"Oh, you needn't try to become so upset over it. Your morals are common knowledge to all the people of Illinois, and elsewhere. And let me tell you, you can—as you have—in your family, force those who know it and condemn it to keep quiet by making yourself so disagreeable that they will honey you up to get along with you. But it is not because they, or all those who know you, are not aware of it! That's your reputation, and some day you are going to suffer for it. You deliberately make people miserable to satisfy your infernal vanity; your desire to be looked upon and called great. Now right here you are bent upon crucifying your own daughter's happiness just because I haven't tickled your rotten vanity, and lied." He arose now, and pointed a threatening finger at the other.
"You are out to injure me, and you are taking advantage of your own child's position as my wife to do so. I'm going to let you go ahead. Orlean's a good girl, but she's weak like the mother that you have abused for thirty years! But remember this, N.J. McCarthy, and I've called you Reverend for the last time. The evil that you do unto others will some day be done unto you and will drag your ornery heart in its own blood. Mark my words!" And the next instant he was gone.
The other looked after him uneasily. The truth had come so forcibly, so impulsively, so abruptly, that it had for the time overcome his cunningness; but only for a moment after the other had disappeared was he so. He regained his usual composure soon enough, and he turned to the sick woman for succor—to her whom he was dragging down to the gutter of misery for his own self aggrandizement.
"Did you hear how he abused your father?" he cried, the tears from his piggish eyes falling on her cheeks. She reached and stroked his white hair, and mumbled weak words.
"Oh, I never thought I would come to this—be brought to this through the daughter that I have loved so much. Oh, poor me, your poor old father," whereupon he wept bitterly.
"You see, you see," cried Ethel, who had risen and stood over her, pointing her finger to Orlean as she lay upon the bed. "This is what comes of marrying that man! I tried, oh, I tried so hard to have you see that no good could come of it, no good at all!" The other sighed. She was too weak from mortification to reply in the affirmative, or the negative.
"I tried, and I tried to have you desist, but you would! When I had at last gotten you to quit him, and you swore you had, no sooner did he come and place his arm about you and whisper fool things in your ear, than did you but up and consent to this. This, this, do you hear? This that has brought your poor father to that!" and she stopped to point to where that one lay stretched across the bed, sobbing.
The night was one long, miserable, quarrelsome night. Ethel and the Elder wore themselves out abusing Baptiste, and along toward morning all fell into a troubled sleep.
Baptiste met them the next morning as they came from the rooms, and helped his wife across the street to a restaurant. When they had finished the meal, he said to her as they came from the restaurant,
"Now, dear, I'll step into the bank here and get you some money—"