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                          THE UNJUST STEWARD

                                  OR

                          THE MINISTER’S DEBT

                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                             PHILADELPHIA

                       J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
                                 1896

                           COPYRIGHT, 1896,
                                  BY
                       J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


  ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA,
                                U.S.A.




                          DEDICATED TO DENNY

                                 1896




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

    I.--A SUDDEN ALARM                                                 7

   II.--A FRIEND IN NEED                                              21

  III.--AFTER THE FUNERAL                                             34

   IV.--“TAKE NOW THY BILL AND WRITE FIFTY”                           47

    V.--MARION AND ELSIE                                              59

   VI.--A HOUSEHOLD CONTROVERSY                                       73

  VII.--THE FIRST MARRIAGE IN THE FAMILY                              86

 VIII.--A NEW FACTOR                                                  99

   IX.--MAN AND WIFE                                                 113

    X.--BROTHER AND SISTER                                           126

   XI.--THE GROWING-UP OF THE BAIRNS                                 139

  XII.--THE MOWBRAYS                                                 153

 XIII.--PLAINTIFF OR PENITENT?                                       166

  XIV.--ANOTHER AGENT                                                179

   XV.--FRANK’S OPERATIONS                                           191

  XVI.--THE UNJUST STEWARD ONCE MORE                                 205

 XVII.--THE POSITION OF ELSIE                                        219

XVIII.--JOHNNY WEMYSS                                                233

  XIX.--A CATASTROPHE                                                246

   XX.--CONFESSION                                                   260

  XXI.--HOW TO SET IT RIGHT                                          273

 XXII.--IN THE STUDY                                                 284

XXIII.--THE LAST                                                     298




                          THE UNJUST STEWARD;

                                OR, THE

                           MINISTER’S DEBT.




CHAPTER I.

A SUDDEN ALARM.


Elsie and Roderick Buchanan were the son and daughter, among a number of
others, of the Rev. George Buchanan, a minister much esteemed in the
city of St. Rule, and occupying a high place among the authorities and
influential personages of that place. They were members of a large
family, and not important members, being the youngest. It is true that
they were not two boys or two girls, but a girl and boy; but being so,
they were as nearly inseparable as a boy and girl could be. They were
called in the family the Twins, though there was quite a year, a year
and a day as in a fairy tale, between them. It was the girl who was the
elder of the two, which, perhaps, accounted for the fact that they were
still the same height as well as so very like each other that in their
infancy it was scarcely possible to know them apart, so that the name
of the Twins was quite appropriate. Elsie was fourteen, and Roderick,
better known as Rodie, according to the Scotch love of diminutives, just
thirteen. Up to this age, their lessons and their amusements had gone on
together,--the girls in St. Rule’s, from the beginning of time, having
been almost as athletic as the boys, and as fond of the links and the
harbour, while the old Scotch fashion of training them together had not
yet given way before the advancing wave of innovation, which has so much
modified education in Scotland. They were in the same class, they read
the same books, they had the same lessons to prepare. Elsie was a little
more diligent, Rodie more strong in his Latin, which was considered
natural for a boy. They helped each other mutually, he being stronger in
the grammar, she more “gleg” at construing. She went all wrong in her
tenses, but jumped at the meaning of a thing in a way that sometimes
astonished her brother. In this way, they were of great assistance to
each other in their school life.

The other side of life, the amusements and games, were not nearly of so
much importance, even with children, then as now. It was the object of
his elders and masters rather to curb Rodie’s enthusiasm for football
than to stimulate it, notwithstanding his high promise as a player; and
the gentlemen who played golf were exceedingly impatient of laddies on
the links; and as for girls presuming to show their faces there, would
have shown their disapprobation very pointedly; so that, except for a
few “holes” surreptitiously manufactured in a corner (even the Ladies’
Links being as yet non-existent), the youngsters found little
opportunity of cultivating that now all-important game. They turned out,
however, sometimes early, very early, of a morning, or late in the
afternoon, and in their hurried performances, Elsie as yet was almost as
good as her brother, and played up to him steadily, understanding his
game, when they two of a summer evening, when all the club was at
dinner, and nobody about to interfere, played together in a single.
Lawn-tennis was still far in the future, and it had not been given to
the children to do more than stand afar off and admire at the
performance of the new game called croquet, which had just been set up
by an exclusive society on the Castle Green. Who were the little
Buchanans to aspire to take part in such an Olympian contest among the
professors and their ladies? They looked on occasionally from a pinnacle
of the ruins, and privately mocked between themselves at the stiffness
of a great man’s learned joints, or the mincing ways of the ladies,
sending confusing peals of laughter over the heads of the players at any
mishap, till the indignant company used the rudest language in respect
to the Buchanan bairns, along, it must be allowed, with the Beaton
bairns and the Seaton bairns, and several more scions of the best
families, and threatened to put them out of the Castle ruins altogether:
though everybody knew this was a vain threat, and impossible to carry
out. It was strictly forbidden that these young people should ever
adventure themselves in a boat, the coast being so dangerous, a
prohibition which Elsie did not resent, having distinguished herself as
a very bad sailor, but against which Rodie kicked with all his might.
The reader will therefore see that they were not encouraged to spend
their strength in athletics, which is so much the custom now.

Perhaps this encouraged in them the delight in books which they had
shown from a very early age. It was always possible to keep the Twins
quiet with a story-book, their elders said, though I confess that Rodie
began to show symptoms of impatience with Elsie’s books, and unless he
got a story “of his own kind,” was no longer so still and absorbed as in
early days. The stories he loved, which were “of his own kind,” were, I
need not say, tales of adventure, which he was capable of reading over
and over again till he knew by heart every one of the Crusoe-like
expedients of his seafaring or land-louping heroes. Elsie had a weakness
for girl’s stories, full of devotion and self-abnegation, and in which
little maidens of her own age set all the world right, which perhaps,
naturally, did not appeal to Rodie. But there was one series which never
failed in its attraction for both. In Mr. Buchanan’s library there was a
set of the _Waverleys_, such as formed part of the best of the
plenishing for a new household in those days when they were but recent
publications, as it still continues we hope to do in every house which
desires to fortify itself against the tedium of the years. The children
were never tired of _Ivanhoe_ and _Quentin Durward_, and the _Fair Maid
of Perth_. Indeed, there was not one of them that had not its lasting
charm, though perhaps the preponderance of a lassie in the _Heart of
Midlothian_, for instance, dulled Rodie’s enthusiasm a little; while
Elsie, more catholic, was as profoundly interested in Harry Bertram’s
Adventures, and followed Rowland Græam through all that happened in the
Castle of Lochleven, with as warm interest as heart could desire. They
thought, if that wildly presumptuous idea could be entertained, that Sir
Walter was perhaps mistaken about bloody Claverhouse, but that, no
doubt, was owing to their natural prejudices and breeding. One of their
most characteristic attitudes was over one of these books (it was the
edition in forty-eight volumes, with the good print and vignettes on the
title-pages), spread out between them (they broke all the backs of his
books, their father complained) their heads both bent over the page,
with faint quarrels arising now and then that Elsie read too fast, and
turned the page before Rodie was ready, or that Rodie read too slow and
kept his sister waiting, which furnished a little mutual grievance that
ran through all the reading, manifested now and then by a sudden stroke
of an elbow, or tug at a page.

The place in which they chiefly pursued their studies was a little
round corner, just big enough to hold them, which adjoined their
father’s study, and which, like that study, was lined with books. It was
really a small turret, the relic of some older building which had been
tacked to the rambling house, old-fashioned enough in its roomy
irregularity, but not nearly so old as the little ashen-coloured tower,
pale as with the paleness of extreme old age, which gave it distinction,
and afforded a very quaint little adjunct to the rooms on that side.
There was scarcely more than room enough in it for these two to sit,
sometimes on an old and faded settle, sometimes on the floor, as the
humour seized them. They were on the floor, as it happened, at the
special moment which I am about to describe. The inconvenience of this
retreat was that it was possible from that retirement to hear whatever
might be said in the study, so that the most intimate concerns of the
family were sometimes discussed by the father and mother in the hearing
of these two little creatures, themselves unseen. There was nothing in
this to blame them for, for it was well known that the turret was their
haunt, and Mr. Buchanan, when reminded of it by some little scuffling or
exchange of affectionate hostilities, would sometimes be moved to turn
them out, as disturbing his quiet when he was busy with his sermon. But
in many other cases their presence was forgotten, and there were not
many secrets in the innocent household. On the other hand, Elsie and
Rodie were usually far too much occupied with their book to pay any
attention to what the rather tedious discussions of father and
mother--usually about money, or about Willie and Marion the two eldest,
who were about to be sent out in the world, or other insignificant and
long-winded questions of that description--might be about.

And I cannot tell for what exquisite reason it was, that on this
particular day their minds were attracted to what was going on in the
study; I think they must have been reading some scene in which the
predominance of lassies (probably the correspondence of Miss Julia
Mannering, what I have always felt disposed to skip) had lessened
Rodie’s interest, but which Elsie, much distracted by the consciousness
of his rebellion, but for pride of her own sex pretending to go
carefully through, yet was only half occupied with, occasioned this
openness of their joint minds to impression. At all events, they both
heard their mother’s sudden entrance, which was hurried indeed, and also
flurried, as appeared a thing not quite common with her. They heard her
come in with a rapid step, and quick panting breath, as if she had run
up-stairs. And “William,” she said, standing by the writing-table, they
felt sure, which was also a usual thing for her to do--“William, have
you heard that old Mr. Anderson is very bad to-day, and not expected to
live?”

“Old Mr. Anderson!” he said, in a surprised and troubled tone.

“So they say. The Lord help us, what shall we do? Willie’s outfit just
paid for, and not a penny to the fore. Oh, my poor man!”

“It’s very serious news,” their father said; “but let us hope that both
for his sake and our own it may not be true.”

“Ill news is aye true,” said Mrs. Buchanan, with a sound of something
like a sob.

Why should mamma be so troubled about old Mr. Anderson, the children
said to themselves, giving each other a look?

“That is just want of faith, my dear,” he replied.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s want of faith! it’s all in God’s hands, and He
can bring light out of darkness, I know; but oh! William, it’s not
always that He thinks fit to do that! You know as well as me. And if
this time it should not be His will?”

“Mary,” he said, “let us not forestall the evil; perhaps it will never
come; perhaps there will be a way out of it--at the worst we must just
bear it, my dear.”

“Oh, I know that, I know that!” she cried, with a sound of tears in her
voice. “You gave your word to pay it if he died, immediately thereafter,
that there might be no talking. Wasn’t that the bargain?”

“That was the bargain,” he said.

“But we never thought it was to come like this, at the worst moment,
just after the siller is gone for Willie’s outfit.”

“Mary, Mary, it is worse for him than for us.”

“Do you think so, do you think so?” she cried, “and you a minister! I do
not think that. He is an old man, and a good man, and if all we believe
is true, it will be a happy change for him. Who has he to leave behind
him? Na, he will be glad to go. But us with our young family! Oh, the
power of that filthy siller; but for that, what happier folk could be,
William, than just you and me?”

“We must be thankful for that, Mary,” said the minister, with a quiver.
“We might have had worse things than the want of money; we might have
had sickness or trouble in our family, and instead of that they’re all
well, and doing well.”

“Thank God for that!” mamma said, fervently, and then there was a pause.

“I will have to go at once to the man of business, and tell him,” father
said; “that was in the bargain. There was no signing of paper, but I was
to go and tell; that was part of the bargain.”

“And a very hard part,” his wife cried, with a long sigh. “It is like
sharpening the sword to cut off your own head. But, maybe,” she said,
with a little revival of courage, “Mr. Morrison is not a hard man; maybe
he will give you time.”

“Maybe our old friend will pull through,” papa said, slowly.

“That would be the best of all,” she said, but not in a hopeful tone.
And presently they heard her shut the door of the study, and go
down-stairs again, with something very different from the flying step
with which she came.

The children did not stir, they did not even turn the leaf; they felt
all at once that it was better that their presence there should not be
known. They had heard such consultations before, and sometimes had been
auditors of things they were not desired to hear; but they had never,
they thought, heard anything so distinctly before, nor anything that was
of so much importance. They were very much awe-stricken to hear of this
thing that troubled father so, and made mother cry, without
understanding very well what it was--old Mr. Anderson’s illness, and
Willie’s outfit, and something about money, were all mixed up in their
minds; but the relations between the one and the other were not
sufficiently clear.

Presently they heard papa get up and begin to walk about the room. He
did this often when he was deep in thought, composing his sermon, and
then he would often say over and over his last sentence by way of
piecing it on, they supposed to the next. So that it did not trouble,
but rather reassured them, to hear him saying something to himself,
which gave them the idea that he had returned to his work, and was no
longer so much disturbed about this new business. When they heard him
say, “no signing of papers, no signing of papers, but to go and tell,”
they were somewhat disturbed, for that did not sound like a sermon. But,
presently, he sat down again and drew a book towards him, and they
could hear him turning over the leaves. It was, there could be no doubt,
the large Bible--large because it was such big print, for father’s eyes
were beginning to go--which always lay on his table. He turned over the
leaves as they had so often heard him doing; no doubt it was some
reference he was looking up for his sermon. He must have found what he
wanted very soon, for there was a little silence, and then they heard
him say, with great emphasis--“Then the Lord commended the unjust
steward.” He said it very slowly, pausing upon almost every word. It was
the way he said over his text when he was pondering over it, thinking
what he was to say. Then he began to read. It was to be a long text this
time; Rodie tried to whisper in his sister’s ear, but Elsie stopped him,
quietly, with emphatic signs and frowns.

“He called every one of his Lord’s debtors and said unto the first, How
much owest thou unto my Lord? And he said an hundred measures of oil.
And he said unto him, Take thy bill and sit down quickly and write
fifty.” Then there was another pause. And again father spoke, so
clearly, with such a distinct and emphatic voice that they thought he
was speaking to them, and looked at each other fearfully. “The Lord
commended the unjust steward.” There was something awful in his tone:
did he mean this for them, to reprove them? But they had done nothing,
and if the Lord commended that man, surely there could be nothing to be
so severe upon.

Elsie and Rodie missed everything that was pleasant that afternoon. It
was thought they were on the hills, or on the sands, and nobody knew
they were shut up there in the turret, now thoroughly alarmed, and
terrified to change their position, or make themselves audible in any
way, or to turn a leaf of their book, or to move a finger. In all their
experience--and it was considerable--father had never been like this
before. After a while, he began again, and read over the whole parable:
and this he repeated two or three times, always ending in that terrible
tone, which sounded to the children like some awful sentence, “The Lord
commended the unjust steward”--then they would hear him get up again,
and pace about the room, saying over and over those last words; finally,
to their unspeakable relief, he opened the door, and went slowly
down-stairs, so slowly that they sat still, breathless, for two minutes
more, until his footsteps had died away.

Then the two children sprang up from their imprisonment, and stretched
their limbs, which were stiff with sitting on the floor. They rushed out
of the room as quickly as possible, and got out into the garden, from
whence there was an exit toward the sea. The one thing which, without
any consultation, they were both agreed upon, was to keep out of sight
of father and mother, so that nobody might divine in what way they had
been spending the afternoon. They did not, however, say much to each
other about it. When they had got quite clear, indeed, of all possible
inspection, and were out upon the east sands, which were always their
resort when in disgrace or trouble, Rodie ventured to hazard an opinion
on the situation.

“Papa’s text is an awfu’ kittle one to-day,” he said. “I wonder if he’ll
ding it out.”

“Oh, whisht!” said Elsie, “yon’s not his text; he was never like that
before.”

“Then what is it?” said Rodie; but this was a question to which she
would give no reply.

As they returned home, towards the twilight, they passed old Mr.
Anderson’s house, a large, old-fashioned mansion in the High Street, and
gazed wistfully at the lights which already appeared in the upper
windows, though it was not dark, and which looked strange and alarming
to them as if many people were about, and much going on in this usually
silent house.

“Does he need so many candles to die by?” said Rodie to his sister.

“Oh, perhaps he is better, and it’s for joy,” said Elsie, taking a more
hopeful view.

Their father came out from the door, as they gazed, awe-stricken, from
the other side of the street. His head was sunk upon his breast; they
had never seen him so cast down before. His aspect, and the fact that he
passed them without seeing them, had a great effect upon the children.
They went home very quietly, and stole into the house without making any
of the familiar noises that usually announced their arrival. However,
it cheered them a little to find that their mother was very busy about
Willie’s outfit, and that their eldest sister Marion was marking all his
new shirts in her fine writing, with the small bottle of marking ink,
and the crow quill. The interest of this process and the pleasure of
getting possession of the hot iron, which stamped that fine writing into
a vivid black, gave a salutary diversion to Elsie’s thoughts. As for
Rodie, he was very hungry for his supper, which had an equally salutary
effect.




CHAPTER II.

A FRIEND IN NEED.


Mr. Buchanan, the minister of St. Leonard’s Church, was a member of a
poor, but well-connected family in the West of Scotland, to which
district, as everybody knows, that name belongs; and it is not to be
supposed that he came to such advancement as a church in a university
town all at once. He had married early the daughter of another minister
in Fife, and it was partly by the interest procured by her family, and
partly by the great reputation he had attained as a preacher, that he
had been promoted to his present charge, which was much more important
and influential than a mere country parish. But a succession of
flittings from manse to manse, even though each new transfer was a
little more important than the previous one, is hard upon a poor
clergyman’s purse, though it may be soothing to his self-esteem; and St.
Leonard’s, though St. Rule was an important port, had not a very large
stipend attached to it. Everybody dwelt upon the fact that it was a most
important post, being almost indeed attached to the university, and with
so large a sphere of influence over the students. But influence is a
privilege and payment in itself, or is supposed to be, and cannot be
made into coin of the realm, or even pound notes, which are its
equivalent. Mr. Buchanan himself was gratified, and he was solemnised,
and felt his responsibility as a power for good over all those young men
very deeply, but his wife may be forgiven, if she sighed occasionally
for a few more tangible signs of the importance of his post. On the
contrary, it led them into expenses to which a country minister is not
tempted. They had to take their share in the hospitalities of the place,
to entertain strangers, to give as seldom as possible, but still
periodically, modest dinner-parties, a necessary return of courtesy to
the people who invited them. Indeed, Mrs. Buchanan was like most women
in her position, the soul of hospitality. It cost her a pang not to
invite any lonely person, any young man of whom she could think that he
missed his home, or might be led into temptation for want of a cheerful
house to come to, or motherly influence over him. She, too, had her
sphere of influence; it hurt her not to exercise it freely. Indeed, she
did exercise it, and was quite unable often to resist the temptation of
crowding the boys up at dinner or supper, in order to have a corner for
some _protégé_. “It was a privilege,” she said, but unfortunately it was
an expensive one, plain though these repasts were. “Oh, the siller!”
this good woman would say, “if there was only a little more of that, how
smoothly the wheels would run.”

The consequence of all this, however, of the frequent removals, of the
lapses into hospitality, the appearances that had to be kept up, and,
finally, the number of the family, had made various hitches in the
family progress. Settling in St. Rule’s, where there was no manse, and
where a house had to be taken, and new carpets and curtains to be got,
not to speak of different furniture than that which had done so very
well in the country, had been a great expense; and all those changes
which attend the setting out of young people in the world had begun. For
Marion, engaged to another young minister, and to be married as soon as
he got a living, there was the plenishing to think of, something more
than the modern trousseau, a provision which included all the household
linen of the new house; and, in short, as much as the parents could do
to set the bride forth in a becoming and liberal manner. And Willie, as
has been told, had his outfit for India to procure. These were the days
before examinations, when friends--it was a kindly habit superseded now
by the changed customs of life--put themselves to great trouble to
further the setting out in life of a clergyman’s sons. And William
Buchanan had got a writership, which is equivalent, I believe, to an
appointment in the Civil Service, by the exertions of one of his
father’s friends. The result of these two desirable family events, the
provision for life of two of its members, though the very best things
that could have happened, and much rejoiced over in the family, brought
with them an appalling prospect for the father and mother when they met
in private conclave, to consider how the preliminaries were to be
accomplished. Where were Willie’s outfit and Marion’s plenishing to come
from? Certainly not out of the straightened stipend of the Kirk of St.
Leonard, in the city of St. Rule. Many anxious consultations had ended
in this, that money must be borrowed in order to make the good fortune
of the children available--that is to say, that the parents must put
themselves under a heavy yoke for the greater part of their remaining
life, in order that the son and the daughter might make a fair and equal
start with their compeers. It is, let us thank heaven, as common as the
day that such sacrifices should be made, so common that there is no
merit in them, nor do the performers in the majority of cases think of
them at all except as simple necessities, the most everyday duties of
life. It was thus that they appeared to the Buchanans. They had both
that fear and horror of debt which is, or was, the accompaniment of a
limited and unelastic income with most reasonable people. They dreaded
it and hated it with a true instinct; it gave them a sense of shame,
however private it was, and that it should be betrayed to the world that
they were _in debt_ was a thing horrible to them. Nevertheless, nothing
remained for them but to incur this dreadful reproof. They would have to
pay it off slowly year by year; perhaps the whole of their remaining
lives would be overshadowed by this, and all their little indulgences,
so few, so innocent, would have to be given up or curtailed. The
prospect was as dreadful to them--nay, more dreadful--than ruin and
bankruptcy are to many nowadays. The fashion in these respects has very
much changed. It is perhaps the result of the many misfortunes in the
landed classes, the collapse of agriculture, the fall of rents; but
certainly in our days the confession of poverty is no longer a shame; it
is rather the fashion; and debts sit lightly on many shoulders. The
reluctance to incur them, the idea of discredit involved in them is
almost a thing extinguished and gone.

When Mr. Buchanan set out one black morning on the dreadful enterprise
of borrowing money, his heart was very sore, and his countenance
clouded. He was a man of a smiling countenance on ordinary occasions. He
looked now as if disgrace had overtaken him, and nothing but despair was
before him. It was not that he had an evil opinion of human nature. He
had, perhaps, notwithstanding what it is now the fashion to call his
Calvinistic creed, almost too good an opinion of human nature. It has
pleased the literary class in all times, to stigmatise the Calvinistic
creed as the origin of all evil. I, for one, am bound to say that I have
not found it to be so, perhaps because dogmatical tenets hold, after
all, but a small place in human hearts, and that the milk of human
kindness flows independent of all the formal rules of theology. Mr.
Buchanan was no doubt a Calvinist, and set his hand unhesitatingly to
all the standards. But he was a man who was for ever finding out the
image of God in his fellow men, and cursing was neither on his lips nor
in his heart. He did not religiously doubt his fellow creature or
condemn him. The tremour, the almost despair, the confusion of face with
which he set out to borrow money was not because of any dark judgment on
other men. It was the growth of that true sense of honour, exaggerated
till it became almost a defect, which his Scotch traditions and his
narrow means combined to foster in him. An honourable rich man may
borrow without scruple, for there is no reason in his mind why he should
not pay. But to an honourable poor man it is the thing most dreadful in
the world, for he knows all the difficulties, the almost impossibility
of paying, the chance of being exposed to the world in his inmost
concerns, the horror of ruin and a roup, the chance of injuring another
man, and dying under the shame of indebtedness, all these miseries were
in Mr. Buchanan’s mind when he went out on his terrible mission. He
would rather have marched through a shower of bullets, or risked his
life in any other way.

He went to old Mr. Anderson, who had been the head of the bank, and who
was still believed to be the highest authority in any kind of financial
matter. He had retired from the bank, and from all active business
several years before. He was an elder of the church; and from the
beginning of Mr. Buchanan’s incumbency had been one of his greatest
admirers and friends. He was, besides all this, a wealthy old man, and
had no children nor any near relative to come after him. It was not,
however, with any thought of the latter circumstance, or indeed
expectation of actual help from himself that the minister sought this
old gentleman. He thought of the bank, which, according to Scottish
methods, gives advantages to struggling people, and intended only to ask
Mr. Anderson’s advice as to what should be done, perhaps if emboldened
by his manner to ask him to be his surety, though the thought of making
such a request to any man bathed the minister in a cold dew of mental
anguish. Had he been asked by any other poor man what reception such an
application would have received from Mr. Anderson, he would have bidden
that other take courage.

“He is the kindest man in the world,” he would have said. But when it
came to be his own case the minister’s heart sank within him. He could
not have been more miserable had his old friend, instead of being the
kindest, been the most cold-hearted man in the world.

There is, perhaps, no more wonderful sensation in life, than that
complete and extraordinary relief which seems to fill the heart with a
sudden flood of undreamed of ease and lightness, when a hand is held out
to us all at once in our trouble, and the help which we have not
believed possible, comes. Mr. Buchanan could not believe his ears when
the old banker’s first words fell upon him.

“Possible! oh, yes, more than possible; how could you doubt it?” he
said. The poor man felt himself float off those poor feet that had
plodded along the street so heavily, into an atmosphere of ease, of
peace, of consolation unspeakable. The thing could be done. Instead of
bringing a cold shade over his friend’s face, it brought a light of
kindness, even of pleasure. Yes, of pleasure, pleasure in being trusted,
in being the first to whom recourse was made, in being able to give at
once relief. It was so great a gleam of that sunshine which sometimes
comes out of a human face, brighter than the very sun in the firmament,
that poor Buchanan was dazzled, and for the moment made to think better
even of himself as calling forth such friendship and kindness. A glow
came into his heart, not only of gratitude but of approval. To see a man
do what in one circumstance is the highest and noblest thing to do, to
feel him exceed all our expectations, and play the part almost of a
beneficent God to misfortune, what more delightful spectacle is there,
even if it had nothing to do with ourselves. Mr. Buchanan poured forth
all his soul to his old friend, who understood everything at half a
word, and only hesitated to think which would be the best way of
fulfilling his wishes. It was by old Anderson’s advice at last that the
idea of the bank was abandoned. He decided that it would be better to
lend the money to the minister himself.

“We will have no fixed times or seasons,” he said. “You shall pay me
just as you can, as you are able to put by a little, and we’ll have no
signing of papers. You and me can trust each other; if I die before you,
as naturally I will, you’ll make it up to my heirs. If you, which God
forbid, should die before me, there will be no use of paper to trouble
your wife. It’s just between you and me, nobody has any business to make
or mell in the matter. I have no fine laddie to put out in the world,
the more’s the pity; and you have, and a bonnie lassie too, I wish you
joy of them both. We’ll just say nothing about it, my dear sir, just a
shake of the hand, and that’s all there’s needed between you and me.”

“But, Mr. Anderson, how can I accept this? You must let me give you an
acknowledgment. And then the interest----”

“Toots,” said the old man, “interest! what’s fifteen pounds to me? I
hope I can live and enjoy myself without your fifteen pounds. Nonsense,
minister! are you too proud to accept a kindly service, most kindly
offered and from the heart, from an old man, that you have done both
good and pleasure to many a day?”

“Oh, proud, no, not proud,” cried Buchanan, “unless it were proud of
you, old friend, that have the heart to do such a blessed thing.”

“Hoot,” said the old man, “it’s nothing but filthy siller, as your good
wife says.”

This had been the bargain, and it was a bargain which probably gave
more pleasure to the lender than to the borrower. It redoubled the old
gentleman’s interest in the family, and indeed made him take a personal
share in their concerns, which pricked the parents a little, as if he
felt a certain right to know all about Willie’s outfit and Marion’s
plenishing. He gave his advice about the boy’s boxes, and his gun, and
kindly criticised his clothes, and warned them not to pay too much for
boots and shoes, and other outside articles, pressing certain makers
upon them with almost too warm a recommendation. And he liked to see
Marion’s sheets and her napery, and thought the damask tablecloths
almost too fine for a country manse, where, except on a presbytery
meeting or the Monday’s dinner after a sacramental occasion, there would
be no means of showing them. But all this was very harmless, though it
sometimes fretted the recipients of his bounty, who could not explain to
their children the sudden access of interest on the part of old Anderson
in all their concerns.

And now to think, while the first year had not more than passed, when
William’s outfit had just been paid off to the utmost farthing, and
Marion’s bill for her napery and her stock of personal linen, that the
old man should die! I judge from Mr. Anderson’s reference to fifteen
pounds (five per cent. being the usual interest in those days, though I
am told it is much less now), that the sum that Mr. Buchanan had
borrowed was three hundred pounds, for I presume he had certain urgent
bills to provide for as well as Willie and May. Fifty pounds was still
in the bank, which was a reserve fund for Marion’s gowns and her wedding
expenses, etc. And to think that just at that moment, when as yet there
had not been time to lay up a penny towards the repayment of the loan,
that this whole house of cards, and their comfort and content in the
smoothing away of their difficulties should, in a moment, topple about
their ears! There seemed even some reason for the tone of exasperation
which came into Mrs. Buchanan’s voice in spite of herself. Had he done
it on purpose it could scarcely have been worse. And indeed it looked as
if it had been done on purpose to drop them into deeper and deeper mire.

Mr. Buchanan fought a battle with himself, of which no one had the
faintest idea, when his wife left him that afternoon. She indeed never
had the faintest idea of it, nor would any one have known had it not
been for the chance that shut up those two children in the turret-room.
They did not understand what they had heard, but neither did they forget
it. Sometimes, the one would say to the other:

“Do you remember that afternoon when we were shut up in the turret and
nobody knew?” When such a thing had happened before, they had laughed;
but at this they never laughed, though they could not, till many years
had passed, have told why. The boy might have forgotten, for he had a
great many things to think of as the toils of education gathered round
him and bound him faster and faster; but the girl, perhaps because she
had not so much to do, there being no such strain of education in those
days for female creatures, never forgot. She accompanied her father
unconsciously in his future, during many a weary day, and pitied him
when there was no one else to pity.

In the meantime, as the children saw, Mr. Buchanan went out; he went to
old Mr. Anderson’s house to inquire for him before he did any of his
usual afternoon duties. And after he had completed all these duties, he
went back again, with a restlessness of anxiety which touched all the
people assembled round the dying man, his brother who had been summoned
from Glasgow, and his doctors, one of whom had come from Edinburgh,
while the other was the chief practitioner of St. Rule’s, and his
nurses, of whom there were two, for he had no one of his own, no woman
to take care of him. They thought the minister must be anxious about the
old gentleman’s soul that he should come back a second time in the
course of the afternoon, and Dr. Seaton himself went down-stairs to
reply to his inquiries.

“I am afraid I cannot ask you to come up-stairs, for he is past all
that,” he said, in the half scornful tone which doctors sometimes assume
to a clerical visitor.

“Is he so bad as that?” said the minister.

“I do not say,” said Dr. Seaton, “that our patient may not regain
consciousness. But certainly, for the present, he is quite unable to
join in any religious exercises.”

“I was not thinking of that,” said Mr. Buchanan, almost humbly, “but
only to take the last news home. Mr. Anderson has been a good friend to
me.”

“So he has been to many,” said Dr. Seaton. “Let us hope that will do
more for him where he is going than prayer.”

“Prayer can never be out of place, Dr. Seaton,” said the minister. He
went away from the door angry, but still more cast down, with his head
sunk on his breast as the children had seen him. He had no good news to
take home. He had no comfort to carry with him up to his study, whither
he went without pausing, as he generally did, to say a word to his wife.
He had no word for anybody that evening. All night long he was repeating
to himself the words of the parable, “Sit down quickly, and take thy
bill, and write fifty.” Could God lead men astray?




CHAPTER III.

AFTER THE FUNERAL.


“After the funeral, after the funeral will be time enough,” Mr. Buchanan
said, when his wife urged him to get it over, and to have his interview
with Mr. Morrison, the man of business, in whose hands all Mr.
Anderson’s affairs were. Everybody remarked how ill the minister was
looking during the week which elapsed between the old man’s death and
the large and solemn funeral, which filled the entire length of the High
Street with black-coated men. It was a funeral _d’estime_. There was no
active sorrow among the long train of serious people who conducted his
mortal part to its long home, but there were a great many regrets. His
was a figure as well known as the great old tower of St. Rule, which is
one of the landmarks from the sea, and the chief distinction of the town
on land, and he was a man who had been kind to everybody. He had been
very well off, and he had lived very quietly, spending but little money
on himself, and he had no near relation, only a distant cousin’s son, to
inherit what he had to leave behind him, for the brother, who was the
chief mourner, was a lonely man like himself, and also rich, and without
heirs. This being the case, old Mr. Anderson had used his money as few
rich men do. He had behaved to many people as he had done to Mr.
Buchanan. He had come to the aid of many of the poor people in St. Rule,
the fisher population, and the poor shopkeepers, and many a needy
family; therefore, though there were perhaps few tears shed, there was a
great and universal regret in all the town. Many men put on their
“blacks,” and went East, which was their way of indicating the quaint
burying-ground that encircled the ruins of the old cathedral, who would
not have swelled any other funeral train in the neighbourhood. He was a
loss to everybody; but there were few tears. An old man going home,
nearer eighty than seventy as the people said, a good old man leaving
the world in charity with everybody, and leaving nobody behind whom he
would miss much when he got there. A woman, here and there, at her
doorhead or her stairfoot, flung her apron over her head as she watched
the procession defiling into the wide space before the churchyard, which
was visible from the houses at the fishers’ end of the lower street. But
the tears she shed were for grief’s sake, and not for grief--for there
was no weeping, no desolation, only a kind and universal regret.

Mr. Buchanan was more blanched and pale than ever, as he walked
bareheaded behind the coffin. There was one, everybody said, who had a
feeling heart--and many were glad when the ceremonial--always of so very
simple a kind in the Scotch church, and in those days scarcely anything
at all, a short prayer and no more--was over, with the thought that the
minister being evidently so much out of health and spirits, and feeling
the loss of the kind old elder so deeply, was just in the condition in
which some “get their death,” from the exposure and chill of a funeral.
Several of his friends convoyed him home after all was completed, and
warned Mrs. Buchanan to take very good care of him, to give him some
good, strong, hot toddy, or other restorative, and do all she could to
bring back his colour and his spirit.

“We have all had a great loss,” said Mr. Moncrieff, who was another
leading elder, shaking his head, “but we are not all so sensitive as the
minister.”

Poor Mrs. Buchanan knew much better than they did what made the minister
look so wae. She took all their advices in very good part, and assured
his friends that the minister felt their kindness, and would soon be
himself again. Alas, there was that interview still to come, which she
thought secretly within herself she would have got over had she been the
minister, and not have thus prolonged the agony day after day. There
were a great many things that Mrs. Buchanan would have done, “had she
been the minister,” which did not appear in the same light to him--as
indeed very commonly happens on either side between married people. But
she accepted the fact that she was not the minister, and that he must
act for himself, and meet his difficulties in his own way since he
would not meet them in hers. She did not comfort him with hot and strong
toddy, as the elders recommended; but she did all she knew to make him
comfortable, and to relieve his burdened spirit, pointing out to him
that Mr. Morrison, the man of business, was also a considerate man, and
acquainted with the difficulties of setting out a family in the world,
and impressing upon him the fact that it was a good thing, on the whole,
that Willie’s outfit had been paid at once, since Mr. Morrison, who
would be neither better nor worse of it in his own person, would be, no
doubt, on behalf of the heir, who was not of age nor capable of grasping
at the money, a more patient creditor than a shop in Edinburgh, where a
good discount had been given for the immediate payment of the account.

“They would just have worried us into our graves,” Mrs. Buchanan said,
and she added that Willie would probably be able to send home something
to help in the payment before it had to be made. She said so much
indeed, and it was all so reasonable, that poor Buchanan almost broke
down under it, and at last implored her to go away and leave him quiet.

“Oh, Mary, my dear, that is all very just,” he said, “and I admire your
steadfast spirit; but there are things in which I am weaker than you
are, and it is I that have to do it while you stay quiet at home.”

“Let me do it, Claude,” she cried. “I am not feared for Mr. Morrison;
and I could tell him all the circumstances maybe as well----”

Perhaps she thought better, and had been about to say so; but would not
hurt in any way her husband’s delicate feelings. As for Mr. Buchanan, he
raised himself up a little in his chair, and a slight flush came to his
pale cheek.

“No,” he said, “I will not forsake my post as the head of the house.
These are the kind of things that the man has to do, and not the woman.
I hope I am not come to that, that I could shelter myself from a painful
duty behind my wife.”

“Oh, if I had been the minister!” Mrs. Buchanan breathed, with an
impatient sigh, but she said,--

“No, Claude, I know well you would never do that,” and left him to his
thoughts.

She had placed instinctively the large printed Bible, which he always
used, on the little table beside him. He would get strength there if
nowhere else. The day was gray and not warm, though it was the beginning
of June, and a fire had been lighted in the study to serve the purpose,
morally and physically, of the hot toddy recommended by the elder. Poor
Mr. Buchanan spread his hands out to it when he was left alone. He was
very much broken down. The tears came to his eyes. He felt forlorn,
helpless, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth to support him. It
was a question of money, and was not that a wretched thing to ask God
for? The filthy siller, the root of so much evil. He could have
demonstrated to you very powerfully, had you gone to ask his advice in
such an emergency, that it was not money, but the love of money that
was the root of all evil; but in his heart, in this dreadful emergency,
he cursed it. Oh, if it were not for money how much the problems of this
life would be lessened? He forgot, for the moment, that in that case the
difficulties of getting Willie his outfit would have been very much
increased. And, instinctively, as his wife had placed it there, he put
out his hand for his Bible. Is it possible that there should be poison
to be sucked out of that which should be sweeter than honey and the
honeycomb to the devout reader? The book opened of itself at that
parable over which he had been pondering. Oh, Mr. Buchanan was quite
capable of explaining to you what that parable meant. No one knew better
than he for what it was that the Lord commended the unjust steward. He
had no excuse of ignorance, or of that bewilderment with which a simple
mind might approach so difficult a passage. He knew all the readings,
all the commentaries; he could have made it as clear as daylight to you,
either in the pulpit or out of the pulpit. And he knew, none better,
that in such a case the letter killeth; but the man was in a terrible
strait, and his whole soul was bent on getting out of it. He did not
want to face it, to make the best of it, to calculate that Willie might,
by that time, be able to help, or even that Mr. Morrison was a
considerate man, and the heir a minor, and that he would be allowed
time, which was his wife’s simple conception of the situation. He
wanted to get out of it. His spirit shrank from the bondage that would
be involved in getting that money together, in the scraping and sparing
for years, the burden it would be on his shoulders. A thirst, a fury had
seized him to get rid of it, to shake it off. And even the fact that the
Bible opened at that passage had its effect on his disturbed mind. He
would have reproved you seriously for trying any _sortes_ with the
Bible, but in his trouble he did this, as well as so many other things
of which he disapproved. He knew very well also that he had opened at
that passage very often during the past week, and that it was simple
enough that it should open in the same place now. Yet, with instinctive
superstition he took the book, holding it in his two hands to open as it
would, and his heart gave a jump when he found this strike his eyes:
“Sit down quickly, and take thy bill, and write fourscore.” These were
the words, like a command out of heaven. What if that was not the inner
meaning, the sense of the parable? Yet, these were the words, and the
Bible opened upon them, and they were the first words that caught his
eye.

Suppose that this temptation had come to another man, how clearly would
its fallacy have been exposed, what daylight would have been thrown upon
the text by the minister? He would have almost laughed at, even while he
condemned and pitied, the futile state of mind which could be so led
astray. And he knew all that, but it had no effect upon the workings of
his own distracted mind at that dreadful moment. He went over it again
and again, reading it over aloud as he had done on the first occasion
when it had flashed upon his troubled soul, and seemed to give him an
occult and personal message. And thus he remained all the rest of the
afternoon, with his knees close to the bars of the grate, and his white,
thin hands blanched with cold. Surely he had caught a chill, as so many
people do in the cold and depression of a funeral. He rather caught at
that idea. It might kill, which would be no great harm; or, at least, if
he had caught a bad cold, it would, at least, postpone the interview he
dreaded--the interview in which he would sit down and take his bill and
write fifty--or perhaps fourscore.

“I think I have caught a chill,” he said, in more cheerful tones, when
he went down-stairs to supper.

But the minister here had reckoned without his wife. It might not be in
her province to see Mr. Morrison and arrange with him about the debt,
but it certainly was quite in her province to take immediate steps in
respect to a bad cold. He had his feet in hot water and mustard before
he knew where he was--he was put to bed, and warmly wrapped up, and the
hot toddy at last administered, spite of all remonstrances, in a potent
measure.

“Mr. Moncrieff said I was to make you take it as soon as you came in;
but I just gave in to your humours, knowing how little biddable you
were--but not now: you must just go to your bed like a lamb, and do
what I bid you now.”

And there could not be a word said now as to what was or was not the
woman’s sphere. If anything was her business at all, decidedly it was
her business to keep her family in health. Mr. Buchanan did what he was
bid, a little comforted by feeling himself under lawful subjection,
which is an excellent thing for every soul, and warm through and through
in body, and hushed in nerves, slept well, and found himself in the
morning without any chill or sign of a chill, quite well. There was thus
no further excuse for him, and he perceived at once in his wife’s eyes,
as she brought him his breakfast before he got up--an indulgence that
always followed the hot-foot bath and the hot drink over-night--that no
further mercy was to be accorded to him, and that she would not
understand or agree to any further postponement of so indispensable a
duty. When she took away his tray--for these were duties she performed
herself, the servants being few, and the work of the house great--she
said, patting him upon the shoulder,--

“Now, Claude, my dear, the best time to see Mr. Morrison is about eleven
o’clock; that will leave you plenty of time to get up and get yourself
dressed. It is a fine morning, and your cold is better. If you like, I
will send over to the office to say you are coming.”

“There is no necessity for that,” Mr. Buchanan said.

“No, no necessity, but it might be safer; so that he might wait for you
if he should have any temptation otherwise, or business to take him
out.”

“If he has business, he will see to it whether he knows I am coming or
not,” said the minister; “and if I do not see him this morning, I can
see him another day.”

“Oh, Claude, my man, don’t put off another day! It will have to be done
sooner or later. Do not keep it hanging over you day after day.”

“Well, then,” said the minister, with some crossness of tone, “for
goodsake, if you are so urgent, go away and let me get up. How can I get
myself dressed with you there?”

Mrs. Buchanan disappeared without another word. And he had no further
excuse for putting off. Even the wife of his bosom, though she knew it
would be a bad moment, did not know half how bad it was. Mrs. Buchanan
had made up her mind to it, however it might turn out. She had already
planned out how the expenses were to be lessened after Marion’s
marriage. Elsie was the only other girl, and she was but fourteen.
Several years must elapse before it was necessary to bring her out, and
give her that share in the pleasures and advantages of youthful life
which was her due. And between that time and this there was no privation
that the good mother was not ready to undertake in order to pay off this
debt. You would have thought to see their frugal living that to spare
much from it was impossible, but the minister’s wife had already made
her plans, and her cheerfulness was restored. It might take them a long
time to do it, but Mr. Anderson’s heir was only seventeen, and had still
a good many years of his minority to run. And Willie by that time would
have a good salary, and would be able to help. It would be a case of
sparing every sixpence, but still that was a thing that could be done.
What a good thing that education was so cheap in St. Rule. John, who was
going to be a clergyman, like his father, would have all his training at
home in the most economical way. And Alick was to go to Mr. Beaton’s,
the writer, as soon as he had completed his schooling, without any
premium. They might both be able to help if the worst came to the worst,
but between her own economies and Willie’s help, who had the best right
to help, seeing it was greatly on his account the money had been
borrowed, she had little doubt that in four years they would manage to
repay, at least, the greater part of the three hundred pounds.

This was all straightforward, but the minister’s part was not so
straightforward. He read over the parable again before he went
down-stairs, and made up his mind finally to take his bill and write
fifty. After all, was not this what Mr. Anderson would have desired? He
was an old man and took no particular interest in his heir. He would
not, of course, have left his money away from him, or injured him in any
way. He quite recognised his claim through his father, a cousin whom
the old man had never known, but who still was his next of kin; yet, on
the other hand, if it came to that, Mr. Anderson was more fully
interested in the young Buchanans. He had seen them all grow up, and
Willie and Marion had been a great deal more to him than young Frank
Mowbray. And Mr. Buchanan was his friend. The minister was persuaded
that old Mr. Anderson would far rather have pardoned him the debt than
extorted it from him almost at the risk of his life. “Take thy bill, and
sit down quickly, and write fifty.” The words of the parable seemed more
and more reasonable, more and more adapted to his own case as he read
them over and over. What he was about to do seemed to him, at the end,
the very right thing to do and the command of heaven.

Mrs. Buchanan met him in the hall with his hat brushed to a nicety, and
his gloves laid out upon the table. She came up to him with a brush in
her hand, to see if there was the faintest speck upon his broadcloth.
She was his valet, and a most cheerful and assiduous one, loving the
office. She liked to turn him out spotless, and to watch him sally forth
with delight and pride in his appearance, which never failed her. It was
one of the ways of the women of her day, and a pretty one, I think. She
was pleased with his looks, as he stood in the hall ready to go out.

“But why are you so pale?” she said; “it is not an affair of life and
death. I hope you are not feared for Mr. Morrison.”

“I am feared for everybody,” said Mr. Buchanan, “that has to do with
money.”

“Oh, Claude,” she said, “I just hate the filthy lucre myself, but it’s
not a question of life or death. The bairns are all well and doing well,
and will pay it off before Frank Mowbray comes of age. I promise you we
will. I have it all in my eye. Do not, my dear man, do not look so cast
down.”

He shook his head but made no answer. He was not thinking of what she
said. He was saying over to himself, “Sit down quickly, and take thy
bill, and write fourscore.”




CHAPTER IV.

TAKE NOW THY BILL AND WRITE FIFTY.


Mr. Buchanan went first to the bank, and drew out the money--the residue
of the loan which had been placed there for Marion’s final equipment. In
those days people did not use cheques, as we do now for every purpose.
When a man paid a debt, it seemed far more sure and satisfactory to pay
it in actual money. To all, except to business men, the other seemed a
doubtful, unsatisfactory way, and those who received a cheque made great
haste to cash it as if in the meantime the bank might break, or the
debtor’s balance turn the wrong way. To pay with a simple bit of paper
did not seem like paying at all. Mr. Buchanan received his fifty pounds
in crisp new notes, pretty notes printed in blue and red. They were like
a little parcel of pictures, all clean and new. He looked at them with a
forlorn admiration: it was seldom he saw such a thing as a ten-pound
note: and here were five of them. Ah, if that had been all! “Sit down
quickly and write fourscore.” This variant troubled his mind a little in
his confusion! But that was measures of wheat, he said to himself, with
a distracted sense that this might somehow make a difference. And then
he walked up the High Street in the morning sunshine to Mr. Morrison’s
office; and sure enough the writer was there and very glad to see him,
so that no chance of escape remained.

“I have come to speak to you,” the minister said, clearing his throat,
and beginning with so much difficulty--he that would read you off an
hour’s sermon without even pausing for a word!--“about business,
Morrison--about a little--monetary transaction there was--between me and
our late--most worthy friend----”

“Anderson?” said the writer. And then he added with a half laugh,
tempered by the fact that “the death” had been so recent. “Half St.
Rule’s, I’m thinking, have had monetary transactions with our late
friend----”

“He would not permit any memorandum of it to be made,” said the
minister.

“No: that was just like him: only his estate will be the worse for it;
for we can’t expect everybody to be so frank in acknowledging as you.”

Mr. Buchanan turned the colour of clay, his heart seemed to stop
beating. He said: “I need not tell you--for you have a family of your
own--that now and then there are expenses that arise.”

The lawyer waved his hand with the freemasonry of common experience.
“Well I know that,” he said; “it is no joke nowadays putting the laddies
out in the world. You will find out that with Willie--but what a fine
opening for him! I wish we were all as well off.”

“Yes, it is a good opening”--if it had not been that all the joy and the
pride in it was quenched by this!--“and that is precisely what I mean,
Morrison. It was just Willie--ordinary expenses, of course, my wife and
I calculate upon and do our best for--but an outfit----”

“My dear Mr. Buchanan,” said the writer, “what need to explain the
matter to me. You don’t imagine I got my own lads all set out, as thank
the Lord they are, without feeling the pinch--ay, and incurring
responsibilities that one would wish to keep clear of in the ordinary
way of life.”

“Yes,” said the minister, “that was how it was; but fortunately the
money was not expended. And I bring you back the fifty pounds--intact.”

Oh, the little, the very little lie it was! If he had said it was not
all expended, if he had kept out that little article _the--the_ fifty
pounds implying there was no more. Anyhow, it was very different from
taking a bill and writing fourscore. But the criminal he felt, with the
cold drops coming out on his forehead, and his hand trembling as he held
out--as if that were all! these fifty pounds.

“Now bide a wee, bide a wee,” said the writer; “wait till I tell
you--Mr. Anderson foresaw something of this kind. Put back your money
into your pocket. He foresaw it, the friendly old body that he was; wait
till I get you the copy of the will that I have here.” Morrison got up
and went to one of the boxes, inscribed with the name of Anderson, that
stood on the shelves behind him, and after some searching drew out a
paper, the heading of which he ran over _sotto voce_, while Mr. Buchanan
sat rigid like an automaton, still holding out in his hand the bundle of
notes.

“Here it is,” said Mr. Morrison, coming back with his finger upon the
place. “You’ll see the case is provided for. ‘And it is hereby provided
that in the case of any persons indebted to me in sums less than a
hundred pounds, which are unpaid at the time of my death, that such
debts are hereby cancelled and wiped out as if they had never existed,
and my executors and administrators are hereby authorised to refuse any
payments tendered of the same, and to desire the aforesaid debtors to
consider these sums as legacies from me, the testator.’

“Well, sir,” said the writer, tilting up his spectacles on his forehead,
“I hope that’s plain enough: I hope you are satisfied with that.”

For a moment the minister sat and gasped, still stretching out the
notes, looking like a man at the point of death. He could not find his
voice, and drops of moisture stood out upon his forehead, which was the
colour of ashes. The lawyer was alarmed; he hurried to a cupboard in the
corner and brought out a bottle and a glass. “Man,” he said, “Buchanan!
this is too much feeling; minister, it is just out of the question to
take a matter of business like this. Take it down! it’s just sherry
wine, it will do you no harm. Bless me, bless me, you must not take it
like this--a mere nothing, a fifty pounds! Not one of us but would have
been glad to accommodate you--you must not take it like that!”

“Sums under a hundred pounds!” Mr. Buchanan said, but he stammered so
with his colourless lips that the worthy Morrison did not make out very
clearly what he said, and, in truth, had no desire to make it out. He
was half vexed, half disturbed, by the minister’s extreme emotion. He
felt it as a tacit indictment against himself.

“One would think we were a set of sticks,” he said, “to let our minister
be troubled in his mind like this over a fifty pound! Why, sir, any one
of your session--barring the two fishers and the farmer---- Take it off,
take it off, to bring back the blood--it’s nothing but sherry wine.”

Mr. Buchanan came to himself a little when he had swallowed the sherry
wine. He had a ringing in his ears, as if he had recovered from a faint,
and the walls were swimming round him, with all the names on the boxes
whirling and rushing like a cloud of witnesses. As soon as he was able
to articulate, however, he renewed his offer of the notes.

“Take this,” he said, “take this; it will always be something,” trying
to thrust them into the writer’s hand.

“Hoot,” said Morrison; “my dear sir, will you not understand? You’re
freely assoilised and leeberated from every responsibility; put back
your notes into your own pouch. You would not refuse the kind body’s
little legacy, and cause him sorrow in his grave, which, you will tell
me, is not possible; but, if it were possible, would vex him sore, and
that we well know. I would not take advantage and vex him because he was
no longer capable of feeling it. No, no; just put them back into your
pouch, Buchanan. They are no use to him, and maybe they will be of use
to you.”

This was how the interview ended. The minister still attempted to
deposit his notes upon Mr. Morrison’s table, but the lawyer put them
back again, doing everything he could to restore his friend and pastor
to the calm of ordinary life. Finally, Morrison declaring that he had
somebody to see “up the town,” and would walk with Mr. Buchanan as far
as their ways lay together, managed to conduct him to his own door. He
noted, with some surprise, that Mrs. Buchanan opened it herself, with a
face which, if not so pale as her husband’s, was agitated too, and full
of anxiety.

“The minister is not just so well as I would like to see him,” he said.
“I would keep him quiet for a day or two, and let him fash himself for
nothing,” he added--“for nothing!” with emphasis.

The good man was much disturbed in his mind by this exhibition of
feeling.

“Oh, why were ‘writers’ made so coarse, and parsons made so fine?” He
would have said these words to himself had he known them, which, perhaps
he did, for Cowper was a very favourite poet in those days. Certainly
that was the sentiment in his mind. To waste all that feeling upon an
affair of fifty pounds! The wife had more sense, Mr. Morrison said to
himself, though she was frightened too, but that was probably for _his_
sake. He went off about his own business, and I will not say that he did
not mention the matter to one or two of his brother elders.

“You or me might be ruined and make less fuss about it,” he said.

“When a man had just a yearly stipend and gets behindhand, it’s wae work
making it up,” said the other.

“We must just try and see if we cannot get him a bit augmentation,” said
Morrison, “or get up a testimonial or something.”

“You see, a testimonial could scarcely take the form of money, and what
comfort would he get out of another silver teapot?” observed the second
elder, prudent though kind.

It was not a much less ordeal for the minister to meet his wife than it
had been to meet the lawyer. She knew nothing about his purpose of
taking his bill and writing fourscore, and he dared not let her suspect
that he had spoken of the “fifty,” as if that fifty were his whole debt,
or that the debts that were forgiven were debts under a hundred pounds.
He said to himself afterwards that it was more Morrison’s fault than
his, that the lawyer would not let him explain that he had said “this
would be something,” meaning that this would be an instalment. All these
things he said to himself as he sat alone for the greater part of the
day, “reading a book,” which was supposed to be an amusing book, and
recovering from that great strain; but he did not venture to tell his
wife of these particulars. What he said to Mrs. Buchanan was that Mr.
Anderson had assoilised his debtors in general, and that each man was to
consider the loan as a legacy, and that Morrison said he was not
entitled to take a penny, and would not. His wife took this news with a
burst of grateful tears and blessings on the name of the good man who
had done this kind thing. “The merciful man is merciful, and lendeth and
asketh not again,” she said. But after this outburst of emotion and
relief, her good sense could not but object.

“It is an awfu’ deliverance for us, Claude; oh, my man! I had it all
planned out, how we were to do it, but it would have been a heavy, heavy
burden. God bless him for the merciful thought! But,” she added, “I am
not clear in my mind that it is just to Frank. To be sure, it was all in
his own hand to do what he liked with his own, and the laddie is but a
far-off heir; but still he has been trained for that, and to expect a
good fortune: and if there are many as we are, Claude----”

“It is not our affair, Mary; he had full command of his faculties, and
it was his own to do what he liked with it,” her husband said, though
with faltering lips.

“Well, that is true,” she replied, but doubtfully: “I am not denying a
man’s right to do what he likes with his own. And if it had been only
you, his minister, that perhaps he owed much more to, even his own soul,
as Paul says----”

“No, no; not so much as that.”

“But if there are many,” Mrs. Buchanan went on, shaking her head, “it
might be a sore heritage for Frank. Claude, if ever in the days to come
we can do anything for that lad, mind I would think it was our duty to
prefer him before our very own: for this is a great deliverance, and
wrought, as you may say, at his cost but without his consent----”

“My dear, a sum like that,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a faint smile and a
heavy heart, “is not a fortune.”

“That is true, but it is a great deliverance to us; and if ever we can
be helpful to him, in siller or in kindness, in health or in
sickness----”

There came a rush of tenderness to Mrs. Buchanan’s heart, with the tears
that filled her eyes, and she could say no more.

“Yes, yes,” he said a little fretfully, “yes, yes; though he had no
merit in it, and not any such great loss either that I can see.”

She judged it wise to leave the minister to himself after this; for,
though nerves were not much thought of in those days, she saw that
irritability and a tendency to undervalue the great deliverance, which
filled her with such overflowing gratitude, had taken the place of more
amiable feelings in his mind. It was better to leave him quiet, to
recover from his ill mood, and from the consequence of being overdone.
“I have so many things to take off my mind,” she said to herself.
Perhaps she thought the minister’s cares--though most people would have
thought them so much more important--nothing to hers, which were so
many, often so petty, so absorbing, leaving her no time to brood. And
had she not provided him with the new _Waverley_, which most people
thought the best anodyne for care--that is, among the comforts of this
world, not, of course, to count among higher things?

But Mr. Buchanan did not, I fear, find himself capable of having his
mind taken off, even by the new _Waverley_. He was spared, he said to
himself, from actual guilt.--Was he spared from actual guilt? He had not
required to take his bill and write fourscore. But for that one little
word the--_the_ fifty (how small a matter!) he had said nothing: and
that was not saying anything, it was merely an inference, which his next
words might have made an end of; only, that Morrison would not hear my
next words. If there was a fault in the matter, it was Morrison’s fault.
He repeated this to himself fretfully, eagerly, impatient with the man
who had saved him from committing himself. Never, never would he commit
any business to Morrison’s hands! Such a man was not to be trusted; he
cared nothing for his client’s interest. All that he was intent upon was
to relieve the debtor, to joke about the “friendly body,” who was so
kind, even in his grave. “A sore saint for his heir,” Morrison had again
said, as was said of the old king--instead of standing for the heir’s
rights as he ought to have done, and hearing what a man had to say!

And this then was the end of it all--salvation--from all the
consequences, even from the very crime itself which he had planned and
intended, but had not required to carry out. He had saved everything,
his conscience, and his fifty pounds, not to speak of all the rest, the
sum which his wife had planned by so many daily sacrifices to make up.
He had not, after all, been like the unjust steward. He had said
nothing, had not even written the fourscore; he had been saved
altogether, even the fifty he had offered. Was this the Lord’s doing,
and marvellous in our eyes--or what was it? Mr. Buchanan put away the
_Waverley_, which was given him to comfort him, and took up the Bible
with the large print. It opened again at that parable; and then, with a
great start of pain, he recognised his fate, and knew that henceforward
it would open always at that parable, now that the parable was no longer
a suggestion of deliverance to him but a dreadful reminder. A convulsive
movement went through all his limbs at that thought. Mr. Buchanan had
often preached of hell, it was the fashion of his time; but he had
never known what he himself meant. Now he knew: this was hell where
their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. It lay here, not
in a vague, unrealised region of fire and brimstone; but here, within
the leaves of the New Testament, which was his chief occupation,
inspiring all the work of his life. This was hell--to see the book open,
the book of life, always at that one place. He had not to wait for it;
the worm had begun to gnaw and the fire to burn.




CHAPTER V.

MARION AND ELSIE.


It was not till a long time after this that the Rev. Matthew Sinclair,
who was the betrothed of Marion Buchanan, got a kirk, and the faithful
pair were able to marry. The snowy heaps of Marion’s linen, which her
mother now spoke of, in the bosom of the family, as in reality a present
from old Mr. Anderson, seeing that it was paid for by a loan from him,
generously converted into a legacy when he died--had lain spread out,
with sprigs of lavender between the folds, in the big press at the head
of the nursery stairs for nearly two years, during which time Elsie grew
into almost a young woman. Rodie, too, became an ever more and more
“stirring” school-boy, less disposed to sit and read from the same book
with his sister, and more occupied with outdoor games and the
“clanjamfry,” as his mother said, of school-fellows and playfellows who
were always hanging about waiting for him, or coming with mysterious
knockings to the door to ask him out. Some of them, Mrs. Buchanan
thought, were not quite proper comrades for the minister’s son, but the
framework of juvenile society in St. Rule’s was extremely democratic,
all the classes going to school together according to Scotch
precedent--the laird’s son and the shoemaker’s on the same bench, and
Rodie Buchanan cheek by jowl with the fisher laddies from east the town.
In the play hours, it was true, things equalised themselves a little;
but there was certainly one fisher laddie his prompter and helper in
school, who kept a great ascendancy over Rodie, and would lead him away
in long tramps along the sea-shore, when he might have been at football
or “at the gouff” with companions of his own standing, and when Elsie
was pining for his society at home. Elsie felt the partial desertion of
her brother extremely. She missed the long readings together in the
turret and elsewhere, and the long rambles, in which Johnny Wemyss had
become Rodie’s companion, apparently so much more interesting to him
than herself. Johnny Wemyss, it was evident, had a great deal of
knowledge, which Elsie was inclined, in her ignorance, to be thankful
she did not possess; for Rodie would come in with his pockets all full
of clammy and wet things--jelly-fish, which he called by some grand
name--and the queer things that wave about long fingers on the edges of
the pools, and shrink into themselves when you touch them. This was
before the days when sea-anemones became a fashionable pursuit, but
children brought up by the sea had, of course, known and wondered at
these creatures long before science took them up. But to bring them home
was a different matter; filling the school-room with nasty, sticky
things, which, out of their native element, decayed and made bad
smells, and were the despair of the unfortunate maid who had to keep
that room in order, and dared not, except in extremity, throw Rodie’s
hoards away. “It is not Rodie’s fault; it is Johnny Wemyss that just
tells him nonsense stories,” Elsie said. She would have given her little
finger to have gone with him on those rambles, and to have heard all
about those strange living things; but already the invisible bonds that
confine a woman’s movements had begun to cramp Elsie’s free footsteps,
and the presence of Johnny Wemyss made, she was well aware, her own
impossible, though it was just Johnny Wemyss’s “nonsense stories” that
she desired most to hear.

Rodie condescended to accompany her on her Sunday walk when all St.
Rule’s perambulated the links from which they were shut out on
week-days; but that became the only occasion on which she could
calculate on his company, and not even the new _Waverley_, which had
failed to beguile the minister from his urgent trouble, could seduce
Rodie from his many engagements with his fellows to sit with his sister
in the turret, with the book between them as of old.

Elsie, it is true, gradually began to make herself amends for this
desertion by forming new alliances of her own with girls of her own age,
who have always abounded in St. Rule’s; but these did not at all make up
to her, as Johnny Wemyss seemed to make up to Rodie, for the separation
from her natural companion and fellow. These young ladies were
beginning already, as they approached sixteen, to think of balls and
triumphs in a way which was different from the romps of old. The world,
in the shape of young men older than their boyish companions, and with
other intentions, began to open about them. At that time it was nothing
very remarkable that girls should marry very early, a circumstance
which, of itself, made a great change in their ideas, and separated them
more than anything else could have done from their childish
contemporaries of the other sex.

Elsie was in that hot stage of indignation and revolt against
sweethearts, and all talk on the subject, which is generally a phase in
a girl’s development. She was angry at the introduction of this unworthy
subject, and almost furious with the girls who chattered and laughed
about Bobbie this and Willie that--for in St. Rule’s they all knew each
other by their Christian names. She could understand that you should
prefer your own brother’s society to that of any girl, and much wondered
that Rodie should prefer any boy to herself--which was one great
distinction between girls and boys which she discovered with indignation
and shame. “I like Rodie better than anybody, but he likes his Johnny
Wemyss better than me! Ay!” she cried, the indignation gaining upon her,
“and even if Johnny Wemyss were not there, Ralph Beaton or Harry Seaton,
or any laddie--whereas I would give up any lassie for him.”

“That is just the way of men,” said Marion, her eldest sister, who,
being now on the eve of marriage, naturally knew a great deal more than
a girl of sixteen.

“Not with Matthew,” cried Elsie, who, if she had no experience, was not
without observation; “he likes you better than all the men in the
world.”

“Oh, Matthew!” said Marion, with a blush--“that’s different: but when
he’s used to me,” added this discreet young woman--“Matthew, I’ve every
reason to believe, will just be like the rest. He will play his gouff,
though I may be sitting solitary at home--and he will go out to his
dinner and argue among his men, and take his walks with Hugh Playfair,
or whoever turns up. He will say, ‘My dear, I want a long stretch that
would be too far for you,’ as my father says to my mother. She takes it
very well, and is glad he should be enjoying himself, and leaving her at
peace to look after her house and her bairns--but perhaps she was not so
pleased at first: and perhaps I’ll not be pleased either when it comes
to that,” Marion said, reflectively.

Sense was her great characteristic, and she had, in her long engagement,
had much time to turn all these things over in her mind.

“I don’t think it will ever come to that--for he cannot let you be for a
moment,” said Elsie. “I sometimes wish he were a hundred miles away.”

“Ah,” said Marion, “but you know that will not last; and, indeed, it is
better it should not last, for how could you ever get anything done if
your man was draigling after you all the day long? No, no, it is more
manlike that he should keep till his own kind. You may think you would
like to have Rodie at your tail for ever, as when you were little
bairns, and called the twins: but you would not, any more than he
does--- just wait a wee, and you will find that out for yourself: for it
should surely be more so with your brother, who is bound to go away from
you, when it is so with your man.”

“Then I think the disciples were right,” said Elsie, who was very
learned in her Bible, as became a minister’s daughter. “And if the case
of a man be so with his wife it would be better not to marry.”

“Well, it does not seem that folk think so,” said Marion, with a smile,
“or it would not have gone on so long. Will you get me the finest
dinner-napkins, the very finest ones, out of the big napery press at the
head of the stairs?--for I am not sure that they are all marked
properly, and time is running on, and everything must be finished.”

Marion was very great at marking, whether in white letters worked in
satin stitch, or in small red ones done with engrained cotton, or
finally with the little bottle of marking-ink and the hot iron with
which Elsie still loved to help her--but in the case of the finest
dinner-napkins, I need not say that marking-ink was not good enough,
and the finest satin stitch was employed.

It need not be added that notwithstanding the reflection above stated
Elsie felt a great interest in the revelations of the sister thus
standing on the brink of a new life, and so soberly contemplating the
prospect before her, not with any idea, as it seemed, of ideal
blessedness, nor of having everything her own way.

Marion had been set thinking by the girl’s questions, and was ready to
go on talking when Elsie returned with the pile of dinner-napkins in her
arms, as high as her chin, which reposed upon them. It had been Mrs.
Buchanan’s pride that no minister’s wife in the whole presbytery should
have more exquisite linen, and both mother and daughter were gratified
to think that the table would be set out for the dinner on the Monday
after the Sacrament as few such tables were. The damask was very fine,
of a beautiful small pattern, and shone like white satin. Elsie had a
little talent for drawing, and she it was who drew the letters which
Marion worked; so that this duty afforded occupation for both.

“It is a little strange, I do not deny,” said Marion, “that though they
make such a work about us when they are courting and so forth, the men
are more content in the society of their own kind than we are: a party
that is all lassies, you weary of it.”

“Not me!” cried Elsie, all aflame.

“Wait till you are a little older,” said the sage Marion; “it’s even
common to say; though I doubt if it is true, that after dinner we weary
for them, if they are too long of coming up-stairs. But they never weary
for us: and a man’s party is always the most joyful of all, and they
like it above everything, and never wish that we were there. I must say
I do not understand how this is, considering how dependent they are upon
us for their comfort, and how helpless they are, more helpless than a
woman ever is. Now, what my father would do if mamma did not see that he
was brushed and trimmed up and kept in order, I cannot tell: and no
doubt it will be just the same with Matthew. He will come to me crying,
‘May, there are no handkerchiefs in my drawer,’ or, ‘May, the button’s
off my glove,’ as if it was my great fault--and when he is going off to
preach anywhere, he will forget his very sermon if I don’t take care
it’s put into his portmanteau.

“Well, my dear! I am no better than my mother, and that is what she has
to do: but when they get a few men together, and can gossip away, and
talk, and take their glass of toddy, then is the time when they really
enjoy themselves. And so it is with the laddies, or even more--you wish
for them, but they don’t wish for you.”

“I wish for none of them, except Rodie, my own brother, that has always
been my companion,” Elsie said.

“And you would think he would wish for you? but no: his Johnny Wemyss
and his Alick Beaton, or was it Ralph?--that’s what he likes far best,
except, of course, when he falls in love, and then he will run after the
lassie wherever she goes, till she takes him, and it’s all settled, and
then he just goes back to his men, as before. It is a very mysterious
thing to me,” said Marion, “but I have thought a great deal about it,
and it’s quite true. I do not like myself,” she added, with a pause of
reflection, “men that are always at a woman’s tails. If you never could
turn round or do a thing without your man after you, it would be a great
bother. I am sure mamma feels that; she is always easy in her mind when
my father is set down very busy to his sermon, or when somebody comes in
to talk to him, or he goes out to his dinner with Professor Grant. Then
she is sure he will be happy, and it leaves her free. I will just feel
the same about Matthew, and he about me. He would not be without me for
all the world, but he will never want me when he gets with his own
cronies. Now, we always seem to have a kind of want of them.”

“You have just said that mamma was quite happy when she got papa off her
hands,” Elsie said.

“That is a different thing; but do you think for a moment that she would
enjoy herself with a party of women as he does at Professor Grant’s?
That she would not; she is glad to get him off her hands because she is
sure he will enjoy himself, and be no trouble to anybody. But that
would be little pleasure to her, if she were to do the same: and you
yourself, if you had all the Seatons and the Beatons that ever were
born----”

“I want only Rodie, my own brother,” Elsie said, with indignation.

“And he,” said Marion, calmly reflecting, “does not want you; that is
just what I say--and what is so queer a thing.”

“If the case of a man is so with his wife?” said Elsie, oracularly.

“Toots--the man is just very well off,” said Marion. “He gets his wife
to take care of him, and then he just enjoys himself with his own kind.”

“Then I would never marry,” cried Elsie; “not whatever any one might
say.”

“That is very well for you,” said Marion. “You will be the only daughter
when I am away; they will be very well contented if you never marry;
for, to be left without a child in the house, would be hard enough upon
mamma. But even, with all my plenishing ready, and the things marked,
and everything settled--not that I would like to part with Matthew, even
if there was no plenishing--I would rather have him without a tablecloth
than any other man with the finest napery in the world. But I just know
what will happen, and I am quite pleased, and it is of no use going
against human nature. For company, they will always like their own kind
best. But then, on the other hand, women are not so keen about company.
When there’s a family, they are generally very well content to bide at
home, and be thankful when their man enjoys himself without fashing
anybody.”

This is not a doctrine which would, perhaps, be popular with women
nowadays; but, in Marion’s time, it was considered a kind of gospel in
its way.

Elsie was not much interested in the view of man, as husband, put forth
by her sister. Her mind did not go out towards that development of
humanity; but the defection of Rodie, her _own_ brother as she said, was
a more serious matter. Most girls in as large family have an own brother
their natural pair, the one most near to them in age or temperament. It
had once been Willie and Marion, just as it had once been Elsie and
Rodie; but Elsie could not bear the thought that Rodie might become to
her, by his own will, the same as Willie was to Marion--her brother, but
not her _own_ brother, with no special tie between them. Her mind was
constantly occupied by the thought of it, and how it was to be averted.
Marion, she thought, had done nothing to lead Willie back when he first
began to go after, what Marion called, his own kind, and to jilt his
sister: so far from that, she had brought in a stranger into the family,
a Matthew, to re-open and widen the breach, so that it was natural that
Willie should go out of nights, and like his young men’s parties, and
come in much later than pleased father. This was not a thing that Elsie
would do--she would bring in no strange man. All the Matthews in the
world might flutter round her, but she would never give Rodie any reason
to think that there was anybody she wanted but her brother--no, whatever
might happen, she would be faithful to Rodie, even if it were true, as
Marion said, that men (as if Rodie were a man!) liked their own kind
best. Why, she _was_ his own kind; who could be so near him as his
sister, his own sister, the one that was next in the family?

Elsie went seriously into this question, as seriously as any forsaken
wife could do, whose husband was being led astray from her, as she took
a melancholy ramble by herself along the east sands, where Rodie never
accompanied her now. She asked herself what she could do to bring him
back, to make him feel that, however his Johnnys and his Alicks might
tempt him for the moment, it was Elsie that was his true friend: she
must never scold him, nor taunt him with liking other folk better, she
must always be kind, however unkind he might be. With these excellent
resolutions warm in her mind, it happened to Elsie to see, almost
straight in front of her, hanging on the edge of a pool among the rocks,
Rodie himself, in company with Johnny Wemyss, the newly-chosen friend of
his heart. Johnny was up to his elbows in the pool, digging out with his
hands the strange things and queer beasts to be found therein; and half
to show the charity of her thoughts, half out of curiosity and desire
to see what they were about, Elsie hurried on to join them. Johnny
Wemyss was a big boy, bigger than Rodie, as old as Elsie
herself--roughly clad, with big, much-mended nailed boots, clouted
shoon, as he would himself have called them, and his rough hair standing
out under the shabby peak of his sailor’s cap.

“What are you doing--oh, what are you finding? Let me see,” cried Elsie,
coming up behind them with noiseless feet on the wet but firm sand.

Johnny Wemyss gave a great start, and raised himself up, drawing his
bare and dripping arms out of the water, and standing confused before
the young lady, conscious that he was not company for her, nor even for
her brother, the minister’s son, he who came of mere fisher folk.

But Rodie turned round fierce and threateningly, with his fists clenched
in his pockets.

“What are you wanting?” he cried. “Can you not let a person abee? We are
no wanting any lassies here.”

“Rodie,” cried his sister, flushed and almost weeping, “do you say that
to me?”

“Ay do I!” cried Rodie, red with wrath and confusion. “What are you
wanting? We just want no lassies here.”

Elsie gave him but one look of injured love and scorn, and, without
saying another word, turned round and walked away.

Oh, May was right! she was only a lassie to her own brother, and he had
insulted her before that Johnny, who was the cause of it all--she only
hoped they were looking after her to see how firm she walked, and that
she was not crying--no, she would not cry--why should she cry about him,
the hard-hearted, unkind boy? and with that, Elsie’s shoulders heaved,
and a great sob rent her breast.

She had indeed mourned his desertion before: yet this was practically
her first revelation of the hollowness of life.

Meanwhile, Rodie was far from comfortable on his side; all the more that
Johnny Wemyss gave him a kick with his clouted shoe, and said, with the
frankness of friendship:

“Ye little cankered beast--how dare ye speak to her like that? How can
she help it if she is a lassie?--it’s no her blame!”




CHAPTER VI.

A HOUSEHOLD CONTROVERSY.


Notwithstanding the great sobriety of her views, as disclosed above,
Marion, on the eve of her marriage, was no doubt the most interesting
member of the Buchanan family; and, if anything could have “taken off”
the mind of Elsie from her own misfortune, it would have been the
admiring and wondering study she was quite unconsciously making of her
sister, who had come to the climax of a girl’s life, and who regarded it
with so staid and middle-aged a view. Marion had always been a very
steady sort of girl all her life, it was common to say. There was no
nonsensical enthusiasm about her. Even when in love--that is, in the
vague and gaseous period, before it has come to anything, when most
girls have their heads a little pardonably turned, and the excitement of
the new thing runs strong in their veins--even then, her deportment had
been everything that could be desired in a minister’s daughter, and
future minister’s wife. There had been no contrivings of meetings, no
lingering on the links or the sands. Never once, perhaps, in that period
when even a lassie is allowed to forget herself a little, had Marion
failed to be at home in time for prayers, or forgot any of her duties.
She was of the caste of the Scotch minister, in which the woman as well
as the man belongs more or less to a sacred profession, and has its
character to keep up. But, no doubt, it was owing to the sober tone of
her own mind that she took at so early an age, and so exciting a moment
of her career, the very sensible and unexalted views which she expressed
so clearly. The Rev. Matthew Sinclair was neither cold nor negligent as
a lover; he was limited by duty, and by a purse but indifferently
filled. He could only come to see her after careful arrangement, when he
could afford it, and when he could secure a substitute in his work. He
could not shower presents upon her, even daily bouquets or other
inexpensive luxuries. In those days, if you had a garden at your hand,
you might bring your beloved “a flower”--that is, a bunch of
flowers--roses and southernwood, and bachelor’s buttons and
gilly-flowers, with a background of the coloured grasses, called
gardener’s garters in Scotland, tightly tied together; but there were no
shops in which you could find the delicate offerings, sweet smelling
violets, and all the wonders of the South--which lovers deal in
nowadays. But he did his part very manfully, and Marion had nothing to
complain of in his attentions. Yet, as has been made apparent, she was
not deceived. She did not expect, or even wish, to attach him to her
apron strings. She was quite prepared to find that, in respect of
“company,” that is society, he would prefer, as she said, his own kind.
And she did not look forward to this with any prevision of that
desolate sense of the emptiness of the world and all things, which was
in the mind of Elsie when her brother told her that he wanted no lassies
there. Marion knew that if she went into her husband’s study when two or
three of the brethren were gathered together, her entrance would
probably stop a laugh, and her husband would look up and say, “Well, my
dear?” interrogatively, with just the same meaning, though less roughly
than that of Rodie. She had seen it in her mother’s case; she accepted
it as quite natural in her anticipations of her own. This curious
composure made her, perhaps, all the more interesting--certainly a more
curious study--to Elsie, who had fire and flame in her veins
incomprehensible to the elder sister. Elsie followed her about with that
hot iron to facilitate the marking, and drank in her words with many a
protest against them. Let it not be supposed that Marion marked her own
“things” with the vulgarity of marking-ink; but she marked the dusters
and the commoner kinds of napery, the coarser towels and sheets, all the
inferior part of her plenishing in this common way, an operation which
occupied a good many mornings, during which there went on much edifying
talk. Sometimes, while they sat at one end of the large dining-table in
the dining-room,--for it was not permitted to litter the drawing-room
with this kind of work,--Mrs. Buchanan would be seated at the other,
with her large basket of stockings to darn, or other domestic mendings,
and, in that case, the talk was more varied, and went over a wider
field. Naturally, the mother was not quite philosophic or so perfectly
informed as was the young daughter on the verge of her life.

“I hear,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “that old Mr. Anderson’s house in the High
Street is getting all prepared and made ready for young Frank Mowbray
and his mother. She is not a very wise woman, and very discontented. I
fear that the old man left much less than was expected. When I think how
good he was to us, and that Willie’s outfit and your plenishing are
just, so to speak, gifts of his bounty, I feel as if we were a kind of
guilty when I hear of his mother’s complaint. For, if he had not given
us, and other people as well as much as he did, there would have been
more for her, or at least for her Frank.”

“But she had nothing to do with it, mother,” said Marion; “and he had a
good right to please himself, seeing it was all his own.”

“All that is quite true,” said Mrs. Buchanan; “I made use of the very
same argument myself when your father was so cast down about it, and
eager to pay it back, and James Morrison would not listen to him. I just
said, ‘It’s in the very Scripture--Shall I not do what I like with my
own?’ And then your father tells me that you must not always take the
words of a parable for direct instruction, and that the man who said
that was meaning--but if you ask him, he will tell you himself what we
were to understand.”

“Was it the one about the unjust steward?” asked Elsie, suddenly looking
up, with the heated iron in her hand.

“What would the unjust steward have to do with it?” said Mrs. Buchanan,
astonished. “Neither your father nor Mr. Anderson would go for
instruction to the unjust steward. Your father had a fine lecture on
that, that he delivered about a year and a half ago. You never mind your
father’s best things, you bairns, though one would think you might be
proud of them.”

“I mind that quite clearly,” said Marion; “and, mother, if you’ll no be
angry, I would like to say that it did not satisfy my mind. You would
have thought he was excusing yon ill man: and more than that, as if he
thought our Lord was excusing him: and, though it was papa that said it,
that was what I could not bide to hear.”

It may be supposed how Elsie, with her secret knowledge, pricked up her
ears. She sat with the iron suspended in her hand, letting Marion’s
initials grow dry upon the linen, and forgetting altogether what she was
about.

“I am astonished that you should say that,” said the mother, giving a
little nod; “that will be some of Matthew’s new lights--for, I am sure,
he explained as clear as could be that it was the man’s wisdom, or you
might say cunning, that the Lord commended, so to speak, as being the
best thing for his purpose, though his purpose was far from being a
good one. Your father is not one that, on such a subject, ever gives an
uncertain note.”

“It is an awfu’ difficult subject for an ordinary congregation,” said
Marion. “Matthew is just as little a man for new lights as papa; but
still he did say, that for a common congregation----”

“I thought it would be found that Matthew was at the bottom of it,” said
Mrs. Buchanan, with a laugh; “though it would set a young man better to
hold his peace, and make no comments upon one that has so much more
experience than himself.”

“You are a little unjust to Matthew,” said Marion, nodding in her turn;
“he made no more comment than any of the congregation might have
done--or than I did myself. He is just very careful what he says about
papa. He says that theology, like other things, makes progress, and that
there’s more exegesis and--and other things, since my father’s
time--which makes a difference; but he has always a great opinion of
papa’s sermons, and says you may learn a great deal from them, even
when----”

“I am sure we are much beholden to him,” said Mrs. Buchanan, holding her
head high. “It’s delicate of him to spare your feelings; for, I suppose,
however enlightened you may be beyond your fellows, you must still have
some kind of objection to hear your father criticised.”

“Oh, mother, how can you take it like that?” said Marion; “there was no
criticism. If anything was said, it was more me than him. I said I could
not bide to hear a word, as if our Lord might have approved such an ill
man. And he said it was dangerous for a mixed congregation, and that few
considered the real meaning of a parable, but just took every word as if
it was instruction.”

“And that was just your father’s strong point. He said it was like
taking another man’s sail to fill up a leak in a boat. You would praise
the man for getting the first thing he could lay his hands on to save
himself and his crew, but not for taking his neighbour’s sail--that was
just his grand point; but there are some folk that will always take
things in the matter-of-fact way, to the letter, and cannot understand
what’s expounded according to the spirit. That, however, has always just
been your father’s special gift,” said the minister’s wife, _de facto_.
She, who was only a minister’s wife in expectation, ought to have bowed
her head; but, being young and confident, even though so extremely
reasonable, Marion could not subdue herself to that better part.

“That was just what Matthew said--dangerous for a mixed congregation,”
she repeated; “the most of them just being bound by nature to the
letter, and very matter-of-fact----”

“No doubt Matthew is a great authority,” said Mrs. Buchanan, with a
violent snap of her big scissors.

“Well, mamma,” said Marion, with the soft answer that does not always
take away wrath, “you’ll allow that he ought to be to me----”

And there then ensued a deep silence; a whole large hole in the heel of
Rodie’s stocking filled up, as by magic, in the mother’s hands,
quickened by this contrariety, and the sudden absorption in her work
which followed, and Marion marked twelve towels, one after the other, so
quickly that Elsie could scarcely follow her with the iron in time to
make them all shine. It was she who took up the thread of the
conversation again, but not wisely. Had she been a sensible young
person, she would have introduced a new subject, which is the bounden
duty of a third party, when the other two have come to the verge of a
quarrel. But Elsie was only sixteen, and this discussion had called back
her own strange experience in the turret-room.

“It must have given papa a great deal of thinking,” she said. “Once me
and Rodie were in the turret as--as he never comes now----” This was
very bad grammar, but Elsie’s heart was full of other things. “We were
reading _Quentin Durward_, and very, very taken up with all that was
going on at Liege, if you mind.” Liége had no accent in Elsie’s mind or
her pronunciation. “And then you came into the study, mother, and
talked. And after he began again with his sermon. It was a long time
ago, but I never forgot, for it was strange what he said. It was as if
he was learning the parable off by heart. ‘Take now thy bill, and sit
down quickly, and write fourscore’--or ‘write fifty.’ He said it over
and over, just those words--sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
It was awfu’ funny. We both heard it; both me and Rodie, and wondered
what he could be meaning. And we dared not move, for though he knew we
were there, we did not like to disturb him. We thought he had maybe
forgotten us. We were so stiff, we could scarcely move, and that was
always what he said, ‘Take now thy bill, and sit down----’”

Mrs. Buchanan had dropped her work and raised her head to listen; a
puzzled look came over her face, then she shook her head, slightly,
unable to solve the problem which she dimly felt to be put before her.
She said, at last, with a change of countenance:

“I came into the study and talked?--and you there? What was I talking
about? do you mind that?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Elsie. “Old Mr. Anderson; it was just before he
died.”

“And you were there, Rodie and you, when I came in to talk private
things with your father! Is that the kind of conduct for children in a
decent house?”

Mrs. Buchanan had reddened again, and wrath, quite unusual, was in her
tone.

“Mamma, when it was raining, and we had a book to read, we were always
there, and father knew, and he never said a word!”

“You knew too, mother,” said Marion; “the two little things were always
there.”

“Little things!” cried Mrs. Buchanan, almost with a snort--Rodie’s heel,
stretched out upon her hand, and now filled up with a strong and seemly
web of darning in stout worsted, was quite as big as his father’s. And
Elsie was taller than either of the two women by her side. “They were
little things with muckle lugs,” she said, with a rather fierce little
laugh; “if you think, Elsie, it was right to spy upon the private
conversation of your father and mother, that is not my opinion. Do you
think I would have spoken to him as I did if I had known you two were
there?”

“Mother, about old Mr. Anderson?” cried Marion, meditating; “there could
be nothing so private about that.”

She gave them both a look, curious and anxious; Marion took it with the
utmost composure, perhaps did not perceive it at all. Elsie, with a
wistful but ignorant countenance, looked at her mother, but did not
wince. She had no recollection of what that conversation had been.

“Oh, mamma,” she said, “we spying!” with big tears in her eyes.

“I am not saying you meant it,” said her mother; “it was a silly habit,
but I must request, Elsie, that it never may happen again.”

“Oh!” cried Elsie, the big tears running over, “he never will come now!
He is not caring neither for me nor the finest book that ever was
written. There is no fear, mother. It breaks my heart to sit there my
lane, and Rodie never will come now!”

“You are a silly thing,” said Mrs. Buchanan; “it is not to be expected,
a stirring laddie. Far better for him to be out stretching his limbs
than poring over a book. But I can understand, too, it’s a
disappointment to you.”

“Oh, a disappointment!” Elsie cried, covering her face with her hands:
the word was so inadequate.

To be disappointed was not to get a new frock when you want it, or
something else, unworthy of a thought: but to be forsaken by your own
brother! You wanted for that a much bigger word.

“All the same,” the mother said, “I have often things to say to your
father that are between me and him alone, and not for you. You must not
do this again, Elsie. Another time, if you hear me go in to speak to
your papa, you must give warning you are there. You must not sit and
hold your breath, and listen. There are many things I might say to him
that were never intended for you. Now, mind what I say. I forgive you
because I am sure you did not mean it; but another time----”

“There will never be another time, mother,” said Elsie, with a quivering
lip.

“Well, I am sure I hope so,” said her mother, and she finished her
stockings carefully, made them into round balls, and carried them away
to put them into their respective drawers. At this particular moment,
with all that was going on, and all that was being prepared in the
house, she had very little time to spend with her daughters in the
pleasant exercise of sewing, virtuous and most necessary as that
occupation was.

“Do you remember what they were saying about old Mr. Anderson?” said
Marion; “for I have always thought there was something about that--that
was--I don’t know what word to say. He died, you know, when they were in
his debt, and he freely forgave them; and that was why I got such a good
plenishing, and Willie the best of outfits, and I would like to know
what they said.”

“I do not mind what they said,” said Elsie; “and, if I did mind, I would
not tell you, and you should not ask me. Rodie and me, we were not
heeding about their secrets. It was just after, when my father went on
and on about that parable, that we took any notice what he said.”

“And what was he saying about the parable?”

“Oh, I have told you already. He just went on and on--‘Take thy bill,
and write fourscore’--you know what it says--till a person’s head went
round and round. And we dared never move, neither me nor Rodie, and very
glad we were when he went down-stairs.”

“Poor bit things, not daring to move,” said Marion. “But that was a
strange thing to say over and over: he said nothing about that in his
sermon, but just how clever the man was for his purpose, though it was
not a good purpose. But Matthew is of opinion that it’s a dangerous
thing to treat the parables in that way.”

“And how should Matthew know better than my father?” cried Elsie, in
indignation. “He may just keep his opinion; I’m of the same opinion as
papa.”

“It is not of much consequence what your opinion is,” said Marion,
imperturbably; “but Matthew has been very well instructed, and he has
all the new lights upon things, and the exegesis and all that, which was
not so advanced in my father’s day. But it was a fine sermon,” she
added, with an approving nod, “though maybe dangerous to the ignorant,
which was all we ever said.”

As for Elsie, she ceased altogether to think of the mystery of that
afternoon, and the sound of her father’s voice--which was such as she
had never heard before--in her hot indignation against Matthew, who
dared to be of a different opinion from papa.




CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST MARRIAGE IN THE FAMILY.


Marion’s marriage took place in the summer, at the very crown of the
year. And it was a very fine wedding in its way, according to the
fashion of the times. Nobody in Scotland thought of going to church for
this ceremony, which took place in the bride’s home, in the drawing-room
upstairs, which was the largest room in the house, and as full as it
could be with wedding-guests. There were two bridesmaids, Elsie and a
sister of Matthew’s, whose mission, however, was unimportant in the
circumstances, unless, indeed, when it happened to be the duty of one of
them to accompany the bride and bridegroom, with the aid of the best
man, upon their wedding-tour. This curious arrangement had never been
thought of in Marion’s case, for no wedding-tour was contemplated. The
wedding pair were to proceed at once to their own quiet manse, somewhere
in the centre of Fife, where they could travel comfortably in a
post-chaise; and there they were disposed of for life, with no further
fuss. There were many things, indeed, wanting in this wedding which are
indispensable now. There were, for example, no wedding-presents, or at
least very few, some pieces of silver of the massive order, a heavy
tea-service, which was indeed a “testimonial” from those who had
profited by the Rev. Matthew’s services, in his previous sphere, and a
number of pretty things sent by Willie, such as used to be sent from
India by all the absent sons, pieces of Indian muslin, embroidered and
spangled (over which Mrs. Buchanan had held up her hands, wondering what
in the world Marion could do with them), and shawls, one of them heavy
with gold embroidery, about which the same thing might be said. Willie
had been by this time about eighteen months in India, and was already
acquainted with all the ways of it, his mother believed. And he sent
such things as other young men sent to their families, without
considering whether they would be of any use. He also sent various
beautiful things in that mosaic of ivory and silver, which used to adorn
so many Scotch houses, and which made the manse parlour glorious for
years to come. On the whole, “every justice” was done to Marion. Had she
come from Mount Maitland itself, the greatest house in the
neighbourhood, or even from the Castle at Pittenweem, or Balcarres, she
could not have been better set out.

It was at this great festivity that there were first introduced to the
society at St. Rule’s two figures that were hereafter to be of great
importance to it, and to assume an importance beyond what they had any
right to, according to ordinary laws. These were Frank Mowbray and his
mother, who had very lately come to St. Rule’s, from a country vaguely
called the South, which was not, after all, any very distant or
different region, but perhaps only Dumfrieshire, or Northumberland, in
both of which they had connections, but which do not suggest any
softness of climate or exuberance of sunshine to our minds nowadays.
They had led, it was believed, a wandering life, which was a thing very
obnoxious to the public sentiment of St. Rule’s, and almost infallibly
meant minds and manners to correspond, light-headedness and levity,
especially on the part of the woman, who could thus content herself
without a settled home of her own. It was naturally upon Mrs. Mowbray
that all the criticism centred; for Frank was still very young, and, of
course, as a boy had only followed his mother’s impulse, and done what
she determined was to be done. She was not in outward appearance at all
unlike the _rôle_ which was given her by the public. She gave for one
thing much more attention to her dress than was then considered right in
St. Rule’s, or almost even decent, as if desirous of attracting
attention, the other ladies said, which indeed was probably Mrs.
Mowbray’s design. In the evening, she wore a scarf, gracefully draped
about her elbows and doing everything but cover the “bare neck,” which
it was intended to veil: and though old enough to wear a cap, which many
ladies in those days assumed, however young they might be--as soon as
they married, did not do so, but wore her hair in large bows on the top
of her head, with stray ringlets upon either cheek, which, for a woman
with a grown-up son, seemed almost an affront to public morality. And
she used a fan with much action and significance, spreading it out, and
shutting it up as it suited her conversation, with little gestures that
were like nothing in the world but a foreigner, one of the French, or
persons of that kind, that thought of nothing but showing themselves
off. It was perhaps an uncharitable judgment, but there was so much
truth in it, that Mrs. Mowbray’s object was certainly to make the most
of herself, and do herself justice which is what she would have said.

And Frank at this period was what was then called a young “dandy;” and
also thought a great deal of his own appearance, which was even more
culpable or at least more contemptible on the part of a young man than
on that of a lady. He wore a velvet collar to his coat, which came up to
his ears, and sometimes a stock so stiff that he could look neither to
the right hand nor the left, and his nankeen trousers and flowered
waistcoats were a sight to behold. Out of the high collar, and
voluminous folds of muslin which encircled his neck, a very young,
boyish face came forth, with a small whisker on either cheek, to set
forth the rosy colour of his youthful countenance, which was quite
ingenuous and simple, and had no harm in it, notwithstanding the scoffs
and sneers which his contemporaries in St. Rule’s put forth against his
airs and graces, and the scent on his handkerchief “like a lassie,”
which was the last aggravation, and called forth roars of youthful
laughter, not unmingled with disgust. The pair together made a great
commotion in the society of St. Rule’s. Mr. Anderson’s house, which was
old-fashioned but kindly, with old mahogany, so highly polished that you
could see your face in it, and old dark portraits hanging on the
panelled walls, underwent a complete revolution to please what St.
Rule’s considered the foreign tastes. She had one of those panelled
rooms covered with wall-paper, to the consternation of the whole town. I
am obliged to allow that this room is the pride of the house now, for
the paper--such things as yet being scarce in the British Islands--was
an Oriental one, of fine design and colour, which has lasted over nearly
a century, and is as fresh now as when it was put up, and the glory of
the place; but in those days, Scotch taste was all in favour of things
dark and plain, without show, which was a wicked thing. To please the
eye at all, especially with brightness and colour, was tacitly
considered wicked, at that day, in all circumstances. It was not indeed
a crime in any promulgated code, but it certainly partook of the nature
of vice, as being evidently addressed to carnal sentiments, not adapted
for confidence or long duration, or any other recognised and virtuous
purpose, but only to give pleasure which was by its very nature an
illegitimate thing. It was not indeed that these good people did not
love pleasure in their hearts. There was far more dancing in those days
than has ever been since, and parties for the purpose, at which the
young people met each other, and became engaged to each other and made
love, and married with a general persistency and universalness no longer
known among us; and there was much more drinking and singing of jovial
songs and celebration of other kinds of pleasure. But a bright
wall-paper, or a cheerful carpet, or more light in a room than was
absolutely necessary, these were frivolities almost going the length of
depravity that were generally condemned.

The new-comers were among the wedding-guests, and Mrs. Mowbray came in a
white Indian shawl, and a white satin bonnet, adorned with roses inside
its cave-like sides, as if she had been the bride herself: while Frank
had already a flower in his coat before the wedding-favour was added
which made him, in the estimation of his compeers, a most conspicuous
figure, and more “like a lassie” than ever. When the time came for
Marion and her husband to go away, it was he who drew from his pocket
the white satin slipper which landed on the top of the post-chaise, and
made the bridal pair also “so conspicuous”--to their great wrath, when
they discovered by the cheers that met them in every village what an
ensign they were carrying with them, though they had indeed a most sober
post-chaise from the old Royal: and Matthew had taken care that the
postillion took off his favour as soon as they were out of the town. To
throw an old shoe for luck was a well-understood custom, but satin
slippers were not so common in St. Rule’s in those days that they should
be used in this way, and Marion never quite forgave this breach of all
decorum, pointing her out to the world just on the day of all others
when she most desired to escape notice. But the Mowbrays did not
understand how you ever could desire to escape notice, which, for their
part, they loved. The young people who crowded about the door to see the
bride go off, the girls laughing and crying in their excitement, the
lads cheering and shouting, were, I need not say, augmented by half the
population of St. Rule’s, all as eager and as much interested as if they
too had been wedding-guests. The women about, though they had no
occasion to be specially moved, laughed and cried too, for sympathy, and
made their comments at the top of their voices, with the frankness of
their class.

“She is just as bonnie a bride as I ever saw, as I aye kent she would
be; but he’s but a poor creature beside her,” said one of the fishwives.

“Hoot, woman,” said another, “the groom, he’s aye the shaddow on the
brightness, and naithing expected from him.”

“But he’s not that ill-faured either,” said another spectator.

“She’s a bonnie creature, and he’s a wise-like man.” Elsie, who had
always an ear for what was going on, took in all these comments, and
the aspect of affairs generally without really knowing what she heard
and saw. But there was one episode which, above all, caught that half
attention which imprints a scene on the memory we cannot tell how. At
the house door, Frank Mowbray, with the slipper in his hand, very proud
of that piece of fashion and prettiness, stood stretching himself to his
full height (which was not great), and preparing for his throw. While at
the same moment she caught sight of a very different figure close to the
chaise watching the crowd, which was Johnny Wemyss, the friend for whom
Rodie her own brother had deserted her, and whom, consequently, she
regarded with no favourable eyes. He was a tall weedy boy, with long
arms growing out of his jacket-sleeves, and that look of loose-jointed
largeness which belongs to a puppy in all varieties of creation. He was
in his Sunday clothes and bareheaded, and as Marion walked across the
pavement, he stooped down and laid before the steps of the chaise a
large handful of flowers. The bride gave an astonished look, and then a
nod and a smile to the rough lad, who rose up, red as fire with the
shamefacedness of his homage, and disappeared behind the crowd. It was
only the affair of a moment, and probably very few people noticed it at
all. But Elsie saw it, and her face burned with sympathetic excitement.
She was pushed back at almost the same moment by the sudden action of
Frank, throwing his missile, and then, amid laughter, crying, and
cheers, the post-chaise drove away.

“My dear,” said Mr. Buchanan, a few minutes after, “some bairn has
dropped its flowers on the pavement, or perhaps it was Marion that let
them fall. Send one of the women out to clear them away; it has a
disorderly look before the door,” the minister said.

Elsie did not know what made her do it, but she darted out in her white
frock among the dispersing crowd, and gathered up, with her own hands,
the flowers on which Marion had set her foot. She took a rose from among
them and put it into her own belt. They were, I fear, dusty and soiled,
and only fit, as Mr. Buchanan said, to be swept away, but it was to
Elsie the only touch of poetry in the whole business. Bride and
bridegroom were very sober persons, scarcely worthy, perhaps, to tread
upon flowers, which, indeed, Mr. Matthew Sinclair had avoided by kicking
them (though gently) out of his way. But Elsie felt the unusual tribute,
if no one else did. She gave a glance round for Johnny Wemyss, and
caught him as he cast back a furtive glance from behind the shadow of a
burly fisherman. And again the boy grew red, and so did she. They had a
secret between them from that day, and everybody knows, who has ever
been sixteen, what a bond that is, a bond for life.

“Take out that dirty flower out of your belt,” said Rodie, putting out
his hand for it; “if you want a flower, you can get a fresh one out of
the garden. All the folk in the street have tramped upon it.” This word
is constantly used in Scotland, with unnecessary vehemence of utterance,
for the simpler syllable trod.

“I’ll not take it out,” said Elsie, “and only Marion put her foot upon
it. It is the bonniest thing of all that has happened; and it was your
own friend Johnny Wemyss that you are so fond of.”

“I am not fond of him,” said Rodie, ingenuously; “do you think me and
him are like a couple of lassies? Throw it away this minute.”

“No for you, nor all the fine gentlemen in the world!” cried Elsie,
holding her rose fast; and there would probably have been a scuffle over
it, Rodie at fifteen having no sense as yet that a lassie’s whims were
more to be respected than any other comrade’s, had not Mrs. Buchanan
suddenly appeared.

“Elsie,” she said half severely, “are you forgetting already that you’re
now the only girl in the house? and nobody to look after the folk
upstairs--oh, if they would only go away! but you and me.”

“I’m going, mamma,” cried Elsie, and then, though embraces were rare in
this reserved atmosphere, she threw her arms round her mother and gave
her a kiss. “I’m not so good as May, but I will try my best,” she said.

“Oh my dear, but I am tired, tired! both body and mind,” said Mrs.
Buchanan; “and awfu’ thankful to have you, to be a comfort. Rodie, run
away and divert yourself and leave her alone; there’s plenty about of
your own kind.”

It gave Elsie a pang, yet a thrill of satisfaction to see her brother,
who had deserted her, thus summarily cleared off the scene. Marion had
said regretfully, yet dispassionately, that they liked their own kind
best, which had been a revelation and a painful one to the abandoned
sister. But to have him thus sent off rather contemptuously than
otherwise to his own kind, as by no means a superior portion of the
race, gave her a new light on the subject, as well as a new sensation.
Boys, she remembered, and had always heard were sent to divert
themselves, as the only thing they were good for, when a lassie was
useful in many ways. In this manner she began to recover from the bitter
sense of the injury which the scorn of the laddies had inflicted upon
her. They might scorn away as they pleased. But the other folk, who had
more experience than they, thought otherwise; this helped Elsie to
recover her balance. She almost began to feel that even if Rodie were
lost, all would not be lost. And her exertions were great in the tired
and wavering afternoon party, which had nothing to amuse itself with,
and yet could not make up its mind to break up and go away, as the
hosts, quite worn out with the long strain, and feeling that everything
was now over, most fondly desired them to do.

“Will you come and see me?” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I have taken a great
fancy to this child, Mrs. Buchanan. She has such pretty brown eyes and
rosy cheeks.”

“Will you come and see me, Elsie? I have got no pretty daughters. Oh!
how I wish I had one to dress up and play with; Frank is all very well,
he is a good boy--but a girl would make me quite happy.”

Elsie was much disgusted with this address: to be told to her face that
she had pretty brown eyes and rosy cheeks was unpardonable! In the first
place, it was not true, for Elsie was well aware she was freckled, and
thought red cheeks very vulgar and common. In those days heroines were
always of an interesting paleness, and had black or very dark hair,
“raven tresses” in poetry. And alas, Elsie’s locks were more ruddy than
raven. She was quite aware that she was not a pretty daughter, and it
was intolerable that anyone should mock her, pretending to admire her to
her face!

Mrs. Buchanan took it much more sweetly. She looked at Elsie with
caressing eyes. “She is the only girlie at home now,” she said, with a
little sigh, “and she will have to learn to be a woman. Marion was
always the greatest help--my right hand--since she was little more than
a baby. And now Elsie will have to learn to take her place.”

“I don’t care so much for them being useful when they are ornamental,”
said Mrs. Mowbray, “for that is the woman’s part in the world is it not?
The men may do all the hard work, but they can’t do the decoration, can
they? We want the girls for that.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “I am not sure that I ever looked upon it
in that light. There is a great deal to be done, when there is a family
of laddies; you cannot expect them to do things for themselves, and when
there is only one sister, it is hard work.”

“Oh, I do not hold with that,” said the other lady. “I turn all that
over to my maid. I would not make the girls servants to their brothers:
quite the contrary. It is the boys that should serve the girls, in my
opinion. Frank would no more let a young lady do things for him!--I
consider it quite wrong for my part.”

Mrs. Buchanan was a little abashed.

“When you have plenty of servants and a small family, it is of course
quite different, but you know what the saying is, ‘a woman’s work is
never done’----”

“My dear Mrs. Buchanan, you are simply antediluvian,” said her visitor.

(Oh, if she would only go away, instead of standing havering there!) The
minister’s wife was more tired than words could say. “Claude,” she said,
clutching at her husband’s arm as he passed her, “Mrs. Mowbray has not
seen our garden, and you know we are proud of our garden. Perhaps she
would like to take a turn and look at the view.”

“I am so glad to get you for a little to myself, Mr. Buchanan,” said
Mrs. Mowbray. “Oh yes, let us go to the garden. I have been so longing
to speak to you. There are so many things about poor Mr. Anderson’s
estate, and other matters, that I don’t understand.”




CHAPTER VIII.

A NEW FACTOR.


Mrs. Mowbray took the minister’s arm with a little eagerness. “I am so
glad,” she said, “so very glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you
alone. I want so much to consult you, Mr. Buchanan. I should have
ventured to come over in the morning to ask for you, if I had not this
opportunity; but then your wife would have had to know, and just at
first I don’t want anyone to know--so I am more glad of this opportunity
than words can say----”

“I am sure,” said Mr. Buchanan, steadily, “that I shall be very glad if
I can be of any use to you. I am afraid you will not find much to
interest you in our homely garden. Vegetables on one side, and flowers
on the other, but at the east corner there is rather a pretty view. I
like to come out in the evening, and see the lighthouses in the distance
slowly twirling round. We can see the Bell Rock----”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “I have no doubt it is very fine, but take
me to the quietest corner, never mind about the view--other people will
be coming to see the view, and to talk is what I want.”

“I don’t think anyone will be coming,” said the minister, and he led her
among the flower-beds, and across what was then, in homely language,
called not the lawn, but the green, to the little raised mound upon
which there was a little summer-house, surrounded with tall lilac
bushes--and the view. Mrs. Mowbray gave but a passing glance at the
view.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “the same as you see from the cliffs, the
Forfarshire coast and the bay. It is very nice, but not
remarkable--whereas what I have got to say to you is of the gravest
importance--at least to Frank and me. Mr. Buchanan, as the clergyman,
you must know of everything that is going on--you knew the late Mr.
Anderson, my husband’s uncle, very well, didn’t you? Well, you know
Frank has always been brought up to believe himself his great-uncle’s
heir. And we believed it would be something very good. My poor husband,
in his last illness, always said, ‘Uncle John will provide for you and
the boy.’ And we thought it would be quite a good thing. Now you know,
Mr. Buchanan, it is really not at all a good thing.”

In the green shade of the foliage, Mr. Buchanan’s face looked gray. He
said, “Indeed, I am sorry,” in a mechanical way, which seemed intended
to give the impression that he was not interested at all.

“Oh, perhaps you think that is not of much importance,” said the lady.
“Probably you imagine that we have enough without that. But it is not
really so--it is of the greatest importance to Frank and me. Oh, here
are some people coming! I knew other people would be coming to see this
stupid view--when they can see it from the road just as well, any time
they please.”

It was a young pair of sweethearts who came up the little knoll,
evidently with the intention of appropriating the summer-house, and much
embarrassed to find their seniors in possession. They had, however, to
stay a little and talk, which they all did wildly, pointing out to each
other the distant smoke of the city further up, and the white gleam of
the little light-house opposite. Mrs. Mowbray said scarcely anything,
but glared at the intrusive visitors, to whom the minister was too
civil. Milly Beaton, who was one of these intruders, naturally knew
every point of the view as well as he did, but he pointed out everything
to her in the most elaborate way, at which the girl could scarcely
restrain her laughter. Then the young people heard, or pretended to
hear, some of their companions calling them, and hurried away.

“I knew,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “that we should be interrupted here----”

“No, I don’t think so: there will be no more of it,” said the minister.

He was not so unwilling to be interrupted as she was. Then it occurred
to her, with a knowledge drawn from other regions than St. Rule’s, that
she was perhaps compromising the minister, and this idea gave her a
lively pleasure.

“They will be wondering what we have to say to each other,” she cried
with a laugh, and she perceived with delight, or thought she perceived,
that this idea discomposed Mr. Buchanan. He changed colour, and shuffled
from one foot to the other, as he stood before her. She had placed
herself on the garden-seat, within the little chilly dark green bower.
She had not contemplated any such amusement, but neither had she time to
indulge in it, which might have been done so very safely with the
minister. For it was business that was in her mind, and she felt herself
a business woman before all.

“Fortunately,” she went on, “nobody can the least guess what I want to
consult you about. Oh! here is another party! I knew how it would be.
Take me to see your cabbages, Mr. Buchanan, or anywhere. I must speak to
you without continual interruptions like this.”

Her tone was a little imperative, which the minister resented. He was
not in the habit of being spoken to in this way, and he was extremely
glad of the interruption.

“It is only a parcel of boys,” he said, “they will soon go.” Perhaps he
did not perceive that the carefully-attired Frank was among the others,
led by his own older son John, who, Mr. Buchanan well knew, would not
linger when he saw how the summer-house was occupied. Frank, however,
came forward and made his mother a satirical bow.

“Oh, this is where you are, mater?” he said. “I couldn’t think where
you had got to. My compliments, I wouldn’t interrupt you for the world.”

“You ridiculous boy!” Mrs. Mowbray said; and they both laughed, for what
reason neither Mr. Buchanan nor his serious son John could divine.

“So you have come up, too, to see the view,” said the lady; “I never
knew you had any love for scenery and the beauties of nature.”

“Do you call this scenery?” said Frank, who, in his mother’s presence,
felt it necessary to be superior as she was. “If you could only have the
ruins in the foreground, instead of this great bit of sea, and those
nasty little black rocks.”

“They may be little,” said John, with all the sudden heat of a son of
St. Rule’s, “but they’re more dangerous than many that are far bigger. I
would not advise you to go near them in a boat. Father, isn’t that
true?”

“It is true that it is a dangerous coast,” said Mr. Buchanan, “that is
the reason why no ship that can help it comes near the bay.”

“I don’t care for that kind of boating,” said Frank. “Give me a wherry
on the river.”

“Give you a game--a ball, or something,” said his mother, exasperated.
“You ought to get up something to amuse the young ladies. Doesn’t Mrs.
Buchanan allow dancing? You might teach them, Frank, some of the new
steps.”

“We want you for that, mater,” said the lad.

“Oh, I can’t be bothered now. I’ve got some business to talk over with
Mr. Buchanan.”

Frank looked malicious and laughed, and Mrs. Mowbray laughed, too, in
spite of herself. The suggestion that she was reducing the minister to
subjection was pleasant, even though it was an interruption. Meanwhile,
Mr. Buchanan and his son stood gazing, absolutely unable to understand
what it was all about. John, however, not used to badinage, seized with
a firm grip the arm of the new-comer.

“Come away, and I’ll take you into the Castle,” he said, giving a drag
and push, which the other, less vigorous, was not able to resist.

“I cannot stand this any longer,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “take me please
somewhere--into your study, Mr. Buchanan, where I can talk to you
undisturbed. I am sure for once your wife will not mind.”

“My wife!” the minister said, in great surprise, “why should my wife
mind?” But it was certain, that he did himself mind very much, having
not the faintest desire to admit this intruder into his sanctum. But it
was in vain to resist. He took her among the cabbages as she had
suggested, but by this time the garden was in the possession of a young
crowd penetrating everywhere, and after an ineffectual attempt among
those cabbages to renew the conversation, Mrs. Mowbray so distinctly
declared her desire to finish her communication in the study, that he
could no longer resist. Mrs. Mowbray looked about her, before she had
taken her seat, and went into the turret-room with a little curiosity.

“I suppose you never admit anyone here,” she said.

“Admit! No, but the two younger children used to be constantly here,”
said Mr. Buchanan. “They have left some of their books about still.
There was a great alliance between them a few years ago, but since Rodie
grew more of a school-boy, and Elsie more of a woman----”

“Elsie! why, she is quite grown-up,” said the visitor. “I hope you don’t
let her come here to hear all your secrets. I shouldn’t like her to hear
mine, I am sure. Is there any other door?”

“There is neither entrance nor exit, but by my study door,” Mr. Buchanan
said, somewhat displeased.

“Well, that is a good thing. I hope you always make sure when you
receive your penitents that there is nobody there.”

The minister made no reply. He thought her a very disagreeable, very
presuming and impertinent woman; but he placed a chair for her with all
the patience he could muster. He had a faint feeling as if she had
lodged an arrow somewhere in him, and that he felt it quivering, but did
not inquire into his sensations. The first thing seemed to be to get rid
of her as quickly as he could.

“Now we can talk at last,” she said, sinking down into the arm-chair,
stiff and straight as it was--for the luxury of modern days had scarcely
yet begun and certainly had not come as far as St. Rule’s--which Mrs.
Buchanan generally occupied when she came upstairs to talk over their
“whens and hows” with her husband.

“It is very serious indeed, and I am very anxious to know if you can
throw any light upon it. Mr. Morrison, the man of business, tells me
that old Mr. Anderson had lent a great deal of money to various people,
and that it proved quite impossible to get it back. Was that really the
case? or is this said merely to cover over some defalcations--some----”

“Morrison,” cried the minister, almost angrily, “is as honourable a man
as lives; there have been no defalcations, at least so far as he is
concerned.”

“It is very satisfactory to hear that,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “because of
course we are altogether in his hands; otherwise I should have got my
English solicitor to come down and look into matters. But you know one
always thinks it must be the lawyer’s fault--and then so many men go
wrong that have a very good reputation.”

Mr. Buchanan relieved his heart with a long painful breath. He said:

“It is true; there are such men: but Morrison is not one of them.”

“Well, that’s satisfactory at least to hear,” she said doubtfully, “but
tell me about the other thing. Is it true that our old uncle was so
foolish, so mad--I really don’t know any word sufficiently severe to
use--so unjust to us as to give away his money on all hands, and lend
to so many people without a scrap of acknowledgment, without so much as
an I.O.U., so that the money never could be recovered; is it possible
this can be true?”

Mr. Buchanan was obliged to clear his throat several times before he
could speak.

“Mr. Anderson,” he said, “was one of the men who are so highly commended
in Scripture, though it is perhaps contrary to modern ideas. The
merciful man is merciful and lendeth. He was a providence to many
troubled persons. I had heard----”

“But, Mr. Buchanan,” cried the lady, raising herself up in her chair,
“you cannot think that’s right; you cannot imagine it is justifiable.
Think of his heirs.”

“Yes,” he replied, “perhaps at that time he did not think of his heir.
If it had been his own child--but we must be fair to him. Your son was
not a very near relation, and he scarcely knew the boy.”

“Not a near relation!” exclaimed Mrs. Mowbray, “but he was the nearest
relation. There was no one else to count at all. A man’s money belongs
to his family. He has no right to go and alienate it, to give a boy
reason to expect a good fortune, and then to squander the half of it,
which really belonged to Frank more than to him.”

“You must remember,” said the minister, with a dreadful tightening at
his throat, feeling that he was pleading for himself as well as for his
old benefactor, “you must remember that the money did not come from the
family--in which case all you say might be true--but from his own
exertions; and probably he believed what is also written in Scripture,
that a man has a right to do what he will with his own.”

“Oh, Mr. Buchanan!” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “that I should hear a clergyman
speak like this. Who is the widow and the orphan to depend upon, if not
on the clergy, to stand up for them and maintain their rights? I should
have thought now that instead of encouraging people who got round this
old man--who probably was not very clear in his head at the end of his
life--and got loans from him, you would have stood up for his heirs and
let them know--oh! with all the authority of the church, Mr.
Buchanan--that it was their duty before everything to pay their debts,
all the more,” cried the lady, holding up an emphatic finger, “all the
more if there was nothing to show for them, no way of recovering them,
and it was left to their honour to pay.”

The minister had been about to speak; but when she put forth this
argument he sat dumb, his lips apart, gazing at her almost with a look
of terror. It was a full minute before he attempted to say anything, and
that in the midst of a discussion of this sort seems a long time. He
faltered a little at last, when he did speak.

“I am not sure,” he said, “that I had thought of this: but no doubt you
are right, no doubt you are right.”

“Certainly I am right,” she cried, triumphant in her victory. “I knew
you would see the justice of it. Frank has always been brought up to
believe that he would be a rich man. He has been brought up with this
idea. He has the habits and the notions of a man with a very good
fortune; and now that I am here and can look into it, what is it? A mere
competence! Nothing that you could call a fortune at all.”

Oh, what it is to be guilty! The minister had not a word to say. He
looked piteously in her face, and it seemed to him that it was an
injured woman who sat before him, injured by his hand. He had never
wronged any one so far as he knew before, but this was a woman whom he
had wronged. She and her son, and her son’s children to all possible
generations,--he had wronged them. Though no one else might know it, yet
he knew it himself. Frank Mowbray’s fortune, which was not a fortune,
but a mere competence, had been reduced to that shrunken measure by him.
His conscience smote him with her voice. There was nothing to show for
it, no way of recovering it; it was a debt of honour, and it was this
that he refused to pay. He trembled under her eye. He felt that she must
be able to read to the bottom of his soul.

“I am very sorry,” he said; “I am afraid that perhaps none of us thought
of that. But it is all past--I don’t know what I could do, what you
would wish me to do.”

“I would wish you,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “to talk to them about it. Ah! I
knew I should not speak in vain when I spoke to you. It is a shameful
thing, is it not, to defraud a truthful, inexperienced boy, one that
knows nothing about money nor how to act in such circumstances. If he
had not his mother to speak for him, what would become of Frank? He is
so young and so peace-making. He would say don’t bother if he heard me
speaking about it. He would be content to starve himself, and let other
people enjoy what was his. I thought you would tell me perhaps who were
the defaulters.”

“No, I certainly could not do that,” he said harshly, with a sound in
his voice which made him not recognise it for his. He had a momentary
feeling that some one else in the room, not himself, had here interposed
and spoken for him.

“You could not? you mean you would not. And you the clergyman, the
minister that should protect the orphan! Oh, Mr. Buchanan, this is not
what I expected when I braced up my nerves to speak to you. I never
thought but that you would take up my cause. I thought you would perhaps
go round with me to tell them they must pay, and how badly my poor boy
had been left: or that at least you would preach about it, and tell the
people what was their duty. He must have lent money to half St. Rule’s,”
cried Mrs. Mowbray; “those people that all look so decent and so
well-dressed on Sunday at church. They are all as well-dressed (though
their clothes are not well made) as any one need wish to be: and to
think they should be owing us hundreds, nay, thousands of money! It is a
dreadful thing for my poor Frank.”

“Not thousands,” said the minister, “not thousands. A few hundreds
perhaps, but not more.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I have heard there was one that
got four hundred out of him; at interest and compound interest, what
does that come to by this time? Not much short of thousands, Mr.
Buchanan, and there may be many more.”

“Did Morrison tell you that?” he asked hastily.

“No matter who told me. How am I to get at that man? I should make him
pay up somehow, oh trust me for that, if I could only make out who he
was.”

“There was no such man,” said the minister. There breathed across his
mind, as he spoke, the burden of the parable: “Take now thy bill, and
sit down quickly, and write fourscore.” “I have not heard of any of Mr.
Anderson’s debtors who had got so large a loan as that: but Morrison
expressly said that it was in the will he had freely forgiven them all.”

“I should not forgive them,” cried the lady, harshly. “Get me a list of
them, Mr. Buchanan, give me a list of them, and then we shall see what
the law will say. Get me a list of them, Mr. Buchanan! I am sure that
you must know them all.”

“I don’t know that I could tell you more than one of them.”

“That will be the four hundred man!” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “Tell me of
him, tell me of him, Mr. Buchanan, and I shall always be grateful to
you. Tell me the one you know.”

“I must first think it over--and--take counsel,” the minister said.




CHAPTER IX.

MAN AND WIFE.


“What did that woman want with you, Claude?” said Mrs. Buchanan, coming
in with panting breath, and depositing herself in the chair from which
Mrs. Mowbray had risen but a little while before.

The minister sat with his head in his hands, his face covered, his
aspect that of a man utterly broken down. He did not answer for some
time, and then:

“I think she wants my life-blood,” he said.

“Your life-blood! Claude, my man, are you taking leave of your
senses--or what is it you mean?”

Once more there was a long pause. His wife was not perhaps so frightened
as she might have been in other circumstances. She was very tired. The
satisfaction of having got rid of all her guests was strong in her mind.
She had only just recovered her breath, after toiling upstairs. Lastly,
it was so absurd that any one should want the minister’s life-blood;
last of all, the smiling and flattering Mrs. Mowbray, that she was more
inclined to laugh than to be alarmed.

“You may laugh,” said Mr. Buchanan, looking up at her from below the
shadow of his clasped hands, with hollow eyes, “but it is death to me.
She wants me to give her a list of all old Anderson’s debtors, Mary. I
told her I only knew one.”

“Goodness, Claude! did you say it was yourself?”

“Not yet,” he said, with a deep sigh.

“Not yet! do you mean that after the great deliverance we got, and the
blessed kindness of that old man, you are going to put your head under
the yoke again? What has she to do with it? He thought nothing of her.
He let the boy get it because there was nobody else, but he never took
any interest even in the boy. He never would have permitted--Claude!
those scruples of yours, they are ridiculous; they are quite ridiculous.
What, oh! what do you mean? To ruin your own for the sake of that little
puppy of a boy? God forgive me; it is probably not the laddie’s fault.
He is just the creation of his silly mother. And they are well off
already. If old Anderson had left them nothing at all, they were well
off already. Claude, if she has come here to play upon your weakness, to
get back what the real owner had made you a present of----”

“Mary, I have never been able to get it out of my mind that it was the
smaller debtors he wanted to release, but not me.”

“Had you any reason to mistrust the old man, Claude?”

He gave her a look, still from under his clasped hands, but made no
reply.

“Which of them were more to him than you,” said Mrs. Buchanan,
vehemently; “the smaller debtors? Joseph Sym, the gardener, that he set
up in business, or the Horsburghs, or Peter Wemyss? Were they more to
him than you?--was this woman, with her ringlets, and her puffed sleeves
more to him than you? Or her silly laddie, no better than a bairn,
though he may be near a man in years? I have reminded you before what
St. Paul says: ‘Albeit, I do not say to thee how thou owest me thine own
self besides.’ He was not slow to say that, the old man, when you would
let him. And you think he was more taken up with that clan-jamfry than
with you?”

“No--no; I don’t say that, Mary. I know he was very favourable to me,
too favourable; but I have never felt at rest about this. Morrison would
not let me speak; perhaps he thought I had got less than I really had.
This has always been in my head.” The minister got up suddenly and began
to walk about the room. “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and
write fourscore,” he said, under his breath.

“What is that you are saying, Claude? That is what Elsie heard you
saying the day of Mr. Anderson’s death. She said, quite innocent, it
gave you a great deal of trouble, your sermon, that you were always
going over and over----”

“What?” said Mr. Buchanan, stopping short in his walk, with a scared
face.

“Dear me, Claude! no harm, no harm, only _that_, that you are saying
now--about writing fourscore. Oh, Claude, my dear, you give it far more
thought than it deserves. We could have almost paid it off by this time,
if it had been exacted from us. And when that good, kind, auld man
said--more than saying--when he wrote down in his will--that it was to
be a legacy, God bless him! when I heard that, with thanksgiving to the
Lord, I just put it out of my mind--not to forget it, for it was a great
deliverance--but surely not to be burdened by it, or to mistrust the
good man in his grave!”

The eyes of the minister’s wife filled with tears. It was she who was
the preacher now, and her address was full of natural eloquence. But,
like so many other eloquent addresses, her audience paid but little
attention to it. Mr. Buchanan stopped short in his walk; he came back to
his table and sat down facing her. When she ceased, overcome with her
feelings, he began, without any pretence of sharing them, to question
her hastily.

“Where was Elsie, that she should hear what I said? and what did she
hear? and how much does she know?” This new subject seemed to occupy his
mind to the exclusion of the old.

“Elsie? oh, she knows nothing. But she was in the turret there, where
you encouraged them to go, Claude, though I always thought it a
dangerous thing; for the parents’ discussions are not always for a
bairn’s ears, and you never thought whether they were there or not. I
have thought upon it many a day.”

“And she knows nothing?” said Mr. Buchanan. “Well, I suppose there is no
harm done; but I dislike anyone to hear what I am saying. It is
inconvenient; it is disagreeable. You should keep a growing girl by your
own side, Mary, and not let her stray idle round about the house.”

He had not heard her complain against himself as encouraging the
children to occupy the turret. His wife was well enough accustomed with
his modes of thought. He ignored this altogether, as if he had no
responsibility. And the thought of Elsie thus suggested put away the
other and larger thought.

“I should like exactly to know how much she heard, and whether she drew
any conclusions. You can send her to me when you go down down-stairs.”

“Claude, if you will be guided by me, no--do not put things into the
bairn’s head. She will think more and more if her thoughts are driven
back upon it. She will be fancying things in her mind. She will be----”

“What things can she fancy in her mind? What thoughts can she have more
and more, as you say? What are you attributing to me, Mary? You seem to
think I have been meditating--or have done--something--I know not
what--too dark for day.”

He looked at her severely, and she looked at him with deprecating
anxiety.

“Claude,” she said, “my dear, I cannot think what has come over you. Am
I a person to make out reproaches against you? I said it was a pity to
get the bairns into a habit of sitting there, where they could hear
everything. That was no great thing, as if I was getting up a censure
upon you, or hinting at dark things you have done. I would far easier
believe,” she said, with a smile, laying her hand upon his arm, “that I
had done dark deeds myself.”

“Well, well,” he said, “I suppose I am cranky and out of sorts. It has
been a wearying day.”

“That it has,” cried Mrs. Buchanan, with warm agreement. “I am not a
woman for my bed in the daytime; but, for once in a way, I was going to
lie down, just to get a rest, for I am clean worn out.”

“My poor Mary,” he said, with a kind smile. When she felt her weakness,
then was the time when he should be strong to support her. “Go and lie
down, and nobody shall disturb you, and dismiss all this from your mind,
my dear; for, as far as I can see, there is nothing urgent, not a thing
for the moment to trouble your head about.”

“It is not so easy to dismiss things from your mind,” she said, smiling
too, “unless I was sure that you were doing it, Claude; for when you are
steady and cheery in your spirits, I think there is nothing I cannot put
up with, and you may be sure I will not make a fuss, whatever you may
think it a duty to do. And it is not for me to preach to you; but mind,
there are many things that look like duty, and are not duty at all, but
just infatuation, or, maybe, pride.”

“You have not much confidence in the clearness of my perceptions, Mary.”

“Oh, but I have perfect confidence.” She pronounced this word “perfitt,”
and said it with that emphasis which belongs to the tongue of the North.
“But who could ken so well as me that your spirit’s a quick spirit, and
that pride has its part in you--the pride of aye doing the right thing,
and honouring your word, and keeping your independence. I agree with it
all, but in reason, in reason. And I would not fly in that auld man’s
face, and him in his grave, Claude Buchanan, not for all the women’s
tongues in existence, or their fleeching words!”

He had been standing by the table, from which she had risen too, with an
indulgent smile on his face; but at this his countenance changed, and,
as Mrs. Buchanan left the room, he sat down again hastily, with his head
in his hands.

Was she right? or was his intuition right? That strong sense, that
having meant wrong he had done wrong, whether formally or not. Many and
many a day had he thought over it, and he had come to a moral conviction
that his old friend had intended him to have the money, that he was the
last person in the world from whom Anderson would have exacted the last
farthing. Putting one thing to another he had come to that conviction.
Of all the old man’s debtors, there was none so completely his friend.
It was inconceivable that all the other people should be freed from the
bonds, and only he kept under it. He had quite convinced himself rather
that it was for his sake the others had been unloosed, than that it was
he alone who was exempt from relief. But it only required Mrs. Mowbray’s
words to overset this carefully calculated conclusion. His conscience
jumped up with renewed force, and, as his wife had divined, his pride
was up in arms. That this foolish woman and trifling boy had a right to
anything that had been consumed and alienated by him, was intolerable to
think of. Mary was right. It was an offence to his pride which he could
not endure. His honest impulses might be subdued by reason, but his
pride of integrity--no, that was not to be subdued.

The thought became intolerable to him as he pondered seriously, always
with his head between his hands. He began once more to pace up and down
the room heavily, but hastily--with a heavy foot, but not the deliberate
quietness of legitimate thought. Such reflections as these tire a man
and hurry him; there is no peace in them. Passing the door of the
turret-room, he looked in, and a sudden gust of anger rose. A stool was
standing in the middle of the room, a book lying open on the floor. I do
not know how they had got there, for Elsie very seldom now came near the
place of so many joint readings and enjoyments. The minister went in,
and kicked the stool violently away. It should never, at least, stand
there again to remind him that he had betrayed himself; and then it
returned to his mind that he desired to see Elsie, and discover how much
she knew or suspected. Her mother had said no, but he was not always
going to yield to her mother in everything. This was certainly his
affair. He went down-stairs immediately to find Elsie, walking very
softly on the landing not to disturb his wife, who had, indeed, a good
right to be tired, and ought to get a good rest now that everybody was
gone; which was quite true. He never even suggested to himself that her
door was open; that she might hear him, and get up and interrupt him.
There was nobody to be found down-stairs. The rooms lay very deserted,
nothing yet cleared from the tables, the flowers drooping that had
decorated the dishes (which was the fashion in those days); the great
white bride-cake, standing with a great gash in it, and roses all round
it. There was nothing, really, to be unhappy about in what had taken
place to-day. Marion was well, and happily provided for. That was a
thing a poor man should always be deeply thankful for, but the sight of
“the banquet-hall deserted” gave him a pang as if it had been death,
instead of the most living of all moments, that had just passed over his
house. He went out to the garden, where he could see that some of the
younger guests were still lingering; but it was only Rodie and the boys
who were his boon companions that were to be seen. Elsie was not there.

He found her late in the afternoon, when he was returning from a long
walk. Walks were things that neither he himself nor his many critics
and observers would have thought a proper indulgence for a minister. He
ought to be going to see somebody, probably “a sick person,” when he
indulged in such a relaxation; and there were plenty of outlying
invalids who might have afforded him the excuse he wanted, with duty at
the end. But he was not capable of duty to-day, and the sick persons
remained unvisited. He turned his face towards home, after treading many
miles of the roughest country. And it was then, just as he came through
the West Port, that he saw Elsie before him, in her white dress, and
fortunately alone. The minister’s thoughts had softened during his walk.
He no longer felt disposed to take her by the shoulders, to ask angrily
what she had said to her mother, and why she had played the spy upon
him; but something of his former excitement sprang up in him at the
sight of her. He quickened his pace a little, and was soon beside her,
laying his hand upon her shoulder. Elsie looked up, not frightened at
all, glad to be joined by him.

“Oh, father, are you going home?” she said, “and so am I.”

“We will walk together, then; which will be a good thing, as I have
something to say to you,” he said.

Elsie had no possible objection. She looked up at him very pleasantly
with her soft brown eyes, and he discovered for the first time that his
younger daughter had grown into a bonnie creature, prettier than
Marion. To be angry with her was impossible, and how did he know that
there was anything to be angry about?

“Elsie,” he said, “your mother has been telling me of something you
heard me say in my study a long time ago, something that you overheard,
which you ought not to have overheard, when you were in the turret, and
I did not know you were there.”

Elsie grew a little pale at this unexpected address.

“Oh, father,” she said, “you knew we were always there.”

“Indeed, I knew nothing of the kind. I never supposed for a moment that
you would remain to listen to what was said.”

“We never did. Oh, never, never!” cried Elsie, now growing as suddenly
red.

“It is evident you did on this occasion. You heard me talking to myself,
and now you have remembered and reported what I said.”

“Oh, father!” cried Elsie, with a hasty look of remonstrance, “how can
you say I did that?”

“What was it, then, you said?”

He noticed that she had no need to pause, to ask herself what it was.
She answered at once.

“It was about the parable. They said you had preached a sermon on it,
and I said I thought your mind had been very full of it; because, when
Rodie and me were in the turret, we heard you.”

“Oh, there were two of you,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a pucker in his
forehead.

“There were always, always two of us then,” said Elsie, with a sudden
cloud on hers; “and what you said was that verse about taking your bill
and writing fourscore. I did not quite understand it at the time.”

“And do you understand it now?”

“No, father, for it was a wrong thing,” said Elsie, sinking her voice.
“It was cheating: and to praise a man for doing it, is what I cannot
understand.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you about that; I will show you what it means,” he said,
with the instinct of the expositor, “but not at this moment,” he added,
“not just now. Was that all that you thought of, when you heard me say
those words to myself?”

Elsie looked up at him, and then she looked all round; a sudden dramatic
conflict took place in her. She had thought of that, and yet she had
thought of something more than that, but she did not know what the
something more was. It had haunted her, but yet she did not know what it
was. She looked up and down the street, unconsciously, to find an answer
and explanation, but none came. Then she said, faltering a little:--

“Yes, father, but I was not content; for I did not understand: and I am
just the same now.”

“I will take an opportunity,” he said, “of explaining it all to you” and
then he added, in a different tone, “it was wrong to be there when I did
not know you were there, and wrong to listen to what I said to myself,
thinking nobody was near; but what would be most wrong of all, would be
to mention to any living creature a thing you had no right to overhear.
And if you ever do it again, I will think you are a little traitor,
Elsie, and no true child of mine. It would set you better to take care
not to do wrong yourself, than to find fault with the parable.”

He looked at her with glowing, angry eyes, that shone through the
twilight, while Elsie gazed at him with consternation. What did he mean?
Then and now, what did he mean?




CHAPTER X.

BROTHER AND SISTER.


All that evening Elsie tried in vain to secure the attention of Rodie,
her brother, her own brother, whom life had already swept away from her,
out of her feminine sphere. To be so intimately allied as that in
childhood, which is a thing which doubles every joy, at least for the
girl, and probably at that early age for the boy also--generally
involves the first pang of existence to one at least of these sworn
companions. It is, I think, always the girl who suffers, though
sometimes no doubt the girl is carried away on the wave of new
friendships, especially if she goes to school, and is swept up into the
whirl of feminine occupations, before the boy is launched into the
circle of contemporaries, who are more absorbing still. But Rodie among
“his laddies,” had left his sister more completely “out of it” than any
boy in possession of all his faculties can ever be. He was always busy
with something, always wandering somewhere with the Seatons, or the
Beatons, when he was not in the still more entrancing company of Johnny
Wemyss. And they never seemed to be tired of each other’s company, day
or night. There were times when he did not even come in to his meals,
but went along with his cronies, in the freedom of his age, without
invitation or preparation; even he had been known to sit down to the
stoved potatoes in the Wemyss’s cottage, though they were not in a class
of life to entertain the minister’s son; but what did Rodie care? When
he brought in Johnny Wemyss in his turn to supper, Mrs. Buchanan could
not shame the rules of hospitality, by giving the fisher lad a bad
reception, but her notice of him was constrained, if kind, so that none
of the young ones were very comfortable. But Alick Seaton and Ralph
Beaton were frequent visitors, taken as a matter of course, and would
sit at the end of the table, with Rodie between them, making their
jokes, and shaking with convulsions of private laughter, which broke out
now and then into a subdued roar, making the elders ask “what was the
fun now?” John in special, who was “at the College,” and sported a red
gown about the streets, being gruff in his critical remarks: for he had
now arrived at an age when you are bound to behave yourself, and not to
“carry on” like the laddies. This being the state of affairs, however,
it was very difficult to long hold of Rodie, who often “convoyed” his
friends home, and came back at the latest moment practicable, only
escaping reprimand by a rush up-stairs to bed. It was not therefore till
the Sunday following that Elsie had any opportunity of seeing her
brother in private, which even then was not with his will: but there was
an interval between breakfast and church, which Rodie, with the best
will in the world, could not spend with “his laddies,” and which
consequently lay undefended, liable to the incursions of his sister.
This moment was usually spent in the garden, and often in calculating
strokes by which, teeing at a certain spot, he might make sure or almost
sure, as sure as the sublime uncertainty of the game permitted, of
“holeing” his ball. Naturally, to have taken out a club on Sunday
morning, even to the hole in the garden, would have been as good as
devoting one’s self to the infernal gods: but thought is free. Rodie had
a conviction that Elsie would come bouncing along, through the lilac
bushes, to spoil his calculations, as she usually did; but this did not
lessen the frown with which he perceived that his anticipation had come
to pass. “What are you wantin’ now?” he said gloomily, marking imaginary
distances upon the grass.

“Oh, nothing--if you are so deep engaged,” said Elsie, with a spark of
natural pride.

“I’m no deep engaged!” said Rodie, indignantly; for he knew father would
not smile upon his study, neither would it be appreciated by Alick or
Ralph (though they were probably engaged in the same way themselves),
that he should be studying the strokes which it was their pride to
consider as spontaneous or, indeed, almost accidental. He threw down the
cane he had in his hand, and turned away towards the summer-house,
whither Elsie followed him.

“I want awfully to speak to you, Rodie----”

“You are always wanting to speak to me,” said the ungrateful boy.

“I’m nothing of the kind; and if I were, want would be my master,” cried
Elsie, “for there’s never a moment when you’re free of these laddies.
You’re just in their arms and round their necks every moment of your
life.”

“I’m neither in their arms nor round their necks,” cried Rodie furious,
being conscious that he was not weaned from a certain “bairnly” habit of
wandering about with an arm round his cronies’ shoulders. Elsie,
however, not sorry for once in a way to find him at a disadvantage,
laughed.

“It’s Ralph and Alick, Ralph and Alick, just day and night,” she cried,
“or else Johnny Wemyss--but you’re not so keen about Johnny Wemyss
because they say he’s not a gentleman; but _I_ think he’s the best
gentleman of them all.”

“It’s much you ken!” cried Rodie. His laddies had made him much more
pronounced in his Fife sing-song of accent, which the minister, being
from the West Country (though it is well known in Fife that the accent
of the West Country is just insufferable), objected to strongly.

“I ken just as well as you--and maybe better,” said Elsie. Then she
remembered that this passage of arms, however satisfactory in itself,
was not quite in accordance with the object of the interview which she
desired. “I am not wanting to quarrel,” she said.

“It was you that began,” said Rodie, with some justice. They had by this
time reached the summer-house, with its thick background of lilac
bushes. The bay lay before them, in all that softened splendour of the
Sabbath morning, concerning which so many of us hold the fond tradition
that in its lustre and its glory there is something distinct from all
other days. The Forfarshire coast lay dim and fair in a little morning
haze, on the other side of the blue and tranquil sea, with faint lines
of yellow sand, and here and there a white edge of foam, though all was
so still, lighting up the distance. The hills, all soft with light and
shadow, every knowe and howe visible under the caress of the mild and
broad sunshine, the higher rocks upon the near shore half-draped with
the intense greenery of the delicate sea-weed, the low reefs, lying dark
in leathery clothing of dulse, like the teeth of some great sea monster,
half hidden in the ripples of the water, the horizon to the east
softening off into a vague radiance of infinity in the great breadth of
the German Ocean. I have always thought and often said, that if there is
a spot on earth in which one can feel the movement of the great round
world through space, though reduced by human limitations to a faint
rhythm and swaying, it is there under the illimitable blue of the
northern sky, on the shores and links of St. Rule’s.

The pair who came thus suddenly in sight of this landscape, were not of
any sentimental turn, and were deeply engaged in their own immediate
sensations; but the girl paused to cry, “Oh, how bonnie, how bonnie!”
while the boy sat down on the rough seat, and dug his heels into the
grass, expecting an ordeal of questioning and “bothering,” in which the
sky and the sea could give him but little help. Elsie was much of the
mind of the jilted and forsaken everywhere. She could not keep herself
from reproaches, sometimes from taunts. But the sky and sea did help
Rodie after all, for they brought her back by the charm of their aspect,
an effect more natural at sixteen than at fifteen, and to a girl rather
than a boy.

“I am not wanting to quarrel, and it’s a shame and a sin on the Sabbath,
and such a bonnie day as this. Oh, but it’s a bonnie day! there is the
wee light-house that is like a glow-worm at night; it is nothing but a
white line now, as thin as an end of thread: and muckle Dundee nothing
but a little smoke hanging above the Law----”

“I suppose,” said Rodie, scornfully, “you have seen them all before?”

“Oh, yes, I have seen them all before: but that is not to say that they
are not sometimes bonnier at one time than another. Rodie, you and me
that are brother and sister, we never should be anything less than dear
friends.”

“Friends enough,” said Rodie, sulkily. “I am wanting nothing but just
that you’ll let me be.”

“But that,” said Elsie, with a sigh, “is just the hardest thing! for
I’m wanting you, and you’re no wanting me, Rodie! But I’ll say no more
about that; Marion says it’s always so, and that laddies and men for a
constancy they like their own kind best.”

“I didna think Marion had that much sense,” the boy said.

“Oh, dinna anger me over again with your conceit,” cried Elsie, “and me
in such a good frame of mind, and the bay so bonnie, and something so
different in my thoughts.”

Rodie settled himself on the rude bench, as though preparing to endure
the inevitable: he took his hands out of his pockets and began to drum a
faint tune upon the rustic table. The attitude which many a lover, many
a husband, many a resigned male victim of the feminine reproaches from
which there is no escape, has assumed for ages past, came by nature to
this small boy. He dismissed every kind of interest or intelligence from
his face. If he had been thirty, he could not have looked more blank,
more enduring, more absolutely indifferent. Since he could not get away
from her, she must have her say. It would not last for ever, neither
could it penetrate beyond the very surface of the ear and of the mind.
He assumed his traditional attitude by inheritance from long lines of
forefathers. And perhaps it was well that Elsie’s attention was not
concentrated on him, or it is quite possible that she might have assumed
the woman’s traditional attitude, which is as well defined as the
man’s. But she was fortunately at the visionary age, and had entered
upon her poetry, as he had entered into the dominion of “his laddies.”
Her eye strayed over the vast expanse spread out before her, and the awe
of the beauty, and the vast calm of God came over her heart.

“Rodie, I want to speak to you of something. It’s long past, and it has
nothing to do with you or me. Rodie, do you mind yon afternoon, when we
were shut up in the turret, and heard papa studying his sermon?”

“What’s about that? You’ve minded me of it many a time: but if I was to
be always minding like you, what good would that do?”

“I wanted to ask you, Rodie--sometimes you mind better than me,
sometimes not so well. Do you mind what he was saying? I want to be just
sure for once, and then never to think upon it again.”

“What does it matter what he was saying? It was just about one of the
parables.” I am afraid the parables were just “a thing in the Bible” to
Rodie. He did not identify them much, or think what they meant, or
wherein one differed from another. This, I need not say, was not for
want of teaching: perhaps it was because of too much teaching, which
sometimes has a similar effect. “I mind,” he said with a laugh, “we were
just that crampit, sitting so long still, that we couldn’t move.”

“Yes, yes,” said Elsie, “but I want to remember quite clear what it was
he said.”

“It did not matter to us what he said,” said Rodie. “Papa is sometimes a
foozle, but I am not going to split upon him.” This was the slang of
those days, still lingering where golf is wont to be played.

“Do you think I would split upon him?” cried Elsie with indignation.

“I don’t know, then, what you’re carrying on about. Yes, I mind he said
something that was very funny; but then he often does that. Fathers are
so fond of saying things, that you don’t know what they mean, and
ministers worse than the rest. There’s the first jow of the bell, and
it’s time to get your bonnet on. I’m not for biding here havering; and
then that makes us late.”

“You’re keen about being in time this morning, Rodie!”

“I’m always keen for being in time. When you come in late, you see on
all their faces: ‘There’s the minister’s family just coming in--them
that ought to set us an example--and we’ve been all here for a quarter
of an hour.’”

“We are never so late as that,” cried Elsie, indignantly.

“You will be to-day, if you do not hurry,” he said, jumping up himself
and leading the way.

And it was quite true, Elsie could not but allow to herself, that the
minister’s family were sometimes late. It had originated in the days
when there were so many little ones to get ready; and then, as Mrs.
Buchanan said, it was a great temptation living so near the church. You
felt that in a minute you could be there; and then you put off your
time, so that in the end, the bell had stopped ringing, and you had to
troop in with a rash, which was evidently a very bad example to the
people. And they did look up with that expression on their faces, as if
it were they who were the examples! But the fact that Rodie was right,
did not make what he said more agreeable. It acted rather the contrary
way. She had wished for his sympathy, for his support of her own
recollections, perhaps for surer rectification of her impressions; and
she found nothing but high disapproval, and the suggestion that she was
capable of splitting upon papa. This reproach broke Elsie’s heart.
Nothing would have induced her to betray her father. She would have
shielded him with her own life, she would have defended him had he been
in such danger, for instance, as people, and especially ministers, were
long ago, in Claverhouse’s time--or dug out with her nails a place to
hide him in, like Grizel Home. But to fathom the present mystery, and
remember exactly what he said, and find out what it meant, had not
seemed to her to be anything against him. That it was none of her
business, had not occurred to her. And she did not for the moment
perceive any better sense in Rodie. She thought he was only perverse, as
he so often was now, contrary to whatever she might say, going against
her. And she was very sure it was no enthusiasm for punctuality, or for
going to church, which made him hasten on before to the house, where his
Sunday hat, carefully brushed, was on the hall-table, waiting for him.
That was a thing that mother liked to do with her own hands.

The thought of Rodie in such constant opposition and rebellion,
overshadowed her through all the early service, and it was not really
till the middle of the sermon that a sudden perception caught her mind.
Was that what Rodie meant? “He may be a foozle, but I will never split
on him.” But papa was no foozle. What was he? A good kind man, doing
nobody any wrong. There was nothing to say against him, nothing for his
children to betray. Even Elsie’s half-developed mind was conscious of
other circumstances, of children whose father might have something to
betray. And, in that dreadful case, what would one do? Oh, decline to
hear, decline to know of anything that could be betrayed, shut your ears
to every whisper, believe not even himself to his own undoing! This idea
leapt into her mind in the middle of the sermon. There was nothing in
the sermon to make her think of that. It was not Mr. Buchanan who was
preaching, but the other minister, his colleague, who did not preach
very good sermons, not like father’s! And Elsie’s attention wandered in
spite of herself. And then, all in a moment, this thought leapt into her
mind. In these circumstances, so different from her own, that would have
been the only thing for a child to do. Oh, never to listen to a word
against him, not even if it came from himself. Elsie’s quick mind sprang
responsive to this thought. This was far finer, far higher than her
desire to remember, to fathom what he had meant. And from whence was it
that this thought had come? From Rodie, her brother, the boy whom she
had been accusing in her mind, not only of forsaking her, but of
becoming more rough, more coarse, less open to fine thoughts. This
perception surprised Elsie so, that it was all she could do, not to jump
up in her place, to clap her hands, to cry out: “It was Rodie.” And she
who had never known that Rodie was capable of that! while all St.
Rule’s, and the world besides, had conceived the opinion of him that he
was a foolish callant. Elsie’s heart swelled full of triumph in Rodie.
“He may be a foozle”--no, no, he was no foozle--well did Rodie know
that. But was not Elsie’s curiosity a tacit insult to papa, as
suggesting that he might have been committing himself, averring
something that was wrong? Elsie would have condemned herself to all the
pangs of conscience, to all the reproaches against the ungrateful child,
who in her heart was believing her father guilty of some unknown
criminality, if it had not been that her heart was flooded with sudden
delight, the enchantment of a great discovery that Rodie had chosen the
better part. There was a true generosity in her, notwithstanding her
many foolishnesses. That sudden flash of respect for Rodie, and happy
discovery that in this one thing at least he was more faithful than she,
consoled her for appearing to herself by comparison in a less favourable
light.

And the effect was, that she was silenced even to herself. She put no
more questions to Rodie, she tried to put out of her own mind her
personal recollections, and every attempt to understand. Did not Rodie
say it was not their business, that it did not matter to them what papa
said? Elsie could not put away her curiosity out of her heart, but she
bowed her head to Rodie’s action. After all, what a grand discovery it
was that Rodie should be the one to see what was right.




CHAPTER XI.

THE GROWING UP OF THE BAIRNS.


This was the last incident in the secret history of the Buchanan family
for the moment. The sudden, painful, and unexpected crisis which had
arisen on Marion’s wedding day ceased almost as suddenly as it arose.
The Mowbrays, after staying a short time in St. Rule’s, departed to more
genial climes, and places in which more amusement was to be found--for
though even so long ago, St. Rule’s had become a sort of watering-place,
where people came in the summer, it was not in the least a place of
organised pleasure, or where there was any whirl of gaiety; nothing
could be more deeply disapproved of than a whirl of gaiety in these
days.

There were no hotels and few lodgings of the usual watering-place kind.
People who came hired houses and transported themselves and all their
families, resuming all their usual habits with the sole difference that
the men of the family, instead of going out upon their usual avocations
every day, went out to golf instead: which was then a diversion
practised only in certain centres of its own, where most of the people
could play--a thing entirely changed nowadays, as everybody is aware,
when it is to be found everywhere, and practised by everybody, the most
of whom do not know how to play.

Mrs. Mowbray did not find the place at all to her mind. Mr. Anderson’s
house, to which her son had succeeded, was old-fashioned, with furniture
of the last century, and large rooms, filled with the silence and calm
of years. Instead of being surrounded by “grounds,” which were the only
genteel setting for a gentleman’s house, it had the ruins of the
cathedral on one hand, and on the other the High Street. The picturesque
was not studied in those days: unless it might be the namby-pamby
picturesque, such as flourished in books of beauty, keepsakes, and
albums, when what was supposed to be Italian scenery was set forth in
steel engravings, and fine ladies at Venetian windows listened to the
guitars of their lovers rising from gondolas out of moonlit lakes. To
look out on the long, broad, sunny High Street, with, perhaps, the
figure of a piper in the distance, against the glow of the sunset, or a
wandering group, with an unhappy and melancholy dancing bear--was very
vulgar to the middle-class fine lady, a species appropriate to that
period, and which now has died away; and, to look out, on the other
hand, upon the soaring spring of a broken arch in the ruins, gave Mrs.
Mowbray the vapours, or the blues, or whatever else that elegant malady
was called. We should say nerves, in these later days, but, at the
beginning of the century, nerves had scarcely yet been invented.

For all these reasons, Mrs. Mowbray did not stay long in St. Rule’s--she
complained loudly of everything she found there, of the house, and the
society which had paid her so little attention: and of the climate, and
the golf which Frank had yielded to the fascination of, staying out all
day, and keeping her in constant anxiety! but, above all, she complained
of the income left by old Mr. Anderson, which was so much less than they
expected, and which all her efforts could not increase. She said so much
about this, as to make the life of good Mr. Morrison, the man of
business, a burden to him: and at the same time to throw upon the most
respectable inhabitants of St. Rule’s a sort of cloud or shadow, or
suspicion of indebtedness which disturbed the equanimity of the town.
“She thinks we all borrowed money from old Anderson,” the gentlemen said
with laughter in many a dining-room. But there were a few others, like
Mr. Buchanan, who did not like the joke.

“The woman is daft!” they said; but it was remarked by some keen
observers that the minister gave but a sickly smile in response. And it
may be supposed that this added to the contempt of the ladies for the
pretensions of a woman of whom nobody knew who was her father or who her
mother, yet who would fain have set herself up as a leader of fashion
over them all. In general, when the ladies disapprove of a new-comer, in
a limited society like that of St. Rule’s, the men are apt to take her
part--but, in this case, nobody took her part; and, as there was
nothing gay in the place, and no amusement to be had, even in solemn
dinner-parties, she very soon found it was not suitable for her health.

“So cold, even in summer,” she said, shivering--and everybody was glad
when she went away, taking that little mannikin, Frank--who, perhaps,
might have been made into something like a man on the links--with her,
to the inanity of some fashionable place. To like a fashionable place
was then believed to be the very top, or bottom, of natural depravity in
St. Rule’s.

This had been a very sore ordeal to Mr. Buchanan: his conscience
upbraided him day by day--he had even upon him an aching impulse to go
and tell somebody to relieve his own mind, and share the responsibility
with some one who might have guided him in his sore strait. Though he
was a very sound Presbyterian, and evangelical to his finger-tips, the
wisdom of the Church of Rome, in the institution of confession, and of a
spiritual director to aid the penitent, appeared to him in a far clearer
light than he had ever seen it before. To be sure, in all churches, the
advantage of telling your difficulties to an adviser conversant with the
spiritual life, has always been recognised: but there was no one whom
Mr. Buchanan could choose for this office--they were all married men,
for one thing, and who could be sure that the difficulty might not ooze
out into the mind of a faithful spouse, in no way bound to keep the
secrets of her husband’s penitents--and whom, at all events, even though
her lips were sealed by strictest honour, the penitent had no intention
of confiding his secret to. No; the minister felt that his reverend
brethren were the last persons to whom he would like to confide his hard
case. If there had been some hermit now, some old secluded person, some
old man, or even woman, in the sanctuary of years and experience, to
whom a man could go, and, by parable or otherwise, lay bare the troubles
of his soul. He smiled at himself even while the thought went through
his mind: the prose part of his being suggested an old, neglected
figure, all overgrown with beard and hair, in the hollow of St. Rule’s
cave, within the dashing of the spray, the very place for a hermit, a
dirty old man, hoarse and callous, incapable of comprehending the
troubles of a delicate conscience, though he might know what to say to
the reprobate or murderer: no, the hermit would not do, he said to
himself, with a smile, in our days.

To be sure, he had one faithful confidant, the wife of his bosom; but,
least of all, would Mr. Buchanan have poured out his troubles to his
wife. He knew very well what she would say--“You accepted an indulgence
that was not meant for you; you took your bill and wrote fourscore when
it was hundreds you were owing; Claude, my man, that cannot be--you must
just go this moment and tell Mr. Morrison the whole truth; and, if I
should sell my flannel petticoat, we’ll pay it off, every penny, if
only they will give us time.” He knew so well what she would say, that
he could almost hear the inflections of her voice in saying it. There
was no subtlety in her--she would understand none of his hesitations.
She would see no second side to the question. “Own debt and crave days,”
she would say; she was fond of proverbs--and he had heard her quote that
before.

There are thus difficulties in the way of consulting the wife of your
bosom, especially if she is a practical woman, who could, in a manner,
force you to carry out your repentance into restitution, and give you no
peace.

During this time of reawakened feeling, Mr. Buchanan had a certain
distant sentiment, which he did not know how to explain to himself,
against his daughter Elsie. She had a way of looking at him which he did
not understand--not the look of disapproval, but of curiosity, half
wistful, half pathetic--as if she wanted to know something more of him,
to clear up some doubt in her own mind. What cause could the girl have
to want more knowledge of her own father? She knew everything about him,
all his habits, his way of looking at things--as much as a girl could
know about a man so much older and wiser than herself. It half amused
him to think that one of his own family should find this mystery in him.
He was to himself, always excepting that one thing, as open as the
day--and yet the amusement was partial, and mingled with alarm. She
knew more of that one thing than any one else; could it be that it was
curiosity and anxiety about this that was in the girl’s eyes?

Sometimes he thought so, and then condemned himself for entertaining
such a thought, reminding himself that vague recollections like that of
Elsie do not take such shape in a young mind, and also that it was
impossible that one so young, and his affectionate and submissive child,
should entertain any such doubts of him.

The curious thing was that, knowing all he did of himself, and that he
had done--or intended to do, which was the same--this one thing which
was evil, he still felt it impossible that any doubt of him should lodge
in his daughter’s mind.

In this way the years which are, perhaps, most important in the
development of the young, passed over the heads of the Buchanans. From
sixteen, Elsie grew to twenty, and became, as Marion had been, her
mother’s right hand, so that Mrs. Buchanan, more free from domestic
cares than formerly, was able to take an amount of repose which,
perhaps, was not quite so good for her as her former more active life;
for she grew stout, and less willing to move as her necessities
lessened. John was now in Edinburgh, having very nearly obtained the
full-fledged honours of a W.S. And Rodie, nearly nineteen, was now the
only boy at home. Perhaps, as the youngest, and the last to be settled,
he was more indulged than the others had been; for he had not yet
decided upon his profession, and still had hankerings after the army,
notwithstanding that all the defects of that service had been put before
him again and again--the all but impossibility of buying him a
commission, the certainty that he would have to live on his pay, and
many other disadvantageous things.

Rodie was still not old enough to be without hopes that something might
turn up to make his desires possible, however little appearance of it
there might be. Getting into the army in those days was not like getting
into the army now. With us it means, in the first place, examinations,
which any boy of moderate faculties and industry can pass: but then it
meant so much money out of his father’s pocket to buy a commission: to
put the matter in words, the present system seems the better way--but it
is doubtful whether the father’s pocket is much the better, seeing that
there is often a great deal of “cramming” to be done before the youth
gets through the ordeal of examinations, and sometimes, it must be
allowed, boys who are of the most perfect material for soldiers do not
get through that narrow gate at all.

But there was no cramming in Roderick Buchanan’s day; the word had not
been invented, nor the thing. A boy’s education was put into him
solidly, moderately, in much the same way as his body was built up, by
the work of successive years--he was not put into a warm place, and
filled with masses of fattening matter, like the poor geese of
Strasburg.

Rodie’s eyes, therefore, not requiring to be for ever bent on
mathematics or other abstruse studies, were left free to search the
horizon for signs of anything that might turn up; perhaps a cadetship
for India, which was the finest thing that could happen--except in his
mother’s eyes, who thought one son was enough to have given up to the
great Moloch of India: but, had the promise of the cadetship arrived any
fine morning, I fear Mrs. Buchanan’s scruples would have been made short
work with. In the meantime, Rodie was attending classes at the College,
and sweeping the skies with the telescope of hope.

Rodie and his sister had come a little nearer with the progress of the
years. From the proud moment, when the youth felt the down of a coming
moustache upon his upper lip, and began to perceive that he was by no
means a bad-looking fellow, and to feel inclinations towards balls and
the society of girls, scorned and contemned so long as he was merely a
boy, he had drawn a little closer to his sister, who had, as it were,
the keys of that other world. It was a little selfish, perhaps; but, in
a family, one must not look too closely into motives; and Elsie,
faithful to her first affection, was glad enough to get him back again,
and to find that he was, by no means, so scornful of mere “lassies,” as
in the days when his desertion had made her little heart so sore.
Perhaps it had something to do with his conversion, that “his laddies,”
the Alicks and Ralphs of his boyish days, had all taken (at least, as
many as remained of them, those who had not yet gone off to the army, or
the bar, or the W.S.’s office) to balls also, and now danced as
vigorously as they played.

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, examining the 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
his rubbish 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 students near 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.




CHAPTER XII.

THE MOWBRAYS.


Mrs. Mowbray and 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 now speaking, 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
unspeakable relief, 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 was _bon 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 of those
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. She learned 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
culpability were 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 expectation into 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. _That_
woman--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 person coming 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 what I 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 prevent her 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 woman who 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 will always 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 of any
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.”




CHAPTER XIII.

PLAINTIFF OR PENITENT?


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 is _that_ woman again,” he said to himself. Mrs. Mowbray, on her
side, was very far from thinking herself _that_ woman; she rather
thought the minister looked forward with pleasure to her visits, that
she brought a sort of atmosphere of sunshine and the great 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 appearance was
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 efforts to 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 your own 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 as to 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 looking out 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. _Thy_ bill; 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.




CHAPTER XIV.

ANOTHER AGENT.


Mrs. Mowbray had 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 was not
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 our _monde_,” his mother said.

“Why not of our _monde_?” cried Frank, “they are the best people in St.
Rule’s, and that is their _monde_; and it is our _monde_, 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 we were 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 our _monde_.”

“What is our _monde_?” cried the young man. “It is not Lord Mowbray’s
_monde_, nor the _monde_ of 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 could never
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 be yours. 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.




CHAPTER XV.

FRANK’S OPERATIONS.


Frank Mowbray was 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 to see 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 without anybody 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 steady heart 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 you
know 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.”

“Oh, then I suppose,” cried Frank, “it is rather urgent, and we ought to
ask for it to preserve our claim.”

There is a universal sentiment in the human heart against a creditor
wishing to recover, and in favour of the debtor who is instinctively
understood not to be able to pay. Especially strong is this sentiment in
the bosom of the young; to lend is a fine thing, but to ask back again
is always a mean proceeding. Rodie instinctively hardened himself
against the legal rights of his friend.

“There’s men,” he said, “I’ve heard, that are constantly dunning you to
pay them. I would rather never borrow a penny if it was to be like
that.”

“I would rather never borrow a penny whether it was like that or not,”
said the virtuous Frank.

“Oh, it’s easy speaking for you, that have more money than you know what
to do with; but if you think of my commission, and where the money is
to come from.”

“Most likely,” said Frank, without any special meaning, merely as a
conjecture, “if my Uncle Anderson had been living, your father would
have got it from him.”

Rodie grew redder than ever under this suggestion. “It might be so,” he
said; “but I hope you are not meaning that my father would not have paid
the money back, whoever it came from: for if that is what you are
meaning, you’re a----”

“I was meaning nothing of the kind,” cried Frank in a hurry; for to have
the word _leear_, even though it is a mild version of liar, flung in his
face by Rodie Buchanan, the brother of Elsie, was a thing he did not at
all desire. “I hope I know better: but I wish I could speak to your
father about my affairs, for I know that he was Uncle Anderson’s great
friend, and he is sure to know.”

“To know what?” said Rodie.

“Oh, to know the people that borrowed from my uncle, and did not pay. I
hope you don’t think I ought to let them off when they have behaved like
that.”

“Behaved like what?” Rodie asked again.

“What is the matter with you, Rodie? I am saying nothing that is wrong.
If my uncle lent them money, they ought to pay.”

“And do you think,” cried Rodie, in high indignation, “that my father
would betray to you the names of the poor bodies that got a little money
from Mr. Anderson to set them up in their shops, or to buy them a boat?
Do you think if you were to talk to him till doomsday, that my father
would do _that_?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” said Frank, whose intellect was not of a subtle
kind. “People should pay back the money when they have borrowed it. It
is not as if it had been given to them as a present; Mr. Buchanan has
been very kind to me, and I shouldn’t ask him to do anything that was
not right, neither would I be hard on any poor man. I was not told they
were very poor men who had got my old uncle’s money; and surely they had
not so good a right to it as I have. I don’t want to do anything that is
cruel; but I will have my money if I can get it, for I have a right to
it,” Frank said, whose temper was gradually rising; yet not so much his
temper as a sensation of justice and confidence in his own cause.

“You had better send in the sheriff’s officers,” said Rodie,
contemptuously, “and take their plenishing, or the stock in the shop, or
the boat. But if you do, Frank Mowbray, mind you this, there is not one
of us will ever speak to you again.”

“One of you!” cried Frank, “I don’t want to quarrel with you, Rodie; but
you are all a great deal younger than I am, and I am not going to be
driven by you. I’ll see your father, and ask his advice, and I shall do
what he says; but if you think I am going to be driven by you, from
anything that is right in itself, you’re mistaken: and that’s all I have
got to say.”

“You are a prig, and a beast, and a cruel creditor,” cried Rodie. “Not
the kind for us in St. Rule’s: and good-night to you, and if you find
nobody to play with to-morrow, you will just mind that you’ve chosen to
put yourself against us, and it’s your own fault.”

Saying which, Rodie made a stride against the little garden gate which
led to the Buchanan’s front door, flung it inwards with a clang, and
disappeared under the shadow of the dark elder-tree which overshadowed
the entrance.

It was not until that moment that Frank realised what the consequence
might be of quarrelling with Elsie’s brother. He called after him, but
Rodie was remorseless, and would not hear; and then the young man went
home very sadly. Everybody knew that Rodie was Elsie’s favourite
brother; she liked him better than all the rest. If Rodie asked anything
of her, Elsie was sure to grant almost everything to his request: and
Frank had been such a fool as to offend him! He could not think how he
could have been so foolish as to do it. It was the act of a madman, he
said to himself. What was a few hundreds, or even thousands in
comparison with Elsie, even if he recovered his money? It would be no
good to him if he had to sacrifice his love.

Frank was not a young man who despised either hundreds or thousands,
and probably, later, if all went well with him, he might think himself a
fool to sacrificing good money for any other consideration; but he
certainly was not in this state of feeling now. Elsie and Rodie, and the
Statute of Limitations, and the money that Uncle Anderson had strewed
about broadcast, jumbled each other in his mind. What did it matter to
him if he lost the favour of his love? and on the other hand the pity it
would be to lose the money for want of asking for it, and knowing who
the man was who had got it, and had not had the honesty to pay. He grew
angrier and angrier at these people as he went along, seeing that in
addition to this fundamental sin against him, they were also the cause
of his quarrel with Rodie, and terrible dismissal by Elsie. The cads! to
hold their tongues and conceal who they were, when it was a debt of
honour; and to trust in such a poor defence as a Statute of Limitations,
and to part him from the girl he loved. He had been more curious than
eager before, thinking besides the natural feeling one has not to be
robbed, and to recover at all hazard that which is one’s own, however
wicked people should endeavour to cheat one out of it--that it would be
fun to break through the secret pretences of those people, and force
them to disgorge the money they had unlawfully obtained; but now Frank
began to have a personal animosity against those defaulters, as his
mother called them, who not only had cheated him of his money, but had
made him to quarrel with Rodie, and perhaps with Rodie’s sister.
Confound them! they should not be let off now. He would find them,
though all the world united in concealing them. He would teach them to
take away his inheritance, and interfere between him and his love! It
was with these sentiments hot in his heart that he hastened home.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE UNJUST STEWARD ONCE MORE.


Rodie Buchanan plunged into the partial darkness of his father’s house,
with a heart still more hot and flaming than that of Frank. He could not
have told anyone why he took this so much to heart. It was not that he
was unusually tender of his neighbours, or charitable beyond the
ordinary rule of kindness, which was current in St. Rule’s. He was one
of those who would never have refused a penny to a beggar, or a bawbee
to a weeping child, provided he had either the penny or the bawbee in
his ill-furnished pockets, which sometimes was not the case; but, having
done that by habit and natural impulse, there was no necessity in
Rodie’s mind to do more, or to make himself the champion of the poor, so
that he really was not aware what the reason was which made him turn so
hotly against Frank, in his equally natural determination to get back
what was his own. The hall and staircase of Mr. Buchanan’s house lay
almost completely in the dark. There was one candle burning on a little
table at the foot of the stair, which made the darkness visible, but
above there was no light at all. Gas was not general in those days, nor
were there lamps in common use, such as those which illuminate every
part of our dwellings now. The dark passages and dreadful black corners
of stair or corridor, which are so familiar in the stories of the
period, those dreadful passages, through which the children flew with
their hearts beating, not knowing what hand might grip them in the dark,
or terrible thing come after them, must perplex the children of to-day,
who know nothing about them, and never have any dark passages to go
through. But, in those days, to get from the nursery to the drawing-room
by night, unless you were preceded by the nursery-maid with a candle,
was more alarming than anything a child’s imagination could grasp
nowadays. You thought of it for a minute or two before you undertook it;
and then, with a rush, you dared the perils of the darkness, flinging
yourself against the door to which you were bound, all breathless and
trembling, like one escaped from nameless dangers. Rodie, nearly twenty,
big and strong, and fearing nothing, had got over all those tremors. He
strode up the dark stairs, three at a time, and flung open the
drawing-room door, groping for it in the wall. He knew what, at that
hour, he would be likely to find there. It was the hour when Mrs.
Buchanan invariably went to the study “to see what papa was doing,” to
make sure that his fire was mended, if he meant to sit up over his
sermon, or that things were comfortable for him in other ways when fires
were not necessary. The summer was not far advanced, and fires were
still thought necessary in the evenings at St. Rule’s. Between the fire
and the table was seated Elsie, with a large piece of “whiteseam,” that
is, plain sewing, on her knee, and two candles burning beside her.
Another pair of candlesticks was on the mantelpiece, repeated in the low
mirror which hung over it, but these candles were not lighted, neither
were those on the writing-table at the other end of the room. When there
was company, or, indeed, any visitor, in the evening they were lighted.
The pair on the mantelpiece only when the visitor was unimportant, but
the whole six when anybody of consequence was there, and then, you may
suppose, how bright the room was, lighted _al giorus_, so to speak. But
the household, and Elsie’s little friends, when they came rushing in
with some commission from their mothers, were very well contented with
the two on the table. They wanted snuffing often, but still they gave,
what was then supposed to be, a very good light.

Elsie looked up, pleased to see her brother, and let her work fall on
her knee. Her needlework was one of the chief occupations of her life,
and she considered the long hours she spent over it to be entirely a
matter of course; but, by this hour of the night, she had naturally
become a little tired of it, and was pleased to let it drop on her knee,
and have a talk with Rodie over the fire. It was considered rather
ill-bred to go on working, with your head bent over your sewing, when
anyone came in. To be sure, it was only her brother, but Elsie was so
glad to see him a little earlier than usual, that, though the task she
had given herself for the evening was not quite completed, she was glad
to let her seam drop upon her knees. “Oh, Rodie, is that you?” she said.

“Of course it’s me,” said Rodie. “I suppose you were not looking for
anybody else at this hour?”

“I am glad you are in so soon,” said Elsie. “And who was that that came
with you to the door? Not Johnny Wemyss. I could tell by his foot.”

“What have you to do with men’s feet?” said Rodie, glad to find
something to spend a little of his wrath upon. “Lassies must have
tremendously little to think of. I am sure I would never think if it was
one person’s foot, or another, if I were sitting at home like you.”

“Well,” said Elsie, “you never do sit at home, so you cannot tell. I
just notice them because I cannot help it. One foot is so different from
another, almost as much as their voices. But what is the matter with
you, Rodie? Have you been quarrelling with somebody? You look as if you
were in a very ill key.”

“I wonder who wouldn’t be in an ill key? There is that feckless gomeril,
Frank Mowbray----” (“Oh, it was Frank Mowbray?” Elsie interjected in an
undertone)--“going on about debts and nonsense, and folk in the town
that owe him money, and that he’s coming to my father to ask him who
they are; as if my father would go and split upon poor bodies that
borrowed from old Anderson. I had it in my heart,” cried Rodie, striking
with his heel a piece of coal that was smouldering in the grate, and
breaking it up into a hundred blazing fragments--“I had it in my heart
to take him by the two shoulders, and fling him out like potato peelings
into the road.”

“Oh, Rodie, my mother’s gathering coal!” cried Elsie, hastening to
extinguish the fiery sparks that had fallen upon the large fur rug
before the fire. “Well,” she said, serenely, in a tone which would have
disposed summarily, had he heard it, of poor Frank’s hopes, “you are big
enough to have done it: but I would not lift my hands, if I were you, on
one that was not as big as myself. And what has Frank done? for he never
was, that I could see, a quarrelling boy.”

“Oh, not that you could see!” said Rodie, with a snort. “He’s sure to
keep a good face before the lassies, and especially you that he’s
courting, or trying to court, if he knew the way.”

“He’s not courting me,” cried Elsie, with a blush and a laugh, giving
Rodie a sisterly push, “and I wonder you will say such things to me.”

“It’s only because he doesna know the way then,” said Rodie, picking up
the pieces of blazing coal from the white hearth. “Will you let me
alone, when you see I have the tongs in my hand?”

“Was it for that you quarrelled with Frank?” said Elsie, letting a
little careless scorn appear in her tone, as who should say, you might
quarrel with many besides Frank if that was the cause. The girls in St.
Rule’s, in those days, were not so disproportionate in number as they
seem to be now, and she was unpopular, indeed, who had not one or two,
at least, competing for her smiles.

“It was not for that!” cried Rodie, expressing, on his side, a scornful
conviction that anything so unimportant was not worth quarrelling about.
And then he added, “Do ye mind, Elsie, yon day in the turret-room?”

“Oh, I mind it very well,” cried Elsie, with a little start; “I have
always minded it. I think of it sometimes in the middle of the night
when I wake up and cannot get to sleep.”

“I cannot see what good it can do thinking of it then,” said Rodie,
always contemptuous of the ways of lassies. “But you mind how my father
went on about the unjust steward. It was awfully funny the way he went
on.”

“It was for his sermon,” said Elsie, with a little trouble in her eyes.

“It was not for his sermon. I heard him preach that sermon after, and I
just listened, minding yon afternoon. But there was not a word in it
about taking your bill, and writing fourscore.”

“Oh, Rodie, you couldn’t remember it as well as all that!”

“Why shouldn’t I remember? I was a big laddie. I remember heaps of
things. I mind going to Kinghorn, and crossing in the smack to Leith,
years and years before.”

“That was different from hearing a sermon,” said Elsie, with the
superiority to sermons which a minister’s daughter naturally possessed.

“I did mind it, however,” said Rodie, “and I knew it was not in the
sermon--then where was it? and what was it for? I mind, as if it were
yesterday, about taking the bill, and writing fourscore. Now, the
question is,” said the young man, laying down the tongs, and gazing
unwinking into the glowing abyss of the fire, “what did my father mean
by yon? He did not mean just nothing at all. You would not say that.”

“I do not suppose,” said Elsie, with a woman’s quick and barely
justified partisanship, “that my father ever said anything that meant
just nothing at all.”

“Oh yes, he does, whiles,” said the more impartial boy; “but this was
different. What did he mean by it? I will tell you what I have been
thinking. Yon gomeril of a Frank has got it into his thick head that
everybody in St. Rule’s is in his debt. It is his mother that has put it
into his head. Now, just supposing, for the sake of the argument, that
it was true----”

“I think,” said Elsie, thoughtfully, “that maybe it was true.”

“Well, then,” said Rodie, “we’ll suppose that papa” (into this babyish
title they all fell by moments, though protesting against it) “knew all
about it. He generally does know about most things; people put a great
deal of trust in him. They tell him things. Now, my opinion is, that old
Mr. Anderson told him all about this, and who the folk were, and how
they were to pay.”

“Maybe,” said Elsie, doubtfully.

“Maybe? I have no doubt about it; and my conviction is, this is what he
was meaning yon afternoon. The old man was dead or dying, and nobody
knew but papa--I mean my father. He knew what they had borrowed, and who
they were. And most likely he knew that they were far from able to pay.
There’s a proverb about borrowed siller,” said Rodie; “I cannot mind, at
this moment, what it is--but it means this, that it never does you any
good, and that I certainly believe.” Here he made a pause. He had once
borrowed a pound, and Rodie had no such harassing recollection in all
his experience. He was still owing eighteenpence of that sum, and it had
eaten into a whole year of his life.

Elsie said nothing; this sudden revival of the subject awakened many
thoughts in her breast, but she sat with her eyes cast down, gazing, as
he was, into the dazzling glow of the fire. Rodie was now kneeling on
the hearth-rug in front of it, his face illuminated by the ruddy flame.

“I don’t think,” he said, in a steady voice, like that of a man making a
statement in which was involved death or life, “that papa was right----”

“Rodie!”

“No,” he repeated, solemnly, “I can’t think it was right. I know you
have no business to judge your own father. But I think,” said the lad,
slowly, “I would almost rather he had done a wrong thing like that, than
one of the good things. Mind, Elsie, he had a struggle with himself. He
said it over and over and over, and rampaged about the room, as you do,
when you cannot make up your mind. But he knew they could not pay, the
poor bodies. He knew it would be worse for them than if they had never
got the money. It was an awful temptation. Then, do you mind, he said:
‘the Lord commended the unjust steward.’ In his sermon he explained all
that, but I cannot think he was explaining it the same way yon
afternoon.”

“Rodie,” said Elsie, with a little awe, “have you been thinking and
thinking all this time, or when did you make out all that?”

“Not I,” said the lad; “it just flashed out upon me when Frank was going
on about his debtors, and about consulting my father. That’s what made
me angry as much as anything. I don’t want papa to be disturbed in his
mind, and made to think of that again. It was bad enough then. To be
sure he will maybe refuse to speak at all, and that would be the best
thing to do; and, considering what a long time has passed, he would be
justified, in my opinion,” said Rodie, with great gravity; “but to sit
down and write fourscore when it was a hundred--I would stand up for him
to the last, and I would understand him,” cried the young man: “but I
would rather my father did not do that.”

“And of whom do you think he would be tempted to say that, Rodie?” said
his sister, under her breath--Elsie had another thought very heavy at
her heart.

“Oh, of the Horsburghs, and the Aitkens, and so forth, and I am not sure
but Johnny Wemyss’s folk would be in it,” said Rodie; “and they are all
dead, and it would fall upon Johnny, and break his heart. I hope my
father will refuse to speak at all.”

Then there was a long silence, and they sat and gazed into the fire.
Elsie’s idea was different. She knew some things which her brother did
not know. But of these she would not breathe a word to him. They sat for
some time quite silent, and there was a little stir over their heads, as
if Mrs. Buchanan had risen from her chair, and was about to come down.

“Rodie, you’ll have to be a W. S.,” cried Elsie, “and let Jack go to
India; nobody but a lawyer could have put it all out as clear as that.”

Rodie sprang to his feet, and struck out a powerful arm.

“If you were not a lassie,” he cried furiously, “I would just knock you
down.”

When Mrs. Buchanan came into the room, this was what she saw against
that wavering glow in the chimney; her son’s spring against an invisible
foe, and Elsie demurely looking at him, with her work in her hands, from
the other side of the fire.

“Eh, laddie,” cried Mrs. Buchanan, “you terrify me with your boxing and
your fighting. What ails you at him, and who is the enemy now? And
you’ve broken up my gathering coal that would have lasted the whole
night through.”

“It’s me he is fechting, mother,” said Elsie, “and he says if I had not
been a lassie, he would have knocked me down.”

“You’re never at peace, you two,” said the mother, with much composure;
“and we all know that Rodie had aye a great contempt for lassies. Let us
just see, Elsie, if some day or other he may not meet a lassie that will
give him a good setting down.”

“What do I care about lassies,” cried Rodie, indignant; “you’re thinking
of Frank Mowbray and Raaf Beaton. If ever two fellows made fools of
themselves! looking as glum as the day of judgment, if Elsie turns her
head the other way.”

“Hold your tongue, laddie,” cried Mrs. Buchanan, but with a smothered
laugh. She was “weel pleased to see her bairn respected like the lave,”
but she was a sensible mother, and would have no such nonsense made a
talk of. “Your father is not coming down-stairs again,” she said; “he is
busy with his sermon, so you can go to your bed when you like, Rodie.
Bless me, the laddie has made the room insupportable with that great
fire, and dangerous, too, to leave it burning. Elsie, my dear, I wish
you were always as diligent; but you must fold up your seam now for the
night.”

After a little while Rodie retired to find the supper which had been
waiting for him in the dining-room; for his evening hours were a little
irregular, and his appetite large.

“He says Frank Mowbray is very much taken up about people that owe him
debts,” said Elsie, to her mother; “and that he is coming to consult my
father.”

“Oh, these weariful debts,” said Mrs. Buchanan; “I have always said how
much better it would have been to clear them off, and be done with them.
It would have been all paid back before this time, and our minds at
rest. But Mr. Morrison, he would not hear of it, and your father has
never got it off his mind to this very day.”

“Will it disturb him, mother, very much if Frank comes to talk to him?”
said Elsie.

“I cannot tell why it should disturb him. The laddie has nothing to do
with it, and Mr. Morrison had the old man’s orders. But it will for all
that. I think I will speak to Frank myself,” Mrs. Buchanan said.

“Oh, no, mother,” said Elsie.

“And wherefore, oh, no, mother? Many a man have I seen, and many a
thing have I done to save your father. But it would be giving too much
importance to this laddie. It will be his mother that sets him on. Put
away your seam, Elsie, it is time that you were in your bed.”

“I could not sleep a wink,” said Elsie, “if I thought papa was to be
troubled about this old thing.”

“You had better think nothing about it,” her mother replied; “for,
whatever happens, you can do nothing: and what is the use of making
yourself unhappy about a thing you cannot mend?”

Elsie was not so sure that she could do nothing. She thought it highly
probable, indeed, that she could do much. But how was she to do it, how
signify to Frank that if he disturbed her father, he had nothing to hope
from her? Besides, had he anything to hope from her in any
circumstances? This was very uncertain to Elsie. She was willing to
believe in her own power, and that she could, if she pleased, keep him
from rousing up this question; but how to do it, to condescend to allow
that her father would be affected by it one way or another? And even in
case Frank yielded, as she held it certain he would, to an expression of
her will on the subject, was she sure that she was ready to recompense
him in the only way which he would desire? While she was thinking, Mrs.
Buchanan, who was moving about the room putting by her work, and
arranging everything for the night, suddenly sent forth an
unintentional dart, which broke down all Elsie’s resolutions.

“At the same time,” Mrs. Buchanan said, pursuing the tenor of the
argument, as she had been, no doubt, carrying it on within herself, “I
have always felt that I would like to do young Frank a good turn. Elsie,
if it’s true they tell me, be you kind to poor Frank. That will make up
to him for anything the rest of your family may have done against him.
Fain, fain, would I pay him back his siller; but be you kind to him,
Elsie, if the other is not to be.”




CHAPTER XVII.

THE POSITION OF ELSIE.


Mrs. Buchanan was a woman of great sense, yet perhaps she never made use
of a more effective argument than that with which she concluded the
conversation of that evening. Elsie went up to her room full of thought.
It had always been impressed upon her from her earliest consciousness
that her father’s peace and comfort, his preservation from all
unnecessary cares, from all noises and disturbing influence of every
kind was one of the chiefest and most important duties of the family. It
had been made the rule of her own childish conduct from the very
beginning. “Oh, Miss Elsie, whatever you do, dinna make a noise, and
disturb your papaw,” had been the entreaty of the nursery-maid as long
as she could remember. And when she was old enough to understand a
reason, her mother had explained to her how papa was occupied all day
long in the service of God, and for the instruction of common folk not
so learned or so wise as himself. “And I think it a great privilege to
mind the house and mind the doors, so that none of these small things
may trouble him,” her mother had said, “and you should be a proud lassie
to think that you can be helpful in it, and do your part to keep
everything quiet for the minister, that he may study the word of the
Lord in peace.” In our days, it is possible that Elsie might have been
inspired by the spirit of revolt, and considered her own comfort of as
much importance as her father’s; but such a notion never entered her
mind, and the preservation of perfect peace in that mysterious, yet so
beloved and familiar study had always appeared to her the most necessary
thing in the world. In their latter days, her mind had strayed away
instinctively from her first early conception of papa. There had been
awe to her in all his surroundings when she was a child, awe, tempered
by much affection and perfect confidence, but still partaking much of
that vague tremor of respect and veneration with which, but in a higher
degree, she was taught to look up to God. But there is no criticism so
intense, though often so unconscious, as that with which the children
watch, without knowing they are watching, the development of the parent,
who gradually comes out of those mists of devotion, and becomes clear
and real, a being like themselves to their eyes. Elsie had soon learned
in the midst of her semi-worship to be sorry for papa--poor papa who was
so easily disturbed, liable to be impeded in his work, and have his
composure destroyed by incidents which did not affect her mother in the
least, and would not have gained herself an excuse for an imperfectly
learned lesson. Why, if she was expected to learn her verbs all the
same, whether there was a noise or not, should papa be unable to carry
on his studies except in the most carefully preserved silence? She did
not give vent to the sentiment, but it added to her reverence and
devotion a strong feeling of pity for papa. Evidently he was of finer
material than other people, and felt everything more keenly. Pity may be
destructive of the highest reverence, but it adds to the solicitude of
affection. But that scene, so well remembered in every detail, which had
betrayed to her a struggle in him, had greatly heightened this effect.
Poor papa! he had to be taken care of more than ever. To preserve his
peace no effort was too much.

There had been a long pause in these reflections, as she herself began
to be less subject to the delight of making a noise, and even Rodie
expended his high spirits out of doors, and learned to respect the
decorums of home. But as thought grew in Elsie’s mind, a comprehension
of the meaning of life grew with it, a comprehension, much aided by the
philosophical remarks of Marion, and by those general views which Mrs.
Buchanan was not aware were philosophy, the woman’s philosophy which
recognises many mysteries, and accepts many necessities in a manner
quite different from the man’s. The subject of her father was one of
those upon which she had received much enlightenment. She had learned
that the highest regard and the deepest love were quite consistent with
a consciousness of certain incurable weaknesses, and a toleration that
in other circumstances would have been something like contempt. Probably
nobody but a woman can ever understand this extraordinary mingling of
sentiment. A man is naturally indignant and angry to think that his
sublime self should ever be the object of this unimpassioned
consciousness of defect, though no doubt his sentiment towards his
womankind is of the same mingled character: but in the woman’s mind it
takes away nothing from the attraction, and little from the respect with
which she regards her man. Perhaps it even adds to his attraction, as
making the intercourse more interesting, and bringing all the varieties
of her being into play.

This gave to Elsie an almost tragic sense of the necessity of preserving
her father’s peace of mind at all hazards. When she came to think the
whole matter over, and to realise what Rodie’s view of the subject was,
her mind took a new opening. She took up the Bible which was on her
table, and read over the parable of the unjust steward, with this new
light upon it. She had not, by some chance, heard her father’s sermon on
the subject, and she was not very clear as to how it was that the man
was commended for his falsehood, nor did she enter upon that view of the
question. Was there something good in it, as Rodie seemed to think,
diminishing the burdens of the poor, trying to save those who were
struggling, and could not answer for themselves? Elsie, in the silence,
shook her young head with its curls over that idea. She had no
pretension of knowing better than her teachers and elders. She did not
think, because she did not understand, that therefore the Lord who
commended the unjust steward must be wrong. She took the matter plainly,
without penetrating its other meaning. Was it good, or right, or
excusable, a sin that one could forgive to one’s father that he should
do this? Rodie seemed to think so. He said he would rather his father
had done a wrong thing like that than many right things. Elsie began to
cry, dropping hot tears on her Bible, all alone, not understanding, in
the midst of the silence and the night. No, no, not that. It would not
be so bad, perhaps, as if he had done it for himself. To save the
Horsburghs and the Aitkens from ruin, even at the expense of a lie, of
teaching them to lie---- Oh no, no, Elsie cried, the tears pouring over
her Bible. It might not be so bad in one way, but it was worse in
another. It was dictating a lie to others as well as uttering it
himself. Was papa guilty of that? Was that what it meant, that struggle
long ago, the questioning and the self-conflict? Oh no, no, she cried to
herself, oh no, no! Neither for himself, neither for others could he
have done that. And yet what did it mean?

There is a point beyond which such a question cannot go. She had no way
of settling it. The doubt burned her like fire, it penetrated her heart
like a knife: but at last she was obliged, baffled, exhausted, and
heart-broken, to leave it alone. Perhaps she never would know what the
real meaning was, either of the parable in the book or the still more
urgent parable of human conduct here half revealed to her. But there was
at least something that she could understand, the old lesson of the
house, the teaching of her childhood, to guard her father from all
assault, from anything that could disturb his mind or his life. It was
not the simple formula now of not making a noise lest it should disturb
papa. It was something a great deal more important, not so easily
understood, not so easy to perform, but still more absolute and binding.
Not to disturb papa, not to allow him to be disturbed, to defend his
door, if need were, with her life. To put her arm into the hoops of the
bolt like Katherine Douglas in the history--that rash maiden whom every
Scots girl holds high, and would emulate if she could. Elsie was faintly
aware that this statement of the cause was a little nonsensical, that
she would not be called upon to sacrifice her life or to break her arm
in defence of her father; but she was very young, and full of passionate
feeling, and her thoughts formed into the language of generous
extravagance, in spite of herself. What was it really, after the
outburst of that fond resolution, that she had to do?

It did not sound so great a matter after all to keep back Frank Mowbray,
that was all: to prevent him from penetrating to her father’s room,
recalling her father’s painful memories, and his struggle with himself.
Her arm within the hoops! it was not so exaggerated an idea after all,
it was more than breaking an arm, it might be perhaps breaking a heart:
still it was a piece of actual exertion that was required of her on her
father’s behalf. Elsie had not given very much serious consideration to
Frank Mowbray, but she knew vaguely as much as she had chosen to know,
the meaning and scope of his attentions, and the possibility there was,
if she did not sharply discourage him, that he would shortly demand a
decision from her one way or other. Elsie had not sharply discouraged
him; she had been friendly, unwilling to give pain, unwilling to act as
if she believed that it could matter to him one way or another: but she
had not shown him particular favour. In no way was her conscience guilty
of having “led him on.” Her pride sprang up in flames of indignation at
the thought of having led any one on. There was Raaf Beaton too: they
had both been the same to her, boys she had known, more or less, all her
life, whom she liked very well to dance with, even to talk to for an
idle moment, whom she would not vex for the world. Oh no, she would not
vex them for the world, neither of them! nevertheless, to select one of
them, to bind herself to either, to pretend to take either as the first
of men? Elsie almost laughed, though her eyes were still hot with tears,
at that ridiculous thought.

Yet this was the easiest way of stopping Frank from disturbing her
father, oh! the easiest way! She had only to receive him a little more
warmly than usual, to listen to what he said, to let him walk with her
when they went out of doors, and talk to her when they were within. It
is very likely that on both sides this influence also was exaggerated.
There was nothing that Frank would not have done for Elsie and her
smiles; but after a time no doubt his mind would have returned to his
former resolutions, and he would not have felt it necessary to abandon a
previously-formed and serious intention on her account. But a girl
rarely understands that, nor does the man think of it, in the excitement
of such a crisis. Elsie had no doubt that she had the fullest power to
turn aside Frank from any attempt on her father’s peace. And then came
her mother’s recommendation to be kind to him, to make up to him for
something that was past. It was a recommendation that made her blood
boil, that she should pay him for some injustice past. Be kind to him,
as her mother said, to make up, make as it were money of herself to be a
compensation to him! This idea was odious to the girl: but yet it was
only another version of the same necessity that she should keep him from
disturbing papa.

Naturally, it was not long before the opportunity came. Elsie was
walking towards the East Sands with Rodie on the next day, when Frank
was seen coming back from that spot, a little wet about the boots, and
sandy about the trousers, which was a sign, already beginning to be
understood in St. Rule’s, that the wearer of these garments had been
among the rocks with Johnny Wemyss, of whom, as a “character,” the town
had become, from its height of reprobation, half proud. Frank had been
fascinated by him, as everybody else was, though he was vexed to be seen
in this plight, after an hour with the naturalist, especially as Rodie,
at the sight of him, had the bad breeding to show embarrassment, and
even repugnance to meet his former friend.

“I’ll away west,” Rodie said, as soon as he was visible. “There’s
Mowbray. I’m not going to stay here, and see him fawning upon you. It is
disgusting,” Rodie said, severely. He had not yet himself begun to
“fawn” upon any one, and was still intolerant of everything of this
kind.

“You are not going away, just after he has seen that we saw him,” cried
Elsie, gripping her brother’s arm, in the intensity of her feeling,
“letting him see how ill you take it, and that you cannot forget! Man,
Rodie, will you run away?”

“I am not running away,” cried Rodie, red with wrath and shame.

“You shall not,” cried Elsie, holding him with a vigorous young grip,
almost as strong as his own, out of which he was still attempting to
wriggle, when Frank came up, all smiling and beaming.

“Johnny Wemyss has found a new beast,” he reported with a little
excitement. “It is not in all the books, there has been none discovered
like it. You should see his eyes just jumping out of his head.”

Elsie’s eyes gave a jump too; a warm flush ran over her face.
Unconsciously, she held her head high.

“Oh,” she said, softly, “I am not surprised! I am not surprised!”

At this Frank looked at her half alarmed, half suspicious, not quite
easy in his mind, why she should take so much interest in Johnny. But
after all, he was only Johnny, a fellow wrapped up in “beasts,” and no
competitor for anybody’s favour.

Meanwhile, Rodie had twisted his elbow out of Elsie’s hold, who had too
much respect for appearances to continue the struggle before strangers.

“I’m away to see it,” cried Rodie. “You’ll come when you are ready,” and
off he rushed like a wild deer, with a sulky nod at Frank.

“It appears I have offended Rodie without meaning it,” said Frank,
taking the wise way of forestalling any reproach. “I hope he has not
prejudiced you against me, Miss Elsie; for all I said that vexed him,
was only that I was coming to ask your father’s advice, and I have
always heard that everybody asks the minister’s advice. May I walk with
you, and tell you about it? I don’t know what he thought I meant.”

“So far as I understood,” said Elsie, “he thought you wanted to make my
father betray some poor bodies that trusted in him.” Elsie, too, thought
it was wiser to forestall any other statement. But she put forth this
bold statement with a high colour and a quaking heart.

“Betray!” cried Frank, growing red, too, “oh, I assure you, I had no
such thought.”

“You wanted my father to tell upon the poor folk that had borrowed
money, and were not able to pay.” Elsie averted her head for the reason
that, sorely troubled by her own guesses and doubts, she could not look
Frank in the face: but he interpreted this action in quite another way.
He took it for a gesture of disdain, and it roused a spirit even in the
bosom of Elsie’s slave.

“Justice is justice,” he said, “Miss Elsie, whether one is poor or rich.
To hunt the poor is what I would never do; but if they are right who
told me, there are others passing themselves off under the shield of the
poor, that are quite well able to pay their debts--more able than we are
to do without the money: and that is just what I want to ask Mr.
Buchanan, who is sure to know.”

It seemed to Elsie that the sands, and the rocks, and the cliffs beyond
were all turning round and round, and that the solid earth sank under
her feet. “Mr. Buchanan, who is sure to know,” she said to herself under
her breath. Oh yes, he was sure to know. He would look into the face of
this careless boy, who understood nothing about it, and he would
say--what would he say? It made Elsie sick and faint to think of her
father--her father, the minister, the example to all men--brought face
to face with this temptation, against which she had heard him
struggling, which she had heard him adopting, without knowing what it
meant, six years ago. No, he had not been struggling against it. He had
been struggling with it, trying to convince himself that it was just and
right. This came upon her like a flash of lightning, as she took a few
devious steps forward. Then Frank’s outcry, “You are ill, Miss Elsie!”
brought her back to herself.

“No, I am not ill,” she said, standing still by the rocks, and taking
hold of a glistening pinnacle covered with seaweed, to support herself
for a moment, till everything settled down. “I am not ill: I am just
thinking,” she kept her head turned away, and looked out upon the level
of the sea, very blue and rippled over with wavelets in its softest
summer guise, with a faint rim of white showing in the distance against
the red sand and faint green banks of the Forfar coast. Of all things in
this world to make the heart sick, there is nothing like facing a moral
crisis, which some one you love is about to go through, without any
feeling of certainty that he will meet it in the one only right way.
“Oh, if it was only me!” Elsie sighed, from the bottom of her heart.

You will think it was the deepest presumption on her part, to think she
could meet the emergency better than her father would. And so it was,
and yet not so at all. It was only that there were no doubts in her
mind, and there were doubts, she knew, inconceivable doubts, shadows,
self-deceptions, on his. A great many thoughts went through her mind, as
she stood thus looking across the level of the calm sea--although it was
scarcely for a minute altogether, that she underwent this faintness and
sickening, which was both physical and mental. The cold touch of the wet
rock, the slipping tangles of dark green leathery dulse which made her
grasp slip, brought her to herself, and brought her colour rushing back.
She turned round to Frank with a smile, which made the young man’s heart
beat.

“But I am awfully anxious not to have papa disturbed,” she said. “You
know he is not just like other folk; and when he is interrupted at his
writing it breaks the--the thread of his thoughts, and sometimes he
cannot get back the particular thing he was meditating upon (it seemed
to Elsie that the right words were coming to her lips, though she did
not know how, like a sort of inspiration which overawed, and yet
uplifted her). And then perhaps it will be his sermon that will suffer,
and he always suffers himself when that is so.”

“He has very little occasion to suffer in that way,” cried Frank, “for
every one says--and I think so myself, but I am no judge--that there is
no one that preaches like him, either in the town or through all Fife. I
should say more than that--for I never in London heard any sermons that
I listened to as I do to his.”

Elsie beamed upon her lover like the morning sun. It was strictly true
to the letter, but, whether there might be anything in the fact, that
none of these discredited preachers in London were father to Elsie, need
not be inquired. It gave the minister’s daughter a keen pang of pleasure
to hear this flattering judgment. It affected her more than her mother’s
recommendation, or any of her own serious thoughts. She felt for a
moment as if she could even love Frank Mowbray, and get to think him the
first of men.

“Come and let me see the new beast,” she said, with what was to Frank
the most enchanting smile.




CHAPTER XVIII.

JOHNNY WEMYSS.


Johnny Wemyss was not perhaps at that moment a figure precisely adapted
to please a maiden’s eye, nor would any other lad in St. Rule’s have
cared to present himself before a young lady whom he regarded with
interest, under his present aspect. His trousers were doubled up as far
as was practicable, upon legs which were not models of shapeliness nor
even of strength, being thin and wiry “shanks,” capable of any amount of
fatigue or exertion, but showing none of these qualities. His arms, much
like these lower members, were also uncovered up to the elbow, his blue
pea-jacket had a deposit of sand in every wrinkle, and the broad blue
bonnet on his head had scraps of very vivid green sea-weed clinging to
it, showing how Johnny’s head, as well as his arms and legs, had been in
contact with the recesses of the rocks. It was pushed back from his
forehead, and he was holding out at the length of his hairy, sinewy arm,
a thing which was calculated to call forth sentiments rather of disgust
than of admiration, in persons not affected with that sympathetic
interest in the researches of Johnny, which St. Rule’s in general was
now beginning to feel. It was a variety of that family of the Medusa,
called in St. Rule’s jelly fish, which fringe all the sands along that
coast after a storm. Elsie had got over the repugnance to touch the
clammy creatures, which is common to uninstructed persons, and was eager
to have the peculiarity in its transparent structure pointed out to her,
which marked it as a discovery. But Johnny was neither so animated in
its exposition, nor so enthusiastic over the beauty of his prize, as he
had been on many previous and less important occasions. He had been a
witness of Elsie’s progress, since Frank Mowbray had joined her. He had
seen her pause by the rocks to recover herself from something, he could
not tell what. Was it not very likely at least that it was a more full
disclosure of Frank’s sentiments--which, indeed, nobody in St. Rule’s
had any doubt about the nature of--which suddenly overcame a vigorous,
healthful girl like Elsie, and made her lean against the wet rocks which
were under water at full tide, and grasp the tangles of the dulse for
support? Nothing could be more probable, nay, certain. And when Elsie
turned towards her lover with that smile which the other half saw, and
most clearly divined, and led him back with her triumphant, what other
hypothesis could account for it? Johnny could follow with the most
delicate nicety the conclusions that were to be drawn from the
transparent lines of colour in the round clammy disc he held quivering
in his hand; but he could not tell, how could he; having no data to go
upon, and being quite incapable, as science will probably always
continue to be of such a task, to decipher what was in a single
quivering heart, though it might be of much more consequence to him. He
watched them coming along together, Frank Mowbray suddenly changed from
the commonplace comrade, never quite trusted as one of themselves by the
young men of St. Rule’s, though admitted to a certain cordiality and
good fellowship--coming along transfigured, beaming all over, his very
clothes, always so much more dainty than anybody else’s, giving out a
radiation of glory--the admired yet contemned spats upon his feet,
unconsciously stepping as if to music: and altogether with a conquering
hero aspect, which made Johnny long to throttle him, though Johnny was
perhaps the most peaceable of all the youths of his time. An unconscious
“confound him” surged up to the lips of the naturalist, himself so
triumphant a minute ago in the glory of his discovery; and for one
dreadful moment, Johnny felt disposed to pitch his Medusæ back into the
indifferent water, which would have closed over it as calmly as though
it had been the most lowly and best known of its kind. For what was the
good of anything, even an original discovery, if such a thing was
permitted to be under the skies, as that a girl such as Elsie Buchanan
should elect out of all the world the like of Frank Mowbray,
half-hearted Scot, dandy, and trifler, for her master? It was enough to
disgust a man with all the courses of the earth, and even with the
finest unclassed Medusæ newly voyaged out of the heart of the sea.

“Oh, Johnny,” Elsie said, hurrying towards him in all that glow and
splendour of triumph (as he thought). “I hear you have made a discovery,
a real discovery! Let me see it! and will it be figured in all the
books, and your name put to it? Wemyssea--or something of that kind.”

“I had thought of a different name,” said Johnny, darkly, “but I’ve
changed my mind.”

“What was that?” said Elsie, lightly taking hold of his arm in the easy
intimacy of a friendship that had lasted all her life--in order that she
might see more clearly the object limply held in his palm. “Tell me the
difference,” she said, throwing down her parcel, and putting her other
hand underneath his to bring the prize more distinctly within her view.
The young man turned deeply red up to his sandy hair, which curled round
the edge of his blue bonnet. He shrank a little from that careless
touch. And Frank, looking on with a half jealousy, quickly stifled by
the more agreeable thought that it was Elsie’s now distinctly identified
preference of himself which made her so wholly unconscious of any
feeling on the part of the other, laughed aloud out of pure delight and
joy of heart.

“What are you laughing at?” said Johnny, gruffly, divining only too well
why Frank laughed.

“Show me,” said Elsie, “I think I can see something. You always said I
was the quickest to see. Is it this, and this?” she said, bending over
the hand which she held.

“Let me hold it for you,” said Frank.

“I can hold up my hand myself,” said Johnny; “I am wanting no
assistance. As I found it myself, I hope I am able to show it myself
without anybody interfering.”

Elsie withdrew her hand, and looked up surprised in his face, with one
of those appeals which are so much less answerable than words. She stood
a little aside while he began to expound his discovery. They had all
caught a few of the most superficial scientific terms from Johnny. Elsie
would never have spoken of the new thing being “figured” in a book, but
for those little technicalities of knowledge which he shed about him.
And he had said that she was the one of all his interested society who
understood best. She was the only one who knew what observation meant,
the naturalist said. I think that this was a mistake myself, and that he
was chiefly led away by her sympathy and by certain other sentiments of
which it is unnecessary to speak.

In the meantime, he explained with a mingled gruffness and languor which
Elsie did not understand.

“Oh, it’s perhaps not so great a discovery after all,” Johnny said. “I
daresay some fellow has noted it before. That’s what you always find
when you take it into your head you have got something new.”

“But you know all about the Medusæ,” said Elsie, “and you would be sure
to know if it had been discovered before.”

“I’m not sure that I know anything,” said Johnny, despondently. He cast
the jelly fish out of his hand upon the sand. “We’re just, as Newton
said, like bairns picking up shells on the shore. We know nothing. It is
maybe no new thing at all, but just a variety that everybody knows.”

“Oh, Johnny, that is not like you!” cried Elsie, while the two young men
standing by, to whom this mood on Wemyss’s part was quite unknown, gaped
at him, vaguely embarrassed, not knowing what to say. Rodie had a great
desire to get away from a problem he could not understand, and Frank was
feeling a little guilty, he could scarcely tell why. Elsie got down on
her knees upon the sand, which was firm though wet, and, gathering a
handful of the dulse with its great wet stalks and hollow berries, made
a bed for the Medusæ, which, with some repugnance, she lifted on to the
little heap.

“You will have to give me a new pair of gloves,” she said, looking up
with a laugh, “for I have spoilt these ones that are nearly new; and
what will my mother say? But though you think it is very weak, I cannot
touch a jelly fish--I am meaning a Medusa, which is certainly a far
bonnier name--with my bare hands. There now, it will go easy into a
basket, or I would almost carry it myself, with the dulse all about it;
but to throw it away is what I will never consent to, for if you think
it is a discovery, I know it must be a discovery, and it will be called
after you, and a credit to us all.”

“It _is_ a discovery,” cried Johnny, with a sudden change of mien. “I
was a fool. I am not going to give it up, whatever happens. The less
that comes to me in this world, the more I’ll keep to the little I’m
sure of.” When he had uttered this enigmatical sentence, which was one
of those mystic utterances, more imposing than wisdom, that fill every
audience with confused admiration, he snapped his fingers wildly, and
executed a _pas_ of triumph. “It will make the London men stand about!”
he said, “and I would just like to know what the Professor will say to
it! As for the name----”

“Oh, yes, Johnny, the name?”

“It will be time enough to think of that,” he said, looking at her with
mingled admiration and trouble. “Anyway, it is you that have saved it
for me,” he said.

“Frank,” said Rodie, “are you meaning to play your foursome with Raaf
and Alick, or are you not?”

“I thought you had turned me out of it,” said Frank.

“Oh, go away and play your game!” Elsie commanded in a tone of relief.
“It is just the thing that is best for you idle laddies, with never a
hand’s turn to do in this world. I am going home as soon as I have seen
Johnny take up his new beast like a person of sense, after taking the
pet at it like a silly bairn. You are all silly, the whole tribe of you,
for so much as you think of yourselves. If you’re late, Alick and Raaf
will just play a twosome, and leave you out.”

“That’s what they’ll do,” Rodie pronounced, authoritatively. “Come
along, Frank.”

And Frank followed, though torn in pieces by attractions both ways. It
was hard to leave Elsie in so gracious a mood, and also with Johnny
Wemyss, who had displayed a quite unexpected side to-day: but Johnny
Wemyss did not, could not count, whatever he might feel: surely if there
was anything a man could calculate upon, it was that. And Frank was
sincerely pleased to be taken into favour again by that young despot,
Rodie, who in his capacity as Elsie’s brother, rode roughshod over Ralph
Beaton and was more respected than he had any right to be by several
more of the golf-playing community. So that it seemed a real necessity
in present circumstances, with the hopes of future games in mind, to
follow him docilely now.

“Why were you so petted, Johnny?” said Elsie, when reluctantly her wooer
had followed her brother in a run to the links.

“I was not petted,” said Johnny, with that most ineffectual reply which
consists of simple contradiction. In those days petted, that is the
condition of a spoilt child, was applied to all perverse moods and
causeless fits of ill-temper. I do not think that in current Scots
literature, of which there are so many examples, I remember the same use
of the word now.

“Oh, but you were,” cried Elsie, laughing, “in a pet with your new
beast, and what could go further than that? I would not have been so
much surprised if you had been in a pet with Rodie or me.”

“There was occasion,” said Johnny, relapsing a little into the clouds.
“Why were you such friends with that empty-headed ass? And coming along
the sands smiling at him as if--as if----”

“As if what?” said Elsie. She laughed again, the laugh of conscious
power. She was not perhaps so fine a character as, considering all
things, she might have been expected to be.

“Elsie,” said the young man, “it’s not me that shall name it. If it
really turns out to be something, as I think it will, I am going to call
it after you.”

“A grand compliment,” cried the girl, with another peel of laughter. “A
jeely fish! But,” she added, quickly, “I think it is awfully nice of
you, Johnny; for those are the sort of things, I know, that you like
best in the world.”

“Not quite,” said the naturalist. “There are things I care for far more
than beasts, and if you don’t know that, you are not so quick at the
uptake as I have always thought you; but what is the good when I am
nobody, and never will be anybody, if I were to howk and ferret for new
beasts till I die!”

“Bide a wee, bide a wee,” said Elsie, laughing, but confused; “you will
be a placed minister, and as good as any of them; and what could ye have
better than that?”

“I am the most unfortunate man in the world,” said Johnny, “for you know
that, which is the only way for a poor lad like me, it is not what I
want.”

“And you are not blate to say so to me that am a minister’s daughter,
and very proud of it,” cried Elsie, with a flush of offence.

“That’s just the worst of it,” said Johnny, sadly, shaking his head,
“for maybe you, and certainly other folk, will believe indeed I am not
blate, thinking too much of myself, not to be content with a kirk if I
could get one. But you should know it isn’t that. I think too little of
myself. Never could I be a man like your father, that is one of the
excellent of the earth. It is the like of him, and not the like of me,
that should be a minister. And then whatever I was, and wherever I was,”
he added, with a humility that was almost comic, “I would always have
something inside teasing me to be after the beasts all the same.”

“What are you going to do with it now?” said Elsie, looking down at the
unconscious object of all this discussion, which lay semi-transparent,
and a little dulled in the delicate mauve colour of its interesting
markings, on the bed she had made of the tangles of the dulse at her
feet.

“The first thing is, I will draw a picture of it, the best I can,” said
Johnny, rousing to something of his usual enthusiasm, “and then I will
dissect it and get at its secrets, and I will send the drawing and the
account of it to London--and then----”

“And then?” repeated Elsie.

“I will just wait,” he said. His eyes which had been lighted up with
eagerness and spirit sank, and he shrugged his shoulders and shook his
head. “Just as likely as not I will never hear word of it more. That’s
been my fate already. I must just steel myself not to hope.”

“Johnny, do you mean that you have sent up other things like this, and
got no good of them?”

“Aye,” he said, without looking up. He was not a cheerful figure, with
his head bent on his breast, and his eyes fixed on the strange
prize--was it a mere clammy inanimate thing, or was it progress, and
fame, and fortune?--which lay at his feet. Elsie did not know what to
say.

“And you standing there with wet feet, and everything damp and cold
about you,” she cried, with a sudden outburst. “Go home this moment,
Johnny Wemyss; this time it will be different. I’m not a prophet and how
should I know? But this time it will be different. How are you to get it
home?”

He took his blue bonnet from his head, with a low laugh, and placed the
specimen in it.

“Nobody minds,” he said, smoothing down his sleeves. “I am as often
without my bonnet as with it. They say it’s only Johnny Wemyss: but I’m
not fit to walk by the side of a bonnie princess like you.”

“I am coming with you all the same,” Elsie said.

They were, indeed, a very unlikely pair. The girl in all her prettiness
of summer costume, the young man, damp, sandy, and bareheaded, carrying
his treasure. So far as the sands extended, however, there was no one to
mark the curious conjunction, and they went lightly over the firm wet
sand within high-water mark, talking little, but with a perfect
familiarity and kindness of companionship which was more exquisite than
the heats and chills through which Frank Mowbray had passed, when Elsie
for her own purposes had led him back. Elsie kept step with Johnny’s
large tread, she had an air of belonging to him which came from the
intimate intercourse of years; and though the social distinction between
the minister’s daughter and the fisherman’s son was very marked,
externally, it was evidently quite blotted out in fact by a closer
fraternity. Elsie was not ashamed of him, nor was Johnny proud of her,
so far as their difference of position was concerned. He was proud of
her in another sense, but she quite as much of him.

“I will call it ‘Princess Elsie,’” he said at last. “I will put it in
Latin: or else I will call it ‘Alicia:’ for Elsie and Alison and all are
from Alice, which is just the bonniest name in the world.”

“Nonsense,” she said, “there are many that are much bonnier. I don’t
think Alison is very bonny, it is old-fashioned; but it was my
grandmother’s name, and I like it for that.”

“It is just the bonniest name in all the world,” he repeated, softly;
but next moment they had climbed from the sands to the smooth ground
near the old castle, and from thenceforward Johnny Wemyss was the centre
of a moving group, made up of boys and girls, and an occasional golfer,
and a fisher or two, and, in short, everybody about; for Johnny Wemyss
was known to everybody, and his particular pursuits were the sport, and
interest, and pride of the town.

“He has found a new beast.”

“Oh, have you found a new beast? Oh Johnny, let us see it, let us see
it! Oh, but it’s nothing but a jeely-fish,” cried, in a number of
voices, the little crowd. Johnny walked calmly on, his bare head red in
the sunshine, with crisp short curls surrounding a forehead which was
very white in the upper part, where usually sheltered by his bonnet, and
a fine red brown mahogany tint below. Johnny was quite at his ease amid
the encircling, shouting little crowd, from out of which Elsie withdrew
at the garden gate, with a wave of her hand. He had no objection to
their questions, their jests, their cries of “Let us see it, Johnny!” It
did not in the least trouble him that he was Johnny to all the world,
and his “new beast” the diversion of the town.




CHAPTER XIX.

A CATASTROPHE.


Mrs. Mowbray was 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 any anxiety 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 window for 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 unable to 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 visits were 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 the _Courant_ day, 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 Frank would 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 the _Courant_ by 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. I
have 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
had heroically 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, and which 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 and blood 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 a
bottle 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.




CHAPTER XX.

CONFESSION.


“Then it 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, a defaulter 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:” “_The_ fifty,” with
the lie beneath, 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,” cried his 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
enjoying the 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 their pride, 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 which the 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, unconnected with 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 her this 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 for you, 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.




CHAPTER XXI.

HOW TO SET IT RIGHT.


“What is 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--to loan
£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 make up 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 the _Pilgrim’s
Progress_, when the burden rolled off his back. Oh, my dear! 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,
sensible woman, 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 all very 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 did not 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 yon _is_ a 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 than _near_ sure all your life. _I_ knew 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.




CHAPTER XXII.

IN THE STUDY.


The hour 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 children dear.’ 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 majority is 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 his _rôle_ of
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 and I
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 speech in 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.”

“What is lawful I am little judge of,” said the minister, mournfully. “I
have shown you how very little I am to be trusted even for what is
right.”

“Toots!” was the impatient reply. “I am not meaning the law of Scotland.
If I do not know that, the more shame to me.” It is another law I am
thinking of. When I’m in with the King in the house of Rimmon, and him
leaning on my shoulder, and the King bows down in the house of Rimmon,
and me to be neighbourlike I bow with him, is this permitted to thy
servant? You mind the text? That’s what I’ve come to ask. There may be
an intent to deceive that has no ill motive, and there may be things
that the rigid would call lies. I’ve no respect for her to speak of,
but she’s a woman: and if a man could shield a creature like that----”

“I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “now that your own business is over,
Claude, and Mr. Morrison with his business to talk to you about, you
will want me no longer. Are you really as sure as you say, Mr. Morrison,
about the siller? You would not deceive him and me? It is not a lee as
you say, with the best of motives? for that I could not bide any more
than the minister. Give me your word before I go away.”

“It is God’s truth,” said the lawyer, taking her hand. “As sure as
death, which is a solemn word, though it’s in every callant’s mouth.”

“Then I take it as such,” she said, grasping his hand. “And, Claude, ye
have no more need of me.”

But what the further discussion was between the two men, which Mrs.
Buchanan was so high-minded as not to wait to hear, I can tell no more
than she did. They had a long consultation; and when the lawyer took his
leave, Mr. Buchanan, with a strong step as if nothing had ever ailed
him, not only conducted him to the door but went out with him, walking
briskly up the street with a head as high as any man’s; which perhaps
was the consequence of his release, by Morrison’s energetic refusal,
from the burden which he had bound on his shoulders and hugged to his
bosom for so long; and certainly was the happy result of having his
thoughts directed towards another’s troubles, and thus finally diverted
from his own.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LAST.


“Elsie,” said Mrs. Buchanan in the evening, when they were seated again
together at their work, at the same hour in which they had discussed and
settled on the previous night the necessary economies by which three
hundred pounds were to be scraped together in as many years.

“Elsie, you will think I am going back of my word. But we are now seeing
clearer, papa and I. There will be no need for what we were thinking of.
I will keep on Betty who is a good lass on the whole, if she would get
sweethearts and nonsense out of her head--and my dear there will be no
reason why you should not go to the ball.”

“Mother,” said Elsie, “is it Willie?”

“No, it’s not Willie--it’s just the nature of events--Mr. Morrison he
will not hear a word of it. He says Mr. Anderson, who was a good man,
and a leal friend, and well I know would never have let harm come to
your father, had left full instructions. Mr. Morrison is a fine honest
man, but he is a little rough in his ways. He just insulted papa--and
said he might throw away his siller if he liked, but not to him, for he
would not receive it. And what is to be said after that? I always
thought----”

“I would rather, far rather it had been paid! What am I caring about
balls or white hands. I would rather have worked them to the bone and
got it paid,” Elsie cried.

“To whom,” replied her mother, with an unconscious copy of the lawyer’s
tone, “to yon silly woman that has nothing to do with it, to throw away
on her feathers and her millinery, and shame the auld man’s settled
plan? Your father was hard to move, but he was convinced at the last.
And what do you think,” she added, quickly, eager to abandon so
dangerous a subject in view of Elsie’s sudden excitement and glowing
eyes, “Frank Mowbray turns out to be a very lucky laddie--and Mr.
Morrison has as good as doubled his estate. What do you think of that?
He will be a rich man.”

“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” cried Elsie with great indifference, “but,
mother, about this money. Oh would you not rather pay it and be done
with it, and wipe it out for ever and ever? What am I caring about
balls? It will be years and years before you need take any thought for
me. I would rather be of some use than go to the Queen’s balls, let
alone the Golf--and nobody that I am heeding would care a pin the less
for me if my hands were as red as Betty’s.” She looked at them with a
toss of her head, as she spoke, stretching them out in their smoothness
and softness. This was the point at which Elsie’s pride was touched. She
did not like to think of these small members becoming as red as Betty’s,
who, for her part, was perfectly pleased with her hands.

“What were you meaning if I might ask about it being years and years
before we need take any thought for you?”

Elsie was much startled by this question. She knew what she meant very
well, but she had not intended to betray to her mother, or any one, what
that hidden meaning was, and the words had come to her lips in the tide
of feeling without thought. She gave one hurried glance at her mother’s
face, herself crimson red from chin to brow.

“I was meaning nothing,” she said.

“That is not the way folk look when they mean nothing,” her mother said.

“But it’s true. I meant just nothing, nothing! I meant I would want no
plenishing like Marion. I meant--that you need not take account of me,
or say, as I’ve heard you saying, ‘I must put this by for’--it used
always to be for Marion. You are not to think of me like that,” Elsie
cried.

“And wherefore no? If I were not to think of you like that, I would be
an ill mother: and why you less than another? You are taking no whimsies
into your head, I hope, Elsie--for that is a thing I could not put up
with at all.”

“I have no whimsies in my head, mother,” cried Elsie bending low over
her work.

“You have something in it, whimsey or no,” said her mother severely,
“that is not known to me.”

And there was a little relapse into silence and sewing for both. Elsie’s
breath came quick over her lengthened seam, the needle stumbled in her
hold and pricked her fingers. She cast about all around her desperately
for something to say. Indeed no--she had not meant anything, not
anything that could be taken hold of and discussed: though it was
equally true that she knew what she meant. How to reconcile these
things! but they were both true.

“Mother,” she said, after five dreadful moments of silence, and assuming
a light tone which was very unlike her feelings. “Do you mind you told
me that if there was any way I could make it up to Frank--but now that
he’s to be so well off there will be no need of that any more.”

“Were you ever disposed to make it up to Frank?” her mother said
quickly, taking the girl by surprise.

“I never thought about it--I--might never have had any
occasion--I--don’t know what I could have--done,” Elsie replied,
faltering.

“Because,” said Mrs. Buchanan in the same rapid tone, “it would just be
better than ever now. He will have a very good estate, and he’s a very
nice callant--kind and true, and not so silly as you might expect from
his upbringing. If that was your thought, Elsie, it would be far wiser
than I ever gave you credit for--and your father and me, we would never
have a word but good and blessing to say----”

“Oh, mother,” cried Elsie, “you to say the like of that to me--because a
person was to have a good estate!”

“And wherefore no? A good estate is a very good thing: and plenty of
siller, if it is not the salt of life--oh, my dear, many a time it gives
savour to the dish. Wersh, wersh without it is often the household
bread.”

“It is not me,” cried Elsie, flinging high her head, “that would ever
take a man for his siller: I would rather have no bread at all. Just a
mouthful of cake,[A] and my freedom to myself.”

 [A] It may here be explained for the benefit of the Souther that cake
 in the phraseology of old Scotland meant oat cake, in distinction from
 the greater luxury of “loaf-bread:” so that the little princess who
 suggested that the poor people who had no bread might eat cake, might
 have been a reasonable and wise Scot, instead of the silly little
 person we have all taken her to be.

“I said there were whimsies in the lassie’s head,” said Mrs. Buchanan,
“it’s the new-fangled thing I hear that they are setting up themselves
against their natural lot. And what would you do with your freedom if
you had it, I would like to know? Freedom, quotha! and she a lassie, and
little over twenty. If you were not all fools at that age!”

“I was meaning just my freedom--to bide at home, and make no change,”
said Elsie, a little abashed.

“‘Deed there are plenty,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “that get that without
praying for’t. There are your aunties, two of them, Alison and
Kirsteen--the old Miss Buchanans, very respectable, well-living women.
Would you like to be like them? And Lizzie Aitken, she has let pass her
prime, and the Miss Wemysses that are settling down in their father’s
old house, just very respectable. If that is what you would like, Elsie,
you will maybe get it, and that without any force on Providence. They
say there are always more women than men in every country-side.”

Elsie felt herself insulted by these ironical suggestions. She made no
answer, but went on at her work with a flying needle, as if it were a
matter of life and death.

“But if that’s not to your mind,” Mrs. Buchanan added, “I would not take
a scorn at Frank. There is nothing to object to in him. If there was
anything to make up to him for, I would say again--make it up to him,
Elsie: but being just very well off as he is, there is another way of
looking at it. I never saw you object to him dangling after you when
nothing was meant. But in serious earnest he well just be a very good
match, and I would be easy in my mind about your future, if I saw
you----”

“That you will never see me, mother,” cried Elsie, with hot tears, “for
his siller! I would rather die----”

“It need not be altogether for his siller,” Mrs. Buchanan said, “and,
oh! if you but knew what a difference that makes. To marry a poor man
is just often like this. Your youth flies away fighting, and you grow
old before your time, with nothing but bills on every hand, bills for
your man, and bills for your bairns, hosen and shoes, meat and meal--and
then to put the lads and lassies out in the world when all’s done. Oh,
Elsie, the like of you! how little you know!”

“You married a poor man yourself, mother,” the girl cried.

“The better I’m fitted to speak,” said Mrs. Buchanan. “But,” she said,
putting down her work, and rising from her chair, “I married your
father, Elsie! and that makes all the difference,” she said with
dignity, as she went away.

What was the difference it made? Elsie asked herself the question,
shaking back her hair from her face, and the tears from her eyes. Her
cheeks were so hot and flushed with this argument, that the drops from
her eyes boiled as they touched them. What made the difference? If ever
she married a man, she said to herself, he should be a man of whom she
would think as her mother did, that being _him_ was what made all the
difference. The image that rose before her mind was not, alas! of a man
like her father, handsome and dignified and suave, a man of whom either
girl or woman might be proud. She was not proud of his appearance, if
truth must be told: there were many things in him that did not please
her. Sometimes she was impatient, even vexed at his inaptitudes, the
unconscious failures of a man who was not by birth or even by early
breeding a gentleman. This thought stung her very sorely. Upon the sands
ploutering, as she said, in the salt water, his bonnet pushed back, his
shirt open at the neck, his coat hanging loosely on his shoulders! Elsie
would have liked to re-dress that apparition, to dust the yellow sand
from him and the little ridges of shattered shells which showed on his
rough clothes as they did on the sea-shore. But no hand could keep that
figure in order, even in a dream. And alas! he would be no placed
minister like her father, or like Marion’s husband, with a pleasant
manse and a kirk in which all men would do him honour. Alas, alas, no!
They did not reverence Johnny. They came plucking at him, crowding about
him, calling to him, the very littlest of them, the very poorest of
them, Elsie said to herself, to let them see the new beast! But at this
thought her heart melted into the infinite softness of that approval,
which is perhaps the most delightful sentiment of humanity, the approval
of those we love--our approval of them more exquisite still than their
approval of us. Elsie did not care the least for the new beast. She was
altogether unscientific. She did not see the good of it, any more than
the most ignorant. But when she thought of his genial countenance
beaming over the small, the poor, the ignorant, her heart swelled, and
she approved of him with all her soul.

Elsie had no easy life during the remaining months of the summer. After
Frank Mowbray’s birthday, when all was settled, and he had begun to trim
up and brighten Mr. Anderson’s old house, which was to be his future
home, she had a great deal to bear from the members of her family, who
one and all supported Frank’s suit, which the young man lost no time in
making. He for himself would take no refusal, but came back and back
with a determination to be successful, which everybody said would
eventually carry the day: and each one in succession took up his cause.
All St. Rule’s indeed, it may be said, were partisans of Frank. What
ailed her at him, her friends said indignantly? who was Elsie Buchanan
that she should look for better than that? A fine fellow, a good income,
a nice house, and so near her mother! Girls who were going to India, or
other outlandish places, asked, with tears in their eyes, what she could
desire more? It was not as if there was any one else to disturb her
mind, they said: for by this time Ralph Beaton and the rest were all
drifting away to India and the Colonies to fulfil their fate: and to
think of Johnny Wemyss as lifting his eyes to the minister’s daughter,
was such a thing as no one could have believed. Marion came in expressly
from the country, with her three babies, to speak powerfully to the
heart of her sister. “You will regret but once, and that will be all
your life,” she said solemnly. And it has already been seen how her
mother addressed her on the subject. Rodie, too, made his wishes
distinctly known.

“Why will you not take him?” he said; “he is as decent a chap as any in
the town. If you scorn him, very likely you will never get another: and
you must mind you will not always have me to take you about everywhere,
and to get your partners at the balls.”

“You to get me partners!” cried Elsie, wildly indignant; “you are a
bonnie one! You just hang for your own partners on me; and as for taking
me to places, where do you ever take me? That was all ended long ago.”

But things became still more serious for Elsie, when her father himself
came to a pause in front of her one day, with a grave face.

“Elsie,” he said, “I hear it is in your power to make a young man’s
life, or to mar it; at least that is what he says to me.”

“You will not put any faith in that, father. Who am I, that I should
either make or mar?”

“I am tempted to think so myself,” he said, with a smile; “but at your
age people are seldom so wise. You are like your mother, my dear, and, I
doubt not, would be a tower of strength to your husband, as I have good
reason to say she has been; but that is not to say that any man has a
right to put the responsibility of his being to another’s charge. No,
no; I would not say that. But there is no harm in the lad, Elsie. He
has good dispositions. I would be at ease in my mind about your future,
if you could find it in your heart to trust it to him.”

“Father,” cried Elsie, very earnestly, “I care no more about him than I
do for old Adam, your old caddie. Just the same, neither more nor less.”

Her father laughed, and said that was not encouraging for Frank.

“But, my dear,” he said, “they say a lassie’s mind is as light as air,
and blows this way and that way, like the turn of the tide.”

“They may say what they like, father,” cried Elsie, with some
indignation. “If you think my mother is like that, then your daughter
can have no reason to complain.”

“Bless me, no,” cried Mr. Buchanan; “your mother! that makes all the
difference.”

These were the same words that Mrs. Buchanan had said. “As if because
she was my mother she was not a woman, and because he was my father he
was not a man,” said Elsie to herself; “and where is the difference?”
But she understood all the same.

“I will not say another word,” said the minister. “If you care for him
no more than for old Adam, there is not another word to say; but I would
have been glad, on my own account, if you could have liked him, Elsie.
It would have been a compensation. No matter, no matter, we’ll say no
more.”

Elsie would have been more touched if her father had not alluded to that
compensation. She had within herself a moment of indignation. “Me, a
compensation,” she cried to herself, “for your weary three hundred
pounds. It is clear to me papa does not think his daughter very muckle
worth, though he makes a difference for his wife!”

While all this was going on in the front of affairs, another little
drama was proceeding underneath, in which Elsie was a far more
interested performer, though she had no acknowledged title to take part
in it at all.

For great and astonishing things followed the discovery of the new
beast. Letters addressed to John Wemyss, Esq., letters franked by great
names, which the people in the post-office wondered over, and which were
the strangest things in the world to be sent to one of the student’s
lodgings, near the West Port, that region of humility--kept coming and
going all the summer through, and when the time approached for the next
College Session, and red gowns began to appear about the streets, Johnny
Wemyss in his best clothes appeared one day in the minister’s study,
whither most people in St. Rule’s found their way one time or other: for
Mr. Buchanan, though, as we have seen, not quite able always to guide
himself, was considered a famous adviser in most of the difficulties of
life. Johnny was shamefaced and diffident, blushing like a girl, and
squeezing his hat so tightly between his hands, that it presented
strange peculiarities of shape when it appeared in the open air once
more. Johnny, too, was by way of asking the minister’s advice--that is
to say, he had come to tell him what he meant to do, with some anxiety
to know what impression the remarks he was about to make might have upon
Elsie’s father, but no thought of changing his resolutions for anything
the minister might say. Johnny told how his discovery had brought him
into communication with great scientific authorities in London, and that
he had been advised to go there, where he would find books and
instruction that might be of great use to him, and where he was told
that his interests would be looked after by some persons of great
influence and power. Mr. Buchanan listened with a smile, much amused to
hear that the discovery of an unknown kind of “jeely fish” could give a
man a claim for promotion: but when he heard that Johnny intended to go
to London, he looked grave and shook his head.

“I am afraid that will very much interfere,” he said, “with what seems
to me far more important, your studies for your profession.”

“Sir,” said Johnny, “I’m afraid I have not made myself very clear. I
never was very much set on the Church. I never thought myself good
enough. And then I have no interest with any patron, and I would have
little hope of a kirk.”

The minister frowned a little, and then he smiled. “That mood of mind,”
he said, “is more promising than any other. I would far rather see a
young lad that thought himself not good enough, than one that was over
sure. And as for interest, an ardent student and a steady character,
especially when he has brains, as you have, will always find interest to
push him on.”

“You are very kind to say so, Mr. Buchanan,” said Johnny; “but,” he
added, “I have just a passion for the beasts.”

“Sir,” said the minister, looking grave, “no earthly passion should come
in the way of the service of God.”

“Unless, as I was thinking,” said Johnny, “that might maybe be for the
service of God too.”

But this the minister was so doubtful of--and perhaps with some reason,
for the discoverers of jelly fishes are not perhaps distinguished as
devout men--that the interview ended in a very cool parting, Mr.
Buchanan even hinting that this was a desertion of his Master’s
standard, and that the love of beasts was an unhallowed passion. And
Johnny disappeared from St. Rule’s shortly after, and was long absent,
and silence closed over his name. In those days perhaps people were less
accustomed to frequent letters than we are, and could live without them,
for the most anxious heart has to acknowledge the claim of the
impossible. Johnny Wemyss, however, wrote to Rodie now and then, and
Elsie had the advantage of many things which Rodie never understood at
all in these epistles. And sometimes a newspaper came containing an
account of some of Mr. Wemyss’s experiments, or of distinctions won by
him, which electrified his old friends. For one thing, he went upon a
great scientific voyage, and came home laden with discoveries, which
were, it appeared, though no one in St. Rule’s could well understand
how, considered of great importance in the scientific world. And from
that time his future was secure. It was just after his return from this
expedition, that one day there came a letter franked by a great man,
whose name on the outside of an envelope was of value as an autograph,
openly and boldly addressed to Miss Elsie Buchanan, The Manse, St.
Rule’s. It was written very small, on a sheet of paper as long as your
arm, and it poured out into Elsie’s heart the confidences of all those
silent years. She showed it to her mother, and Mrs. Buchanan gasped and
could say no word. She took it to her father, and the minister cried
“Johnny Wemyss!” in a voice like a roar of astonishment and fury.

“Do you mean this has been going on all the time,” he cried, “and not a
word said?”

“Nothing has been going on,” said Elsie, pale but firm.

“Oh, it was settled, I suppose, before he went away.”

“Never word was spoken either by him or me,” said Elsie; “but I will not
say but what we knew each other’s meaning, I his, and he mine,” she
added, softly, after a pause.

There was a good deal of trouble about it one way and another, but you
may believe that neither father nor mother, much less Rodie and John,
though the one was a W. S., and the other an advocate, could interfere
long with a wooing like this.


THE END.







End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unjust Steward, by Margaret Oliphant

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