Winter Evening Tales - Amelia Barr 2 стр.

But that even his father had doubts and hesitations was proven to David by the contradictory nature of his advice and charges. Thus on the morning he left Glasgow, and as they were riding together to the Caledonian station, the old man said, "Your uncle has given you a seat in his bank, Davie, and you'll mak' room for yoursel' to lie down, I'se warrant. But you'll no forget that when a guid man thrives a' should thrive i' him; and giving for God's sake never lessens the purse."

"I am but one in a world full, father. I hope I shall never forget to give according to my prosperings."

"Tak the world as it is, my lad, and no' as it ought to be; and never forget that money is money's britheran' you put two pennies in a purse they'll creep thegither.

"But then Davie, I am free to say gold won't buy everything, and though rich men hae long hands, they won't reach to heaven. So, though you'll tak guid care o' yoursel', you will also gie to God the things that are God's."

"I have been brought up in the fear of God and the love of mankind, father. It would be an ill thing for me to slink out of life and leave the world no better for my living."

"God bless you, lad; and the £20,000 will be to the fore when it is called for, and you shall make it £60,000, and I'll see again Ellenmount in the Lockerby's keeping. But you'll walk in the ways o' your fathers, and gie without grudging of your increase."

David nodded rather impatiently. He could hardly understand the struggle going on in his father's heartthe wish to say something that might quiet his own conscience, and yet not make David's unnecessarily tender. It is hard serving God and Mammon, and Andrew Lockerby was miserable and ashamed that morning in the service.

And yet he was not selfish in the matterthat much in his favor must be admitted. He would rather have had the fine, handsome lad he loved so dearly going in and out his own house. He could have taken great interest in all his further studies, and very great pride in seeing him a successful "placed minister;" but there are few Scotsmen in whom pride of lineage and the good of the family does not strike deeper than individual pleasure. Andrew really believed that David's first duty was to the house of Lockerby.

He had sacrificed a great deal toward this end all his own life, nor were his sacrifices complete with the resignation of his only child to the same purpose. To a man of more than sixty years of age it is a great trial to have an unusual and unhappy atmosphere in his home; and though Mrs. Lockerby was now tearful and patient under her disappointment, everyone knows that tears and patience may be a miserable kind of comfort. Then, though Janet had as yet preserved a dour and angry silence, he knew that sooner or later she would begin a guerilla warfare of sharp words, which he feared he would have mainly to bear, for Janet, though his housekeeper, was also "a far-awa cousin," had been forty years in his house, and was not accustomed to withhold her opinions on any subject.

Fortunately for Andrew Lockerby, Janet finally selected Mary Moir as the Eve specially to blame in this transgression. "A proud up-head lassie," she asserted, "that cam o' a family wha would sell their share o' the sunshine for pounds sterling!"

From such texts as this the two women in the Lockerby house preached little daily sermons to each other, until comfort grew out of the very stem of their sorrow, and they began to congratulate each other that "puir Davie was at ony rate outside the glamour o' Mary Moir's temptations."

"For she just bewitched the laddie," said Janet, angrily; and, doubtless, if the old laws regarding witches had been in Janet's administration it would have gone hardly with pretty Mary Moir.

Part II

It is a weary day when the youth first discovers that after all he will only become a man; and this discovery came with a depressing weight one morning to David, after he had been counting bank notes for three hours. It was noon, but the gas was lit, and in the heavy air a dozen men sat silent as statues, adding up figures and making entries. He thought of the college courts, and the college green, of the crowded halls, and the symposia, where both mind and body had equal refection. There had been days when he had a part in these things, and when to "strive with things impossible," or "to pluck honor from the pale-faced moon," had not been unreasonable or rash; but now it almost seemed as if Mr. Buckle's dreary gospel was a reality, and men were machines, and life was an affair to be tabulated in averages.

He had just had a letter from Willie Caird, too, and it had irritated him. The wounds of a friend may be faithful, but they are not always welcome. David determined to drop the correspondence. Willie was going one way and he another. They might never see each other again; and

For by simply going with the current in which in great measure, subject yet to early influences, he found himself, David Lockerby had drifted in one twelve months far enough away from the traditions and feelings of his home and native land. Not that he had broken loose into any flagrant sin, or in any manner cast a shadow on the perfect respectability of his name. The set in which Alexander Gordon and his nephew lived sanctioned nothing of the kind. They belonged to the best society, and were of those well-dressed, well-behaved people whom Canon Kingsley described as "the sitters in pews."

In their very proper company David had gone to ball and party, to opera and theatre. On wet Sundays they sat together in St. George's Church; on fine Sundays they had sailed quietly down the Thames, and eaten their dinner at Richmond. Now, sin is sin beyond all controversy, but there were none of David's companions to whom these things were sins in the same degree as they were to David.

To none of them had the holy Sabbath ever been the day it had been to him; to none of them was it so richly freighted with memories of wonderful sermons and solemn sacraments that were foretastes of heaven. Coming with a party of gentlemanly fellows slowly rowing up the Thames and humming some passionate recitative from an opera, he alone could recall the charmful stillness of a Scotch Sabbath, the worshiping crowds, and the evening psalm ascending from so many thousand hearthstones:

He alone, as the oars kept time to "aria" or "chorus," heard above the witching melody the solemn minor of "St. Mary's," or the tearful tenderness of "Communion."

To most of his companions opera and theatre had come as a matter of course, as a part of their daily life and education. David had been obliged to stifle conscience, to disobey his father's counsels and his mother's pleadings, before he could enjoy them. He had had, in fact, to cultivate a taste for the sin before the sin was pleasant to him; and he frankly told himself that night, in thinking it all over, that it was harder work getting to hell than to heaven.

But then in another year he would become a partner, marry Mary, and begin a new life. Suddenly it struck him with a new force that he had not heard from Mary for nearly three weeks. A fear seized him that while he had been dancing and making merry Mary had been ill and suffering. He was amazed at his own heartlessness, for surely nothing but sickness would have made Mary forget him.

The next morning as he went to the bank he posted a long letter to her, full of affection and contrition and rose-colored pictures of their future life. He had risen an hour earlier to write it, and he did not fail to notice what a healthy natural pleasure even this small effort of self-denial gave him. He determined that he would that very night write long letters to his mother and Janet, and even to his father. "There was a good deal he wanted to say to him about money matters, and his marriage, and fore-talk always saved after-talk, besides it would keep the influence of the old and better life around him to be in closer communion with it."

Thus thinking, he opened the door of his uncle's private room, and said cheerily, "Good morning, uncle."

"Good morning, Davie. Your father is here."

Then Andrew Lockerby came forward, and his son met him with outstretched hands and paling cheeks. "What is it, father? Mother? Mary? Is she dead?"

"'Deed, no, my lad. There's naething wrang but will turn to right. Mary Moir was married three days syne, and I thocht you wad rather hear the news from are that loved you. That's a', Davie; and indeed it's a loss that's a great gain."

"Who did she marry?"

"Just a bit wizened body frae the East Indies, a'most as yellow as his gold, an' as auld as her father. But the Deacon is greatly set up wi' the matchor the settlementsand Mary comes o' a gripping kind. There's her brother Gavin, he'd sell the ears aff his head, an' they werena fastened on."

Then David went away with his father, and after half-an-hour's talk on the subject together it was never mentioned more between them. But it was a blow that killed effectually all David's eager yearnings for a loftier and purer life. And it not only did this, but it also caused to spring up into active existence a passion which was to rule him absolutelya passion for gold. Love had failed him, friendship had proved an annoyance, company, music, feasting, amusements of all kinds were a weariness now to think of. There seemed nothing better for him than to become a rich man.

"I'll buy so many acres of old Scotland and call them by the Lockerby's name; and I'll have nobles and great men come bowing and becking to David Lockerby as they do to Alexander Gordon. Love is refused, and wisdom is scorned, but everybody is glad to take money; then money is best of all things."

Thus David reasoned, and his father said nothing against his arguments. Indeed, they had never understood one another so well. David, for the first time, asked all about the lands of Ellenmount, and pledged himself, if he lived and prospered, to fulfill his father's hope. Indeed, Andrew was altogether so pleased with his son that he told his brother-in-law that the £20,000 would be forthcoming as soon as ever he choose to advance David in the firm.

"I was only waiting, Lockerby, till Davie got through wi' his playtime. The lad's myself o'er again, an' I ken weel he'll ne'er be contented until he settles cannily doon to his interest tables."

So before Andrew Lockerby went back to Glasgow David was one of the firm of Gordon & Co., sat in the directors' room, and began to feel some of the pleasant power of having money to lend. After this he was rarely seen among men of his own agewomen he never mingled with. He removed to his uncle's stately house in Baker street, and assimilated his life very much to that of the older money maker. Occasionally he took a run northward to Glasgow, or a month's vacation on the Continent, but nearly all such journeys were associated with some profitable loan or investment. People began to speak of him as a most admirable young man, and indeed in some respects he merited the praise. No son ever more affectionately honored his father and mother, and Janet had been made an independent woman by his grateful consideration.

He was so admirable that he ceased to interest people, and every time he visited Glasgow fewer and fewer of his old acquaintances came to see him. A little more than ten years after his admission to the firm of Gordon & Co. he came home at the new year, and presented his father with the title-deeds of Ellenmount and Netherby. The next day old Andrew was welcomed on the City Exchange as "Lockerby of Ellenmount, gentleman." "I hae lived lang enough to hae seen this day," he said, with happy tears; and David felt a joy in his father's joy that he did not know again for many years. For while a man works for another there is an ennobling element in his labor, but when he works simply for himself he has become the greatest of all slaves. This slavery David now willingly assumed; the accumulation of money became his business, his pleasure, the sum of his daily life.

Ten years later both his uncle and father were dead, and both had left David every shilling they possessed. Then he went on working more eagerly than ever, turning his tens of thousands into hundreds of thousands and adding acre to acre, and farm to farm, until Lockerby was the richest estate in Annandale. When he was forty-five years of age fortune seemed to have given him every good gift except wife and children, and his mother, who had nothing else to fret about, worried Janet continually on this subject.

"Wife an' bairns, indeed!" said Janet; "vera uncertain comforts, ma'am, an' vera certain cares. Our Master Davie likes aye to be sure o' his bargains."

"Weel, Janet, it's a great cross to mean' him sae honored, an' guid an' rich, wi' no a shilling ill-saved to shame him."

"Tut, tut, ma'am! The river doesna' swell wi' clean water. Naebody's charged him wi' wrangdoingthat's enough. There's nae need to set him up for a saint."

"An' you wanted him to be a minister, Janet."

"I was that blindance."

"We are blind creatures, Janet."

"Wi' excepts, ma'am; but they'll ne'er be found amang mithers."

This conversation took place one lovely Sabbath evening, and just at the same time David was standing thoughtfully on Princes street, Edinburgh, wondering to which church he had better turn his steps. For a sudden crisis in the affairs of a bank in that city had brought him hurriedly to Scotland, and he was not only a prudent man who considered public opinion, but was also in a mood to conciliate that opinion so long as the outward conditions were favorable. Whatever he might do in London, in Scotland he always went to morning and evening service.

He was also one of those self-dependent men who dislike to ask questions or advice from anyone. Though a comparative stranger he would not have allowed himself to think that anyone could direct him better than he could choose for himself. He looked up and down the street, and finally followed a company which increased continually until they entered an old church in the Canongate.

Its plain wooden pews and old-fashioned elevated pulpit rather pleased than offended David, and the air of antiquity about the place consecrated it in his eyes. Men like whatever reminds them of their purest and best days, and David had been once in the old Relief Church on the Doo Hill in Glasgowjust such a large, bare, solemn-looking house of worship. The still, earnest men and women, the droning of the precentor, the antiquated singing pleased and soothed him. He did not notice much the thin little fair man who conducted the services; for he was holding a session with his own soul.

A peculiar movement among the congregation announced that the sermon was beginning, and David, looking up, saw that the officiating minister had been changed. This man was swarthy and tall, and looked like some old Jewish prophet, as he lifted his rapt face and cried, like one crying in the wilderness, "Friends! I have a question to ask you to-night: 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'"

For twenty-three years David had silenced that voice, but it had found him out againit was Willie Caird's. At first interested and curious, David soon became profoundly moved as Willie, in clear, solemn, thrilling sentences, reasoned of life and death and judgment to come. Not that he followed his arguments, or was more than dimly conscious of the moving eloquence that stirred the crowd as a mighty wind stirs the trees in the forest: for that dreadful question smote, and smote, and smote upon his heart as if determined to have an answer.

What shall it profit? What shall it profit? What shall it profit? David was quick enough at counting material loss and profit, but here was a question beyond his computation. He went silently out of the church, and wandered away by Holyrood Palace and St. Anthony's Chapel to the pathless, lonely beauty of Salisbury Crags. There was no answer in nature for him. The stars were silent above, the earth silent beneath. Weariness brought him no rest; if he slept, he woke with the start of a hunted soul, and found him asking that same dreadful question. When he looked in the mirror his own face queried of him, "What profit?" and he was compelled to make a decided effort to prevent his tongue uttering the ever present thought.