Маргарет Олифант
The Unjust Steward or The Minister's Debt
CHAPTER XIII.
PLAINTIFF OR PENITENT?
Meanwhile, the reader shall judge by the turn of one of these conversations whether Mrs. Buchanan was, or was not, justified in her prevision. Mrs. Mowbray came tripping up the long stair, which was of stone, and did not creak under foot, though she was betrayed by the rustle of her silk dress, which was in those days a constant accompaniment of a woman’s movements. When she approached nearer, there were other little sounds that betrayed her,—a little jingle of bracelets and chains, and the bugles of her mantle. She was naturally dressed in what was the height of the fashion then, though we should think it ridiculous now, as we always think the fashions that are past. When Mr. Buchanan heard that little jingle and rattle, his heart failed him. He put down his pen or his book, and the healthful colour in his cheek failed. A look of terror and trouble came into his face.
“Here is that woman again,” he said to himself. Mrs. Mowbray, on her side, was very far from thinking herself that woman; she rather thought the minister looked forward with pleasure to her visits, that she brought a sort of atmosphere of sunshine and the great world into that sombre study of his, and that the commonplace of his life was lighted up by her comings and goings. There are a great many people in the world who deceive themselves in this way, and it would have been a shock to Mrs. Mowbray if she had seen the appalled look of the minister’s face when his ear caught the sound of her coming, and he looked up to listen the better, with a gesture of impatience, almost despair, saying to himself, “that woman again.”
She came in, however, all smiles, lightly tapping at the door, with a little distinctive knock, which was like nobody else’s, or so at least she thought. She liked to believe that she did everything in a distinctive way, so that her touch and her knock and all her movements should be at once realised as hers. She had been a pretty woman, and might still indeed have been so, had she not been so anxious to preserve her charms that she had undermined them for a long time, year by year. She had worn out her complexion by her efforts to retain it and make it brighter, and frizzed and tortured her hair till she had succeeded in making it of no particular colour at all. The effort and wish to be pretty were so strong in her, and so visible, that it made her remaining prettiness almost ridiculous, and people laughed at her as an old woman struggling to look young when she was not really old at all. Poor Mrs. Mowbray! looking at her from one point of view, her appearance was pathetic, for it was as much as to say that she felt herself to have no recommendation at all but her good looks, and therefore would fight for them to the death—which is, if you think of it, a kind of humility, though it gets no credit for being so. She came in with a simper and jingle of all the chains and adornments, as if she felt herself the most welcome of visitors, and holding out her hand, said:
“Here I am again, Mr. Buchanan. I am sure you must be getting quite tired of me.” She expected him to contradict her, but the minister did not do so. He said:
“How do you do, Mrs. Mowbray?” rising from his chair, but the muscles of his face did not relax, and he still held his pen in his hand.
“I am so afraid you are busy, but I really will not detain you above a few minutes. It is such a comfort amid all the troubles of my life to come to this home of peace, and tell you everything. You don’t know what a consolation it is only to see you, Mr. Buchanan, sitting there so calm, and so much above the world. It is a consolation and a reproach. One thinks, Oh, how little one’s small troubles are in the light that comes from heaven!”
“I am afraid you are giving me credit for much more tranquillity than I can claim,” said the minister. “I am not without my cares, any more than other men.”
“Ah, but what are those cares?” cried the lady. “I know; the care of doing what you can for everybody else, visiting the poor and widows in their affliction, and keeping yourself unspotted from the world. Oh, how different, how different from the things that overwhelm us!”
What could the poor minister do? It seemed the most dreadful satire to him to be so spoken to, conscious as he was of the everlasting gnawing at his heart of what he had done, or at least left undone. But if he had been ever so anxious to confess his sins, he could not have done it to her; and accordingly he had to smile as best he could, and say that he hoped he might preserve her good opinion, though he had done so very little to deserve it. Perhaps if he had been less conscious of his own demerits, he would have perceived, as his wife had done, that there was a line in Mrs. Mowbray’s forehead which all her little arts could not conceal, and which meant more than anything she had yet told him. Mrs. Buchanan had divined this, but not the minister, who was too much occupied with his own purgatory to be aware that amid all her rustlings and jinglings, and old-fashioned coquetries, there was here by his side another soul in pain.
“You cannot imagine,” said Mrs. Mowbray, spreading out her hands, “what it is to me to think of my poor Frank deceived in his hopes, and instead of coming into a fortune, having next to no money when he comes of age. Oh, that coming of age, I am so frightened, so frightened for it! It is bad enough now to deny him so many things he wants.”
“Do you deny him many things he wants?” said the minister. The question was put half innocently, half satirically, for Frank indeed seemed a spoilt child, having every possible indulgence, to the sturdy sons of St. Rule’s.
Mrs. Mowbray laughed, and made a movement as of tapping the minister’s arm with a fan.
“Oh, how unkind of you,” she said, “to be so hard on a mother’s weakness! I have not denied him much up to this time. How could I, Mr. Buchanan, my only child? And he has such innocent tastes. He never wants anything extravagant. Look at him now. He has no horse, he is quite happy with his golf, and spends nothing at all. Perhaps his tailor’s bill is large, but a woman can’t interfere with that, and it is such a nice thing that a boy should like to be well dressed. I like him to take a little trouble about his dress. I don’t believe he ever touches a card, and betting over his game on the links is nothing, he tells me: you win one day and lose the next, and so you come out quite square at the end. Oh, it all goes on smooth enough now. But when he comes of age! It was bad enough last time when he came of age, for his English money and everything was gone over. Do you think it just, Mr. Buchanan, that a mere man of business, a lawyer, an indifferent person that knows nothing about the family, should go over all your expenses, and tell you you shouldn’t have done this, and you shouldn’t have done that, when he has really nothing to do with it, and the money is all your own?”
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Buchanan, “that the business man is a necessity, and perhaps is better able to say what you ought to spend than you are yourself.”
“Oh, how can you say so? when perhaps he is not even a gentleman, and does not understand anything about what one wants when one is accustomed to good society. This man Morrison, for instance–”
“Morrison,” said the minister, “is a gentleman both by blood and breeding, although he is a simple man in his manners: his family–”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “a small Scotch squire, and they think as much of their family as if they were dukes. I know he is Morrison of somewhere or other, but that does not teach a man what’s due to a lady, or what a young man wants who is entitled to expect his season in town, and all his little diversions. Morrison, Mr. Buchanan, would have put Frank to a trade. He would, it is quite true. I don’t wonder you are surprised. My Frank, with so much money on both sides! He spoke to me of an office in Edinburgh. I assure you he did—for my boy!”
“I am not in the least surprised,” said the minister; “we are all thankful to put our sons into offices in Edinburgh, and get them something to do.”
“I am sure you won’t think I mean anything disagreeable,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “but your sons, Mr. Buchanan, pardon me—you have all so many of them. And I have only one, and money, as I say, on both sides. I had quite a nice fortune myself. I never for a moment will consent that my Frank should go into an office. It would ruin his health, and then he is much too old for anything of that sort. The folly of postponing his majority till he was twenty-five! And oh, Mr. Buchanan,” she cried, clasping her hands, “the worst of it all is, that he will find so little, so very little when he does come into his property at last.”
There was a look almost of anguish in the poor lady’s face, her eyes seemed full of tears, her forehead was cut across by that deep line of trouble which Mrs. Buchanan had divined. She looked at the minister in a sort of agony, as if asking, “May I tell him? Dare I tell him?” But of this the minister saw nothing. He did not look at her face with any interest. He was employed in resisting her supposed efforts to penetrate his secret, and this concealed from him, under impenetrable veils, any secret that she might have of her own. It was not that he was dull or slow to understand in general cases, but in this he was blinded by his own profound preoccupation, and by a certain dislike to the woman who thus disturbed and assailed his peace. He could not feel any sympathy with her; her little airs and graces, her efforts to please, poor soul, which were intended only to make her agreeable, produced in him exactly the opposite sensation, which often happens, alas, in our human perversity. Neither of them indeed understood the other, because each was occupied with himself.
“I don’t think,” said Mr. Buchanan, roused to resistance, “that you will find things nearly so bad as you seem to expect. I am sure the estate has been very carefully administered while in my friend Morrison’s hands. You could not have a more honourable or a more careful steward. He could have no interest but to do the best he could for you, and I am sure he would do it. And property has not fallen in value in Fife so far as I know. I think, if you will permit me to say so, that you are alarming yourself without cause.”
All this time, Mrs. Mowbray had been looking at him through the water in her eyes, her face contracted, her lips a little apart, her forehead drawn together. He glanced at her from time to time while he was speaking, but he had the air of a man who would very gladly be done with the business altogether, and had no ear for her complaints. The poor lady drew from the depths of her bosom a long sigh, and then her face changed from the momentary reality into which some strong feeling had forced it. It was a more artificial smile than ever which she forced upon her thin lips, in which there was a quiver of pain and doubt.
“Ah, Mr. Buchanan, you always stand up for your own side. Why is it I cannot get you to take any interest in mine?”
“My dear lady,” said the minister with some impatience, “there are no sides in the matter. It is simple truth and justice to Morrison.”
Here she suddenly put her hand on his arm. “And how about the defaulters?” she said.
“The defaulters!” She was as ignorant wherein the sting lay to him as he was of the gnawing of the serpent’s tooth in her. It was now his under lip that fell, his cheek that grew pale. “I don’t know what you mean by defaulters,” he said, almost roughly, feeling as if she had taken advantage when he was off his guard and stabbed him with a sharp knife.
“Oh, dear Mr. Buchanan, the men who borrowed money, and never paid it! I am sure you could tell me about them if you would. The men who cheated my poor Frank’s old uncle into giving them loans which they never meant to pay.”
“Mrs. Mowbray,” he said, slowly, “I remember that you have spoken to me on this subject before.”
“Yes, yes, I have spoken on this subject before. Isn’t it natural I should? You as good as acknowledged it, Mr. Buchanan. You acknowledged, I remember, that you knew one of them: of course you know all of them! Didn’t he tell you everything? You were his minister and his spiritual guide. He did nothing without you.”
“Mr. Anderson never asked any advice from me as to his secular business. Why should he? He understood it much better than I did. His spiritual guide in the sense in which you use the words, I never was, and never could have been.”
“Oh!” cried the lady, waving her hands about in excitement, “what does it matter about words? If you only knew how important a little more money would be to us, Mr. Buchanan! It might make all the difference, it might save me from—from—oh, indeed, I do not quite know what I am saying, but I want you to understand. It is not only for the money’s sake. I know, I am certain that you could help me; only tell me who these men are, and I will not trouble you any more.”
“I do not know what you mean,” he said, “when you talk of those men.”
“Mr. Buchanan, you said you knew one.”
“Perhaps I said I knew one; that was only one, it was not many. And if I did know, and knew that they had been forgiven, do you think it would be right for me to bring those poor men into trouble, and defeat the intentions of my friend—for what, for what, Mrs. Mowbray? I don’t know what you suppose my inducement would be.”
She bent towards him till she almost seemed to be on her knees, and clasping her hands, said:
“For me, Mr. Buchanan, for me!”
There was no doubt that it was genuine feeling that was in her face, and in the gaze of the eager eyes looking out from their puckered lids; but the poor woman’s idea of pleasing, of overcoming by her personal charms was so strong in her, that underneath those puckered and beseeching eyes which were so tragically real, there was a smile of ingratiating blandishment on her mouth, which was like the stage smile of a ballet dancer, set and fictitious, appealing to heaven knows what of the man’s lower nature. She meant no harm, nor did she think any harm, but those were the days when feminine influence was supposed to lie in blandishment, in flattery, and all the arts of persuasion. Do this for me because I am so pretty, so helpless, so dependent upon your help, but chiefly because I am so pretty, and so anxious that you should think me pretty, and be vanquished by my beauty! This was the sentiment on part of Mrs. Mowbray’s face, while the other was full of eager pain and trouble, almost desperation. That smile and those blandishments might perhaps have moved the man had she been indeed beautiful and young, as she almost thought she was while making that appeal. But Mr. Buchanan’s eyes were calm, and they turned from the ballet-dancer’s smile and ingratiating looks with something more like disgust than yielding. Alas! these feminine arts which were then supposed to be quite independent of common sense, or reason or justice, and to triumph over them all, required real beauty at least and the charms of youth! To attempt to exercise them when the natural spell had failed, was almost an insult to a man’s intelligence. The minister was not conscious of this feeling, but it made him angry in spite of himself.
“For you, Mrs. Mowbray?” he said, “think what you are saying. You would like me to betray my old friend, and balk his intentions, and to disturb a number of families and snatch from them what they have been accustomed to consider as a free gift, and probably in no circumstances expected to refund—for you. For you, for what? that your son, having a great deal already, should have a little more,” (here she attempted to interrupt him to say, “No, no, not having had a great deal, never having had much!” which his stronger voice bore down and penetrated through), “that you should add some luxuries to your wealthy estate. No, Mrs. Mowbray, no. I am astonished that you should ask it of me. If I could do it, I should despise myself.”
What high ground he took! and he felt himself justified in taking it. He was buoyed up over all personal motives of his own by a lofty realisation of the general question. There were many others concerned as well as he. What right would he have to betray the fact that poor Horsburgh, for instance, had received a loan from Mr. Anderson to establish him in business? If Mr. Anderson’s heirs proceeded against Horsburgh, who was still painfully keeping his head above water, the result would be ruin—all to put another hundred pounds, perhaps, in Frank Mowbray’s pocket, an idle lad who already had plenty, and never did a hand’s turn. And she thought to come over him and make him do that by the glamour of a pair of middle-aged eyes, and the flatteries of an antiquated smile? The man was angry with the woman’s folly and revolted by her pretensions. No, he would not betray poor Horsburgh. Was not this the meaning after all, and a nobler meaning than he had ever thought of, of the proceedings of the unjust steward? Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore. Thy bill; not mine, did not that make all the difference in the world? Not for me, but for poor Horsburgh. The woman was mad to think that for her, a woman who wanted nothing, he would sacrifice a struggling family: not to say that, even now, poor Horsburgh was, as it were, looking ruin in the face.
CHAPTER XIV.
ANOTHER AGENT
Mrs. Mowbray had put off all sign of agitation when in the evening she sat down with her son Frank, at the hour of seven, which, in those days, was a pretentiously late, even dissipated hour for dinner, at all events in St. Rule’s, where most people dined early or at least at varying hours in the afternoon, such as four o’clock, five o’clock, the very height of discomfort, but supposed by some reasoning I am unable to account for, to be virtuous and respectable hours, while anything later than six was extravagant and almost wicked. Mrs. Mowbray dined at seven by way of waving a flag of superiority over the benighted town. It was reported commonly, that in London people were beginning to dine at eight, an hour when honest folk were thinking of getting ready for bed, or, at all events, were taking their supper as honest folk ought. I am not able to explain why one hour should be considered more innocent than another; but so it was. Frank Mowbray, half-influenced by his mother, and half-drawn away into different modes of thinking by the young society of St. Rule’s, which thought every way ridiculous that was not its own way, was half-proud of the fashionable peculiarities of his mother’s economy, and half-abashed to find himself held to habits which were so different to those of the others. As the nights began to lengthen he was impatient of being kept in at what the others thought the most agreeable time of the evening, when all the young fellows were clustering about the club, making up their matches for the next day. But he had not yet reached the moment of revolt.
Mrs. Mowbray had put off, so far as she could, all appearance of agitation. She was very nicely dressed according to the fashion of the times. Her ringlets were flowing, her smiles freely dispensed, though only her son was present to admire her. But she thought it was part of her duty to make herself as agreeable to Frank as to any other member of society. She listened quite patiently to all his talk about his young men. She was indeed interested in this talk and pleased to hear about everybody, who and what they were, and even whether they were first-class or second-class players: and their special deeds of prowess at the heathery hole or any other of the long list which Frank had at his finger-ends. She liked to hear all the details with which Frank could furnish her of their families as well as their golf. But that was less interesting to him, and helped her but little in her researches.
“You see a great deal of the Buchanans, don’t you, Frank?” she said, in the course of the conversation, not meaning much more by the question than by many others.
But here Mrs. Mowbray instantly perceived a difference in her son’s manner, which betrayed something quite new and unexpected.
Frank made a pause, which, though only for a moment, was noted by her fine and vigilant spirit of observation, looked at her furtively, coloured, and said: “Oh, the Buchanans! Yes, I see them now and then,” in a tone quite different from that in which he had been discoursing about the Seatons and the Beatons, and all the rest of the tribe.
“You see them now and then? Yes, that is all I expected: they are not precisely of our monde,” his mother said.
“Why not of our monde?” cried Frank, “they are the best people in St. Rule’s, and that is their monde; and it is our monde, I suppose, as long as we stay here.”
“Yes, dear boy,” said his mother, “but, fortunately, you know we don’t belong to it, and it is only a question of how long we stay here.”
Upon this, Frank cleared his throat, and collecting all his courage, launched forth a suggestion which he had long desired, but, up to this moment, had never had the bravery to make.
“Mother,” he said, “this is a very nice house, don’t you think? The rooms are large, and I know you like large rooms. Just think what a wretched little place the house in Chapel Street was in comparison. And we were nobody there, and you always said you were not appreciated.”
“That is true enough; when you have no title, and are not rich, it is hard, very hard, to get a footing in society,” Mrs. Mowbray said, with a sigh.
“But we are somebody here,” said Frank, “you are looked up to as the glass of fashion and the mould of form, that sort of thing, don’t you know? All the ladies say to me, ‘What does Mrs. Mowbray do?’ or ‘What is your mother going to do?’ They see your superiority and make you their example.”
“Frank,” said his mother, pleased but a little doubtful, “you are flattering me. I don’t know why you should flatter me.”
“I am not flattering you a bit, mother. It is quite true. Now, what I mean to say is, why should we go back again to Chapel Street, where there is not a single thing for a man to do, and the women are so disagreeable to you, because you have no title—when we can be the first people in the place, and so much thought of here.”
“Here!” said Mrs. Mowbray, with a little shriek of dismay.
“You know, mother, you always say how disappointing it is to go through the world, and never know anybody who takes you at your true value,” said Frank. “People are always—I have heard you say it a hundred times—inquiring who we are, and what relation we are to Lord Mowbray, and all that: as if we were not fit to be visited because we are not related to Lord Mowbray.”
“It is quite true,” said Mrs. Mowbray with indignation, “but I never knew before that you had taken any notice of it, Frank.”
“Oh, I have taken great notice of it,” he said. “I never said anything, for what was the use when I couldn’t do anything; but you don’t suppose it didn’t hurt me very much to see that you were not receiving proper attention, mother? Of course I took notice of it! but words never do any good.”
“What a dear boy you are, Frank!” said his mother, kissing the tips of her fingers to him. It was not very often that she was flattered in this way. The flatter was usually done by herself. She was so well acquainted with it, that she was not so easily convinced of its sincerity, as others might have been; but still, sincere or not, there was no doubt that these were very nice things for Frank to say.
“But here it is your notice that everybody would seek, mother,” he continued. “It is you who would set the example, and everybody would follow. Nobody thinks of asking whether we are related to Lord Mowbray, here. We are just what we are, and the objects of respect. We are the best people in the place,” Frank said.
“That is what you have just said of the Buchanans, Frank—and I told you before—they are not of our monde.”
“What is our monde?” cried the young man. “It is not Lord Mowbray’s monde, nor the monde of the Rashleighs and those sort of people, mother, whom we used to run after. I am sure they said just what you are doing about us. They used to twist round their necks and thrust out their heads, and screw up their noses, don’t you remember?”
“Oh, and bow with their eyelids and smile with the edge of their lips,” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “I remember! How could I help remembering people not fit to tie our shoes, but with an odious little baronetcy in the family!”
“But nobody could do that here,” said Frank, with a feeling that he had conducted his argument very cleverly, and had carried her with him all along the line.
Mrs. Mowbray burst into a laugh. “Is it all for my benefit, to see me respected, that you would like to shut me up in this little hole for life,” she said.
Poor Frank was very much startled by this issue of his argument. He looked up at her half-piteous, half-angry.
“I don’t call it a little hole,” he said.
“But I do,” said his mother, “a dreadful little hole! where you have to make yourself agreeable to all sorts of people whom you would never speak to, nor look at in society! Why, Frank, there is nobody here in society. Not one that you would like to walk along Bond Street with. Think of going along Rotten Row with any one of those girls on your arm.”
“I should be very proud,” cried Frank, very red, “to go anywhere with one of them on my arm.”
“My poor dear boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “I knew that was what you meant all the time. I always forget that you have come to the age for that sort of thing. Only think how you would look if you were to meet Lady Marion, and she were to begin to ask her questions. ‘Who was the young lady, and who were her friends in town?’ ‘Oh, she doesn’t know anybody in town.’ ‘Where did she come from?’ ‘Oh, not a place you ever heard of in your life, a little town in Scotland.’ ‘Yes, Lord Laidlaw lives near, of course she knows the Laidlaws?’ ‘Oh, no, she never heard of them; oh, no, she knows nobody. She is only a minister’s daughter, and except that she is prettyish–’”
Mrs. Mowbray had the art of a mimic; and she had made her sketch of the Lady Marion who asked questions, very amusing to her son, who had been in his little way cross-examined by Lady Marion many times: but when she described the young lady as prettyish, the young man bounded from his chair.
“Take care, mother! no one, not even you, shall speak so of Elsie. I won’t have it,” he cried.
“You would be obliged to have it, dear, if you had her,” his mother said, composedly. “And as for speaking so, I have no wish to speak so. I think she’s a very nice little girl, for St. Rule’s; you could never take her into society, but for St. Rule’s she would do very well.”
“Then, mother,” said Frank, “you understand me, for you make me speak very plain. We’ve got a good house here, and we’re rich enough to be about the first people in the place; and I wish to settle in St. Rule’s.”
“My poor boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “rich, oh, my poor boy!”
And here, without any warning, she suddenly burst into a torrent of tears. This was, perhaps, a proceeding to which her son was not wholly unaccustomed; for he maintained, to a certain extent, his equanimity. He walked up and down the room, striking the backs of the chairs with a paper-knife he held in his hand for some seconds. And then he came back to her, and asked, with a little impatience:
“Why am I a poor boy? and why is it so wonderful that we should be rich? I am—I suppose we are rich—more or less—able at all events to take our place among the best people in St. Rule’s.” He laughed, and went on striking his little ivory toy against the chairs sharply. “It isn’t so great a brag, after all,” he said, laughing, “among the best people in St. Rule’s.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “how am I to tell him? Oh, how am I to tell him? Frank, we have always said, when we came into the Scotch money, all would be well. I thought it was such a fine sum, that we should throw off all our debts, and be really rich as you say. Oh, that is only a dream, Frank, like so many things we have trusted in! There will be scarcely any money. You may well start and stare at me. Oh, Frank, I that thought as soon as it came, all our difficulties would be over, and we should be quite right.”
“What difficulties?” said Frank, “what difficulties, mother? I always thought we were well off.”
“This has been the aim of my life,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “that you should never find out any difficulties, that everything should go as if it were on velvet; and then when the Scotch money came, that all would be right. I did not think then that all Mr. Anderson’s fine fortune had been frittered away—I did not tell you that, Frank—by defaulters.”
She liked the word: there was something vague and large in it: it meant something more than debtors: “defaulters,” she said again, and shook her head.
“What in the world do you mean, mother? Who are the defaulters, and what have they to do with me?”
“Mr. Anderson’s money has been frittered away,” she said. “He lent it to everybody; and instead of preserving their notes, or their bills, or whatever it was, he threw them into the fire, I suppose. And nobody paid. I believe half St. Rule’s is built on old Mr. Anderson’s money, the money that ought to be yours. But he never kept the papers, and none of them have been so honourable as to pay.”
Frank stared at his mother with a bewildered face. He had never managed his own affairs. For a year or two past, he had begun to think that this was foolish, and that he might perhaps, if he tried, learn to understand business as well as his mother; but he had never had the strength of mind to assert himself. He had received an ample allowance from her hands, and he had tacitly agreed that until the Scotch property became his, everything should go on as before. But it had always been understood, that when he attained his Scotch majority, there was to be a change. His Scotch majority was to be a great day. All the hoards of his old uncle were then to come into his hands. Retarded manhood, independence, and wealth were all to be his. And now what was this he heard, that these hoards of money were frittered away? He could not at once understand or grasp what it meant. He stared at his mother with bewildered eyes.
