The Unjust Steward or The Minister's Debt

“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.’”