Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 21

"But, why?"

"Well, I can't smoke cheap strong tobacco, and I can't afford better stuff."

"Then, be at ease, my friend. The Squire has sent me a large supply. I am to divide with you," which was as near to a fib as the young clergyman ever got in his blameless life.

"I shall thank him," returned Grace simply, "and return to my pipe, but I do sometimes think it is too weak an indulgence of a slavish habit."

"Hardly worth while to thank Penhallow; he will have forgotten all about it."

"But I shall not."

They smoked and talked politics, and the village and their work, until at last, after one of the pipe-filling pauses, Grace said, "I ought not to have taken that cider, but it singularly refreshed me. You did not partake."

"No, it disagrees with me."

"I feel it, Brother Rivers. I feel it slightly, and-I-a man who preaches temperance, total abstinence-"

"My dear Grace, that is not temperance. There may be intemperance in the way a man puts his opinions before others-a man may hurt his own cause-"

Grace returned quickly, "You were in our church Wednesday night-I saw you. You think I was intemperate?"

"Frankly, yes. You were abusive. You are too well self-governed to understand the working-man's temptations. You preached from the heart as you felt, without the charity of the head."

"Perhaps-perhaps," he returned humbly; and then with a quite gentle retort, "Don't you sometimes preach too much from the head, Brother Rivers?"

"Yes, that may be the case. I am conscious sometimes that I lack your power of direct appeal-your personal application of the truth. I ought to preach the first half of the sermon-the appeal to the reason, the head part-and ask you to conclude with the heart share-the personal application of my cold logic."

"Let us try it," said Grace rising and much amused; "cold, Rivers! your cold logic! There is nothing cold in all your nature. Let us go home; we have had a good talk."

As they walked down the avenue Grace said, "What are you doing about Lamb? Is it really wise to talk to him?"

"Just now," said the rector, "he has acquired a temporary conscience in the shape of a congested stomach. I talked to him a little. He is penitent, or says he is, and as his mother is sometimes absent, I have set Billy to care for him; some one must. I have found that to keep Billy on a job you must give him a daily allowance of chewing tobacco; that answers."

"Bad company, Brother Rivers."

"Oh, there is no guile in Billy."

They parted at the Grey Pine gate. Rivers had innocently prepared remote mischief, which by no possible human foresight could he have antic.i.p.ated. When, walking in the quiet of a lonely wood, a man sets his foot on a dead branch, the far end stirs another, and the motion so transmitted agitates a half dozen feet away the leaves of a group of ferns. The man stops and suspects some little woodland citizen as the cause of the unexplained movement; thus it is in the affairs of life. We do some innocent thing and are puzzled to explain how it brings about remote mischief.

Meanwhile an unendurable craving for drink beset the man Lamb, who was the prey of slowly lessening delusions. Guardian Billy chewed his daily supply of tobacco and sat at the window in the hot second-storey room feeding Lamb with brief phrases concerning what he saw on the street.

"Oh! there go Squire's horses for exercise; Joe's on Lucy."

"d.a.m.n Lucy! Do you go to mother's room-"

"What for?"

"Oh, she keeps her money in it, and Mrs. Penhallow paid her in advance the day she left."

"Can't do it," said Billy, who had strict orders not to leave Lamb alone.

"Oh, just look in the top drawer. She keeps a bit of money rolled up in one of her stockings. That will get me a little whisky and you lots of tobacco."

"Can't do it," said Billy. "Want me to steal? Won't do it."

"Then I'll get even with you some day."

Billy laughed. "Why I could lick you-like Mr. John licked the doctor's son. Gosh! there goes Pole's wagon."

Lamb fell to thought of how to get that whisky. The ingenuity of the man who craves alcohol or morphia is sometimes surprising even to the most experienced doctor. The immorality of the means of attainment is never considered. If, as with Lamb, a lie or worse be needed, there is a certain satisfaction in having outwitted nurse and doctor.

On the day after the two clergymen had heard John's final opinion of Lamb, the bed-fast man received his daily visit from his spiritual physician, and the clergyman met at the house door the doctor of the body. "I suppose," said McGregor, "that you and I as concerns this infernal rascal are under orders from Penhallow and his wife. I at least have the satisfaction of being paid-"

"Oh, I am paid, Doctor," the clergyman smiled.

"Of course, any one and every one who serves that very efficient and positive saint, Mrs. Penhallow, is paid. She's too terrifyingly good. It must be-well, inconvenient at times. Now she wants this animal looked after because of Mrs. Lamb; and the squire has some sort of absurd belief that because the same b.r.e.a.s.t.s that nursed him nursed our patient, he must befriend the fellow-and he does. Truth is, Rivers, that man's father was a sodden drunkard but, I am told, not otherwise bad. It's a pretty sure doom for the child. This man's body has d.a.m.ned his soul, and now the soul is paying it back in kind."

"The d.a.m.nation will be settled elsewhere," said Rivers gravely. "You are pleading for him when you say he had a father who drank."

"Well, yes, yes. That is true, but I do confoundedly mistrust him. He never remembers a kindness and never forgets the smallest injury. But when Mrs. Penhallow puts a hand on your arm and you look at her, you just go and do what she wants done. Oh, me too! Let's get out of this unreasonable sun and see this fellow."

Billy was chasing blue-bottle flies on the window panes, and the patient in bed was lying still, flushed, with red eyes. He was slowly recovering from an attack of delirium tremens and rea.s.sembling his scattered wits.

"Well," said McGregor, "better, I see. Bugs gone?"

"Yes, sir; but if I had a little, just a nip of whisky to taper off on, I'd be all right."

"Not a drop, Peter."

"I'll die if I don't get it."

"Then die sober."

Peter made no reply. McGregor felt his pulse, made his usual careful examination, and said at last, "Now keep quiet, and in a few days you'll be well."

"For G.o.d's sake, give me whisky-a little. I'm so weak I can't stand up."

"No," said McGregor, "it will pa.s.s. Now I must go. A word with you, Mr. Rivers." When outside of the room he said, "We must trust Billy, I suppose?"

"Yes, there is no one else."

"That man is giving his whole mind to thinking how he can get whisky. He will lie, cheat, steal, do anything to get it."

"How can he? Neither Billy nor his old mother will help him. He will get well, Doctor, I suppose?"

"Yes, I told him he would. More's the pity. He is a permanent nuisance, up to any wickedness, a hopelessly ruined wild beast."

"Perhaps," said Rivers; "perhaps. Who can be sure of that?" He despaired of no one.

The sadly experienced doctor shook his head. "He will live to do much mischief. The good die young; you may be sure the wicked do not. In some ways the man's case has its droll side. Queer case! in some ways interesting."