“I can’t. I can’t, and I never will.”
She dropped into a chair and burst into tears. Fred’s momentary expression of anger softened into sorrow, but his business instinct did not desert him. “Ettie,” said he tenderly, “I thought you trusted me.”
“You know I do, Fred,” said the weeping girl; “but my lover and the Fred who drinks are two different persons, and I can’t trust the latter. Don’t think me selfish: be always your natural self, and there’s no poverty or sorrow that I won’t endure to be always with you. Do you think I hope to marry you for the sake of living in luxury, or that any pleasures that money will buy will satisfy me any more than they do Nellie Wainright and Mr. Moshier’s wife? Or do you, professing to love me, ask me to run even the slightest risk of ever being as unhappy as the poor women we have been talking about are with their husbands, who love them dearly? You must keep that promise, or I must love you apart from you—until you marry some one else! Even then I could only stop, it seems to me, by stopping to live.”
Fred’s face, while Esther was speaking, was anything but comely to look upon, but his intended reply was prevented by a violent knock at the door. Esther hurriedly dried her eyes, and prepared to vanish, if necessary, while Fred regained in haste his ordinary countenance; then, as the servant opened the door, the lovers heard a voice saying,
“Is Fred Macdonald here? He must come down to George Doughty’s right away. George is dying!”
Fred gave Ettie a hasty kiss and a conciliatory caress, after which he left the house at a lively run.
CHAPTER VII.
SOME NATURAL RESULTS.
George Doughty lay propped up in bed; standing beside him, and clasping his hand tightly, was his wife; near him were his two oldest children, seemingly as ignorant of what was transpiring as they were uncomfortable on account of the peculiar influence which pervaded the room. On the other side of the bed, and holding one of the dying man’s hands, knelt Parson Wedgewell; beside him stood the doctor; while behind them both, near the door, and as nearly invisible as a man of his size could be, was Squire Tomple. The Squire’s face and figure seemed embodiments of a trembling, abject apology; he occasionally looked toward the door, as if to question that inanimate object whether behind its broad front he, the Squire, might not be safe from his own fears. It was very evident that the Squire’s conscience was making a coward of him; but it was also evident, and not for the first time in the world’s history, that cowardice is mightily influential in holding a coward to the ground that he hates. Had any one spoken to him, or paid him the slightest attention, the Squire would have felt better; nothing turns cowards into soldiers so quickly as the receipt of a volley; but no such relief seemed at all likely to reach him. The doctor, like a true man, having done all things, could only stand, and stand he did; Parson Wedgewell, feeling that upon his own efforts with the Great Physician depended the sick man’s future well-being, prayed silently and earnestly, raising his head only to search, through his tears, the face of the patient for signs of the desired answer to prayer. Mrs. Doughty was interested only in looking into the eyes too soon to close forever, and the faces of the two children were more than a man could intentionally look upon a second time. So when Doughty’s baby, who had been creeping about the floor, suddenly beholding the glories of the great seal which depended from the Squire’s fob-chain, tried to climb the leg of the storekeeper’s trousers, the Squire smiled, as a saint in extremity might smile at the sudden appearance of an angel, and he stooped—no easy operation for a man of Squire Tomple’s bulk—and, lifting the little fellow in his arms, put kisses all over the tiny face, which, in view of the relations of cleanliness to attractiveness, was not especially bewitching. A moment later, however, a muffled but approaching step brought back to the Squire his own sense of propriety, and he dropped the baby just in time to be able to give a hand to Fred Macdonald, as that young man softly pushed open the door. The Squire’s face again became apologetic.