Part 8 (1/2)
There was no reply, but only a burst of tears.
”Mary, dearest Mary, what am I to understand? Do your parents object to your engaging yourself to me? Oh, surely it is not so?”
”No, Frank; they have not objected--not exactly--but--”
She hesitated and looked down.
”Oh, why then not give me a plain 'Yes' at once? You own that your heart is mine--you _know_ that my heart is yours--why not then promise to be mine altogether?”
”It is true, dear Frank,” she replied slowly, ”that my heart is yours--I cannot take it back if I would--but it may be my duty not to give my hand with it.”
”Your duty! Oh, Mary, what a cold, cruel speech! Why your duty?”
”Well,” she replied, ”the plain truth is best, and best when soonest spoken. You must know, dear Frank, how we all here feel about the sin and misery caused by strong drink. And you must know--oh, forgive me for saying it, but I must say it, I must be open with you _now_ on this subject--you must know that we have reason to fear that your own liking for beer and wine and such things has been, for the last year or two, on the increase. And oh, we fear--we fear that, however unconsciously, you may be on the downward road to--to--”
She could not finish her sentence.
Frank hung down his head, and turned half away, the colour flus.h.i.+ng up to the top of his fair forehead. He tried to speak, but could not for a while. At last, in a husky voice, he whispered,--
”And so you will give me up to perish, body and soul, and to go down hill with all my might and main?”
”No, Frank,” she answered, having now regained her composure; ”no; I have no wish to give you up to sin and ruin. It will rest with yourself. I cannot promise absolutely that I will be yours. It will depend upon--upon--upon what you are yourself when the time comes that we might marry.”
”And you have promised your mother--”
”I have promised--oh, Frank, dear Frank, pardon me if I wound you by plain, rough words, but they must be spoken--I have promised that I will never be the wife of a drunkard.”
He bowed his head on his hand, and there was a long and painful silence.
Poor Mary, her heart bled for him, as she saw the tears forcing their way between his thin, pale fingers.
”Mary,” he said at last, ”you must be mine; I cannot live without you.
Trust me; you shall have no cause to be ashamed of me. I know--I feel that I have been in great danger of sliding into intemperate habits; but you shall see me and hear of me henceforth as strictly moderate. I solemnly promise you this; and on the very day that makes us one, I will be one with you in total abstinence also. Dearest, will this satisfy you?”
”Yes, dear Frank; I have no right to ask more, if you _can_ be strictly moderate; but oh, do not trust in your own strength. Pray for help, dear Frank, and then you will be able to conquer.”
”Oh, of course,” he said hastily; ”but never fear, I give you my solemn promise that you shall never see nor hear of any excess in me.”
And did he keep his resolution? Yes; for a while. But, alas! how little do those in circ.u.mstances like his really appreciate the awful difficulties which beset those who are struggling to maintain strict moderation. This makes drunkenness such a fearful and exceptional sin,--
”The bow well bent, and smart the spring, Vice seems already slain.”
The resolution is firmly set; the man walks forth strong as a rock in his determination. He begins to drink; his rock is but a piece of ice after all, but he knows it not; it is beginning to melt with the warmth of the first gla.s.s; he is cheered and encouraged by the second gla.s.s, and his resolution seems to himself stronger than ever, while in very truth it is only melting faster and faster. At last he is over the border of moderation before he conceives that he had so much as approached it. Then, alas! the word ”moderation” stands for an unknown quant.i.ty, easy to use but hard to define, since one man's moderation may be another man's excess, and to-day's moderation may be an excess to- morrow.
Poor Frank was never more in earnest than when he promised Mary Oliphant that he would observe strict moderation. He had everything to induce him to keep his word--his love for Mary; his desire to please his own parents, who had begun to tremble for him; his own self-respect. So he left the rectory strong as a lion in his own estimation, yet not without a sort of misgiving underlying his conviction of his own firmness; but he would not listen to that misgiving for a moment.
”I mean to be what I have promised, and I _will_ be,” he said to himself. ”Mary shall see that, easy and self-indulgent as I have been, I can be rigid as iron when I have the will to be so.”
Poor Frank! he did not knew his own weakness; he did not know that his was not a will of iron, but was like a foot once badly sprained, which has lost its firm and unfaltering tread. Happy would it have been for him had he sought a strength higher than his own--the strength from above.
For several weeks he kept strictly to his purpose. He limited himself to so much beer and wine, and never exceeded. He became proud of his firmness, forgetting that there had been nothing to test the stamina of his resolution.