"Why should you distress yourself about this matter, my own dear Mary.
Cannot you trust me? Cannot you believe that I will be strictly
moderate? Have I not promised?"
"You _have_ promised; and I would hope and believe that--that--" She
could not go on, her tears choked her words.
"Ah, I know what you would say," he replied passionately; "you would
reproach me with my failure--my one failure, my failure under
extraordinary excitement and weakness--I thought you had forgiven me
_that_. Have I not kept my promise since then? Cannot you trust me,
unless I put my hand to a formal pledge? If honour, love, religion,
will not bind me, do you think that signing a pledge will do it?"
"I have not asked you to sign any pledge," she replied sorrowfully;
"though I should indeed rejoice to see you do it. I only hoped--oh, how
fervently!--that you might see it to be your wisdom, your safety, to
become a total abstainer. Oh, dearest Frank, you are so kind, so open,
so unsuspecting, that you are specially liable to be taken off your
guard, unless fortified by a strength superior to your own. Have you
really sought that strength? Oh, ask God to show you your duty in this
matter. It would make me so very, very happy were you to be led to
renounce at once and for ever those stimulants which have ruined
thousands of noble souls."
"Dearest Mary, were this necessary, I would promise it you in a moment.
But it is not necessary. I am no longer a child. I am not acting in
the dark. I see what is my duty. I see that to exceed moderation is a
sin. I have had my fall and my warnings, and to be forewarned is to be
forearmed. Trust me, dear Mary--trust me without a pledge, trust me
without total abstinence. You shall not have cause to blush for me
again. Believe me, I love you too well."
And with this she was forced to be content. Alas! poor Frank; he little
knew the grasp which the insidious taste for strong drink had fixed upon
him. He _liked_ it once, he _loved_ it now. And beside this he shrank
from the cross, which pledged total abstinence would call upon him to
take up. His engaging manners made him universally popular, and he
shrank from anything that would endanger or diminish that popularity.
He winced under a frown, but he withered under a sneer; still he had
secret misgivings that he should fall, that he should disgrace himself;
that he should forfeit Mary's love for ever if he did not take the
decided step; and more than once he half resolved to make the bold
plunge, and sign the pledge, and come out nobly and show his colours
like a man.
It was while this half resolve was on him that he was one evening
returning home after a day's fishing, Juniper Graves being with him. He
had refused the spirit-flask which his servant held out to him more than
once, alleging disinclination. At last he said,--
"I've been seriously thinking, Juniper, of becoming a total abstainer;
and it would do you a great deal of good if you were to be one too."
The only reply on the part of Juniper was an explosion of laughter,
which seemed as if it would tear him in pieces. One outburst of
merriment followed another, till he was obliged to lean against a tree
for support. Frank became quite angry.
"What _do_ you mean by making such an abominable fool of yourself;" he
cried.
"Oh dear, oh dear," laughed Graves, the tears running over in the
extremity of his real or pretended amusement, "you must pardon me, sir;
indeed, you must. I really couldn't help it; it did put me so in mind
of Jerry Ogden, the Methodist parson. Mr Frank and his servant
Juniper, two whining, methodistical, parsimonious teetotallers! oh dear,
it _was_ rich." And here he relapsed into another explosion.
"Methodist parson! I really don't know what you mean, sir," cried
Frank, beginning to get fairly exasperated. "You seem to me quite to
forget yourself. If you don't know better manners, the sooner you take
yourself off the better."
"Oh, sir, I'm very sorry, but really you must excuse me; it did seem so
very comical. _You_ a total abstainer, Mr Frank, and me a-coming arter
you. I think I sees you a-telling James to put the water on the table,
and then you says, `The water stands with you, Colonel Coleman.'"
"Don't talk so absurdly," said Frank, amused in spite of himself at the
idea of the water-party, with himself for the host. "And what has my
becoming a total abstainer to do with Jerry What-do-you-call-him, the
Methodist parson?"
"Oh, just this, sir. Jerry Ogden's one of those long-faced gentlemen as
turns up their eyes and their noses at us poor miserable sinners as
takes a little beer to our dinners. Ah! to hear him talk you'd have
fancied he was too good to breathe in the same altitude with such as me.
Such lots of good advice he has for us heathens, such sighing and
groaning over us poor deluded drinkers of allegorical liquors. Ah! but
he's a tidy little cask of his own hid snug out of the way. It's just
the case with them all."
"I'm really much obliged to you," said his master, laughing, "for
comparing me to Jerry Ogden. He seems, from your account, to have been
a regular hypocrite; but that does not show that total abstinence is not
a good thing when people take it up honestly."
"Bless your simplicity, sir," said the other; "they're all pretty much
alike."
"Now there, Juniper, I know you are wrong. Mr Oliphant has many men in
his society who are thoroughly honest teetotallers, men who are truly
reformed, and, more than that, thorough christians."
"Reformed! Christians!" sneered Juniper, venomously; "a pretty likely
thing indeed. You don't know them teetotallers as well as I do, sir.
`Oh dear, no; not a drop, not a drop: wouldn't touch it for the world.'
But they manage to have it on the sly for all that. I've no faith in
'em at all. I'd rather be as I am, though I says it as shouldn't say
it, an honest fellow as gets drunk now and then, and ain't ashamed to
own it, than one of your canting teetotallers. Why, they're such an
amphibious set, there's no knowing where to have them."
"Amphibious?" said his master, laughing; "why, I should have thought
`aquatic' would have been a better word, as they profess to confine
themselves to the water; unless you mean, indeed, that they are only
half water animals."
"Oh, sir," said Graves, rather huffed, "it was only a phraseology of
mine, meaning that there was no dependence to be placed on 'em."
"Well but, Juniper, I am not speaking of hypocrites or sham
teetotallers, but of the real ones. There's Mr Oliphant and the whole
family at the rectory, you'll not pretend, I suppose, that _they_ drink
on the sly?"
"I wouldn't by no means answer for that," was the reply; "that depends
on circumstantials. There's many sorts of drinks as we poor ignorant
creatures calls intoxicating which is quite the thing with your tip-top
teetotallers. There's champagne, that's quite strict teetotal; then
there's cider, then there's cherry-brandy; and if that don't do, then
there's teetotal physic."
"Teetotal physic! I don't understand you."
"Don't you, sir? that's like your innocence. Why, it's just this way.
There's a lady teetotaller, and she's a little out of sorts; so she
sends a note to the doctor, and he sends back a nice bottle of stuff.
It's uncommon good and spirituous-like to smell at, but then it's
medicine, only the drugs ain't down in what the chemists call their
`Farming-up-here.'"
"I never heard of that before," remarked Frank.
"No, I don't suppose, sir, as ever you did. And then there's the
teetotal gents; they does it much more free and easy. They've got what
the Catholics calls a `dispensary' from their Pope, (and their Pope's
the doctor), to take just whatever they likes as a medicine--oh, only as
a medicine; so they carries about with 'em a doctor's superscription,
which says just this: `Let the patient take as much beer, or wine, or
spirits, as he can swallow.'"
"A pretty picture you have drawn," laughed Frank. "I'm afraid there's
not much chance of making _you_ an abstainer."
"Nor you neither, Mr Frank, I hope. Why, I should be ashamed to see my
cheerful, handsome young master, (you must forgive me, sir, for being so
bold), turned into a sour-looking, turnip-faced, lantern-jawed, whining
teetotaller."
"Why, I thought you said just now," said the other, "that they all take
drink on the sly; if that's the case, it can't be total abstinence that
spoils their beauty."