Playing With Fire

"Blunder! Yes, if it be a blunder to take a man out of temptation and put him under the best of influences."

"You think college life the best of influences?"

"It is better than wandering about the country as a musician, however clever he is, must do."

"But Donald likes wandering. He wants to see the wide world over."

"A roving life, Jessy, leads to wavering principles. How can a man be religious who has no settled church? Already, Donald disbelieves in the creed his father preaches, and a man without a creed is a loose-at-ends Christian. General scepticism will succeed it, and scepticism poisons all the wells of life and undermines the foundations of morality."

"Donald is no sceptic. He is a God-loving, God-fearing lad. You'll be to excuse me now. I have a sore headache and I want to be alone."

So she went to her room and Dr. Macrae was much annoyed at her air of injury and sorrow.

"Your aunt is fretting about Donald," he said. "Donald has behaved very cruelly to me, Marion. I suppose you know how."

"About college, Father?"

"Yes. I begged him, for his own good, to go to St. Andrews, and he flatly refused, bid me farewell, and left his home."

"Did you not ask him where he was going?"

"No."

"I am so sorry."

"I knew you would be sorry for me. Never would Marion treat her father in a way so disrespectful and disobedient, eh, dear?"

"While I live I never will say farewell to you, my dear Father."

"You will always obey my wishes, I know."

"When I can, yes, when I can I will always gladly obey them."

"Do I not know what is best for you?"

"Not always, you might be wrong sometimes, Father – everybody is wrong sometimes – but, even so, I would obey you if I could."

"You mean that if you could not you would take your own way?"

"Not exactly."

"And say farewell to me and leave your home?"

"I would never say farewell to you. I do not think I would leave my home in any such way."

"What would you do?"

"Love you and die daily at your side. When you saw me suffering you would give me my desire, because it would be my life."

"I would not. If confident I was right I would not do wrong to please you. And it would be far better for you to die than to make yourself a wanderer in improper company and a prodigal daughter."

"Father, fear to say such words. I am God's daughter. I am your daughter and I do not forget I am a daughter of the honorable clan of Macrae. Such words are an insult to me, to yourself, and to every Macrae, living or dead." She rose as she spoke and with a white, angry look was leaving the room when her father laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder and said:

"Promise me you will not marry anyone without my consent."

"For nearly two years, Father, I could only make a runaway marriage, liable to be temporarily broken at your will."

"Why do you say temporarily?"

"Because, if I loved any man well enough to run away with him I should stay with him forever. You might sever us 'temporarily,' but I should go back to him as soon as I went twenty-one and marry him over again," and her face flushed crimson, and she lifted her brimming eyes to her father and added:

"But all the time I should love you. I should never say farewell to you. To the end of my life, throughout all eternity, I should be your daughter, and you would be my dear, dear Father. Is not that so? Yes, it is! It is!"

He looked at her with a swelling heart full of intense admiration and unbounded love. He could have struck and kissed her at the same moment, but he could find no words to answer her loving question. So he lifted his hand from her proud, indignant form and, with such a sob as may come from a breaking heart, he turned from her to go to his study. She could not bear it. When the parlor door shut, that piteous cry was still in her ears, and she hastened to the study after him. But just as she reached the door she heard the key turn in its lock.

Then she fled upstairs and found her aunt lying still in the semidarkness of her room. "Aunt! Aunt!" she cried in a passion of tears, "I cannot bear it! No, I cannot bear it! My poor Father! Someone ought to think of his feelings. Yes, indeed they ought."

"It seems to me, Marion, that you are busy enough in that way. What is the matter with the Minister now?"

Then Marion, with many tears and protestations, related her conversation with her father, and Mrs. Caird listened as one destitute of much sympathy, and, when she spoke, her words were not more comforting.

"You are a half-and-half creature, Marion; neither here nor there, neither this, that, nor what not. Why didn't you speak plainly to him as your brother did? Mind this! You can't move the Minister with tears and a mouthful of good words. Not you! He will keep up his threep like a gamecock till he dies with it in his last crow. I'm telling you – heed me or not – I am telling you the truth."

"No, he will not, Aunt."

"Such to-and-fro words as you gave him! He'll build his own way strong as Gibraltar upon them. See if he doesn't. Your fight is all to do over, but, as you have taken the matter in your own hands, you and him for it."

"O Aunt! I am so miserable."

"Well, then, I have seen lately that you are never happy unless you are miserable."

"I have not heard from Richard, either yesterday or to-day."

"What is that! At your age I was very proud and satisfied with a love letter once in a fortnight. That's enough in all conscience."

"Two weeks! If Richard was so long silent it would kill me."

"Have you any more nonsense to talk?"

"Aunt, do not be cross with me. I thought you were as full of trouble as I am. Why else did you come here?"

"Partly to keep the doors of my lips shut, and partly to think. I am not full of trouble. I cannot do as I wish to do, but I have a Friend who does all things well. And, when it is my time to act, I shall be ready to act. Now go to your sleeping place and dream without care sitting on your heart; then in the morning you can rise with a clear, trusting soul, such as God loves."

CHAPTER VII

MARION DECIDES

"Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth,