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

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 would the unjust steward have to do with it?” said Mrs. Buchanan, astonished. “Neither your father nor Mr. Anderson would go for instruction to the unjust steward. Your father had a fine lecture on that, that he delivered about a year and a half ago. You never mind your father’s best things, you bairns, though one would think you might be proud of them.”

      “I mind that quite clearly,” said Marion; “and, mother, if you’ll no be angry, I would like to say that it did not satisfy my mind. You would have thought he was excusing yon ill man: and more than that, as if he thought our Lord was excusing him: and, though it was papa that said it, that was what I could not bide to hear.”

      It may be supposed how Elsie, with her secret knowledge, pricked up her ears. She sat with the iron suspended in her hand, letting Marion’s initials grow dry upon the linen, and forgetting altogether what she was about.

      “I am astonished that you should say that,” said the mother, giving a little nod; “that will be some of Matthew’s new lights—for, I am sure, he explained as clear as could be that it was the man’s wisdom, or you might say cunning, that the Lord commended, so to speak, as being the best thing for his purpose, though his purpose was far from being a good one. Your father is not one that, on such a subject, ever gives an uncertain note.”

      “It is an awfu’ difficult subject for an ordinary congregation,” said Marion. “Matthew is just as little a man for new lights as papa; but still he did say, that for a common congregation–”

      “I thought it would be found that Matthew was at the bottom of it,” said Mrs. Buchanan, with a laugh; “though it would set a young man better to hold his peace, and make no comments upon one that has so much more experience than himself.”

      “You are a little unjust to Matthew,” said Marion, nodding in her turn; “he made no more comment than any of the congregation might have done—or than I did myself. He is just very careful what he says about papa. He says that theology, like other things, makes progress, and that there’s more exegesis and—and other things, since my father’s time—which makes a difference; but he has always a great opinion of papa’s sermons, and says you may learn a great deal from them, even when–”

      “I am sure we are much beholden to him,” said Mrs. Buchanan, holding her head high. “It’s delicate of him to spare your feelings; for, I suppose, however enlightened you may be beyond your fellows, you must still have some kind of objection to hear your father criticised.”

      “Oh, mother, how can you take it like that?” said Marion; “there was no criticism. If anything was said, it was more me than him. I said I could not bide to hear a word, as if our Lord might have approved such an ill man. And he said it was dangerous for a mixed congregation, and that few considered the real meaning of a parable, but just took every word as if it was instruction.”

      “And that was just your father’s strong point. He said it was like taking another man’s sail to fill up a leak in a boat. You would praise the man for getting the first thing he could lay his hands on to save himself and his crew, but not for taking his neighbour’s sail—that was just his grand point; but there are some folk that will always take things in the matter-of-fact way, to the letter, and cannot understand what’s expounded according to the spirit. That, however, has always just been your father’s special gift,” said the minister’s wife, de facto. She, who was only a minister’s wife in expectation, ought to have bowed her head; but, being young and confident, even though so extremely reasonable, Marion could not subdue herself to that better part.

      “That was just what Matthew said—dangerous for a mixed congregation,” she repeated; “the most of them just being bound by nature to the letter, and very matter-of-fact–”

      “No doubt Matthew is a great authority,” said Mrs. Buchanan, with a violent snap of her big scissors.