alone. I have judged others for less, far less, than I myself have done.”
“Well, let it be so,” said his wife, “you will know better another time. Claude, you are just my bairn to-night. You will say your prayers and go to your bed, and the Lord in heaven and me at your bedside, like a dream it will all pass away.”
He dropped down heavily upon his knees, and bent his head upon the table.
“Mary, I feel as if I could say nought but this: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh Lord.”
“You know well,” she said, “the hasty man that Peter was, if ever he had been taken at his word. And do you mind what was the answer? It was just ‘Follow me.’”
“Father, forgive me. Master, forgive me,” he breathed through the hands that covered his face, and then his voice broke out in the words of an older faith, words which she understood but dimly, and which frightened her with the mystery of an appeal into the unknown.Kyrie Eleison,Christ Eleison, the man said, humbled to the very depths.
The woman stood trembling over him not knowing how to follow. His voice rolled forth low and intense,like the sound of an organ into the silent room; hers faltered after in sobs inarticulate, terrified, exalted, understanding nothing, comprehending all.
This scene was scarcely ended when Elsie burst out singing over her work, forgetting that there was any trouble in the world: to each its time, and love through all.
Mr. Buchanan was very much shaken with physical illness and weakness next morning, than where there is nothing more healing for a spirit that has been put to the question, as in the old days of the Inquisition, but by rack and thumbscrew still more potent than these. His head ached, his pulses fluttered. He felt as if he had been beaten, he said, not a nerve in him but tingled; he could scarcely stand on his feet. His wife had her way with him, which was sweet to her. She kept him sheltered and protected in his study under her large and soft maternal wing. It was to her as when one of her children was ill, but not too ill—rather convalescent—in her hands to be soothed and caressed into recovery. This was an immense and characteristic happiness to herself even in the midst of her pain. In the afternoon after she had fed him with nourishing meats, appropriate to his weakness, a visitor was announced who startled them both. Mr. Morrison, the writer, sent up his name and a request to have speech of Mr. Buchanan, if the minister were well enough to receive him. There was a rapid consultation between the husband and wife.
“Are you fit for it, Claude?”
“Yes, yes, let us get it over: but stay with me,” he said.
Mrs. Buchanan went down to meet the man of business, and warn him of her husband’s invalid condition.
“He is a little low,” she said. “You will give no particular importance, Mr. Morrison, to any despondent thing he may say.”
“Not I, not I,” cried the cheerful man of business. “The minister has his ill turns like the rest of us: but with less occasion than most of us, I’m well aware.”
Mrs. Buchanan stayed only long enough in the room to see that her husband had drawn himself together, and was equal to the interview. She had a fine sense of the proprieties, and perception, though she was so little of a sensitive, of what was befitting. Morrison perceived with a little surprise the minister’s alarmed glance after his wife, but for his part was exceedingly glad to get rid of the feminine auditor.
“I am glad,” he said, “to see you alone, if you are equal to business, Mr. Buchanan, for I’ve something which is really not business to talk to you about: that is to say, it’s a very bad business, just the mishap of a silly woman if you’ll permit me to say so. She tells me she has confided them to you already.”
“Mrs. Mowbray?” said the minister.
“Just Mrs. Mowbray. The day of Frank’s majorityis coming on when all must come to light, and in desperation, poor body, she sent for me. Yon’s a silly business if you like—a foolish laddie without an idea in his head—and a lightheaded woman with nothing but vanity and folly in hers.”
“Stop a little,” said Mr. Buchanan, in the voice which hisrôleof invalid had made, half artificially, wavering, and weak; “we must not judge so harshly. Frank, if he is not clever, is full of good feeling, and as for his mother—it is easy for the wisest of us to deceive ourselves about things we like and wish for—she thought, poor woman, it was for the benefit of her boy.”
“You are just too charitable,” said Morrison, with a laugh. “But let us say it was that. It makes no difference to the result. A good many thousands to the bad, that is all about it, and nothing but poverty before them, if it were not for what she calls the Scotch property. The Scotch property was to bear the brunt of everything: and now some idiot or other has told her that the Scotch property is little to lippen to: and that half St. Rule’s was in old Anderson’s debt——”
“I have heard all that—I told her that at the utmost there were but a few hundreds——”
“Not a penny—not a penny,” said Morrison. “I had my full instructions: and now here is the situation. She has been more foolish than it’s allowable even for a lightheaded woman to be.”
“You have no warrant for calling her lightheaded;so far as I know she is an irreproachable woman as free of speck or stain——”
“Bless us,” said the man of business, “you are awfully particular to-day, Buchanan. I am not saying a word against her character: but lightheaded, that is thoughtless and reckless, and fond of her pleasure, the woman undoubtedly is: nothing but a parcel of vanities, and ostentations, and show. Well, well! how it comes about is one thing, how to mend it is another. We cannot let the poor creature be overwhelmed if we can help it. She spent all her own money first, which, though the height of folly, was still a sign of grace. And now she has been spending Frank’s, and, according to all that appears, his English money is very nearly gone, and there is nothing but the Scotch remaining.”
“And the Scotch but little to lippen to, as you say, and everybody says.”
“That’s as it may be,” said Morrison, with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s better than the English, anyway. She deserves to be punished for her folly, but I have not the heart to leave her in the lurch. She’s sorry enough now, though whether that is because she’s feared for exposure or really penitent, I would not like to say. Anyway, when a woman trusts in you to pull her out of the ditch, it’s hard just to steel your heart and refuse: though maybe, in a moral point of view, the last would be well justified and really the right thing to do. But I thought you andI might lay our heads together and see which was best.”
“There is that money of mine, Morrison.”
“Hoots!” said the man of business, “what nonsense is that ye have got in your head? There is no money of yours.”
“Forgive me, but you must not put me down so,” said the minister. “I have done wrong in not insisting before. The arrangement was that it should be repaid, and I ought not to have allowed myself to be persuaded out of it, I owed Mr. Anderson——”
“Not a penny, not a penny. All cancelled by his special instructions at his death.”
“Morrison, this has been upon my mind for years. I must be quit of it now.” He raised his voice with a shrill weakness in it. “My wife knows. Where is my wife? I wish my wife to be present when we settle this account finally. Open the door and call her. I must have Mary here.”
“Well, she is a very sensible woman,” said Mr. Morrison, shrugging his shoulders. He disapproved on principle, he said always, of the introduction of women to matters they had nothing to do with, which was the conviction of his period. But he reflected that Buchanan in his present state was little better than a woman, and that the presence of his wife might be a correction. He opened the door accordingly, and she came out of her room in a moment, ready evidently for any call.
“Mary, I wish you to be here while I tell Morrison, once for all, that I must pay this money. I perhaps gave you a false idea when we talked of it before. I made you believe it was a smaller sum than it was. I—I was like the unjust steward—I took my bill and wrote fourscore.”
“What is he meaning now, I wonder?” said Morrison to Mrs. Buchanan, with a half-comic glance aside. “He is just a wee off his head with diseased conscientiousness. I’ve met with the malady before, but it’s rare, I must say, very rare. Well, come, out with it, Buchanan. What is this about fourscore?”
“You misunderstand me,” he cried. “I must demand seriousness and your attention.”
“Bless us, man, we’re not at the kirk,” Morrison said.
The minister was very impatient. He dealt the table a weak blow, as he sometimes did to the cushion of his pulpit.
“Perhaps I did it on purpose,” he said, “perhaps it was half-unconscious, I cannot tell; but I gave you to believe that my debt was smaller than it really was. Morrison, I owed Mr. Anderson three hundred pounds.”
The tone of solemnity with which he spoke could scarcely have been more impressive had he been reasoning, like St. Paul, of mercy, temperance, and judgment to come. And he felt as if he were doing so: it was the most solemn of truths he was telling against himself; the statement as of a dying man.His wife felt it so, too, in a sympathy that disturbed her reason, standing with her hand upon the back of his chair. Morrison stood for a moment, overcome by the intensity of the atmosphere, opening his mouth in an amazed gasp.
“Three hundred pounds!” the minister repeated, deliberately, with a weight of meaning calculated to strike awe into every heart.
But the impression made upon his audience unfortunately did not last. The writer stared and gasped, and then he burst into a loud guffaw. It was irresistible. The intense gravity of the speaker, the exaltation of his tone, the sympathy of his wife’s restrained excitement, and then the words that came out of it all, so commonplace, so little conformable to that intense and tragic sentiment—overwhelmed the man of common sense. Morrison laughed till the tremulous gravity of the two discomposed him, and made him ashamed of himself, though their look of strained and painful seriousness almost brought back the fit when it was over. He stopped all of a sudden, silenced by this, and holding his hand to his side.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Buchanan. It was just beyond me. Lord’s sake, man, dinna look so awesome. I was prepared to hear it was thirty thousand at the least.”
“Thirty thousand,” said the minister, “to some people is probably less than three hundred to me: but we cannot expect you to feel with us in respect to that.Morrison, you must help us somehow to pay this money, for we cannot raise it in a moment; but with time every penny shall be paid.”
“To whom?” said Morrison, quietly.
“To whom? Are not you the man of business? To the estate, of course—to the heir.”
“Not to me, certainly,” said the lawyer. “I would be worthy to lose my trust if I acted in contradiction to my client’s wishes in any such way. I will not take your money, Buchanan. No! man, though you are the minister, you are not a Pope, and we’re not priest-ridden in this country. I’ll be hanged if you shall ride rough shod over my head. I have my instructions, and if you were to preach at me till doomsday, you’ll not change my clear duty. Pay away, if it’s any pleasure to you. Yon wild woman, I dare to say, would snatch it up, or any siller you would put within reach of her; but deil a receipt or acquittance or any lawful document will you get from auld John Anderson’s estate, to which you owe not a penny. Bless me, Mrs. Buchanan, you’re a sensible woman. Can you not make him see this? You cannot want him to make ducks and drakes of your bairns’ revenue. John Anderson was his leal friend, do you think it likely he would leave him to be harried at a lawyer’s mercy? Do you not see, with the instincts of my race, I would have put you all to the horn years ago if it had been in my power?” he cried, jumping suddenly up. “Bless me, I never made so long a speechin my life. For goodsake, Buchanan, draw yourself together and give up this nonsense, like a man.”
“It is nonsense,” said the minister, who, during all this long speech, had gone through an entire drama of emotions, “that has taken all the pleasure for five long years and more out of my life.”
“Oh, but, Claude, my man! you will mind I always said——”
“Ye hear her? That’s a woman’s consolation,” said the minister, with a short laugh, in which it need not be said he was extremely unjust.
“It’s sound sense, anyway,” said Mr. Morrison, “so far as this fable of yours is concerned. Are you satisfied now? Well, now that we’ve got clear of that, I’ll tell you my news. The Scotch property—as they call it, those two—has come out fine from all its troubles. What with good investments and feus, and a variety of favourable circumstances, for which credit to whom credit is due—I am not the person to speak—John Anderson’s estate has nearly doubled itself since the good man was taken away. He was just a simpleton in his neglect of all his chances, saying, as he did—you must have heard him many a day—‘there will aye be enough to serve my time.’ I am not saying it was wonderful—seeing the laddie was all but a stranger—but he thought very, very little of his heir. But you see it has been my business to see to the advantage of his heir.”
“Your behaviour to-day is not very like it, Morrison.”
“Hoots!” said the man of business, “that’s nothing but your nonsense. I can give myself the credit for never having neglected a real honest opening. To rob or to fleece a neighbour was not in that line. I am telling you I’ve neglected no real opening, and I will not say but that the result is worth the trouble, and Frank Mowbray is a lucky lad. And what has brought me here to-day—for I knew nothing of all this nonsense of yours that has taken up our time—was just to ask your advice if certain expedients were lawful for covering up this daft mother’s shortcomings—certain expedients which I have been turning over in my head.”