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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ