The Unjust Steward or The Minister's Debt

“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,1 and my freedom to myself.”

“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.