Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “I gave the rent to you, Katherine,” said Mr. Danesbury. “You should have paid it yourself.”

  “But, sir, he took it from me each time and said he would go up and pay it, and I never thought but what he did. He went out to do it, and came back and said he had. I asked him one day for the receipts, and he replied that he had given them to you. How could I suspect any thing wrong?”

  “I suppose he spent it on his drink.”

  “I suppose he did,” she sobbed. “He has taken such a horror of this man, who is put in, that it terrifies me. When these attacks are coming on, he is not sane, and he might spring upon him and kill him. I did not know what to be at, sir. I was unwilling to come here to ask for the money; but Lionel raved out to me to come. I whispered to the man to be upon his guard.”

  “Swore at you, I suppose, Katherine.”

  “Oh, sir — but it is only when he is like this that he swears. He is kind and good when he is well.”

  “Katherine,” resumed Mr. Danesbury, sinking his voice, “I heard that he struck yon this week. Was it so?”

  She shivered, and sobbed out a faltering excuse for Lionel — that he was “quite gone,” and did not know what he did. “If he would but keep from drink!” she moaned, “if he would but keep from drink? This week he has taken enough to kill him.”

  Mrs. Danesbury listened, and a cold shiver passed over her frame, a sickness seized upon her breaking heart. “Oh,” she cried out in her anguish, “what infatuation is it that possesses my children?”

  What could Mr. Danesbury do, but relieve Lionel’s house of its encumbrance? He wrote a word to the landlord, and the man was instantly withdrawn. But that same night, Lionel had to be watched by two men, in his dangerous delirium.

  Mrs. Danesbury retired to rest, but not to sleep. Robert had come in, and was wandering about the house, pacing up and down the stairs incessantly, his mind unconscious; it appeared more with madness than with wine. What a sound for a mother! Mrs. Danesbury had not been to her children all that she might have been, but her affection for them, at least, was powerful. She had started from some troubled dream in their infancy and rushed to their cradles, and thanked God that they were safe. Now she started from her bed more frequently, not at the imaginary terrors of a dream, but at the bitter stings of waking reality. At length the noise ceased, Robert subsided into his room, and his mother sank to sleep. She was awake again with the first gray streak of dawn that glimmered in the east, awake to the new day and the pain it brought. Oh, the anguish of that first awakening, when a heavy weight lies upon the conscience or the heart! Trouble may oppress in the day; suspense, perplexity, care, may render the pillow sleepless in the night; but it is as nothing, compared with the hideous reality, the lively anguish that rushes then over the spirit.

  The terrible reality — stem, appalling, intense — rushed over the brain of Mrs. Danesbury, and she sprang from her bed with a suppressed cry, and paced the cold room with her hands to her temples, wondering that her senses did not quite leave her in these dreaded moments. There was no help on earth, and she sank on her knees and prayed that her sons’ infatuating sin might yet be conquered; that it might not have laid hold of them past redemption. And yet, she had so prayed for years, and amendment had not come to them; and she prayed as one who had no hope.

  Mr. and Mrs. Danesbury rose as usual, and after breakfast the former went to the factory. He came back about mid-day, too ill to go out again. In the afternoon he was cowering over the fire in the dining-room, for he felt shivering and chill, when Robert came in, his dress loose, and his gait slouching. Though three o’clock, it was his first appearance that day. His eyes were bloodshot, and his countenance bore the marks of his evil life. His slippers were down at the heel, his coat dirty and torn, his pantaloons embraced, and he had no collar on Mr. Danesbury looked up, and then averted his eyes with a suppressed groan. Robert held his hat, which he had carried on his head into his chamber the previous night; he now essayed to place it on the table, but his hand shook, and it slipped on the floor: Mrs. Danesbury, little less shaking than he, stooped and poked it up again. Yet Robert was sober then — perfectly sober; the drams he had been obliged to take ere he could dress himself not affecting him.

  He was screwing his courage up to tell of his faults. Told they must be. In his excited mood of the previous night, he had demanded money; it was now his task to tell quietly why it must be supplied him. He had again got into debt, for the third or fourth time once he came home, and had drawn liabilities upon himself which must be discharged or he dragged off to the county jail.

  “You have brought me to the verge of ruin,” gasped Mr. Danesbury, as he listened; “do you want to complete it? It is not eight months since I paid your debts. Then there was nothing but a jail before you, and I saved you from it.”

  Robert sat by, penitent and ill: he always felt penitent and ill when he was quite sober. He had nothing to answer.

  “How many times have I paid your debts since you returned from London?” proceeded Mr. Danesbury. “Not one shilling of them had you any cause to contract. You have a good home here, with every thing you can require, and you have a trifle to spend. What other father would keep you in idleness? You have squandered the money that I worked hard for. What will you do when I am gone?”

  Robert had risen, and now stood leaning on the mantlepiece. He was intent on procuring what he wanted, and he began to offer some attempt at excuse.

  ‘‘I can not pay away much more,” returned Mr. Danesbury. “I will not completely cripple the business, so that Arthur shall be unable to carry it on, and be left without resources. No; I have sacrificed enough to you and Lionel, but I will not entirely sacrifice your eldest brother, who never gave me an hour’s grief in his life.”

  “And for William also, as well as for him and Lionel,” somewhat sharply put in Mrs. Danesbury.

  “Rather would I let poverty and want come upon me, than ruin Arthur,” proceeded the old man. “He has made unparalleled sacrifices for you, of his own kind will. He is a brother in a thousand. How much is this money that you are liable for?”

  “It’s — it’s about two hundred pounds,” hesitated Robert, ashamed of the confession. “It is not—”

  “Two hundred pounds!” interrupted Mr. Danesbury. “What have you been doing, to owe all that? I will not find it,” he sternly added, “I can not find it. You are reducing me to distress, sir, with your wicked habits. Would you wish your mother there to end her days in the work-house? For myself,” he continued, his voice broken with emotion, “I shall not long trouble any of you, and I care not how soon it may please, the Almighty to remove me from a world which has been productive to me of so much suffering.”

  Mrs. Danesbury covered her face. Mr. Danesbury gradually changed his tone: his spirit was broken, his heart breaking, and he could not keep up anger long. He showed Robert how impossible it was that he could continue to supply means for this ruinous expenditure, and he enlarged upon his blameable course of life; the sin he was guilty of toward his parents, toward himself, and the far deeper sin he was guilty of toward God. Robert listened till he fell into a contrite spirit, and presently he burst into tears, openly lamented his conduct, and promised to amend. His brain was whirling, his health and strength were shattered, and he cried as he had cried that night in London to Arthur, when he was in a maudlin state. His father and mother seized upon the moment to implore him to reform, and Robert solemnly promised. He meant it, poor deluded man; the sin of his dally life was pressing heavily upon his conscience; and, what with his sinking body and sinking spirits, it was impossible for any poor creature to feel more wretched. Mr. Danesbury would not advance the money which Robert demanded, he was firm in that, but he said the liabilities might be brought under his examination, and he would see if any arrangement could be effected, toward paying them off by degrees, so as to release Robert from present fears. But he would only do this on condition that Robert entered into no further debts.
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br />   With this conciliation Robert was obliged to content himself, and very kind and fair it was; but, the truth was, he wanted to get the money into his own fingers. He left the room, too physically miserable to stay in it; and what remedy did he resort to cheer himself? He went back to his bedroom, where he regularly kept spirits concealed now, and pouncing upon the brandy-bottle, poured out a tumblerful, and drank it.

  Do not ask where his promises of good resolution flew to. He did not stop at that little light draught; it was not enough for him; and at the customary evening hour, having set his dress to rights, he slunk out, rather worse than usual for what he had taken.

  His parents — oh, have pity for them! — remained alone, scarcely interchanging a word with each other, but silently nursing their misery, a misery that would never be lightened in this world.

  It happened that Arthur had gone to spend that evening with his brother William. The clock struck ten, and Mrs. Danesbury retired, and for a few minutes Mr. Danesbury was alone. His head leaned on his hands, and he sat gazing abstractedly on the fire: he was thinking what a mercy it would have been, had God seen fit to remove his two youngest boys in their infancy. Suddenly he heard the latch key turn in the front door, turn and turn, as if he who held it were not in a state of competency; but at length, it was pushed open with a burst, and Robert staggered across the hall, and came into the room. He reeled up to his father, his hair hanging about his countenance, and his attitude menacing. His words were indistinct, but, so far as Mr. Danesbury could gather, they were a demand for money.

  “Are these your promises of amendment, Robert? Go to your room; go to your room, sir, and do not speak to me again, until you are in a better state.”

  “I must and I will have money,” screamed Robert. “What right have you to deny it to me? I will have it, I tell you.”

  Mr. Danesbury rose from his seat with dignify. “I do possess the right to deny it,” he sadly answered, “and would that I had exercised that right years ago; my sons might have been more dutiful sons now.”

  He knew not what he did, it is to be hoped he knew not, that lost young man, for he cursed his father with a loud and grievous curse, and dealt him a blow on the temple. Mr. Danesbury fell to the ground just as Mrs. Danesbury, her fears ever on the alert, ran in. She flew to her husband, she pushed Robert from her, she reproached him harshly in her shock of grief. He stood there raving, and invoking imprecations on her, his mother; and then, with a shout and a crash, he swept the ornaments off the mantle-piece.

  In rushed a manservant, followed by Arthur, who had come home just in time to hear the noise. Arthur laid his powerful grasp upon the madman, while the man raised Mr. Danesbury to his chair. Mr. Danesbury’s temple was bleeding, for it had struck against the fender, as he fell; and, as Mrs. Danesbury bathed it with water, she whispered to him, through her tears, not to be harsh with their poor mistaken boy.

  “Harsh with him, no!” wailed Mr. Danesbury; but let him take all, let him turn them out of house and home, rather than they should be cursed in their old age by the child to whom they had given birth!

  Arthur and the man got Robert to his chamber, and undressed him, and placed him in bed. But there was no rest for the house that night, for he was out of his apartment again, as on the preceding one, stalking about, like a restless spirit, from room to room, and up the stairs and down. His state was akin to madness: they could do nothing with him; even his father, forgetting the outrage, went to beg him to be composed and to go to rest. All in vain; and shouting, singing, laughing, and raving, he tore about till morning, Arthur and the servant watching him, to prevent mischief.

  By the usual hour of the household’s rising he was partially sober, but the symptoms of insanity hung about him. His mother went to him one more, to coax, beg, entreat him to lie down and try and get some sleep. Yes, he would, he answered; and then he laid hold of her hands, and, melting into tears, whispered his contrition for what he did on the previous night. “Mother, I was mad with drink, I was mad with drink! Will you and my father forgive me?”

  “Yes, yes, dear,” she answered, “it is all forgiven; you were not conscious of your actions. Only go to bed quietly, and get to sleep. I will take you.”

  She passed on to his chamber, and he docilely followed her, muttering still, “I was mad with drink,” and some other words which she could not catch, about the burden of his bitter life.

  He lay down quietly and they left the room, Arthur remaining for some moments to listen at the door. But it appeared that he did not move. Presently Arthur cautiously looked in. He was lying on the bed, with his eyes wide open.

  “Did you call, Robert?” asked his brother, by way of excuse. “Do you want any thing?”

  “No. I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Ay, do. It will do you good.”

  Arthur closed the door. Mrs. Danesbury was standing just outside her own chamber, and beckoned to him.

  “Arthur,” she whispered, “it appears to me that he is worse than I ever saw him: in a more strange sort of way. I think Dr. Pratt had better come and look at him.”

  “I am going for him now,” replied Arthur. “If Robert can not get to sleep, he will have an attack similar to Lionel’s.”

  Mrs. Danesbury stole on tiptoe once or twice to the room door, but all was quiet within, and she hoped he was sleeping. In a short time Arthur returned with the surgeon. Mrs. Danesbury inquired if he had seen Lionel that morning; if he knew how he was.

  “Yes, Lionel is better,” replied Mr. Pratt “He will get over this bout. But if he,” nodding his head in the direction of Robert’s chamber, “is in for it, we shall have some trouble, Lionel has made free enough, in all conscience, but he has made worse. To think of the evils wrought in this world by the influence of drink!” uttered the old gentleman, who bore the appearance of a man of care. “My only son an alien from me! and yours more trouble than if they were aliens.”

  He had gradually advanced to Robert’s door as he spoke, opened it, and partially entered. But he drew back with a suppressed, hasty movement, closed the door, and kept the handle of it in his hand. Arthur and Mrs. Danesbury had followed him.

  “Will you get me some vinegar,” he said to the latter. “Get it and bring it yourself; there’s a good lady.”

  As. she turned away, Mr. Pratt looked at Arthur with a horror-stricken face. “I have sent her off purposely,” he whispered. “I saw the inside of this chamber when I opened the door: it was no sight for any woman; least of all, a mother. Can you bear it?”

  A suspicion of his meaning dawned on the mind of Arthur Danesbury. “What has he done?” he asked, with blanched lips. “Surely he has not injured himself!”

  “HE HAS COMMITTED SUICIDE,” was the dread whisper. “May the Lord have mercy on his soul!”

  They went in, Arthur nerving himself to it. The ill-fated maniac — let us call him so! — was lying on the bed in a pool of blood, the razor clasped in his right hand. He was not dead; but ere the lapse of many minutes he would no longer be numbered among the living.

  Arthur went outside, awake, even in his despair and horror, to the humanity of keeping Mrs. Danesbury from the room. She was coming along the corridor with the vinegar cruet in her hand. In spite of his efforts, he could not recall the colour to his face.

  “Thank you,” he said, offering to take it from her.

  “No; I will go in with it myself,” replied Mrs. Danesbury.

  “Dr. Pratt — Dr. Pratt does not wish any one to go in,” rejoined Arthur.

  “But I will go in. Why should I be kept out? Why are you looking so strange, so scared, Arthur? – Oh!” she screamed, 8 fear flashing across her like lightning, “what has happened? What is amiss with my boy?”

  She had the strength of a desperate woman, and struggled with him. He soothingly strove to lead her away, but she suddenly raised her foot and kicked open the door, and the scene within was disclosed to her. A long shrill shriek rang through the house, and she fell b
ack into Arthur’s arms. It brought Mr. Danesbury out of his bedroom; and the frightened servants came running up.

  What expression of horror was it that gleamed from the dying man’s eye as he grasped the wrists of his father? Could it be that the accomplishment of his crime, or the close approach of death, bad restored his powers of mind and memory? He appeared as conscious as he ever was before the fatal habit grew upon him; there was no mistaking the clear, sane expression of the eye. Who can imagine the awful tortures that were rending his soul? I once read of a drowning man, who testified, after his rescue, that in the moment when his strength was yielding to the waves, all the whole history of his past life rose up before him; its evil thoughts, its unholy actions, all were clear to his mind, like the scenes of a phantasmagoria. Could it be that the same strange renovation of memory had been opened to Robert Danesbury? Will it, when our spirit is about to quit its earthly tenement, open to all of us? Who does not remember those two lines of Hood’s in that beautiful poem, with its warning lesson, “The Lady’s Dream!”

  “Woe, woe for me, if the past should be

  Thus present when I die I”

  That Robert Danesbury’s intellects were dear and sane in those, his dying moments was indisputable. He saw now all the inexpiable guilt of his past life: the talents he had misused, the parents whose hearts he had broken, the Heaven he had deserted; as a single star to the countless myriads that inhabit space, as a drop of dew to the wide seas, was the little span of existence appointed him here, compared with the never-ending life hereafter; yet he had not attempted to perform its poor simple duties to himself to the world, or to his Creator. A little self-denial, a little strife and perseverance, a little help from above, and the victory would have been his. He saw it all now; but he had chosen to abandon his powers, both of mind and body. to the pundit of a degrading vice, and at last he had rashly and impiously taken the life that was not his to take, and was winging his flight to the awful bar of an offended God. Flying swiftly to the unknown, darksome valley of the Shadow of Death, without hope, and without a comforter; for the merciful promise of the Saviour to come again and guide his redeemed to Him could not apply to him now: he had thrown away his Saviour when he threw away the life that was not his to take. And so, amid piercing throes and mental torments, amid ineffectual efforts to give utterance to his remorse and anguish, he wrung his father’s hands with a sharp pressure, and with a last wild cry the spirit of Robert Danesbury passed away forever.