AFTER SUPPER.
They always eat in the kitchen. Strange to say, there was no dining-room
in the house, though there was a sweetly old-fashioned drawing-room. The
servant was with the sufferer, but Alexa was too much in the sick-room,
notwithstanding, to know that she was eating her porridge and milk. The
laird partook but sparingly, on the ground that the fare tended to
fatness, which affliction of age he congratulated himself on having
hitherto escaped. They eat in silence, but not a glance of her father
that might indicate a want escaped the daughter. When the meal was
ended, and the old man had given thanks, Alexa put on the table a big
black Bible, which her father took with solemn face and reverent
gesture. In the course of his nightly reading of the New Testament, he
had come to the twelfth chapter of St. Luke, with the Lord's parable of
the rich man whose soul they required of him: he read it beautifully,
with an expression that seemed to indicate a sense of the Lord's meaning
what He said.
“We will omit the psalm this evening--for the sake of the sufferer,” he
said, having ended the chapter. “The Lord will have mercy and not
sacrifice.”
They rose from their chairs and knelt on the stone floor. The old man
prayed with much tone and expression, and I think meant all he said,
though none of it seemed to spring from fresh need or new thankfulness,
for he used only the old stock phrases, which flowed freely from his
lips. He dwelt much on the merits of the Saviour; he humbled himself as
the chief of sinners, whom it must be a satisfaction to God to cut off,
but a greater satisfaction to spare for the sake of one whom he loved.
Plainly the man counted it a most important thing to stand well with Him
who had created him. When they rose, Alexa looked formally solemn, but
the wan face of her father shone: the Psyche, if not the Ego, had
prayed--and felt comfortable. He sat down, and looked fixedly, as if
into eternity, but perhaps it was into vacancy; they are much the same
to most people.
“Come into the study for a moment, Lexy, if you please,” he said, rising
at length. His politeness to his daughter, and indeed to all that came
near him, was one of the most notable points in his behavior.
Alexa followed the black, slender, erect little figure up the stair,
which consisted of about a dozen steps, filling the entrance from wall
to wall, a width of some twelve feet. Between it and the outer door
there was but room for the door of the kitchen on the one hand, and that
of a small closet on the other. At the top was a wide space, a sort of
irregular hall, more like an out-of-door court, paved with large flat
stones into which projected the other side of the rounded mass, bordered
by the grassy inclosure.
The laird turned to the right, and through a door into a room which had
but one small window hidden by bookcases. Naturally it smelled musty, of
old books and decayed bindings, an odor not unpleasant to some nostrils.
He closed the door behind him, placed a chair for his daughter, and set
himself in another by a deal table, upon which were books and papers.
“This is a sore trial, Alexa!” he said with a sigh.
“It is indeed, father--for the poor young man!” she returned.
“True; but it would be selfish indeed to regard the greatness of his
suffering as rendering our trial the less. It is to us a more serious
matter than you seem to think. It will cost much more than, in the
present state of my finances, I can afford to pay. You little think--”
“But, father,” interrupted Alexa, “how could we help it?”
“He might have been carried elsewhere!”
“With me standing there! Surely not, father! Even Andrew Ingram offered
to receive him.”
“Why did he not take him then?”
“The doctor wouldn't hear of it. And I wouldn't hear of it either.”
“It was ill-considered, Lexy. But what's done is done--though, alas! not
paid for.”
“We must take the luck as it comes, father!”
“Alexa,” rejoined the laird with solemnity, “you ought never to mention
luck. There is no such thing. It was either for the young man's sins, or
to prevent worse, or for necessary discipline, that the train was
overturned. The cause is known to _Him_. All are in His hands--and we
must beware of attempting to take any out of His hands, for it can not
be done.”
“Then, father, if there be no chance, our part was ordered too. So there
is the young man in our spare room, and we must receive our share of the
trouble as from the hand of the Lord.”
“Certainly, my dear! it was the expense I was thinking of. I was only
lamenting--bear me witness, I was not opposing--the will of the Lord. A
man's natural feelings remain.”
“If the thing is not to be helped, let us think no more about it!”
“It is the expense, my dear! Will you not let your mind rest for a
moment upon the fact? I am doing my utmost to impress it upon you. For
other expenses there is always something to show; for this there will be
nothing, positively nothing!”
“Not the mended leg, father?”
“The money will vanish, I tell you, as a tale that is told.”
“It is our life that vanishes that way!”
“The simile suits either. So long as we do not use the words of
Scripture irreverently, there is no harm in making a different
application of them. There is no irreverence here: next to the grace of
God, money is the thing hardest to get and hardest to keep. If we are
not wise with it, the grace--I mean money--will not go far.”
“Not so far as the next world, anyhow!” said Alexa, as if to herself.
“How dare you, child! The Redeemer tells us to make friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness, that when we die it may receive us into
everlasting habitations!”
“I read the passage this morning, father: it is _they_, not _it_, will
receive you. And I have heard that it ought to be translated, 'make
friends _with_, or _by means of_ the mammon of unrighteousness.”
“I will reconsider the passage. We must not lightly change even the
translated word!”
The laird had never thought that it might be of consequence to him one
day to have friends in the other world. Neither had he reflected that
the Lord did not regard the obligation of gratitude as ceasing with this
life.
Alexa had reason to fear that her father made a friend _of_, and never a
friend _with_ the mammon of unrighteousness. At the same time the
half-penny he put in the plate every Sunday must go a long way if it was
not estimated, like that of the poor widow, according to the amount he
possessed, but according to the difficulty he found in parting with it.
“After weeks, perhaps months of nursing and food and doctor's stuff,”
resumed the laird, “he will walk away, and we shall see not a plack of
the money he carries with him. The visible will become the invisible,
the present the absent!”
“The little it will cost you, father--”
“Hold there, my child! If you call any cost little, I will not hear a
word more: we should be but running a race from different points to
different goals! It will cost--that is enough! How much it will cost
_me_, you can not calculate, for you do not know what money stands for
in my eyes. There are things before which money is insignificant!”
“Those dreary old books!” said Alexa to herself, casting a glance on the
shelves that filled the room from floor to ceiling, and from wall to
wall.
“What I was going to say, father,” she returned, “was, that I have a
little money of my own, and this affair shall cost you nothing. Leave me
to contrive. Would you tell him his friends must pay his board, or take
him away? It would be a nice anecdote in the annals of the Fordyces of
Potlurg!”
“At the same time, what more natural?” rejoined her father. “His friends
must in any case be applied to! I learn from his pocket-book--”
“Father!”
“Content yourself, Alexa. I have a right to know whom I receive under my
roof. Besides, have I not learned thereby that the youth is a sort of
connection!”
“You don't mean it, father?”
“I do mean it. His mother and yours were first cousins.”
“That is not a connection; it's a close kinship!”
“Is it?” said the laird, dryly.
“Anyhow,” pursued Alexa, “I give you my word you shall hear nothing more
of the expense.”
She bade her father good-night, and returning to the bedside of her
patient, released Meg.