Frank Oldfield Part 10

"Dear me, sir; to think of my behaving in such a uncompromising way to any gentleman. It's only them ill-natured folks' prevarications. I'll a.s.sure you, sir, I only just took care that you had a little in your gla.s.s to drink healths with, as was becoming; and I'm sure I was vexed as any one when I saw how the heat and your weakness together, sir, had combined to bring you into a state of unfortunate oblivion."

"Well," replied Frank, "you must look-out, Master Juniper, I can tell you. If I find you at any of your tricks again, I shall make short work with you."

But Juniper had no intention of being foiled. He would be more wary, but not less determined. Upon two things he was thoroughly resolved-- first, that Frank should not become an abstainer; and secondly, that he should not marry Mary Oliphant. He was greatly staggered, however, when he discovered that his young master, after the affair at the harvest- home, had contrived to make his peace at the rectory.

"I must bide my time," he said to himself; "but I'll circ.u.mscribe 'em yet, as sure as my name's Juniper Graves."

So he laid himself out in every possible way to please Frank, and to make himself essential to his comforts and pleasures. For a while he cautiously avoided any allusion to total abstinence, and was only careful to see that beer and spirits were always at hand, to be had by Frank at a moment's notice. If the weather was hot, there was sure to be a jug of shandy-gaff or some other equally enticing compound ready to be produced just at the time when its contents would be most appreciated. If the weather was cold, then, in the time of greatest need, Juniper had always an extra flask of spirits to supplement what his master carried. And the crafty fellow so contrived it that Frank should feel that, while he was quite moderate in the presence of his parents and their guests, he might go a little over the border with his groom without any danger.

Things were just in this state at the time when the conversation took place at the hall, which resulted in the permission to Mr Oliphant to persuade Frank--if he could--to become a pledged abstainer. A day or two after that conversation, Frank walked over to the rectory. He found Mary busily engaged in gathering flowers to decorate the tables at a school feast. His heart, somehow or other, smote him as he looked at her bright sweet face. She was like a pure flower herself; and was there no danger that the hot breath of his own intemperance would wither out the bloom which made her look so beautiful? But he tossed away the reflection with a wave of his flowing hair, and said cheerily,--

"Cannot I share, or lighten your task, dear Mary?"

"Thank you--yes--if you would hold the basket while I gather. These autumn flowers have not quite the brightness of the summer ones, but I think I love them more, because they remind me that winter is coming, and that I must therefore prize them doubly."

"Ah, but we should not carry winter thoughts about us before winter comes. We should look back upon the brightness, not forward to the gloom."

"Oh, Frank," she replied, looking earnestly at him, with entreaty in her tearful eyes, "don't talk of looking back upon the brightness. We are meant to look forwards, not to the gloom indeed, but beyond it, to that blessed land where there shall be no gloom and no shadows."

He was silent.

"You asked me just now, dear Frank," she continued, "if you could lighten my task. You could do more than that--you could take a load off my heart, if you would."

"Indeed!" he exclaimed; "tell me how."

"And will you take it off if I tell you?"

"Surely," he replied; but not so warmly as she would fain have had him say it.

"You remember," she added, "the day you dined with us a long time ago, when you asked papa about becoming an abstainer?"

"Yes; I remember it well, and that my mother would not hear of it, so, as in duty bound, I gave up all thoughts of it at once."

"Well, dear Frank, papa has been having a long talk on the very subject at the hall, and has convinced both your father and mother that total abstinence is not the objectionable thing they have hitherto thought it to be. Oh, dear Frank, there is no hindrance _there_ then, if you still think as you once seemed to think on this subject."

The colour came into his face, and his brow was troubled as he said,--

"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 pa.s.sionately; "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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bly 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, "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 alt.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstantials. 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.'"