“There would be a thousand pounds, or near by it. Mother, I’m thinking,” said Christina. “You know well how scrimping with himself he has been. Good fishing or bad fishing, he never had a shilling to spend on any one. He bought nothing other boys bought; when he was a laddie, and when he grew to the boats, you may mind that he put all he made away somewhere. And he made a deal more than folks thought. He had a bit venture here, and a bit there, and they must have prospered finely.”
“Not they!” said Janet angrily. “What good has come of them? What good could come of money, hid away from everybody but himself? Why didn’t he tell his mother? If her thoughts had been round about his siller, it would not have gone an ill road. A man who hides away his money is just a miracle of stupidity, for the devil knows where it is if no decent human soul does.”
It was a mighty sorrow to bear, even for the two women, and Janet wept like a child over the hopes blasted before she knew of them. “He should have told us both long since,” she sobbed. “I would have been praying for the bonnie ship building for him, every plank would have been laid with a blessing. And as I sat quiet in my house, I would have been thinking of my son Captain Binnie, and many a day would have been a bright day, that has been but a middling one. So selfish as the lad has been!”
“Maybe it wasn’t pure selfishness, Mother. He was saving for a good end.”
“It was pure selfishness! He was that way even about Sophy. Nobody but himself must have word or look from her, and the lassie just wearied of him. Why wouldn’t she? He put himself and her in a circle, and then made a wilderness all round about it. And Sophy wanted company, for when a girl says ‘a man is all the world to her,’ she doesn’t mean that nobody else is to come into her world. She would be a wicked lass if she did.”
“Well, Mother, he lost her, and he bore his loss like a man.”
“Ay, men often bear the loss of love easier than the loss of money. I’ve seen far more fuss made over the loss of a set of fishing-nets, than over the brave fellows that handled them. And to think of our Andrew hiding away his gold all these years for his own hoping and pleasuring! A perfectly selfish pleasuring! The gold might well take wings to itself and fly away. He should have clipped the wings of it with giving a piece to the kirk now and then, and a piece to his mother and sister at odd times, and the flying wouldn’t have been so easy. Now he has lost the whole, and he well deserves it I’m thinking his Maker is dourly angry with him for such ways, and I am angry myself.”
“Ah well, Mother, there is no use in our anger; the lad is suffering enough, and for the rest we must just leave him to the general mercy of God.”
“‘General mercy of God.’ Don’t let me hear you use the like of such words, Christina. The minister would tell you it is a very loose expression and a very dangerous doctrine. He was reproving Elder McInnes for them very words, and any good minister will be keeping his thumb on such a wide outgate. Andrew knows well that he has to have the particular and elected grace of God to keep him where he ought to be. This hid-away money has given him a sore tumble, and I will tell him so very plainly.”
“Don’t trouble him, Mother. He will not bear words on it, even from you.”