"Oh, Mr. G----!" exclaimed the clergyman. "I am right glad to find you here. I remember seeing your name in the list of directors."
"Yes, I am one of the men engaged in this work," replied Mr. G----.
Then, as he looked more closely at Mr. Ridley, he recognized him and saw at a glance his true condition.
"My dear sir," said he, stepping forward and grasping his hand, "I am glad you have come here."
Mr. Ridley looked at, or rather beyond, him in a startled way, and then drew back a few steps. Mr. G---- saw him shiver and an expression of fear cross his face. Turning to a man who sat writing at a desk, he called him by name, and with a single glance directed his attention to Mr. Ridley. The man was by his side in a moment, and as Mr. Elliott did not fail to notice all on the alert. He spoke to Mr. Ridley in a kind but firm voice, and drew him a little way toward an adjoining room, the door of which stood partly open.
"Do the best you can for this poor man," said Mrs. Birtwell, now addressing Mr. G----. "I will pay all that is required. You know him, I see."
"Yes, I know him well. A sad case indeed. You may be sure that what can be done will be done."
At this moment Mr. Ridley gave a cry and a spring toward the door.
Glancing at him, Mrs. Birtwell saw that his countenance was distorted by terror. Instantly two men came in from the adjoining room and quickly restrained him. After two or three fruitless efforts to break away, he submitted to their control, and was immediately removed to another part of the building.
With white lips and trembling limbs Mrs. Birtwell stood a frightened spectator of the scene. It was over in a moment, but it left her sick at heart.
"What will they do with him?" she asked, her voice husky and choking.
"All that his unhappy case requires," replied Mr. G----. "The man you saw go first to his side can pity him, for he has himself more than once pa.s.sed through that awful conflict with the power of h.e.l.l upon which our poor friend has now entered. A year ago he came to this Home in a worse condition than Mr. Ridley begging us for G.o.d"s sake to take him in. A few weeks saw him, to use sacred words, "clothed and in his right mind," and since then he has never gone back a single step. Glad and grateful for his own rescue, he now devotes his life to the work of saving others. In his hands Mr. Ridley will receive the gentlest treatment consistent with needed restraint. He is better here than he could possibly be anywhere else; and when, as I trust in G.o.d the case may be, he comes out of this dreadful ordeal, he will find himself surrounded by friends and in the current of influences all leading him to make a new effort to reform his life. Poor man! You did not get him here a moment too soon."
CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. BIRTWELL slept but little that night and in the brief periods of slumber that came to her she was disturbed by unquiet dreams. The expression of Mr. Ridley"s face as the closing door shut it from her sight on the previous evening haunted her like the face of an accusing spectre.
Immediately after breakfast she dressed herself to go out, intending to visit the Home for reforming inebriates and learn something of Mr.
Ridley. Just as she came down stairs a servant opened the street door, and she saw the slender figure of Ethel.
"My poor child!" she said, with great kindness of manner, taking her by the hand and drawing her in. "You are frightened about your father."
"Oh yes, ma"am," replied Ethel, with quivering lips. "He didn"t come home all night, and I"m so scared about him. I don"t know what to do.
Maybe you"ll think it wrong in me to trouble you about it, but I am in such distress, and don"t know where to go.
"No, not wrong, my child, and I"m glad you"ve come. I ought to have sent you word about him."
"My father! Oh, ma"am, do you know where he is?"
"Yes; he came here last night sick, and I took him in my carriage to a Home for just such as he is, where he will be kindly taken care of until he gets well."
Ethel"s large brown eyes were fixed in a kind of thankful wonder on the face of Mrs. Birtwell. She could not speak. She did not even try to put thought or feeling into words. She only took the hand of Mrs. Birtwell, and after touching it with her lips laid her wet cheek against it and held it there tightly.
"Can I go and see him?" she asked, lifting her face after some moments.
"It will not be best, I think," replied Mrs. Birtwell--"that is, not now. He was very sick when we took him there, and may not be well enough to be seen this morning."
"Very sick! Oh, ma"am!" The face of Ethel grew white and her lips trembled.
"Not dangerously," said Mrs. Birtwell, "but yet quite ill. I am going now to see him; and if you will come here in a couple of hours, when I shall return home--"
"Oh. ma"am, let me go along with you," broke in Ethel. "I won"t ask to see him if it isn"t thought best, but I"ll know how he is without waiting so long."
The fear that Mr. Ridley might die in his delirium had troubled Mrs.
Birtwell all night, and it still oppressed her. She would have much preferred to go alone and learn first the good or ill of the case, but Ethel begged so hard to be permitted to accompany her that she could not persist in objection.
On reaching the Home, Mrs. Birtwell found in the office the man in whose care Mr. Ridley had been placed. Remembering what Mr. G---- had said of this man, a fresh hope for Ethel"s father sprang up in her soul as she looked into his clear eyes and saw his firm mouth and air of conscious poise and strength. She did not see in his manly face a single scar from the old battle out of which he had come at last victorious. Recognizing her, he called her by name, and not waiting for her to ask the question that looked out of her face, said:
"It is all right with him."
A cry of joy that she could not repress broke from Ethel. It was followed by sobbing and tears.
"Can we see him?" asked Mrs. Birtwell.
"The doctor will not think it best," replied the man. "He has had a pretty hard night, but, the worst is over. We must keep him quiet to-day."
"In the morning can I see him?" asked Ethel lifting her eyes, half blinded by tears, to the man"s face.
"Yes; I think I can say yes," was the reply.
"How soon?"
"Come at ten o"clock."
"You"ll let me call and ask about him this evening, won"t you?"
"Oh yes, and you will get a good report, I am sure."
The care and help and wise consideration received in the Home by Mr.
Ridley, while pa.s.sing through the awful stages of his mania, had probably saved his life. The fits of frenzy were violent, so overwhelming him with phantom terrors that in his wild and desperate struggles to escape the fangs of serpents and dragons and the horrid crew of imaginary demons that crowded his room and pressed madly upon him he would, but for the restraint to which he was subjected, have thrown himself headlong from a window or bruised and broken himself against the wall.
It was the morning of the second day after Mr. Ridley entered the Home.
He had so far recovered as to be able to sit up in his room, a clean and well ventilated apartment, neatly furnished and with an air of home comfort about it. Two or three pictures hung on the walls, one of them representing a father sitting with a child upon each knee and the happy mother standing beside them. He had looked at this picture until his eyes grew dim. Near it was an illuminated text: "WITHOUT ME YE CAN DO NOTHING."
There came, as he sat gazing at the sweet home-scene, the beauty and tenderness of which had gone down into his heart, troubling its waters deeply, a knock at the door. Then the matron, accompanied by one of the lady managers of the inst.i.tution, came in and made kind inquiries as to his condition. He soon saw that this lady was a refined and cultivated Christian woman, and it was not long before he felt himself coming under a new influence and all the old desires and purposes long ago cast away warming again into life and gathering up their feeble strength.
Gradually the lady led him on to talk to her of himself as he would have talked to his mother or his sister. She asked him of his family, and got the story of his bereavement, his despair and his helplessness.
Then she sought to inspire him with new resolutions, and to lead him to make a new effort.
"I will be a man again," he exclaimed, at last, rising to this declaration under the uplifting and stimulating influences that were around him.
Then the lady answered him in a low, earnest, tender voice that trembled with the burden of its great concern:
"Not in your own strength. That is impossible."
His lips dropped apart. He looked at her strangely.