“Don’t you know that you are my little girl?” he said.
“Yours! Is your name Paul von Frauenstein?” she asked, with withering scorn. Dan confessed it was not.
“Then I am not your little girl, for I am Paul’s; and you are a saucy man, and I don’t like you;” and with this she shot into the house, leaving Dan a prey to very bitter reflections. The result was his going to Susie, and reproaching her for teaching “his child” to hate him. Susie was offended at being obliged to justify herself against such a charge.
“I have never said the slightest word that should even make her indifferent to you. You can have her confidence if you can win it. I see no other way.” Dan could not control himself. He burst forth in a torrent of complaints at Susie’s coldness, and at her being unwilling that his child should love him. Then he became serious, and played the rôle of mentor—told Susie what was best for her to do, which was, of course, to marry him forthwith. “Don’t you see, Susie, that is the only thing to do. That will make you at once an honest woman in the eyes of the world, and we can bring up Minnie like a lady, and no one will dare to treat her with disrespect.” This was too much for even Susie’s sweet temper.
“I wonder at your assurance,” she said. “You, who trampled my love for you under your feet, who deserted me in my agony of disgrace, when I had not one friend in this world—you, who had not the manly decency to conceal your love for another woman when I was in such a condition, by the basest, most sacrilegious act of treachery a man ever perpetrated; then after all that, leaving me for six years to fight the battle alone, never during that time sending me one word of sympathy, or even taking the trouble to enquire whether I, or your child, or both, were dead; after all that, and after by toil such as you never dreamed of, and by a long and unremitting struggle, I have conquered independence, won friends among the noblest and best, and compelled even my worst slanderers to respect me and my child, you—you come to me and offer to make me an honest woman, by the offer of your debauched self. If that is honor, give me dishonor for the rest of my life.”
Dan raved and threatened, still talking in a very authoritative style about his child.
“Thank Heaven! she is not your child, she is mine. There’s one bit of justice which the law offers to a dishonored mother. My child is mine! You cannot take her from me, as you could if I should marry you. What do you suppose I care for a lost honor that can be restored by any jugglery of law? Now drop that subject forever, if you wish me to retain the least friendliness toward you. I should not dream of marrying you—no: not if you were to become emperor of the world.”
Three days afterward Dan was brought home by two policemen from one of the lowest dens of the town, where he had been robbed of purse, cravat, handkerchief, and hat. In a day or two, by the united efforts of the family and friends, he was forced to consent to be taken to the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum. The doctor went with him, treated him very kindly, and labored to show him that by staying two years, leading, as he would, a temperate life, he might entirely overcome the passion for intoxication. “It is most important, you see, my son, for you are still a young man, and you may yet be useful to the world.” Dan was much affected when his father left him, and promised to follow his advice, and turn his attention to some scientific study. He expressed sorrow for having given him so much trouble, and added, “I ain’t worth saving, I fear. If you had drowned me like a blind kitten, when I was little, you would have done the best thing for me.”
“Oh no, Dan. Don’t feel that way. Your life has not been in vain, and I have by no means given you up. When I’m an old codger, with one foot in the grave, I believe you will be my comfort, and atone for all the heart-aches you have caused me.”
“God knows, I hope so,” said Dan fervently; “for no scapegrace of a boy ever had a better father than I have.” This was the first and only manly speech Dr. Forest had ever heard from Dan, and it touched him deeply. When he was gone, Dan spent an hour or so walking rapidly back and forth through the fine grounds of the Asylum; and then he went into the billiard-room, and began to make the acquaintance of the patients. He was quite astonished, and immensely gratified, to see that they were not low fellows, but, on the contrary, real gentlemen in appearance and manners, almost to a man. Dan, conscious of looking very “shaky,” from his late three-days terrible debauch, made some apology to a fine-looking fellow who handed him a cue and challenged him to a game of billiards. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself to make any apologies,” said the gentleman, laying his hand kindly on Dan’s broad shoulder. “We are all drunkards here, every one of us!” After this Dan felt at home, and began to enjoy himself far more than he had ever done before. For the first time in his life, he spent several hours a day reading, and at last conquered a real love for it; also, he became, from the loosest, most uncertain and unsatisfactory of correspondents, a very tolerably exemplary one. He wrote every week to his father, and quite often to the other members of the family, giving long accounts of life in his asylum, and talking hopefully of the future. “Don’t forget to tell mother,” he wrote, after he had been there about six months, “that there is a little decanter of brandy kept here on the mantel-piece, with a wine-glass beside it, and that I have never once tasted it. I want you to tell her this, because it will please her. You, sir, will understand very well that it don’t prove any remarkable virtue, for you understand the philosophy of drunkenness. Your real victim don’t drink for the taste of liquor, but, as an old soaker in California used to say, ‘for the glorious refects hereafter.’ So, when you haven’t enough for these ‘glorious refects,’ you find it mighty easy to resist a single glass.”