The whole truth, in all its degradation, flashed on the mind of Augusta.
Without a question or comment, she motioned to the sofa in the parlor, and her husband was laid there. She locked the street door, and when the last retreating footstep had died away, she turned to the sofa, and stood gazing in fixed and almost stupefied silence on the face of her senseless husband.
At once she realized the whole of her fearful lot. She saw before her the blight of her own affections, the ruin of her helpless children, the disgrace and misery of her husband. She looked around her in helpless despair, for she well knew the power of the vice whose deadly seal was set upon her husband. As one who is struggling and sinking in the waters casts a last dizzy glance at the green sunny banks and distant trees which seem sliding from his view, so did all the scenes of her happy days pa.s.s in a moment before her, and she groaned aloud in bitterness of spirit. "Great G.o.d! help me, help me," she prayed. "Save him--O, save my husband."
Augusta was a woman of no common energy of spirit, and when the first wild burst of anguish was over, she resolved not to be wanting to her husband and children in a crisis so dreadful.
"When he awakes," she mentally exclaimed, "I will warn and implore; I will pour out my whole soul to save him. My poor husband, you have been misled--betrayed. But you are too good, too generous, too n.o.ble to be sacrificed without a struggle."
It was late the next morning before the stupor in which Edward was plunged began to pa.s.s off. He slowly opened his eyes, started up wildly, gazed hurriedly around the room, till his eye met the fixed and sorrowful gaze of his wife. The past instantly flashed upon him, and a deep flush pa.s.sed over his countenance. There was a dead, a solemn silence, until Augusta, yielding to her agony, threw herself into his arms, and wept.
"Then you do not hate me, Augusta?" said he, sorrowfully.
"Hate you--never! But, O Edward, Edward, what has beguiled you?"
"My wife--you once promised to be my guardian in virtue--such you are, and will be. O Augusta! you have looked on what you shall never see again--never--never--so help me G.o.d!" said he, looking up with solemn earnestness.
And Augusta, as she gazed on the n.o.ble face, the ardent expression of sincerity and remorse, could not doubt that her husband was saved. But Edward"s plan of reformation had one grand defect. It was merely modification and retrenchment, and not _entire abandonment_. He could not feel it necessary to cut himself off entirely from the scenes and a.s.sociations where temptation had met him. He considered not that, when the temperate flow of the blood and the even balance of the nerves have once been destroyed, there is, ever after, a double and fourfold liability, which often makes a man the sport of the first untoward chance.
He still contrived to stimulate sufficiently to prevent the return of a calm and healthy state of the mind and body, and to make constant self-control and watchfulness necessary.
It is a great mistake to call nothing intemperance but that degree of physical excitement which completely overthrows the mental powers. There is a state of nervous excitability, resulting from what is often called moderate stimulation, which often long precedes this, and is, in regard to it, like the premonitory warnings of the fatal cholera--an unsuspected draught on the vital powers, from which, at any moment, they may sink into irremediable collapse.
It is in this state, often, that the spirit of gambling or of wild speculation is induced by the morbid cravings of an over-stimulated system. Unsatisfied with the healthy and regular routine of business, and the laws of gradual and solid prosperity, the excited and unsteady imagination leads its subjects to daring risks, with the alternative of unbounded gain on the one side, or of utter ruin on the other. And when, as is too often the case, that ruin comes, unrestrained and desperate intemperance is the wretched resort to allay the ravings of disappointment and despair.
Such was the case with Edward. He had lost his interest in his regular business, and he embarked the bulk of his property in a brilliant scheme then in vogue; and when he found a crisis coming, threatening ruin and beggary, he had recourse to the fatal stimulus, which, alas! he had never wholly abandoned.
At this time he spent some months in a distant city, separated from his wife and family, while the insidious power of temptation daily increased, as he kept up, by artificial stimulus, the flagging vigor of his mind and nervous system.
It came at last--the blow which shattered alike his brilliant dreams and his real prosperity. The large fortune brought by his wife vanished in a moment, so that scarcely a pittance remained in his hands. From the distant city where he had been to superintend his schemes, he thus wrote to his too confiding wife:--
"Augusta, all is over! expect no more from your husband--believe no more of his promises--for he is lost to you and you to him. Augusta, our property is gone; _your_ property, which I have blindly risked, is all swallowed up. But is that the worst? No, no, Augusta; _I_ am lost--lost, body and soul, and as irretrievably as the perishing riches I have squandered. Once I had energy--health--nerve--resolution; but all are gone: yes, yes, I have yielded--I do yield daily to what is at once my tormentor and my temporary refuge from intolerable misery. You remember the sad hour you first knew your husband was a drunkard. Your look on that morning of misery--shall I ever forget it? Yet, blind and confiding as you were, how soon did your ill-judged confidence in me return! Vain hopes! I was even then past recovery--even then sealed over to blackness of darkness forever.
"Alas! my wife, my peerless wife, why am I your husband? why the father of such children as you have given me? Is there nothing in your unequalled loveliness--nothing in the innocence of our helpless babes, that is powerful enough to recall me? No, there is not.
"Augusta, you know not the dreadful gnawing, the intolerable agony of this master pa.s.sion. I walk the floor--I think of my own dear home, my high hopes, my proud expectations, my children, my wife, my own immortal soul. I feel that I am sacrificing all--feel it till I am withered with agony; but the hour comes--the burning hour, and _all is in vain_. I shall return to you no more, Augusta. All the little wreck I have saved I send: you have friends, relatives--above all, you have an energy of mind, a capacity of resolute action, beyond that of ordinary women, and you shall never be bound--the living to the dead. True, you will suffer, thus to burst the bonds that unite us; but be resolute, for you will suffer more to watch from day to day the slow workings of death and ruin in your husband. Would you stay with me, to see every vestige of what you once loved pa.s.sing away--to endure the caprice, the moroseness, the delirious anger of one no longer master of himself? Would you make your children victims and fellow-sufferers with you? No! dark and dreadful is my path! I will walk it alone: no one shall go with me.
"In some peaceful retirement you may concentrate your strong feelings upon your children, and bring them up to fill a place in your heart which a worthless husband has abandoned. If I leave you now, you will remember me as I have been--you will love me and weep for me when dead; but if you stay with me, your love will be worn out; I shall become the object of disgust and loathing. Therefore farewell, my wife--my first, best love, farewell! with you I part with hope,--
"And with hope, farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost: Evil, be thou my good."
This is a wild strain, but fit for me: do not seek for me, do not write: nothing can save me."
Thus abruptly began and ended the letter that conveyed to Augusta the death doom of her hopes. There are moments of agony when the most worldly heart is pressed upward to G.o.d, even as a weight will force upward the reluctant water. Augusta had been a generous, a high-minded, an affectionate woman, but she had lived entirely for this world. Her chief good had been her husband and her children. These had been her pride, her reliance, her dependence. Strong in her own resources, she had never felt the need of looking to a higher power for a.s.sistance and happiness. But when this letter fell from her trembling hand, her heart died within her at its wild and reckless bitterness.
In her desperation she looked up to G.o.d. "What have I to live for now?"
was the first feeling of her heart.
But she repressed this inquiry of selfish agony, and besought almighty a.s.sistance to nerve her weakness; and here first began that practical acquaintance with the truths and hopes of religion which changed her whole character.
The possibility of blind, confiding idolatry of any earthly object was swept away by the fall of her husband, and with the full energy of a decided and desolate spirit, she threw herself on the protection of an almighty Helper. She followed her husband to the city whither he had gone, found him, and vainly attempted to save.
There were the usual alternations of short-lived reformations, exciting hopes only to be destroyed. There was the gradual sinking of the body, the decay of moral feeling and principle--the slow but sure approach of disgusting animalism, which marks the progress of the drunkard.
It was some years after that a small and partly ruinous tenement in the outskirts of A. received a new family. The group consisted of four children, whose wan and wistful countenances, and still, unchildlike deportment, testified an early acquaintance with want and sorrow. There was the mother, faded and care-worn, whose dark and melancholy eyes, pale cheeks, and compressed lips told of years of anxiety and endurance.
There was the father, with haggard face, unsteady step, and that callous, reckless air, that betrayed long familiarity with degradation and crime. Who, that had seen Edward Howard in the morning and freshness of his days, could have recognized him in this miserable husband and father? or who, in this worn and woe-stricken woman, would have known the beautiful, brilliant, and accomplished Augusta? Yet such changes are not fancy, as many a bitter and broken heart can testify.
Augusta had followed her guilty husband through many a change and many a weary wandering. All hope of reformation had gradually faded away. Her own eyes had seen, her ears had heard, all those disgusting details, too revolting to be portrayed; for in drunkenness there is no royal road--no salvo for greatness of mind, refinement of taste, or tenderness of feeling. All alike are merged in the corruption of a moral death.
The traveller, who met Edward reeling by the roadside, was sometimes startled to hear the fragments of cla.s.sical lore, or wild bursts of half-remembered poetry, mixing strangely with the imbecile merriment of intoxication. But when he stopped to gaze, there was no further mark on his face or in his eye by which he could be distinguished from the loathsome and lowest drunkard.
Augusta had come with her husband to a city where they were wholly unknown, that she might at least escape the degradation of their lot in the presence of those who had known them in better days. The long and dreadful struggle that annihilated the hopes of this life had raised her feelings to rest upon the next, and the habit of communion with G.o.d, induced by sorrows which nothing else could console, had given a tender dignity to her character such as nothing else could bestow.
It is true, she deeply loved her children; but it was with a holy, chastened love, such as inspired the sentiment once breathed by Him "who was made perfect through sufferings."
"For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified."
Poverty, deep poverty, had followed their steps, but yet she had not fainted. Talents which in her happier days had been nourished merely as luxuries, were now stretched to the utmost to furnish a support; while from the resources of her own reading she drew that which laid the foundation for early mental culture in her children.
Augusta had been here but a few weeks before her footsteps were traced by her only brother, who had lately discovered her situation, and urged her to forsake her unworthy husband and find refuge with him.
"Augusta, my sister, I have found you!" he exclaimed, as he suddenly entered one day, while she was busied with the work of her family.
"Henry, my dear brother!" There was a momentary illumination of countenance accompanying these words, which soon faded into a mournful quietness, as she cast her eyes around on the scanty accommodations and mean apartment.
"I see how it is, Augusta; step by step, you are sinking--dragged down by a vain sense of duty to one no longer worthy. I cannot bear it any longer; I have come to take you away."
Augusta turned from him, and looked abstractedly out of the window. Her features settled in thought. Their expression gradually deepened from their usual tone of mild, resigned sorrow to one of keen anguish.
"Henry," said she, turning towards him, "never was mortal woman so blessed in another as I once was in him. How can I forget it? Who knew him in those days that did not admire and love him? They tempted and insnared him; and even I urged him into the path of danger. He fell, and there was none to help. I urged reformation, and he again and again promised, resolved, and began. But again they tempted him--even his very best friends; yes, and that, too, when they knew his danger. They led him on as far as it was safe for _them_ to go, and when the sweep of his more excitable temperament took him past the point of safety and decency, they stood by, and coolly wondered and lamented. How often was he led on by such heartless friends to humiliating falls, and then driven to desperation by the cold look, averted faces, and cruel sneers of those whose medium temperament and cooler blood saved them from the snares which they saw were enslaving him. What if _I_ had forsaken him _then_? What account should I have rendered to G.o.d? Every time a friend has been alienated by his comrades, it has seemed to seal him with another seal. I am his wife--and mine will be _the last_. Henry, when I leave him, I _know_ his eternal ruin is sealed. I cannot do it now; a little longer--a little longer; the hour, I see, must come. I know my duty to my children forbids me to keep them here; take them--they are my last earthly comforts, Henry--but you must take them away. It may be--O G.o.d--perhaps it _must be_, that I shall soon follow; but not till I have tried _once more_. What is this present life to one who has suffered as I have? Nothing. But eternity! O Henry! eternity--how can I abandon him to _everlasting_ despair! Under the breaking of my heart I have borne up. I have borne up under _all_ that can try a woman; but _this_ thought----" She stopped, and seemed struggling with herself; but at last, borne down by a tide of agony, she leaned her head on her hands; the tears streamed through her fingers, and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.
Her brother wept with her; nor dared he again to touch the point so solemnly guarded. The next day Augusta parted from her children, hoping something from feelings that, possibly, might be stirred by their absence in the bosom of their father.
It was about a week after this that Augusta one evening presented herself at the door of a rich Mr. L., whose princely mansion was one of the ornaments of the city of A. It was not till she reached the sumptuous drawing room that she recognized in Mr. L. one whom she and her husband had frequently met in the gay circles of their early life.
Altered as she was, Mr. L. did not recognize her, but compa.s.sionately handed her a chair, and requested her to wait the return of his lady, who was out; and then turning, he resumed his conversation with another gentleman.
"Now, Dallas," said he, "you are altogether excessive and intemperate in this matter. Society is not to be reformed by every man directing his efforts towards his neighbor, but by every man taking care of himself.
It is you and I, my dear sir, who must begin with ourselves, and every other man must do the same; and then society will be effectually reformed. Now this modern way, by which every man considers it his duty to attend to the spiritual matters of his next-door neighbor, is taking the business at the wrong end altogether. It makes a vast deal of appearance, but it does very little good."
"But suppose your neighbor feels no disposition to attend to his own improvement--what then?"
"Why, then it is his own concern, and not mine. What my Maker requires is, that I do _my_ duty, and not fret about my neighbor"s."
"But, my friend, that is the very question. What is the duty your Maker requires? Does it not include some regard to your neighbor, some care and thought for his interest and improvement?"
"Well, well, I do that by setting a good example. I do not mean by example what you do--that is, that I am to stop drinking wine because it may lead him to drink brandy, any more than that I must stop eating because he may eat too much and become a dyspeptic--but that I am to use my wine, and every thing else, temperately and decently, and thus set him a good example."
The conversation was here interrupted by the return of Mrs. L. It recalled, in all its freshness, to the mind of Augusta the days when both she and her husband had thus spoken and thought.
Ah, how did these sentiments appear to her now--lonely, helpless, forlorn--the wife of a ruined husband, the mother of more than orphan children! How different from what they seemed, when, secure in ease, in wealth, in gratified affections, she thoughtlessly echoed the common phraseology, "Why must people concern themselves so much in their neighbors" affairs? Let every man mind his own business."