Chapter 23
"How should I know, sister?"
"You were not yourself last night, John."
"Alice!"
"Forgive me, brother, for what I now say," the maiden rejoined. "It is a painful trial, indeed; and were it not that I loved you so well--were it not that, besides you, there is no one else in the wide world to whom I can look up, I might shrink from a sister's duty. But I feel that it would be wrong for me not to whisper in your ear one warning word--wrong not to try a sister's power over you."
"I will forgive you this time, on one condition," the brother said, in a tone of rebuke, and with a grave expression of countenance.
"What is that?" asked Alice.
"On condition that you never again, directly or indirectly, allude to this subject. It is not in your province to do so. A sister should not look out for her brother's faults."
A sudden gush of tears followed this cold, half-angry repulse; and then the maiden turned slowly away and left the room.
John Barclay's anger towards his only sister, who had no one, as she had feelingly said, in the wide world to look up to and love, but him, subsided the moment he saw how deeply his rebuke had wounded her. But he could not speak to her, nor recall his words--for the subject she had introduced was one so painful and mortifying, that he could not bear an allusion to it.
From long indulgence, the habit of drinking had become confirmed in the young man to such a degree that he had almost ceased to resist an inclination that was gaining a dangerous power over him. And yet there was in his mind an abiding resolution one day to break away from this habit. He did not intend to become a drunkard. Oh, no! The condition of a drunkard was too low and degrading. He could never sink to that! After awhile, he intended to "swear off," as he called it, and be done with the seductive poison altogether; but he had not yet been able to bring so good a resolution into present activity.
This being his state of mind--conscious of danger, and yet unwilling to fly from that danger, he could not bear any allusion to the subject.
Half an hour, pa.s.sed in troubled thought, elapsed after this brief interview between the brother and sister, when the young man left the house and took his way, scarcely reflecting upon where he was going, to one of his accustomed places of resort--a fas.h.i.+onable drinking house, where every device that ingenuity could invent, was displayed to attract custom. Splendid mirrors and pictures hung against the walls, affecting the mind with pleasing thoughts--and tempting to self-indulgence. There were lounges, where one might recline at ease, while he sipped the delicious compounds the richly furnished bar afforded, never once dreaming that a serpent lay concealed in the cup that he held to his lips--a serpent that one day would sting him, perhaps unto death!
"Regular as clock-work,"--said an old man, a friend of Barclay's father, who had been dead several years, meeting the young man as he was about to enter the attractive establishment just alluded to.
"How?" asked Barclay in a tone of enquiry.
"Six times a day, John, is too often for you to be seen going into the same drinking-house,"--said the old man, with plain-spoken honesty.
"You must not talk to me in that way, Mr. Gray," the other rejoined sternly.
"My respect and regard for the father, will ever cause me to speak plainly to the son when I think him in danger," was Mr. Gray's calm reply.
"In danger of what, Mr. Gray?"
"In danger of--shall I utter the word in speaking o' the son of my old friend, Mr. Barclay? Yes; in danger of--drunkenness!"
"Mr. Gray, I cannot permit any one to speak to me thus."
"Be
"I will not stand to be insulted by any one!" was the young man's angry reply, as he turned suddenly away from his aged friend, and entered the drinking-house. He did not go up at once to the bar, as had been his habit, but threw himself down upon one of the lounges, took up a newspaper, and commenced; or rather, appeared to commence reading, though he did not, in fact, see a letter.
"What will you have, Mr. Barclay?" asked an officious attendant, coming up, a few moments after he had entered.
"Nothing just now," was the reply, made in a low tone, while his eyes were not lifted from the newspaper. No very pleasant reflections were those that pa.s.sed through his mind as he sat there.
At last he rose up quickly, as if a resolution, had been suddenly formed, and left the place where cl.u.s.tered so many temptations, with a hurried step.
"I want you to administer an oath," he said, entering the office of an Alderman, a few minutes after.
"Very well, sir. I am ready," replied the Alderman. "What is its nature?"
"I will give you the form."
"Well?"
"I, John Barclay, do solemnly swear, that for six months from this hour, I will not taste a drop of any kind of liquor that intoxicates."
"I wouldn't take that oath, young man," the Alderman said.
"Why not?"
"You had better go and join a temperance society. Signing the pledge will be of as much avail."
"No--I will not sign a pledge never to drink again. I'm not going to make a mere slave of myself. I'll swear off for six months."
"Why not swear off perpetually, then?"
"Because, as I said, I am not going to make a slave of myself. Six months of total-abstinence will give me a control over myself that I do not now possess."
"I very much fear, sir," urged the Alderman, notwithstanding he perceived that the young man was growing impatient--"and you must pardon my freedom in saying so, that you will find yourself in error. If you are already so much the slave of drink as to feel yourself compelled to have recourse to the solemnities of an oath to break away from its bewitching power, depend upon it, that no temporary expedient of this kind will be of any avail. You will, no doubt, keep your oath religiously, but when its influence is withdrawn, you will find the strength of an unsupported resolution as weak as ever."
"I do not believe the position you take to be a true one," argued young Barclay--"All I want is to get rid of present temptation, and to be freed from present a.s.sociations. Six months will place me beyond the reach of these, and then I shall be able to do right from an internal principle, and not from mere external restraint."
"I see the view you take, and would not urge a word against it, did I not know so many instances of individuals who have vainly opposed their resolutions against the power of habit. When once an appet.i.te for intoxicating drinks has been formed, there is only one way of safety--that of taking a perpetual pledge of total-abstinence. That, and that alone is the wall of sure protection. Without it, you are exposed to temptations on every hand. The manly and determined effort to be free will not always avail. In some weak and unsuspecting moment, the tempter will steal quietly in, and all will be again lost."
"It is useless, sir, to argue the point with me," Barclay replied to this. "I will not now take the pledge--that is settled. I will take an oath of abstinence for six months. If I can keep to it that long, I can keep from drinking always."
Seeing that further argument would be useless, the Alderman said no more, but proceeded to administer the oath. The young man then paid the required fee and turned from the office in silence.
When Alice left the room in tears, stung by the cutting rebuke of her brother, she retired to her chamber with an oppressed and aching heart. She loved him tenderly. They were, sister and brother, alone in the world, and, therefore, her affections clung the closer to him. The struggle had been a hard one in bringing herself to perform the duty which had called down upon her the anger of one for whom she would almost have given her life; and, therefore, the result was doubly painful, more particularly, as it had effected nothing, apparently, towards a change in his habits.
"But perhaps it will cause him to reflect.--If so, I will cheerfully bear his anger," was the consoling thought that pa.s.sed through her mind, after the pa.s.sage of an hour, spent under the influence of most painful feelings.
"O, if he will only be more on his guard," she went on, in thought--"if he will only give up that habit, how glad I should be!"
Just then she heard him enter, and marked the sound of his footsteps as he ascended to his own room, with a fluttering heart. In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes, he went down again, and she listened to observe if he were going out. But he entered the parlours, and then all was, again, quiet.
For some time Alice debated with herself whether she should go down to him or not, and make the effort to dispel the anger that she had aroused against her; but she could not make up her mind how to act, for she could not tell in what mood she might find him. One repulse was as much, she felt, as she could bear. At last, however, her feelings became so wrought up, that she determined to go down and seek to be reconciled. Her brother's anger was more than she could bear.
When she entered the parlours, with her usual quiet step, she found him seated near the window, reading. He lifted his head as she came in, and she saw at a glance that all his angry feelings were gone.
How lightly did her heart bound as she sprang forward!
"Will you forgive me, brother?" she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder as she stood by his side, and bent her face down until her fair cheek almost touched his own.
"Rather let me say, will you forgive me, sister?" was his reply, as he kissed her affectionately--"for the unkind repulse I gave you, when to say what you did must have caused you a most painful sacrifice of feeling?"
"Painful indeed it was, brother. But it is past now and all forgiven."