“To me?” cried Bayard, opening his hazel eyes as wide as a child’s.
“Rum done it,” stammered Mrs. Granite, instinctively using the three familiar words which most concisely covered the ground. “It’s your temperance principles. They ain’t pop’lar. They affect your standing in this community.”
This was the accepted phrase in Windover for all such cases made and provided. It was understood to contain the acme of personal peril or disgrace. To talk to a man about “your standing in this community” was equivalent to an insult or a scandal. Poor Mrs. Granite, an affectionate and helpless parrot, reëchoed this terrible language, and trembled. She felt as if she had said to the minister, Your social ruin is complete for all time, throughout the civilized world.
“Not that it makes any difference to us,” sobbed Mrs. Granite; “we set just as much by you. But your standing is affected in this community. There’s them that hates you, sir, more shame to ’em, more’n the Old Boy himself. Mr. Bayard, Mr. Bayard, don’t you go to Ragged Rock alone, sir, this time o’ night to meet no tom-fool of a drunkard anxious about his soul. He don’t own such a thing to his name! All he’s got is a rum-soaked sponge, he’s mopped up whiskey with all his born days!”
“Your drinks (if not your metaphors) are getting a little mixed, dear Mrs. Granite,” laughed Bayard.
“Sir?” said Mrs. Granite.
“But still I must say, there is some sense in your view of the case—Ah, here’s Jane; and Ben with her. We’ll put the case to—No. I have it. Mrs. Granite, to please you, I will take Ben Trawl along with me. Will that set you at rest?—Here, Trawl. Just read this message, will you? Something about it looks a little queer, and Mrs. Granite is so kind as to worry about me. What do you make of it?”
“Oh, you’ve got home so soon, have you?” said Trawl rather sullenly.
In the evening his eyebrows met more heavily than ever across his forehead; they looked as if they had been corked for some ugly masquerade. He glanced from under them, coldly, at the minister; read the note, and was about to tear it into strips.
“I’ll take it, thank you,” said Bayard quietly, holding out his hand.