“Had you any reason to mistrust the old man, Claude?”
He gave her a look, still from under his clasped hands, but made no reply.
“Which of them were more to him than you,” said Mrs. Buchanan, vehemently; “the smaller debtors? Joseph Sym, the gardener, that he set up in business, or the Horsburghs, or Peter Wemyss? Were they more to him than you?—was this woman, with her ringlets, and her puffed sleeves more to him than you? Or her silly laddie, no better than a bairn, though he may be near a man in years? I have reminded you before what St. Paul says: ‘Albeit, I do not say to thee how thou owest me thine own self besides.’ He was not slow to say that, the old man, when you would let him. And you think he was more taken up with that clan-jamfry than with you?”
“No—no; I don’t say that, Mary. I know he was very favourable to me, too favourable; but I have never felt at rest about this. Morrison would not let me speak; perhaps he thought I had got less than I really had. This has always been in my head.” The minister got up suddenly and began to walk about the room. “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore,” he said, under his breath.
“What is that you are saying, Claude? That is what Elsie heard you saying the day of Mr. Anderson’s death. She said, quite innocent, it gave you a great deal of trouble, your sermon, that you were always going over and over——”
“What?” said Mr. Buchanan, stopping short in his walk, with a scared face.
“Dear me, Claude! no harm, no harm, only that, that you are saying now—about writing fourscore. Oh, Claude, my dear, you give it far more thought than it deserves. We could have almost paid it off by this time, if it had been exacted from us. And when that good, kind, auld man said—more than saying—when he wrote down in his will—that it was to be a legacy, God bless him! when I heard that, with thanksgiving to the Lord, I just put it out of my mind—not to forget it, for it was a great deliverance—but surely not to be burdened by it, or to mistrust the good man in his grave!”
The eyes of the minister’s wife filled with tears. It was she who was the preacher now, and her address was full of natural eloquence. But, like so many other eloquent addresses, her audience paid but little attention to it. Mr. Buchanan stopped short in his walk; he came back to his table and sat down facing her. When she ceased, overcome with her feelings, he began, without any pretence of sharing them, to question her hastily.
“Where was Elsie, that she should hear what I said? and what did she hear? and how much does she know?” This new subject seemed to occupy his mind to the exclusion of the old.
“Elsie? oh, she knows nothing. But she was in the turret there, where you encouraged them to go, Claude, though I always thought it a dangerous thing; for the parents’ discussions are not always for a bairn’s ears, and you never thought whether they were there or not. I have thought upon it many a day.”