There are impressions cut deeper into the heart by the sudden stroke of
some special trial than any made by the continuous pressure of
afflictions, however heavy; impressions which nothing in this world can
efface--wounds, like the three-cornered thrust of the bayonet, which
will not heal up. Such was the keen, piercing sorrow which the sight of
Frank in his drunkenness had stabbed deep into the soul of Mary
Oliphant. The wound it had made would never heal. Oh, miserable drink!
which turns the bright, the noble, the intellectual creatures of God
into worse than madmen; for the madman's reason is gone--we pity, but we
cannot blame him; but in the victim of strong drink reason is suspended
but not destroyed, and in all the distortion, grimaces, reelings,
babblings, ravings of the miserable wretch while his sin is on him, we
see a self-inflicted insanity, and a degradation which is not a
misfortune but a crime.
The day after that miserable meeting at the stile, Frank called at the
rectory, the picture of wretchedness and despair. Mrs Oliphant came to
him, and told him that Mary declined seeing him; indeed, that she was so
utterly unnerved and ill, that she would have been unequal to an
interview even had she thought it right to grant him one.
"Is there no hope for me, then?" he asked. "Have I quite sinned away
even the possibility of forgiveness?"
"I cannot fully answer for Mary," replied Mrs Oliphant; "but I should
be wrong if I said anything that could lead you to suppose that she can
ever again look upon you as she once did."
"Is it really so?" he said gloomily. "Has this one transgression
forfeited her love for ever? Is there no place for repentance? I do
not justify myself. I do not attempt to make less of the fault. I can
thoroughly understand her horror, her disgust. I loathe myself as a
vile beast, and worse than a beast. But yet, can I by this one act have
cut through _every_ cord that bound her heart to mine?"
"Excuse me, dear Frank," said the other; "but you mistake in speaking of
_one_ transgression--one act. It is because poor Mary feels, as I feel
too, that this act must be only one of many acts of the like kind,
though the rest may have been concealed from us, that she dare not trust
her happiness in your keeping."
"And who has any right," he asked warmly, "to say that I am in the habit
of exceeding?"
"Do you deny yourself that it is so?" she inquired, looking steadily but
sorrowfully at him.