The Unjust Steward or The Minister's Debt. Маргарет Олифант

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ