Danger; Or, Wounded in the House of a Friend Part 18

"What were you saying about Dead Sea apples?" Mr. Elliott repeated his question.

"We were speaking of intemperance," replied one of the gentlemen.

"O--h!" in a prolonged and slightly indifferent tone. Mr. Elliott's countenance lost some of its radiance. "And what were you saying about it?"

Common politeness required as much as this, even though the subject was felt to be out of place.

"We were talking with Dr. Angier just now about hereditary drunkenness, or rather the inherited predisposition to that vice--disease, as the doctor calls it. This predisposition he says exists in a large number of persons, and is as well defined pathologically, and as certain to become active, under favoring causes, as any other disease. Alcoholic stimulants are its exciting causes. Let, said the doctor, a man so predisposed indulge in the use of intoxicating liquors, and he will surely become a drunkard. There is no more immunity for him, he added, than for the man who with tubercles in his lungs exposes himself to cold, bad air and enervating bodily conditions. Now, is not this a very serious view to take of the matter?"

"Certainly it is," replied Mr. Elliott. "Intemperance is a sad thing, and a most fearful curse."

He did not look comfortable. It was to him an untimely intrusion of an unpleasant theme. "But what in the world set the doctor off on this subject?" he asked, trying to make a diversion.

"Occasions are apt to suggest subjects for conversation," answered the gentleman. "One cannot be present at a large social entertainment like this without seeing some things that awaken doubts and questionings. If it be true, as Dr. Angier says, that the disease of intemperance is as surely transmitted, potentially, as the disease of consumption, and will become active under favoring circ.u.mstances, then a drinking festival cannot be given without fearful risk to some of the invited guests."

"There is always danger of exciting disease where a predisposition exists," replied Mr. Elliott. "A man can hardly be expected to make himself acquainted with the pathology of his guests before inviting them to a feast. If that is to be the rule, the delicate young lady with the seeds of consumption in her system must be left at home for fear she may come with bare arms and a low-necked dress, and expose herself after being heated with dancing to the draught of an open window. The bilious and dyspeptic must be omitted also, lest by imprudent eating and drinking they make themselves sick. We cannot regulate these things. The best we can do is to warn and admonish.

Every individual is responsible for his own moral character, habits and life. Because some may become the slaves of appet.i.te, shall restraint and limitation be placed on those who make no abuse of liberty? We must teach men self-control and self-mastery, if we would truly help and save them. There is some exaggeration, in my opinion, about this disease-theory of intemperance. The deductions of one-idea men are not always to be trusted. They are apt to draw large conclusions from small facts. Man is born a free agent, and all men have power, if they will, to hold their appet.i.tes in check. This truth should be strongly impressed upon every one. Your disease-theory takes away moral responsibility. It a.s.sumes that a man is no more accountable for getting drunk than for getting the consumption. His diathesis excuses him as much in one case as in the other. Now, I don't believe a word of this. I do not cla.s.s appet.i.tes, however inordinate, with physical diseases over which the will has no control. A man must control his appet.i.te. Reason and conscience require this, and G.o.d gives to every one the mastery of himself if he will but use his high prerogative."

Mr. Elliott spoke a little loftily, and in a voice that expressed a settlement of the argument. But one at least of his listeners was feeling too strongly on the subject to let the argument close.

"What," he asked, "if a young man who did not, because he could not, know that he had dypso-mania in his blood were enticed to drink often at parties where wine is freely dispensed? Would he not be taken, so to speak, unawares? Would he be any more responsible for acts that quickened into life an over-mastering appet.i.te than the young girl who, not knowing that she had in her lungs the seeds of a fatal disease, should expose herself to atmospheric changes that were regarded by her companions as harmless, but which, to her were fraught with peril?"

"In both cases," replied Mr. Elliott, "the responsibility to care for the health would come the moment it was found to be in danger."

"The discovery of danger may come, alas! too late for responsible action. We know that it does in most cases with the consumptive, and quite as often, I fear, with the dypso-maniac."

As the gentleman was closing the last sentence he observed a change pa.s.s over the face of Mr. Elliott, who was looking across the room.

Following the direction of his eyes, he saw General Abercrombie in the act of offering his arm to Mrs. Abercrombie. It was evident, from the expression of his countenance and that of the countenances of all who were near him that something had gone wrong. The general's face was angry and excited. His eyes had a fierce restlessness in them, and glanced from his wife to a gentleman who stood confronting him and then back to her in a strange and menacing way.

Mrs. Abercrombie's face was deadly pale. She said a few words hurriedly to her husband, and then drew him from the parlor.

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Elliott, crossing over and speaking to the gentleman against whom the anger of General Abercrombie had seemed to be directed.

"Heaven knows," was answered, "unless he's jealous of his wife."

"Very strange conduct," said one.

"Been drinking too much," remarked another.

"What did he do?" inquired a third.

"Didn't you see it? Mr. Ertsen was promenading with Mrs. Abercrombie, when the general swept down upon them as fierce as a lion and took the lady from his arm."

This was exaggeration. The thing was done more quietly, but still with enough of anger and menace to create something more than a ripple on the surface.

A little while afterward the general and Mrs. Abercrombie were seen coming down stairs and going along the hall. His face was rigid and stern. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but with eyes set forward made his way toward the street door. Those who got a glimpse of Mrs. Abercrombie as she glided past saw a face that haunted them a long time afterward.

CHAPTER XIII.

AS General and Mrs. Abercrombie reached the vestibule, and the door shut behind them, the latter, seeing, that her husband was going out into the storm, which was now at its height, drew back, asking at the same time if their carriage had been called.

The only answer made by General Abercrombie was a fiercely-uttered imprecation. Seizing at the same time the arm she had dropped from his, he drew her out of the vestibule and down the snow-covered step with a sudden violence that threw her to the ground. As he dragged her up he cursed her again in a cruel undertone, and then, grasping her arm, moved off in the very teeth of the blinding tempest, going so swiftly that she could not keep pace with him. Before they had gone a dozen steps she fell again.

Struggling to her feet, helped up by the strong grasp of the madman whose hand was upon her arm, Mrs. Abercrombie tried to rally her bewildered thoughts. She knew that her life was in danger, but she knew also that much, if not everything, depended on her own conduct. The very extremity of her peril calmed her thoughts and gave them clearness and decision. Plunging forward as soon as his wife could recover herself again, General Abercrombie strode away with a speed that made it almost impossible for her to move on without falling, especially as the snow was lying deep and unbroken on the pavement, and her long dress, which she had not taken time to loop up before starting, dragged about her feet and impeded her steps. They had not gone half a block before she fell again. A wild beast could hardly have growled more savagely than did this insane man as he caught her up from the bed of snow into which she had fallen and shook her with fierce pa.s.sion. A large, strong man, with an influx of demoniac, strength in every muscle, his wife was little more than a child in his hands. He could have crushed the life out of her at a single grip.

Not a word or sound came from Mrs. Abercrombie. The snow that covered the earth was scarcely whiter than her rigid face. Her eyes, as the light of a flickering gas-lamp shone into them, hardly reflected back its gleam, so leaden was their despair.

He shook her fiercely, the tightening grasp on her arms bruising the tender flesh, cursed her, and then, in a blind fury, cast her from him almost into the middle of the street, where she lay motionless, half buried in the snow. For some moments he stood looking at the prostrate form of his wife, on which the snow sifted rapidly down, making the dark garments white in so short a s.p.a.ce of time that she seemed to fade from his view. It was this, perhaps, that wrought a sudden change in his feelings, for he sprang toward her, and taking her up in his arms, called her name anxiously. She did not reply by word or sign, He carried her back to the pavement and turned her face to the lamp; it was white and still, the eyes closed, the mouth shut rigidly.

But Mrs. Abercrombie was not unconscious. Every sense was awake.

"Edith! Edith!" her husband cried. His tones, anxious at first, now betrayed alarm. A carriage went by at the moment. He called to the driver, but was unheard or unheeded. Up and down the street, the air of which was so filled with snow that he could see only a short distance, he looked in vain for the form of a policeman or citizen. He was alone in the street at midnight, blocks away from his residence, a fierce storm raging in the air, the cold intense, and his wife apparently insensible in his arms. If anything could free his brain from its illusions, cause enough was here. He shouted aloud for help, but there came no answer on the wild careering winds. Another carriage went by, moving in ghostly silence, but his call to the driver was unheeded, as before.

Feeling the chill of the intensely cold air going deeper and deeper, and conscious of the helplessness of their situation unless she used the strength that yet remained, Mrs. Abercrombie showed symptoms of returning life and power of action. Perceiving this, the general drew an arm around her for support and made a motion to go on again, to which she responded by moving forward, but with slow and not very steady steps. Soon, however, she walked more firmly, and began pressing on with a haste that ill accorded with the apparent condition out of which she had come only a few moments before.

The insane are often singularly quick in perception, and General Abercrombie was for the time being as much insane as any patient of an asylum. It flashed into his mind that his wife had been deceiving him, had been pretending a faint, when she was as strong of limb and clear of intellect as when they left Mr. Birtwell's. At this thought the half-expelled devil that had been controlling him leaped back into his heart, filling it again with evil pa.s.sions. But the wind was driving the fine, sand-like, sharp-cutting snow into his face with such force and volume as to half suffocate and bewilder him. Turning at this moment a corner of the street that brought him into the clear sweep of the storm, the wind struck him with a force that seemed given by a human hand, and threw him staggering against his wife, both falling.

Struggling to his feet, General Abercrombie cursed his wife as he jerked her from the ground with a sudden force that came near dislocating her arm. She gave no word of remonstrance nor cry of pain or fear, but did all in her power to keep up with her husband as he drove on again with mad precipitation.

How they got home Mrs. Abercrombie hardly knew, but home they were at last and in their own room, the door closed and locked and the key withdrawn by her husband, out of whose manner all the wild pa.s.sion had gone. His movements were quiet and his voice when he spoke low, but his wife knew by the gleam of his restless eyes that thought and purpose were active.

Their room was in the third story of a large boarding-house in a fashionable part of the city. The outlook was upon the street. The house was double, a wide hall running through the centre. There were four or five large rooms on this floor, all occupied. In the one adjoining theirs were a lady and gentleman who had been at Mr. and Mrs.

Birtwell's party, and who drove up in a carriage just as the general and Mrs. Abercrombie, white with snow, came to the door. They entered together, the lady expressing surprise at their appearance, at which the general growled some incoherent sentences and strode away from them and up the stairs, Mrs. Abercrombie following close after him.

"There's something wrong, I'm afraid," said the gentleman, whose name was Craig, as he and his wife gained their own room. "They went in a carriage, I know. What can it mean?"

"I hope the general has not been drinking too much," remarked the wife.

"I'm afraid he has. He used to be very intemperate, I've heard, but reformed a year or two ago, A man with any weakness in this direction would be in danger at an entertainment such as Mr. and Mrs. Birtwell gave to-night."

"I saw the general taking wine with a lady," said Mrs. Craig.

"If he took one gla.s.s, he would hardly set that as a limit. It were much easier to abstain altogether; and we know that if a man over whom drink has once gained the mastery ventures upon the smallest indulgence of his appet.i.te he is almost sure to give way and to fall again. It's a strange thing, and sad as strange."

"Hark!"

Mr. Craig turned quickly toward the door which when opened made a communication between their apartment and that of General and Mrs.

Abercrombie. It was shut, and fastened on both sides, so that it could not be opened by the occupants, of either room.

A low but quickly-stifled cry had struck on the ears of Mr. and Mrs.

Craig. They looked at each other with questioning glances for several moments, listening intently, but the cry was not repeated.

"I don't like that," said Mr. Craig. He spoke with concern.