The tone of solemnity with which he spoke could scarcely have been more impressive had he been reasoning, like St. Paul, of mercy, temperance, and judgment to come. And he felt as if he were doing so: it was the most solemn of truths he was telling against himself; the statement as of a dying man. His wife felt it so, too, in a sympathy that disturbed her reason, standing with her hand upon the back of his chair. Morrison stood for a moment, overcome by the intensity of the atmosphere, opening his mouth in an amazed gasp.
“Three hundred pounds!” the minister repeated, deliberately, with a weight of meaning calculated to strike awe into every heart.
But the impression made upon his audience unfortunately did not last. The writer stared and gasped, and then he burst into a loud guffaw. It was irresistible. The intense gravity of the speaker, the exaltation of his tone, the sympathy of his wife’s restrained excitement, and then the words that came out of it all, so commonplace, so little conformable to that intense and tragic sentiment—overwhelmed the man of common sense. Morrison laughed till the tremulous gravity of the two discomposed him, and made him ashamed of himself, though their look of strained and painful seriousness almost brought back the fit when it was over. He stopped all of a sudden, silenced by this, and holding his hand to his side.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Buchanan. It was just beyond me. Lord’s sake, man, dinna look so awesome. I was prepared to hear it was thirty thousand at the least.”
“Thirty thousand,” said the minister, “to some people is probably less than three hundred to me: but we cannot expect you to feel with us in respect to that. Morrison, you must help us somehow to pay this money, for we cannot raise it in a moment; but with time every penny shall be paid.”
“To whom?” said Morrison, quietly.
“To whom? Are not you the man of business? To the estate, of course—to the heir.”
“Not to me, certainly,” said the lawyer. “I would be worthy to lose my trust if I acted in contradiction to my client’s wishes in any such way. I will not take your money, Buchanan. No! man, though you are the minister, you are not a Pope, and we’re not priest-ridden in this country. I’ll be hanged if you shall ride rough shod over my head. I have my instructions, and if you were to preach at me till doomsday, you’ll not change my clear duty. Pay away, if it’s any pleasure to you. Yon wild woman, I dare to say, would snatch it up, or any siller you would put within reach of her; but deil a receipt or acquittance or any lawful document will you get from auld John Anderson’s estate, to which you owe not a penny. Bless me, Mrs. Buchanan, you’re a sensible woman. Can you not make him see this? You cannot want him to make ducks and drakes of your bairns’ revenue. John Anderson was his leal friend, do you think it likely he would leave him to be harried at a lawyer’s mercy? Do you not see, with the instincts of my race, I would have put you all to the horn years ago if it had been in my power?” he cried, jumping suddenly up. “Bless me, I never made so long a speech in my life. For goodsake, Buchanan, draw yourself together and give up this nonsense, like a man.”
“It is nonsense,” said the minister, who, during all this long speech, had gone through an entire drama of emotions, “that has taken all the pleasure for five long years and more out of my life.”
“Oh, but, Claude, my man! you will mind I always said——”