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 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.
“Well, mamma,” said Marion, with the soft answer that does not always
take away wrath, “you’ll allow that he ought to be to me----”
And there then ensued a deep silence; a whole large hole in the heel of
Rodie’s stocking filled up, as by magic, in the mother’s hands,
quickened by this contrariety, and the sudden absorption in her work
which followed, and Marion marked twelve towels, one after the other, so
quickly that Elsie could scarcely follow her with the iron in time to
make them all shine. It was she who took up the thread of the
conversation again, but not wisely. Had she been a sensible young
person, she would have introduced a new subject, which is the bounden
duty of a third party, when the other two have come to the verge of a
quarrel. But Elsie was only sixteen, and this discussion had called back
her own strange experience in the turret-room.
“It must have given papa a great deal of thinking,” she said. “Once me
and Rodie were in the turret as--as he never comes now----” This was
very bad grammar, but Elsie’s heart was full of other things. “We were
reading _Quentin Durward_, and very, very taken up with all that was
going on at Liege, if you mind.” Liége had no accent in Elsie’s mind or
her pronunciation. “And then you came into the study, mother, and
talked. And after he began again with his sermon. It was a long time
ago, but I never forgot, for it was strange what he said. It was as if
he was learning the parable off by heart. ‘Take now thy bill, and sit
down quickly, and write fourscore’--or ‘write fifty.’ He said it over
and over, just those words--sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
It was awfu’ funny. We both heard it; both me and Rodie, and wondered
what he could be meaning. And we dared not move, for though he knew we
were there, we did not like to disturb him. We thought he had maybe
forgotten us. We were so stiff, we could scarcely move, and that was
always what he said, ‘Take now thy bill, and sit down----’”
Mrs. Buchanan had dropped her work and raised her head to listen; a
puzzled look came over her face, then she shook her head, slightly,
unable to solve the problem which she dimly felt to be put before her.
She said, at last, with a change of countenance:
“I came into the study and talked?--and you there? What was I talking
about? do you mind that?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Elsie. “Old Mr. Anderson; it was just before he
died.”
“And you were there, Rodie and you, when I came in to talk private
things with your father! Is that the kind of conduct for children in a
decent house?”
Mrs. Buchanan had reddened again, and wrath, quite unusual, was in her
tone.
“Mamma, when it was raining, and we had a book to read, we were always
there, and father knew, and he never said a word!”
“You knew too, mother,” said Marion; “the two little things were always
there.”
“Little things!” cried Mrs. Buchanan, almost with a snort--Rodie’s heel,
stretched out upon her hand, and now filled up with a strong and seemly
web of darning in stout worsted, was quite as big as his father’s. And
Elsie was taller than either of the two women by her side. “They were
little things with muckle lugs,” she said, with a rather fierce little
laugh; “if you think, Elsie, it was right to spy upon the private
conversation of your father and mother, that is not my opinion. Do you
think I would have spoken to him as I did if I had known you two were
there?”
“Mother, about old Mr. Anderson?” cried Marion, meditating; “there could
be nothing so private about that.”
She gave them both a look, curious and anxious; Marion took it with the
utmost composure, perhaps did not perceive it at all. Elsie, with a
wistful but ignorant countenance, looked at her mother, but did not
wince. She had no recollection of what that conversation had been.
“Oh, mamma,” she said, “we spying!” with big tears in her eyes.
“I am not saying you meant it,” said her mother; “it was a silly habit,
but I must request, Elsie, that it never may happen again.”
“Oh!” cried Elsie, the big tears running over, “he never will come now!
He is not caring neither for me nor the finest book that ever was
written. There is no fear, mother. It breaks my heart to sit there my
lane, and Rodie never will come now!”
“You are a silly thing,” said Mrs. Buchanan; “it is not to be expected,
a stirring laddie. Far better for him to be out stretching his limbs
than poring over a book. But I can understand, too, it’s a
disappointment to you.”
“Oh, a disappointment!” Elsie cried, covering her face with her hands:
the word was so inadequate.
To be disappointed was not to get a new frock when you want it, or
something else, unworthy of a thought: but to be forsaken by your own
brother! You wanted for that a much bigger word.
“All the same,” the mother said, “I have often things to say to your
father that are between me and him alone, and not for you. You must not
do this again, Elsie. Another time, if you hear me go in to speak to
your papa, you must give warning you are there. You must not sit and
hold your breath, and listen. There are many things I might say to him
that were never intended for you. Now, mind what I say. I forgive you
because I am sure you did not mean it; but another time----”
“There will never be another time, mother,” said Elsie, with a quivering
lip.
“Well, I am sure I hope so,” said her mother, and she finished her
stockings carefully, made them into round balls, and carried them away
to put them into their respective drawers. At this particular moment,
with all that was going on, and all that was being prepared in the
house, she had very little time to spend with her daughters in the
pleasant exercise of sewing, virtuous and most necessary as that
occupation was.
“Do you remember what they were saying about old Mr. Anderson?” said
Marion; “for I have always thought there was something about that--that
was--I don’t know what word to say. He died, you know, when they were in
his debt, and he freely forgave them; and that was why I got such a good
plenishing, and Willie the best of outfits, and I would like to know
what they said.”
“I do not mind what they said,” said Elsie; “and, if I did mind, I would
not tell you, and you should not ask me. Rodie and me, we were not
heeding about their secrets. It was just after, when my father went on
and on about that parable, that we took any notice what he said.”
“And what was he saying about the parable?”
“Oh, I have told you already. He just went on and on--‘Take thy bill,
and write fourscore’--you know what it says--till a person’s head went
round and round. And we dared never move, neither me nor Rodie, and very
glad we were when he went down-stairs.”
“Poor bit things, not daring to move,” said Marion. “But that was a
strange thing to say over and over: he said nothing about that in his
sermon, but just how clever the man was for his purpose, though it was
not a good purpose. But Matthew is of opinion that it’s a dangerous
thing to treat the parables in that way.”
“And how should Matthew know better than my father?” cried Elsie, in
indignation. “He may just keep his opinion; I’m of the same opinion as
papa.”
“It is not of much consequence what your opinion is,” said Marion,
imperturbably; “but Matthew has been very well instructed, and he has
all the new lights upon things, and the exegesis and all that, which was
not so advanced in my father’s day. But it was a fine sermon,” she
added, with an approving nod, “though maybe dangerous to the ignorant,
which was all we ever said.”
As for Elsie, she ceased altogether to think of the mystery of that
afternoon, and the sound of her father’s voice--which was such as she
had never heard before--in her hot indignation against Matthew, who
dared to be of a different opinion from papa.