by Ellen Wood
She spoke the truth. She had ruined her sons, and they, in their turn, had sent her to her grave.
There was a deplorable scene enacted when she was being placed in it. Lionel was in a wretchedly nervous condition, and was obliged to take brandy ere he could venture to the funeral. As the mourners stood around the grave, Mr. Danesbury at their head, and the coffin was being lowered into it, Lionel seized one of the cords, and broke into a burst of sobbing and wailing. The coffin fell into the vault, and, but for Arthur’s firm grasp, who stood next him, he would have flung himself upon it. Lionel had to be surrounded and taken away, ere the service could be concluded; and that night, for the first time in his life, he was secured in a straight-waistcoat.
All this acted as a warning to William Danesbury, and he strove to master his baneful passion. For some time, he kept sober. He staid in doors in the evening, refused to join any loose friends, meaning those who were lovers of excess, and took only ale with his meals. He seemed quite resolved to put temptation from him. But, one Sunday — Anna had been down stairs some time then — the wine was on the table after dinner, and he finished nearly a bottle of port. He rose from his seat, and was about to decant another, when his wife glided up to him, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“William, do not.”
He looked at her; looked at the wine: and then, with an irresolute, unwilling gesture, he put the bottle back again upon the sideboard. There it remained; but ever and anon, his eyes turned restlessly to it, as if they were fascinated.
Later in the evening, when Anna retired for the night, the struggle came to an end. He drew the cork, drank the whole of the wine, and then drew the cork of a bottle of brandy. At one o’clock in the morning he stumbled up to bed, as — as I hope you and I shall never stumble up.
CHAPTER XXL
ANOTHER DEATH-BED.
One evening in November, about two months after Mrs. Danesbury’s death, William was on his way to Danesbury House. His road lay through the town. Eastborough had much increased of late years, especially in the matter of public-houses and beer-shops. For one that used to be in the place, three might be counted now. The chief object of attraction, however, lay in a showy gin-palace. A gin-palace in the very heart of the long street, with a new stuccoed front, and illuminated lamps; and mirrors, and gas, and gilding inside, the very model of those which the reader has had the pleasure of visiting in London. The other shops, and there was no lack of them, had not yet got into the fashion of glare and glitter; but some adventurous spirits had hit upon the scheme of opening one on the meretricious principle, and so attractive was the novelty found, that it was crowded night and day.
William Danesbury passed, with an effort, these various houses of entertainment; really with an effort; for sounds of revelry, mingled with the jingling of glasses, came from them pleasantly on his ear; and in one room, where the blind was still undrawn, his eye caught sight of a goodly company. The temptation to enter and make one was very strong on William Danesbury then, but he resisted it, and strode rapidly on. How strong it was, how the temptation, backed by the Evil One, was pulling at his heart-strings, he alone can tell: but he did not tell how he resisted it. In passing Lionel’s cottage, he saw an old lady standing at the door. He stopped.
“If you want Mrs. Danesbury,” she cried out, before he could speak, “she’s gone out for the doctor. And I am keeping the door for her, and am afraid for my very life.”
“Is Lionel ill?” inquired William, guessing who she was.
“He’s in the strangest way I ever saw,” continued the old lady, “but, thank goodness, I have never been with such as him; he’s fancying he sees cats, and dogs, and devils. He has not been sober, I hear, since his mother died, two months ago; not to say sober, for a day. The night before last, he was dragged home by two men, his head hanging down, and his face purple and crimson. They threw him on the bed, and there he lay, like a cold, for seventeen hours! Beast!”
At that moment Lionel’s wife hastened up. And then the old lady, her grandmother, who had come from her farm to stop a few days in Eastborough, found that the gentleman was Mr. William Danesbury, and she had been calling his brother “beast’’ to his face.
“Well, he is one,” was her mental comment.
“I have been for Mr. Pratt, sir,” Katherine said to William. “He is out: but they will send him when he returns.”
She looked ill, thin, haggard. And no wonder; for, besides the anxiety, the harassing life she led with her husband, besides the sleepless nights, and she was often up all night long, she suffered from positive want of food. Lionel’s habits ran away with the weekly pound, and, for days together, she had only dry bread to eat. A mixed feeling of shame, pride, and love to Lionel, prevented her telling of this, otherwise her mother would not have suffered her to want. Mr. Danesbury partially suspected it, though not to its extent, and many an extra half-crown, beyond the weekly allowance, did he slip into her hand, unsuspected by Lionel. Ah! there were not many like good Mr. Danesbury. A bad bargain had Katherine Bing, in marrying his son.
It was thought, at the time of the occurrence, that Lionel Danesbury would surely read a lesson from his brother’s awful death, and cast away the vice which had led Robert on to it. He did not. And yet, poor, infatuated man! the sight of that ghastly corpse, with its crimson gash, was never absent from his mind’s eye. In the sunny light of day and in the gloom of midnight it was ever before him; and he knew that he must take warning by it, if he would avoid a sinful death. And yet he did not. And since his mother’s loss he had been even worse than before.
“Lionel is ill again!” observed William.
“Very ill,” answered Katherine. “Will you come up, sir, and see him?”
He followed her up stairs. Lionel was in the bedroom, in his night-shirt and boots, striding about, and looking wild and hazard. William saw what dreadful disorder was upon him again.
“I want my clothes,” said Lionel. “She has got them.” She had hid the boots.
“I did not dare to leave them in his way,” whispered Katherine to William. “He would have been out, and over the town. Last night, at eleven o’clock, he stole out, and I was till three in the morning looking for him, in all the nun. I found him at last on the bridge, wet through. I told grandmother to be sure and keep his boots from him, but I suppose she got afraid.”
Lionel had fixed his gaze on the wall of the room, the pupils of his eyes dilating, and horror struggling into his countenance. He slowly backed as far from it as possible, and cowered against the opposite wall.
“Look there!” he shivered to William.
“What?”
“See how black she is! That cat has been there twice before. Drive her away. Oh, William! drive her away.”
His voice had risen to a piteous scream. William went to the spot that appeared to excite his terror. “There is nothing here, Lionel; see” — kicking his feet against the wainscoating— “nothing at all. I will remove the chair. There; you see there’s nothing.”
Lionel’s excited eyes were wandering round the room; under the bed, on the bed, along the walls, on the ceiling; just as if they were following the progress of some object.
“Lionel, you would be better in bed,” cried his brother. “Come, get in; and I will go again and see after Pratt.”
William laid hold of him. A peculiar tremor was running through all his limbs, the precursor of what was coming.
“Yes — yes” — speaking in a wandering, abstracted tone— “yes, I’ll get into bed; and you get Pratt here.” But instead of approaching the bed, he drew farther from it. William gently pulled him forward. Lionel suddenly stopped dead.
“There she is!” he whispered. “On the bed. Look! She has got spots on her coat, now.”
“Nonsense,” said William, “there’s nothing? you know it, Lionel. If you—”
With a spring, Lionel eluded William’s grasp, and rushed to the head of the stairs. The old lady, who had stood on them
, afraid to venture farther, set up a shrill scream, and dropped down them as if she had been shot. This arrested Lionel. But for that circumstance, he would probably have been in the street, just as he was, before they could catch him. William drew him back toward the bed.
“I can’t,” he piteously said. “She’s got inside, and some more with her. See how thick their tails are. There’s one hanging out now. They are the imps, and the devils will be here presently.”
“Come along,” said William, cheerily; “I’ll drive them all away for you.”
Katherine turned the bed-clothes down to the very bottom of the bed, and patted it with her hands. “You see,” she said to her husband, “it is all your fancy.”
He touched the bed himself, and looked wildly about the room again. And just then the surgeon came in.
“What is the matter here?” asked Mr. Pratt. “I have just met old grandmother Ducksworth, flying down the street, as if she were flying for her life, afraid of stopping here, she said. I’ll again?”
“More cats, sir, and other things,” interposed Lionel’s wife. “He is afraid now they are in the bed.”
“Keep them away from me, Pratt, will you!” gasped Lionel.
“To be sure. Get into bed, and I’ll see about it. Halloa! boots in bed! That will never do. Let me have those: we will send them after the cats.”
Quiet as a lamb under Mr. Pratt’s experienced eye, Lionel suffered his boots to be taken from him, and lay down in bed. The doctor administered some medicine he had brought with him, then tucked him up, and told him to be quiet and to sleep. As they were leaving the room, William looked back. There sat Lionel upright in bed, ready to spring out.
“I can’t stop here,” he shivered, “they are coming again. Don’t leave me.”
“No,” answered Katherine, “I am going to stay with you. Lie down, and I will sit here upon the bed. The cats will not come where I am.”
Mr. Pratt and William Danesbury went down stairs, the former carrying the boots. “I have told his wife never to let him hare his boots in these attacks,” he observed. “She knows they must be kept from him.”
“Lionel found them, I believe, while she was gone for you.’’
“Not one in ten of these poor madmen will start out without their boots,” remarked Mr. Pratt; “but, let them put on their boots, and they’ll watch an opportunity to be off, even if they be stark naked. Poor woman! she has a dreadful life with him. And this is going to be a bad attack.”
“Do you fear so?” asked William.
“Ay. He has been drinking awfully lately. It will be worse than any he has had. His wife must have some men in the house, for, before morning he will be outrageous. Mr. William, I will not answer for it that hell get over this. I did not think he would the last time, when his mother died, you know. I’ll look in at George Groat’s,” added Mr. Pratt, “and send up the men that were here before, if they are to be had.”
“I will stay until some one comes,” said William.
“Do so. It is not right that his wife should be left with him alone.”
Quiet did Lionel lie while Mr. Pratt was in the house, but, the moment he heard the door dose on him, he was troublesome again. Who are more cunning than they? Katherine called out, and William ran up.
“I want my boots, William.”
“Presently. What for?”
“Oh, they are round me, and I can’t stop here. I must go out”
“Where to?”
“I — I want to see my father. Get my boots.”
“Not to-night.”
“Yes, I must. Get my boots.”
“Very well. Presently,” and down sat William.
Later, when the requisite help arrived, three men, William took his departure. These repeated attacks were a heavy expense, which, of course, fell upon Mr. Danesbury. When William entered Danesbury House, Arthur was sitting alone.
“Where is my father?” he asked.
“He is gone to bed, ill,” was Arthur’s reply. “I do not think he will be here many weeks, William. If he is no better in the morning, I shall call Pratt in. He would not have him to-night.”
“I have just been with Pratt at Lionel’s,” returned William. “He has got another attack. The old gentleman has sent three men in, he anticipates mischief.”
“Ah! I heard of his being carried home, unable to walk, the night before last.”
“And last night he stole out, and his wife was for four hours looking for him, in the rain, and found him at last on the bridge.”
“What a life for her!” uttered Arthur.
“Pratt says he may not get over this.”
“Then it will be the death of our father!” sadly exclaimed Arthur.
William sat a little while, and then rose to go. His brother accompanied him through the hall to the door, and stood looking out into the night. “William,” he said, laying his hand upon his shoulder with an impressive gesture, “go straight home.”
“I will. I intend to.” And he did so: bravely passing by the public-houses and liquor-shops, as he had done in coming.
Lionel Danesbury had latterly been a burden to himself and to all surround him, but the end was come. The news spread in the town, next day, that Lionel was ill, dangerously ill. His aunt, Mrs. Philip Danesbury, went to see him, and entered the untidy, comfortless chamber.
The fire had been raked out of the grate, for the patient could not bear the heat, and a blanket, tossed off the bed, was lying on a chair. Two men sat in the room, in readiness to act when they should be required, and a third was outside. More than one warning had he had, more than one attack of this disease, and now it was overpowering him for the last time. He lay on the bed, his eyes rolling wildly; cloths steeped in vinegar were covering his head, and the burning fever of delirium was raging in his brain.
Need you be told the name of the malady he was stricken down with? Ask the surgeons to hospitals, to the debtor’s jails, to the criminal prisons, what disease it is, that they have most frequently to grapple with, amid the miserable class who chiefly fall under their care; and they will tell you it is one which rarely appears, save in those who are drinking themselves to death — Delirium Tremens.
This was one of his quiet intervals; nevertheless, his whole frame, his legs, his body, his arms, his hands, shook to such a degree that the very floor of the room was agitated, and the curtains, heaped up atop of the bed that they might not obstruct the air, quivered like the leaves of trees. Oh, it is a terrible disease! may we never encounter it in those who are near and dear to us!
Mrs. Philip Danesbury was awe-stricken. She remembered his once healthy form, his intellectual qualities, and she looked at what he was — the dying sinner. She advanced and took his hand; but an irrepressible terror came over her at the contact of that unnatural motion, which no human aid could stop or mitigate, and she dropped it again.
“Do you know me, Lionel? It is I; your aunt.”
“They have been coming round the bed,” he answered, in a loud, important whisper, while his poor head turned incessantly from side to side, “millions of them. They are devils, you know: ugly grinning devils: black, and green, and purple. There! do you hear the knocking? There’s one; a little one he is; and there’s — Be off!” he shouted, staring wildly at the foot of the bed.
Dr. Pratt, who was present, took hold of his wrists, and presently wrung some linen out of the vinegar basin, and exchanged it for that on his head. Lionel was conscious of this, for he raised his hand and pulled it lower on his forehead. “Ah! so! that’s cool,” he said, and then he turned again to Mrs. Philip Danesbury, looking calmly at her, and speaking in a tone perfectly rational.
“Do you know that William is dead? He’ll be a great loss at the Works. He went out, got into a street-row, and they brought him in here, covered with wounds. His head was an awful sight. A great fool to get into it! However, he is dead.”
Poor fellow! what was his brain working on?
“You never
heard such a row,” he continued, still so collectedly and rationally, that Mrs. Philip Danesbury was unpleasantly puzzled, and a stranger would have believed he was relating something he had actually witnessed. “The sounds came up here; I could not sleep for them. And,” he added, in a dread whisper, “he looked just like Robert did: There! there again! Listen! They are the devils,” he cried confidentially. “That little one is the worst of all. See how he grins! Hark! knock, knock, knock! they have been at it all night There’s one in red; he’s a fresh one; they are all crowding here, one upon another. One, two, three — ten, twenty — fifty! what a knocking! there’s thousands! millions!”
He stopped for the space of a minute, lay perfectly still, and then stealthily slid down the bed; and, with a spring so sudden that the attendants were unprepared, stood bolt upright on it, the raging madman.
Quick as thought, they were upon him, the three men and Dr. Pratt, but the strength of these maniacs is almost supernatural. It was a fearful struggle, a fearful sight, that unhappy creature raving, struggling, and fighting with his opponents, his white night-dress disordered, and the vinegar cloths flapping about his head and face! If he should master! — and there almost seemed a doubt of it. All dangerous weapons, razors, knives, even the fire-irons, had been removed, and the windows were fastened down.