Chapter Seven.
The Tempter.
Juniper Graves was under-groom at Greymoor Park. He was a very fine fellow in his own eyes. His parents had given him the name of Juniper under the impression that it meant something very striking, and would distinguish their son from the vulgar herd. What it exactly signified, or what illustrious person had ever borne it before, they would have been puzzled to say. So he rejoiced in the name of Juniper, and his language was in keeping with it. High-sounding words had ever been his passion—a passion that grew with his growth; so that his conversation was habitually spiced with phrases and expressions in which there was abundance of sound, but generally an equal lack of sense. Too full of himself to be willing to keep patiently plodding on like ordinary people, he had run through a good many trades without being master of any. Once he was a pastry-cook; at another time a painter; and then an auctioneer—which last business he held to the longest of any, as giving him full scope for exhibiting his graces of language. He had abandoned it, however, in consequence of some rather biting remarks which had come to his ears respecting the choice and suitableness of his epithets. And now he was groom at the hall, and had found it to his advantage to ingratiate himself with Frank Oldfield, by rendering him all sorts of handy services; and as there were few things which he could not do, or pretend to do, his young master viewed him with particular favour, and made more of a companion of him than was good for either. Juniper was a sly but habitual drunkard. He managed, however, so to regulate his intemperance as never to be outwardly the worse for liquor when his services were required by Sir Thomas or Lady Oldfield, or when excess was likely to bring him into trouble. When, however, the family was away from the hall, he would transgress more openly; so that his sin became a scandal in the neighbourhood, and brought upon him the severe censure of Mr Oliphant, who threatened to acquaint the squire with his conduct if he did not amend. Juniper’s pride was mortally wounded by this rebuke—he never forgot nor forgave it. For other reasons also he hated the rector. In the first place, because Mr Oliphant was a total abstainer; and further, because he suspected that it was through Mr Oliphant’s representations that he had failed in obtaining the office of postmaster at a neighbouring town, which situation he had greatly coveted, as likely to make him a person of some little importance. So he hated the rector and his family with all the venom of a little mind. No sooner had he discovered the attachment between Frank and Mary Oliphant, than he resolved to do all in his power to bring about a rupture; partly because he felt pretty sure that a closer intimacy between Frank and the Oliphants would be certain to loosen the ties which bound his young master to himself, and partly because he experienced a savage delight in the thought of wounding the rector through his daughter. He soon noticed the restraint which Frank was putting on himself in the matter of drinking beer and wine, and he resolved to break it down. He was quite sure that Mary Oliphant would never marry a drunkard. So he lost no opportunity of insinuating his own views on the subject of total abstinence, and also constantly laboured to bring his young master into contact with scenes and persons likely to lead him into free indulgence in intoxicating drinks. His success, however, was but small, till the day of the harvest-home, and then he resolved to make a great effort. He contrived to get himself appointed to the office of waiter to Frank in the second tent, and took special charge of the drinkables. The beer served out on these occasions was, by Sir Thomas’ express directions, of only a moderate strength; but Juniper had contrived to secrete a jug of the very strongest ale in a place where he could easily get at it. With this jug in hand he was constantly slipping behind his master and filling up his glass, while Frank was busily engaged in seeing that the wants of his guests were duly supplied. Excited by the heat of the day and the whole scene, the poor young man kept raising the glass to his lips, quite unconscious of the way in which his servant was keeping it filled, till at last he lost all self-control, and launched out into the wildest mirth and the most uproarious buffoonery. It was then that Juniper Graves, grinning with malicious delight, sought out Mary Oliphant, and brought her to gaze on her lover’s degradation.
“Now,” said he to himself, “I’ve done it. There’ll be no more love-making atween them two arter this, I reckon. A very preposterous plan this of mine—very preposterous.”
But great as was the triumph of Juniper at the success of his efforts on this occasion, this very success was well nigh bringing about a total defeat. For it came to Frank’s ears, by a side wind, as such things so often do, that his man had been playing him a trick, and had been filling up his glass continually with strong ale when he was not conscious of it.
“It were a burning shame, it were, to put upon the young master in that way,” he overheard a kind-hearted mother say, one of the tenant’s wives. So he taxed Juniper with it, but the man stoutly denied it.
“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 assure you, sir, I only just took care that you had a little in your glass 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 circumscribe ’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 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.”
Juniper looked a little at fault, but immediately replied,—
“Well, sir, at any rate total abstinence will never do for you. Why, you’ll have no peace up at the hall, especially in the shooting season, if you mean to take up with them exotic notions. Be a man, sir, and asseverate your independence. Show that you can take too much or too little as you have a mind. I wouldn’t be a slave, sir. ‘Britons never shall be slaves.’”
Here the conversation closed. The tempter had so far gained his end that he had made Frank disinclined to join himself at present to the body of stanch abstainers. He would wait and see—he preferred moderation, it was more manly, more self-reliant. Ah, there was his grievous mistake. Self-reliant! yes, but that self was blinded, cheated by Satan; it was already on the tempter’s side. So Frank put off, at any rate for the present, joining the abstainers. He was, however, very watchful over himself never openly to transgress. He loved Mary, and could not bear the thoughts of losing her, but in very deed he loved his own self-indulgence more. There was a constraint, however, when they met. He could not fully meet her deep truthful eyes with a steady gaze of his own. Her words would often lead him to prayer, but then he regarded iniquity in his heart—he did not wish to be taken at his prayer—he did not wish to be led into pledged abstinence, or even into undeviating moderation at all times—he wished to keep in reserve a right to fuller indulgence. Poor Mary! she was not happy; she felt there was something wrong. If she tried to draw out that something from Frank, his only reply was an assurance of ardent affection and devotion. There was no apparent evil on the surface of his life. He was regular at church, steady at home, moderate in what he drank at his father’s table and at other houses. She felt, indeed, that he had no real sympathy with her on the highest subjects, but he never refused to listen, only he turned away with evident relief from religious to other topics. Yet all this while he was getting more deeply entangled in the meshes of the net which the drink, in the skilful hands of Juniper Graves, was weaving round him. That cruel tempter was biding his time. He saw with malicious delight that the period must arrive before very long when his young master’s drinking excesses would no longer be confined to the darkness and the night, but would break out in open daylight, and then, then for his revenge.
It was now between two and three years since the harvest-home which had ended so unhappily. Frank was twenty-one and Mary Oliphant eighteen. This was in the year in which we first introduced them to our readers, the same year in which it was intended that Hubert Oliphant should join his uncle Abraham, at any rate for a time, in South Australia. For the last six months dim rumours, getting gradually more clear and decided, had found their way to the rectory that Frank Oldfield was occasionally drinking to excess. Mary grew heart-sick, and began to lose her health through anxiety and sorrow; yet there was nothing, so far, sufficiently definite to make her sure that Frank, since his promise to observe strict moderation, had ever over-passed the bounds of sobriety. He never, of course, alluded to the subject himself; and when he could not help remarking on her altered looks, he would evade any questions she put to him on the painful subject, or meet them by an appeal to her whether she could prove anything against him; and by the observation that nothing was easier than to spread rumours against a person’s character. She was thus often silenced, but never satisfied.
June had come—a bright sky remained for days with scarce a cloud; the hay-makers were everywhere busy, and the fields were fragrant with the sweet perfume of the mown grass. It was on a quiet evening that Mary was returning home from a cottage where she had been to visit a sick parishioner of her father’s. Her way lay in part through a little plantation skirting a hay-field belonging to the Greymoor estate. She had just reached the edge of the plantation, and was about to climb over a stile into a lane, when she heard loud and discordant voices, which made her blood run cold; for one of them, she could not doubt, was Frank’s.
“This way, Mr Frank, this way,” cried another voice, which she knew at once to be that of Juniper Graves.
“I tell you,” replied the first voice, thickly, “I shan’t go that way; I shall go home, I shall. Let me alone, I tell you,”—then there followed a loud imprecation.
“No, no—this way, sir—there’s Miss Mary getting over the stile; she’s waiting for you, sir, to help her over.”
“Very good, Juniper; you’re a regular brick,” said the other voice, suddenly changing to a tone of maudlin affection; “where’s my dear Mary—ah, there she is!” and the speaker staggered towards the stile. Mary saw him indistinctly through the hedge—she would have fled, but terror and misery chained her to the spot. A few moments after and Frank, in his shirt-sleeves, (he had been joining the hay-makers), made his way up to her. His face was flushed, his eyes inflamed and staring wildly, his hair disordered, and his whole appearance brutalised.
“Let me help—help—you, my beloved Mary, over shtile—ah, yes—here’s Juniper—jolly good fellow, Juniper—help her, Juniper—can’t keep shteady—for life of me.”
He clutched at her dress; but now the spell was loosed, she sprang over the stile, and cast one look back. There stood her lover, holding out his arms with an exaggerated show of tenderness, and mumbling out words of half-articulate fondness; and behind him, a smile of triumphant malice on his features, which haunted her for years, was Graves, the tempter, the destroyer of his unhappy master. She cared to see no more, but, with a cry of bitter distress, she rushed away as though some spirit of evil were close behind her, and never stopped till she had gained the rectory.