Penny Plain Part 33

Jean's face got pink. "I should think he has. He's _exactly_ like our own brother."

"Then you want him to have a full share?"

"Of course. It's odd how people will a.s.sume one is a cad! When Mhor's mother died (his father had died before) he came to us--his mother _trusted him_ to us--and people kept saying, 'Why should you take him?

He has no claim on you.' As if Mhor wasn't the best gift we ever got....

And when you have divided it, I wonder if you would take a tenth off each share? We were brought up to give a tenth of any money we had to G.o.d. I'm almost sure the boys would give it themselves. I _think_ they would, but perhaps it would be safer to take it off first and put it aside."

Jean looked very straight at the lawyer. "I wouldn't like any of us to be unjust stewards," she said.

"No," said the lawyer--"no."

"And perhaps," Jean went on, "the boys had better not get their shares until they are twenty-five David could have it now, so far as sense goes, but it's the responsibility I'm thinking about."

"I would certainly let them wait until they are twenty-five. Their shares will acc.u.mulate, of course, and be very much larger when they get them."

"But I don't want that," said Jean. "I want the interest on the money to be added to the tenths that are laid away. It's better to give more than the strict tenth. It's so horrid to be shabby about giving."

"And what are the 'tenths,' to be used for?"

"I'll tell you about that later, if I may. I'm not quite sure myself. I shall have to ask Mr. Macdonald, our minister. He'll know. I'm never quite certain whether the Bible means the tenth to be given in charity, or kept entirely for churches and missions.... And I want to buy some annuities, if you will tell me how to do it. Mrs. M'Cosh, our servant--perhaps you noticed her when you came in? I want to make her absolutely secure and comfortable in her old age. I hope she will stay with us for a long time yet, but it will be nice for her to feel that she can have a home of her own whenever she likes. And there are others ... but I won't worry you with them just now. It was most awfully kind of you to come all the way from London to explain things to me, when you must be very busy."

"Coming to see you is part of my business," Mr. d.i.c.kson explained, "but it has been a great pleasure too.... By the way, will you use the house in Prince's Gate or shall we let it?"

"Oh, do anything you like with it. I shouldn't think we would ever want to live in London, it's such a noisy, overcrowded place, and there are always hotels.... I'm quite content with The Rigs. It's such a comfort to feel that it is our own."

"It's a charming cottage," Mr. d.i.c.kson said, "but won't you want something roomier? Something more imposing for an heiress?"

"I hate imposing things," Jean said, very earnestly "I want to go on just as we were doing, only with no scrimping, and more treats for the boys. We've only got 350 a year now, and the thought of all this money dazes me. It doesn't really mean anything to me yet."

"It will soon. I hope your fortune is going to bring you much happiness, though I doubt if you will keep much of it to yourself."

"Oh yes," Jean a.s.sured him. "I'm going to buy myself a musquash coat with a skunk collar. I've always wanted one frightfully. You'll stay and have luncheon with us, won't you?"

Mr. d.i.c.kson stayed to luncheon, and was treated with great respect by Jock and Mhor. The latter had a notion that somewhere the lawyer had a cave in which he kept Jean's fortune, great casks of gold pieces and trunks of precious stones, and that any lack of manners on his part might lose Jean her inheritance. He was disappointed to find him dressed like any ordinary man. He had had a dim hope that he would look like Ali Baba and wear a turban.

After Mr. d.i.c.kson had finished saying all he had come to say, and had gone to catch his train, Jean started out to call on her minister.

Pamela met her at the gate.

"Well, Jean, and whither away? You look very grave. Are you going to tell the King the sky's falling?"

"Something of that kind. I'm going to see Mr. Macdonald. I've got something I want to ask him."

"I suppose you don't want me to go with you? I love an excuse to go and see the Macdonalds. Oh, but I have one. Just wait a moment, Jean, while I run back and fetch something."

She joined Jean after a short delay, and they walked on together. Jean explained that she was going to ask Mr. Macdonald's advice how best to use her money.

"Has the lawyer been?" Pamela asked, "Do you understand about things?"

Jean told of Mr. d.i.c.kson's visit.

"It's a fearful lot of money, Pamela. But when it's divided into four, that's four people to share the responsibility."

"And what are you going to do with your share?"

"I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to take a house and fill it with guests who will be consistently unpleasant, as the Benefactress did. And I'm not going to build a sort of fairy palace and commit suicide from the roof like the millionaire in that book _Midas_ something or other. And I _hope_ I'm not going to lose my imagination and forget what it feels like to be poor, and send a girl with a small dress allowance half a dozen muslin handkerchiefs at Christmas."

"I suppose you know, Jean--I don't want to be discouraging--that you will get very little grat.i.tude, that the people you try to help will smarm to your face and blackguard you behind your back? You will be hurt and disappointed times without number.... You see, my dear, I've had money for quite a lot of years, and I know."

Jean nodded.

They were crossing the wide bridge over Tweed and she stopped and, leaning her arms on the parapet, gazed up at Peel Tower.

"Let's look at Peel for a little," she said. "It's been there such a long time and must have seen so many people trying to do their best and only succeeding in making mischief. It seems to say, 'Nothing really matters: you'll all be in the tod's hole in less than a hundred years. I remain, and the river and the hills.'"

"Yes," said Pamela, "they are a great comfort, the unchanging things--these placid round-backed hills, and the river and the grey town--to us restless mortals.... Look, Jean, I want you to tell me if you think this miniature is at all like Duncan Macdonald. You remember I asked you to let me have that snapshot of him that you said was so characteristic and I sent it to London to a woman I know who does miniatures well. I thought his mother would like to have it. But you must tell me if you think it good enough."

Jean took the miniature and looked at the pictured face, a laughing boy's face, fresh-coloured, frank, with flaxen hair falling over a broad brow.

When, after a minute, she handed it back she a.s.sured Pamela that the likeness was wonderful.

"She has caught it exactly, that look in his eyes as if he were telling you it was 'fair time of day' with him. Oh, dear Duncan! It's fair time of day with him now, I am sure, wherever he is.... He was twenty-two when he fell three years ago.... You've often heard Mrs. Macdonald speak of her sons. Duncan was the youngest by a lot of years--the baby. The others are frighteningly clever, but Duncan was a lamb. They all adored him, but he wasn't spoiled.... Life was such a joke to Duncan. I can't even now think of him as dead. He was so full of abounding life one can't imagine him lying still--quenched. You know that odd little poem:

"'And Mary's the one that never liked angel stories, And Mary's the one that's dead....'

Death and Duncan seem such a long way apart. Many people are so dull and apathetic that they never seem more than half alive, so they don't leave much of a gap when they go. But Duncan--The Macdonalds are brave, but I think living to them is just a matter of getting through now. The end of the day will mean Duncan. I am glad you thought about getting the miniature done. You do have such nice thoughts, Pamela."

The Macdonalds' manse stood on the banks of Tweed, a hundred yards or so below Peel Tower, a square house of grey stone in a charming garden.

Mr. Macdonald loved his garden and worked in it diligently. It was his doctor, he said. When his mind got stale and sermon-writing difficult, when his head ached and people became a burden, he put on an old coat and went out to dig, or plant or mow the gra.s.s. He grew wonderful flowers, and in July, when his lupins were at their best, he took a particular pleasure in enticing people out to see the effect of their royal blue against the silver of Tweed.

He had been a minister in Priorsford for close on forty years and had never had more than 250 of a salary, and on this he and his wife had brought up four sons who looked, as an old woman in the church said, "as if they'd aye got their meat." There had always been a spare place at every meal for any casual guest, and a spare bedroom looking over Tweed that was seldom empty. And there had been no lowering of the dignity of a manse. A fresh, wise-like, middle-aged woman opened the door to visitors, and if you had asked her she would have told you she had been in service with the Macdonalds since she was fifteen, and Mrs. Macdonald would have added that she never could have managed without Agnes.

The sons had worked their way with bursaries and scholarships through school and college, and now three of them were in positions of trust in the government of their country. One was in London, two in India--and Duncan lay in France, that Holy Land of our people.

It was a nice question his wife used to say before the War (when hearts were lighter and laughter easier) whether Mr. Macdonald was prouder of his sons or his flowers, and when, as sometimes happened he had them all with him in the garden, his cup of content had been full.

And now it seemed to him that when he was in the garden Duncan was nearer him. He could see the little figure in a blue jersey marching along the paths with a wheelbarrow, very important because he was helping his father. He had called the big clump of azaleas "the burning bush." ... He had always been a funny little chap.

And it was in the garden that he had said good-bye to him that last time. He had been twice wounded, and it was hard to go back again. There was no novelty about it now, no eagerness or burning zeal, nothing but a dogged determination to see the thing through. They had stood together looking over Tweed to the blue ridge of Cademuir and Duncan had broken the silence with a question:

"What's the psalm, Father, about the man 'who going forth doth mourn'?"

And with his eyes fixed on the hills the old minister had repeated:

"'That man who bearing precious seed In going forth doth mourn, He, doubtless, bringing back the sheaves Rejoicing will return.'"

And Duncan had nodded his head and said, "That's it. 'Rejoicing will return.'" And he had taken another long look at Cademuir.

Many wondered what had kept such a man as John Macdonald all his life in a small town like Priorsford. He did more good, he said, in a little place; he would be of no use in a city; but the real reason was he knew his health would not stand the strain. For many years he had been a martyr to a particularly painful kind of rheumatism. He never spoke of it if he could help it, and tried never to let it interfere with his work, but his eyes had the patient look that suffering brings, and his face often wore a twisted, humorous smile, as if he were laughing at his own pain. He was now sixty-four. His sons, so far as they were allowed, had smoothed the way for their parents, but they could not induce their father to retire from the ministry. "I'll give up when I begin to feel myself a nuisance," he would say. "I can still preach and visit my people, and perhaps G.o.d will let me die in harness, with the sound of Tweed in my ears."