The Unjust Steward or The Minister's Debt

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

1

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.