A Double Peril.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Mark, I must have a stop put to this: my patience is quite worn out. Do you think I’m made of money? Do you think I can coin money as fast as you choose to spend it? You’ll ruin me with your thoughtless, selfish extravagance, and break your mother’s heart and mine by your drunkenness and folly, that you will.”
These words, uttered in a tone of passionate bitterness, were spoken by Mr Rothwell to his son in the hall at “The Firs,” as the young man was urging his father to grant him a considerable sum to pay some pressing debts. At the same moment Mr John Randolph came out of the drawing-room, and could not help overhearing what was being said.
Mr Rothwell turned fiercely upon him:
“What right have you, sir, to be intruding on my privacy?” he cried, nettled at his rebuke having been overheard by a stranger.
“I am not conscious of being guilty of any intrusion,” said the other quietly.
“You are intruding,” cried Mark, glad to vent his exasperation at his father’s reproaches on somebody, and specially glad of an opportunity of doing so on the music-master.
“You shall not need to make the complaint again then,” said Mr Randolph, calmly, “my lessons to your sisters will cease from to-day;” and with a stiff bow he closed the door behind him.
Rather more than two years had elapsed since Jim Forbes’ enlistment when the scene just described took place. Mark had been sinking deeper and deeper in the mire; he was scarcely ever sober except when visiting the Franklins, on which occasions he was always on his guard, though his excited manner, and the eagerness with which he tossed down the few glasses of wine to which he, evidently with difficulty, restricted himself, made a most painful impression not only on Mrs Franklin, but also on her daughter.
Mary was now nineteen, and shone with the brightness which the gentle light of holiness casts on every word and feature. She was full of innocent cheerfulness, and was the joy of all who knew her. Mark loved her as much as he could love anything that was not himself, and tried to make himself acceptable to her. Mary hoped the best about him, but that hope had begun to droop for some time past. He had never yet ventured to declare his affection to her; somehow or other he could not. A little spark of nobleness still remained in him unquenched by the drink, and it lighted him to see that to bind Mary to himself for life would be to tie her to a living firebrand that would scorch and shrivel up beauty, health and peace. He dared not speak: before her unsullied loveliness his drink-envenomed lips were closed: he could rattle on in wild exuberance of spirits, but he could not yet venture to ask her to be his. And she? She pitied him deeply, and her heart’s affections hovered over him; would they settle there? If so, lost! Lost! All peace would be lost: how great her peril!