Chapter 48
Unable to resist the impulse that drove him onward, the rum-seller entered the house.
"See there, sir! Look! Behold the work of your own hands!" exclaimed the woman with startling emphasis, as he found himself in a room, with a few old rags in one corner of it for a bed, upon which lay, in the last sad agonies of dissolution, his old customer, Bill Riley, who, he had been that day informed by his bar-keeper, had joined the temperance society.
"There, sir! See there!" she continued, grasping his arm, and dragging him up to where the miserable wretch lay. "Look at him!--Bill--Bill!" she continued, stooping down, while she still held tightly the rum-seller's arm, and shaking the dying man.
"Bill--Bill! Here he is. You said you wanted to see him! Now curse him, Bill! Curse him with your dying breath!" And the woman's voice rose to a wild shriek.
The wretch, thus rudely and suddenly called back from the brink of death into a painful consciousness of existence, half rose up, and stared wildly around him for a moment or two.
"Here he is, Bill! Here he is!" resumed his wife, again shaking him violently.
"Who? Who?" inquired the dying man.
"Why, the rum-seller, who robbed you of your hard earnings, that he might roll in wealth and feast daily on luxuries, while your wife and children were starving! Here he is. Curse him now, with your dying breath! Curse him, I say, Bill Riley! Curse him!"
"Who? Who?" eagerly asked the wretched being, a thrill of new life seeming to flash through his exhausted frame--"Old Graves? Where is he?"
"Here he is, Bill! Here he is! Don't you see him?"
"Ah, yes! I see him now!" And Riley fixed his eyes, that seemed, to the rum-seller, to burn and flash like b.a.l.l.s of fire, sending off vivid scintillations, upon him with a long and searching stare.
"Ah, yes," he continued, "this is old Graves, the rum-seller, who has sent more men to h.e.l.l, and more widows and orphans to the poor-house, than any other man living. How do you do, sir?" rising up still more in his bed, and grasping the unwilling hand of the tavern-keeper, which he clenched hard, and shook with superhuman strength. "How are you, old fellow? I'm glad to see you once more in this world. We shall have a jolly time in the next, though, shan't we?"
A smile of malignant triumph flitted for a moment over the livid face of Riley. Then its expression brightened into one of intelligence.
"Look here," he said, and brought his lips close to the ear of Graves. Then in a deep whisper, he breathed the words,
"Sub-Treasury!"
The rum-seller started, suddenly, and grew paler than ever.
Instantly a loud, unearthly laugh rang through the room, causing the blood to curdle about his heart.
"Ha! ha! ha! I thought that chord could be touched! Ha! ha! That was a capital idea, wasn't it, old fellow? But you were too late for Bill Riley. You thought the temperance men had him. But that was a little mistake."
The sweat already stood in large drops on the pale face of the tavern-keeper, and his limbs trembled like the quivering aspen.
"Horrible!" he murmured, closing his eyes, to shut out the scene.
"Not half so horrible as the place where I was, just before you came in, Mr. Graves," said Riley in a calmer voice. "And where do you think that was?"
"In h.e.l.l, I suppose," replied the rum-seller, with the energy of desperation.
"Exactly," was the calm reply. "And what do you think I heard and saw there? Let me tell you. I was dead for a little while, and found myself in strange quarters, as you will say, when you get there. I always thought
"There are a great many little h.e.l.ls there, all grouped into one immense h.e.l.l, like societies here, grouped into one larger society or nation. And there, as here, every smaller society is engaged in doing some particular thing, and all are in one society who love to do that thing. As for instance, all who, while here, have taken delight in theft, are there a.s.sociated together, and are all the while busy in inventing reasons to put into the heads of thieves here to justify them in stealing. Murderers, in like manner; and so rum-sellers. They have a h.e.l.l all filled with rum-sellers there! I was let into it for a little while to see what was going on, and who do you think I saw there. Why, old Adams, that died about a month ago. The old fellow was as lively as a cricket, and as busy as a bee.
"'How is that prime old chap, Graves?' he asked of me, as soon as he found out I was there.
"'I havn't seen him for a week,' I replied. 'I have been sick for that time.'
"'But he's a rum 'un, though, ain't he?' chuckled Adams. 'Many a scheme he and I have laid to get money out of the grog-drinkers. But he was always ahead of me. I used, in my early days, to feel a little compunction when I saw a clever fellow going to ruin. But it never affected him in the least. All was fish that came into his net. I wish we had him with us. We want just such scheming devils as he to help us devise ways and means to circ.u.mvent these temperance men. They'll ruin us, if we don't look out. How were they coming on when you left?'
"'Carrying everything before them,' I said. 'The rum-sellers are almost driven to their wit's ends for devices to get customers.'
"'Too bad! Too bad!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed old Adams. 'I'll turn h.e.l.l upside down, but what I'll beat them out.'
"'You'll have to do your prettiest, then, let me tell you, old fellow,' I rejoined, 'for the temperance cause is going with a perfect rush. It is a mighty torrent whose course, neither men nor devils can stay. It moves onward with a power and majesty that astonishes the world,--and onward it will move, until your h.e.l.l of rum-makers and rum-sellers will not be able to find a single point through which to flow into the world and tempt men with your infernal devices!'
"O, if you had heard the horrid yell of malignancy which arose, and echoed through the black chamber of that region of wickedness and misery, it would have made you shrink into nothingness with terror.
They fairly gnashed on me with their teeth in impotent rage. At length old Adams got upon a whiskey-still--they have such things in h.e.l.l--the pattern was got from there when introduced here, and made a speech to his a.s.sociates. From what he said, I found that he had minute information of all that was going on in this region.
"'Old Graves,' he said--'our very best man, has already been so reduced in his business by this accursed temperance movement, that he has recently thought seriously of giving up. This must not be. We cannot lose him. No mind receives our suggestions more readily than his.--If he gives up, we lose a host. You all know, that our influence on earth is powerless, unless we have men to carry out our plans. If they will not listen to our suggestion--if they will not become our agents, we can do nothing there. As spiritual existences, we cannot affect that which is corporeal, except through the spiritual united with the corporeal--that is, through spiritual bodies in material bodies. In other words, we can act on men's minds, and they can do our works on earth for us. Now, seeing that we can do nothing to stop this temperance movement, except through the self-love of the rum-sellers and rum-makers, it will never do to let old Graves fall. We must help him to some new scheme by which to bring back his diminished custom. Now what shall it be?'
"'Some device that will call attention to his bar-room, is what is wanted,' remarked one.
"Yes, that is plain enough,' replied old Adams, who seemed to be a kind of head devil there--'but what shall it be? That's the question!'
"'Suppose we put him up to getting a woman to walk a plank,'
suggested one.
"'No. That has been tried already; and if it is tried again so soon, these temperance men will cry, humbug!'
"'How would it do for him to get a pretty girl behind his bar.'
"'That might do. But then, his wife is a sort of religious woman, and wouldn't let him do it.'
"Couldn't we induce him to poison her, and so get her out of the way?'
"'No--That's out of the question. He kind of likes the woman too well for that.'
"'What, then, do you suggest?'
"'Some new drink will be the thing. Something that will tickle the ear at the same time that it tickles the palate. It will be a great thing, if, in this matter, we can kill two birds with one stone.
Bring back by some new attraction the wavering ones, and turn the tide of custom in the direction of our very particular friend Mr.
Graves.'
"'Have you thought of a name for it?'
"'No.'
"'How would Ambrosia do?' suggested one.
"'Not at all,' replied old Adams. 'It aint the thing to catch gulls now-a-days. And more than that, it isn't something new.'
"'What do you think of Harlequinade?'
"'That might answer; but it's been used, already.'
"'Fiscal agent?'