Playing With Fire Part 21

"No."

"I am so sorry."

"I knew you would be sorry for me. Never would Marion treat her father in a way so disrespectful and disobedient, eh, dear?"

"While I live I never will say farewell to you, my dear Father."

"You will always obey my wishes, I know."

"When I can, yes, when I can I will always gladly obey them."

"Do I not know what is best for you?"

"Not always, you might be wrong sometimes, Father--everybody is wrong sometimes--but, even so, I would obey you if I could."

"You mean that if you could not you would take your own way?"

"Not exactly."

"And say farewell to me and leave your home?"

"I would never say farewell to you. I do not think I would leave my home in any such way."

"What would you do?"

"Love you and die daily at your side. When you saw me suffering you would give me my desire, because it would be my life."

"I would not. If confident I was right I would not do wrong to please you. And it would be far better for you to die than to make yourself a wanderer in improper company and a prodigal daughter."

"Father, fear to say such words. I am G.o.d's daughter. I am your daughter and I do not forget I am a daughter of the honorable clan of Macrae.

Such words are an insult to me, to yourself, and to every Macrae, living or dead." She rose as she spoke and with a white, angry look was leaving the room when her father laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder and said:

"Promise me you will not marry anyone without my consent."

"For nearly two years, Father, I could only make a runaway marriage, liable to be temporarily broken at your will."

"Why do you say temporarily?"

"Because, if I loved any man well enough to run away with him I should stay with him forever. You might sever us 'temporarily,' but I should go back to him as soon as I went twenty-one and marry him over again," and her face flushed crimson, and she lifted her br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes to her father and added:

"But all the time I should love you. I should never say farewell to you.

To the end of my life, throughout all eternity, I should be your daughter, and you would be my dear, dear Father. Is not that so? Yes, it is! It is!"

He looked at her with a swelling heart full of intense admiration and unbounded love. He could have struck and kissed her at the same moment, but he could find no words to answer her loving question. So he lifted his hand from her proud, indignant form and, with such a sob as may come from a breaking heart, he turned from her to go to his study. She could not bear it. When the parlor door shut, that piteous cry was still in her ears, and she hastened to the study after him. But just as she reached the door she heard the key turn in its lock.

Then she fled upstairs and found her aunt lying still in the semidarkness of her room. "Aunt! Aunt!" she cried in a pa.s.sion of tears, "I cannot bear it! No, I cannot bear it! My poor Father! Someone ought to think of his feelings. Yes, indeed they ought."

"It seems to me, Marion, that you are busy enough in that way. What is the matter with the Minister now?"

Then Marion, with many tears and protestations, related her conversation with her father, and Mrs. Caird listened as one dest.i.tute of much sympathy, and, when she spoke, her words were not more comforting.

"You are a half-and-half creature, Marion; neither here nor there, neither this, that, nor what not. Why didn't you speak plainly to him as your brother did? Mind this! You can't move the Minister with tears and a mouthful of good words. Not you! He will keep up his threep like a gamec.o.c.k till he dies with it in his last crow. I'm telling you--heed me or not--I am telling you the truth."

"No, he will not, Aunt."

"Such to-and-fro words as you gave him! He'll build his own way strong as Gibraltar upon them. See if he doesn't. Your fight is all to do over, but, as you have taken the matter in your own hands, you and him for it."

"O Aunt! I am so miserable."

"Well, then, I have seen lately that you are never happy unless you are miserable."

"I have not heard from Richard, either yesterday or to-day."

"What is that! At your age I was very proud and satisfied with a love letter once in a fortnight. That's enough in all conscience."

"Two weeks! If Richard was so long silent it would kill me."

"Have you any more nonsense to talk?"

"Aunt, do not be cross with me. I thought you were as full of trouble as I am. Why else did you come here?"

"Partly to keep the doors of my lips shut, and partly to think. I am not full of trouble. I cannot do as I wish to do, but I have a Friend who does all things well. And, when it is my time to act, I shall be ready to act. Now go to your sleeping place and dream without care sitting on your heart; then in the morning you can rise with a clear, trusting soul, such as G.o.d loves."

CHAPTER VII

MARION DECIDES

"Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth, From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.

"Love is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind."

After Donald left his father he went straight to his aunt's room and, when she had finished making her pastry, she found him there, nursing his anger and sorrow with pa.s.sionate tears and words of self-justification. He had kept a brave face to his father, but to his aunt-mother he wept out all his trouble, and he was comforted as one whom his mother comforteth. When Dr. Macrae asked her if she knew where Donald was she had truthfully answered, "No," but she instantly suspected, and shortened her work as much as possible in order to go to him.

They talked cautiously of his plans and prospects and, when dinner time arrived, she surrept.i.tiously carried him a good meal upstairs; for she was not willing that the servants should discuss Donald's quarrel with his father--the Master being to them, first of all, an ecclesiastic with a suggestion of the surplice ever around him. She knew their sympathy would veer decidedly toward the Master, for Donald played the "wee sinfu' fiddle" too much, and, as he went through the halls and parlors, was always whistling some irreligious reel, or strathspey, forbye hardly keeping himself from dancing it.

He was in his aunt's sitting-room while Marion related to her the conversation she had just had with her father and, no doubt, Mrs.

Caird's short and rather indifferent attention to her niece's trouble arose from the stress of his unacknowledged presence. For Donald had begged not to see Marion that evening. "She will ask me all kinds of questions about Richard," he said, "questions I cannot answer until I see him." So Marion felt as if she had been snubbed and sent off to bed with a little sermon just when she wanted to talk of Richard more than she had ever before done. Mrs. Caird explained the circ.u.mstances to her the following day, but she was more offended than satisfied by the explanation.

"You supposed, Aunt," she answered, "that I was so selfish as to be insensible to Donald's anxiety and trouble, and would put my own before his. You must have a poor opinion of me. It hurts me."

"You are too sensitive, Marion. Donald is going away from us."

"Where is he going to?"

"He does not know until he hears from Richard."