Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  When he and Mr. Bell entered the Ram, an inn of rather a superior class, the first in Eastborough, several gentlemen whom William knew were in the parlour; among them was Mr. Laughton, once poor Lionel’s great friend.

  “It’s never you!” sarcastically exclaimed Laughton, addressing William. “I heard you had joined the teetotalers, and were coming out in a medal and blue ribbon.”

  William winced: he was not yet sufficiently self-reliant to take these jokes with equanimity. He sat down in the midst of the temptation — the terrible temptation; that at home was nothing to it. Glasses of ale were on the table; glasses of hot rum and water, the slices of lemon swimming in it; glasses of strong-flavored gin; glasses of real cognac brandy; and the fragrant steam from all ascended around, intoxicating William Danesbury’s senses before a drop had passed his lips. Laughton gave a quiet order, and William, on looking down, saw a glass of brandy and water, placed before him by the waiter.

  “Now, if you have not signed the pledge and cut us all dead, I recommend you to topple up that,” said Laughton. “You never tasted better brandy than this. It’s a fresh lot they have got in, direct from France — it has the true Champagne flavour.”

  “Come, Mr. William Danesbury,” cried the farmer, ‘‘you shirked it at home, but you can’t refuse to drink with a friend now. Take up your glass. Good health to you.”

  Poor William Danesbury! Silly William Danesbury! Weak William Danesbury! All his good resolves were going, he knew not whither: his veins were throbbing, his heart was longing for that pernicious draught. Never had the desire for it so strongly beset him. He had resisted it in his own house, but here —

  William Danesbury took up the glass and drained it.

  Then remorse set in. He saw himself what he was, a weak, guilty coward, a man without self-restraint; and yet a self sufficient man, who had trusted to himself. Why had he not asked for aid to resist the temptation, as he had done in his own home? It had glanced across his mind to do so, even as he took the glass in his Angers, and he had driven it away unnoticed. So the successful struggles of weeks, the recent victory over himself, the dying admonitions of his father, the new hopes of his wife, the advice of Lord Temple and of Arthur, and the prayers of Isabel — all were undone by the act of one moment. If self-torture ever overtook a man, it did William then. He rose from his seat, ready to curse himself.

  “Danesbury, you are not going!”

  “I must. I have an engagement.”

  That was so far true. For his wife was spending the evening at a friend’s, and he had promised to go and bring her home.

  “Take another glass,” cried Laughton.

  “Not to-night. Good-evening, all.”

  William Danesbury went out into the moonlight. It was shining very bright down the street, whitening the houses and the old-fashioned stones. To take the near way to his home he must pass the church-yard, and hardly had he turned into its narrow lane when he met Harding.

  “Is it you. Mr. William? I am so glad!”

  “It is more than I am,” returned William. “Why are you glad?”

  “Because I saw you in somewhere, Mr. William, and I thought you would be better away,” he whispered; “and I am thankful you have come away; that’s why, sir.”

  “I am a wicked idiot, Harding, and nothing else. So don’t trouble yourself to be thankful about me.”

  “Perhaps you have been led to transgress to-night, Mr. William, and I know you have been striving against it lately. Forgive me, sir, but I was nearly an old man when you were a child, and I think if you were to fail at last, it would break my heart.”

  “It is of no use striving,” returned William, gloomily. “I have been striving, resolutely striving, and now a moment’s temptation has upset it.”

  “Strive on, strive on, Mr. William, victory will be yours in the end. I know it will; if you only take the right means to help yourself.”

  “How can you say you know it, Harding, and assert it so impressively? I am no better than others. Worse.”

  “Sir,” said Thomas Harding, the tears rolling down his cheeks, “I will tell you why I know you will be kept, and preserved — if you only strive for it as you ought. I was in the chaise with your mother the night she died; when she was hastening home to you, a baby. At the moment of the accident, when the chaise was going over, and she saw her danger, and possibly foresaw her death — for when death comes to take the body, it is said to be visible to the living spirit — in that last moment she offered up a prayer. ‘My Saviour! I can but commend my children to thee. Do thou make them thine, and keep them from the evil!’

  “Mr. William,” added Thomas Harding, “no dying mother ever commended her children to Christ in vain. He will keep you from the evil, if you earnestly ask him.”

  William was much affected. “Harding, I can not do it of myself. All my efforts come to naught.”

  “No, sir, not of yourself; if we could do things of ourselves, Christ would not have told us to go to him. He is waiting to give you aid, if you will only ask him; you will not ask in vain. I have long wanted to say this to you, Mr. William, but I did not know how. Forgive me, sir.”

  William wrung Thomas Harding’s hand with a grateful pressure, and continued his way toward the church-yard. He halted at the gate, as his brother had done before him, attracted by the white gravestones and the mounds of earth, which stood out so brightly in the moonlight. Conspicuous amid them was the Danesbury tomb, and he stepped toward it. There she lay, his own mother, there was her name—” Isabel, the wife of John Danesbury.” The words of Harding were ringing in his ears, and William’s feelings overcame him: he bowed his head upon the iron railings, and broke into a flood of passionate tears, such as only man can shed.

  “My mother! do thou pray for me still, if it may be permitted thee. My Saviour! teach me to pray. Keep me from the evil, as she asked of thee; teach and help me to overcome!”

  Exceedingly surprised he was to hear footsteps close to him, and more surprised still to find they were Arthur’s. The latter linked his arm within his.

  “I was near the gate, and saw you come in. William, what distresses you? Let me know it. We are alone in the world, save Isabel.”

  “I am so angry and vexed with myself! Arthur, I have been striving to do right, to abstain: for three weeks not a drop of liquor of any sort had passed my lips, and water was becoming palatable. To-night has undone it all.”

  “How was it?”

  “Bell came to my house about his machines, and said he would have some brandy and water. I sat by while he drank it, taking none, though it was a sore temptation. Afterward we had to go to the Ram to find Sears. Laughton and some more of my old cronies were there, and I was such a weak fool as to be tempted to drink.”

  “Much?”

  “One glass.”

  “I wish you had not. But, William, do not despair; if there were nothing to resist there would be no victory. Let the relapse serve to strengthen you for future fight. Seek aid where you know it may be found.”

  “I will seek it; I do,” answered William. “But no one knows how hard the struggle is — the physical pain of abstaining — the inward, mental craving to fight against.”

  “He knows, and He is all-sufficient. If you had nothing the overcome, where would be the reward? ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.’ Oh, William, think of the glorious end! Persevere, and it will surely be yours.”

  Almost the same words that his wife, some weeks ago, had caused him to read to her. William wrung his brother’s hand, as he had just before wrung Thomas Harding’s, and departed to his home.

  He took a light, and went up stairs to his bedroom; shut himself in, and paced about, too uneasy to sit or rest. His mind was a chaos: self-reproach, self-anger, doubt, despondency, and hope. Yes, in the midst of it all, there was a little ray of hope whispering him that, if he so willed it, the victory would be his. How should he choose? On the on
e side, there was indulgence in his much-loved propensity, a downward course of degradation and despair, ruin to his body, and, in the end, to his immortal soul. On the other side, there was abstinence, self-denial, the drinking of water instead of wine; but with it came hope, peace, the ardent fulfilment of his appointed duties, a happy home here, and the end, everlasting life. If he embraced the first, he must reject his Saviour: if the latter, that ever gracious Saviour dropped his head upon and strengthen him.

  William dropped his head upon his hands, and thought. This little fleeting life, whose length, compared with eternity, was but as a grain of sand to the clouds of it on the sea-shore! Eternity? forever! forever! He lost himself in striving to comprehend the depths of the word. All do. Robert and Lionel had entered on that “forever”. How? What was their state? What might be their remorse, their suffering at that very moment, then, when he was spared in mercy, and could yet choose the good or the evil? Their bodies were mouldering under the tombstone m the churchyard, but their never-dying souls had passed at once into futurity. What might it be for them? What would it be for him unless he could overcome?

  William shuddered, and, taking his wife’s Bible, opened it at the Book of Revelations. He was looking for the places, he knew there were several, which promise life to those who overcome; but as he turned over the leaves, his eyes fell on some other words.

  “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

  According to their works!

  “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

  Then he found what he was looking for. And read the several verses fervently, with a yearning heart: a heart that felt its own weakness, and its need of God. The following were the two last his eyes fell on:

  “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.

  “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

  William Danesbury fell on his knees and bowed his head on the book, and sobbed as he had sobbed in the church-yard. Earnestly he prayed; prayed that, from that night henceforth, he might never return to his besetting sin, but might be kept in his recurring hours of temptation; and, in the end, so overcome, as to sit down with the redeemed in paradise.

  He continued long in prayer. Perhaps it was the first time in William Danesbury’s life that he had ever learned so to pray: to pray with earnest sobs and cries, not loud, but from the very depths of his heart; urgently as a drowning man calls for help to the living: it was the first time he had found how very near to him God was, how ready to bear him. He felt that he was a changed man from that hour; changed, in so far that he had learned the need of aid and where to obtain it; and, when he rose from his knees, there was a never-yet-known spirit of peace and comfort diffused through his soul. It made him think involuntarily of the new name written on the white stone; perhaps he might yet gain that.

  He remembered that he had to go for his wife. Descending the stairs, and entering the sitting-room for his hat, which he had left there on coming in, his eyes fell on the brandy-bottle. Without a moment’s deliberation he carried it outside the door and emptied its contents on the flower-bed; they called to one of the servants to take the bottle down stairs. “May I ever be as resolute in rejecting it!” he aspirated.

  His thoughts were still busy as he walked along the road. Strange to say, though he could scarcely account for the sensation, he felt a sense of happiness, of security, that he had never felt previously; as if he had entered on the right path to be reconciled to God. “What can that new name be, which none knoweth, save he who receiveth it?” he deliberated. “I wonder whether it can be peace; perfect, inward peace?”

  When he reached the presence of his wife, she looked apprehensively at him. His face was pale, his eyes were red; as she advanced close to him, his breath gave forth an odour she knew too well, and her heart sank within her. She put her things on directly, and they set out to return home. It was a client walk, for her tears were nearly overflowing, and she dared not speak; and William seemed buried in a reverie. As they passed through their own garden she exclaimed suddenly, “what a strong smell of brandy!”

  “Yes,” he replied, “there is. Do you know what I have been doing to-night, Anna?’’

  “What you ought not,’” she faintly said. “William, William, will nothing avail with you?”

  “It did not to-night I had to go on business to the Ram, and there I broke through. The temptation was terrible,” he murmured; “the desire of it burning me, as a consuming fire; and I yielded.”

  She was weeping silently. He had halted with her at the flower-bed, in the midst of the grass-plot.

  “So I came home, and I took a bottle of brandy — the last we had in the house, and which had been reached up, but not for me — and brought it out here, and emptied it on the earth. I trust — I think — that with this night my worst struggle is over. I believe that henceforth my strife will not be in vain. Anna! I have never said so much as that.”

  “You — will — strive — in earnest?” she slowly breathed, scarcely daring to admit the rush of joy which his words, and still more, his manner, brought her: “strive aright?”

  “Ay. And overcome — by the help of God.”

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  ARTHUR DANESBURY. MURMURS.

  Not for many a day had so great a commotion arisen in Eastborough. A commodious building in the heart of the town, belonging to Mr. Danesbury, was being repaired and done up, and lighted with gas; to be rendered, so the report ran, as attractive as the gin-palace, which reared its unblushing front nearly opposite. A second gin-palace it was going to be, as was told throughout the place; and the commotion was caused by a curious rumor that these various alterations were not being made for any tenant who might have taken the place, but for, and on account of, the landlord himself — Mr. Danesbury.

  “Mr. Danesbury!” echoed the excited crowd. “He set up a gin-palace; that is, cause it to be set up; after all he has said and done, all his goings-on against drink to us!”

  It was inexplicable. But beyond doubt the building belonged to Mr. Danesbury; and beyond doubt it was not to let. One who was in want of such a house applied to become its tenant; but Mr. Danesburys reply was, that he required it for his own purposes. Partitions were being taken down inside, and small rooms made into larger. The Commotion increased, but the doubt was set at rest, for one of the artisans at the Works respectfully put the question to Mr. Danesbury — the man was one who never drank— “Was it really to be a house of entertainment for the men?”

  “Yes, it is. I intend it in opposition to the public-houses, and especially to the gin-palace opposite,” replied Mr. Danesbury. “My workmen must go out at night, it seems, and drink, so it occurred to me that I might as well derive some benefit from the habit, much as I disapprove of it. I hope, in a few weeks from this, it will be open and flourishing, and will have taken some custom from the other houses.”

  The questioner was confounded far more than he could have been had his master seriously assured him that black was white.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “For asking, sir. I have heard ’em on some days in the place a-talking that it was the master’s, and was meant for a gin-shop, and it made me quite angry to hear it, because I did not believe it, and I thought I’d get your leave, sir, to contradict it.”

  “On the contrary,” said Mr. Danesbury, “you may confirm it, that it is mine, and say that I hope they will give me their custom.”

  The man walked away like one in a dream. Whatever had come over his sober, respectable master? Countenance
a gin-shop! nay, open one! The more he reflected on it the more he was puzzled; and he repeated the news, and thus set all doubts at rest.

  The reader has not forgotten the row of houses particularly mentioned as being occupied by men employed at the Works. It still existed, and many of its former tenants yet lived there. A few of the houses had changed occupants; and it may be remarked that all the changes, save those caused by death, had been led to by intemperate habits. Mrs. Gould lived there as before, a goodly matron. The Goulds were pretty prosperous, though — it was the old story — not so much so as they would have been, had Richard Gould spent less, in drink. Many spent more than he, and Jessy still had help from her friends, so that they were tolerably flourishing. The same features that you saw there formerly, you might have seen there yet. Tailor and his wife, the drunken couple, had gone drunkards to their kindred dust. The husband of the poor, half-starved Mrs. Reed had relapsed from bad to worse, and from bad to worse again, until she and her children had found a refuge in the workhouse. Go there and ask after them: the mother is in it still, a decayed pauper; the children have emancipated pated themselves from workhouse authority — the boys, men now, are vagabondising about the country, and the girls have entered upon courses which can never be redeemed. A knot of these tenant-wives in Prospect Row were standing before their doors discussing the astounding fact just reported to them, that the proprietor of the new gin-palace was Mr. Danesbury.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it of him,” resentfully cried Mrs. Gould, “and so I told uncle Harding when the rumor first got wind. ‘Mr. Arthur set up a new public, and put a man in to keep it? No!’ said I, ‘that he never will.’ ‘‘

  “All gas, and glare, and glitter, to ‘tice our men in to drink, like ‘tother horrid place,” chimed in another. “They wastes money enough as it is: what’ll they do when the master himself encourages ’em direct?”