The Lights and Shadows of Real Life Part 41

"O, if we could but save him, sister!" Anna said, as she sat conversing with Mary, after all doubt of his recovery had been removed. "If we could only do some. thing to restore our brother to himself, how glad I should be!"

"I would do anything in my power," Mary replied, "and sacrifice everything that it was right to sacrifice, if, by so doing, I could help Alfred to conquer his besetting evils. I cannot tell you how I feel about it. It seems as if it would break my heart to have him return again into his old habits of life: and yet, what have we to found a hope upon, that he will not so return?"

"I feel just as you do about it, Mary," her sister said. "The same yearning desire to save him, and the same hopelessness as to the means."

"There is one way, it seems to me, in which we might influence him."

"What is that, Mary?"

"Let us manifest towards him, fully, the real affection that we feel; perhaps that may awaken a chord in this own bosom, and thus lead him, for our sakes, to enter upon a new course of life."

"We can at least try, Mary. It can do no harm, and may result in good."

With the end of his reformation in view, the two sisters, during his convalescence, attended him with the most a.s.siduous and affectionate care. The moment Anna would come home from the store at night, she would repair with a smiling countenance to his bedside, and although usually so fatigued as to be compelled to rally her spirits with an effort, she would seem so interested and cheerful and active to minister in some way to his pleasure, that Alfred began to look forward every day as the evening approached, with a lively interest, for her return. This Mary observed, and it gave her hope.

Three weeks soon pa.s.sed away, when Alfred was so far recovered as to be able to walk out.

"Do not walk far, brother," Mary said, laying her hand gently upon his arm, and looking him with affectionate earnestness in the face.

"You are very weak, and the fatigue might bring on a relapse."

"I shall only walk a little way, Mary," he replied, as he opened the door and went out.

Neither the mother nor sister could utter the fear that each felt, lest Alfred should meet with and fall in temptation before he returned. This fear grew stronger and stronger, as the minutes began to acc.u.mulate, and lengthen to an hour. A period of ten or fifteen minutes was as long as they had any idea of his remaining away.

Where could he be? Had he been taken sick; or was he again yielding to the seductions of a depraved and degrading appet.i.te? The suspense became agonizing to their hearts, as not only one, but two, and even three hours pa.s.sed, bringing the dim twilight, and yet he returned not.

In the meantime, the young man, whose appearance the careful hand of Mary and her sister had been rendered far superior to what it had been for years past, went out from his mother's humble dwelling, and took his way slowly down one of the streets, leading to the main portion of the city, with many thoughts of a painful character pa.s.sing through his mind. The few weeks that he had been confined to the house, and in constant a.s.sociation with his mother, and one or both of his sisters, who were at home, had startled his mind into reflection. He could not but contrast their constant and affectionate devotion to him, with his own shameful and criminal neglect of them. Conceal her real feelings as she would, it did not escape his notice, that when Anna came home at night, she was so much exhausted as to be hardly able to sit up; and as for Mary, often when she dreamed not that he was observing her, had he noticed her air of languor and exhaustion, and her half-stifled expression of pain,--as she bent resolutely over her needle-work. Never before had he felt so indignant towards Ellen's husband for his neglect and abuse of her, his once favourite sister; and, indeed, the favourite of the whole family.

It was, to his own mind, a mystery how he ever could have sunk so low, and become so utterly regardless of his mother and sisters.

"Wretch! wretch! miserable wretch that I am!" he would, sometimes, mentally exclaim, turning his face to the wall as he lay reviewing, involuntarily, his past life. Uniformly it happened, that following such a crisis in his feelings, would be some affectionate word or kind attention from Mary or his mother, smiting upon his heart with emotions of the keenest remorse.

It was under the influence of such feelings that he went out on the afternoon just alluded to. Still, no settled plan of reformation had been formed in his mind, for the discouraging question would constantly arise while pondering gloomily over his condition and the condition of the family.

"What can I do?" To this, he could find no satisfactory answer.

Three or four years of debasing drunkenness, had utterly separated him from those who had it in their power to encourage and strengthen his good desires,--and to put him in the way of providing for himself and his family, by an industrious application to some kind of business.

He had walked slowly on, in painful abstraction, for about five minutes, when a hand was laid on his arm, and a familiar voice said--

"Is this you, Graham! Where in the name of Pluto have you been, for the last three weeks? Why, how blue you look about the gills! Havn't been sick, I hope?"

"Indeed I have, Harry," Alfred replied, in a feeble voices. "It came very near being all over with me."

"Indeed! Well, what was the matter?"

Raising his hat, and displaying a long and still angry-looking wound on the side of his head, from which the hair had been carefully cut away, he said--

"Do you see that?"

"I reckon I do."

"Well, that came very near doing the business for me."

"How did it happen?"

"I hardly know, myself. I was drunk, I suppose, and quarrelled with some one, or insulted some one in the street--and this was the consequence."

"Really, Graham, you have made a narrow escape."

"Havn't I? It kept me in bed for nearly three weeks, and now, I can just totter about. This is the first time I have been outside of the house since it happened."

"You certainly do look weak and feeble enough," replied his old friend and crony, who added, in a moment after,

"But come! take a drink with me at the tavern across here. You stand in need of something."

"No objection, and thank you," Alfred rejoined, at once moving over towards a well-known, low tavern, quenching in imagination a morbid thirst that seemed instantly created, by a draught of sweetened liquor.

"What will you take?" asked his friend, as the two came up to the counter.

"I'll take a mint sling," Alfred replied.

"Two mint slings," said his companion, giving his orders to the bar-keeper.

"Hallo, Graham! Is this you?" exclaimed one or two loungers, coming forward, and shaking him heartily by the hand. "We had just made up our minds that you had joined the cold-water army."

"Indeed!" suddenly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Graham, an instant consciousness of what he was, where he was, and what he was about to do, flashing over his mind. "I wish to heaven your conclusion had been true!"

This sudden charge in his manner, and his earnestly, indeed solemnly expressed wish, were received with a burst of laughter.

"Here Dan," said one, to the bar-keeper, "havn't you a pledge for him to sign."

"O, yes! Bring a pledge! Bring a pledge! Has no one a pledge?"

rejoined another, in a tone of ridicule.

"Yes, here is one," said a man in a firm tone, entering the shop at the moment. "Who wants to sign the pledge?"

"I do!" Graham said, in a calm voice.

"Then here it is," the stranger replied, drawing a sheet of paper from his pocket, and unrolling it.

"Give me a pen Dan," Alfred said, turning to the barkeeper.

"Indeed, then, and I won't," retorted that individual, "I'm not going to lend a stick to break my own head."

"O, never mind, young man, I can supply pen and ink," said the stranger, drawing forth a pocket inkstand.

Alfred eagerly seized the pen that was offered to him, and instantly subscribed the total abstinence pledge.

"Another fool caught!" sneered one.