CHAPTER IV.
ASLEEP IN JESUS.
Gilbert Allison, of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, wholesale and retail liquor dealers, walking briskly along a sideway that led toward one of the great thoroughfares of the city, halted a second before crossing the street. As he stopped a voice reached his ear. Hearing the voice he took a more careful glance at the surroundings and found himself standing in front of a plain little wooden structure that he learned, from a sign upon one corner, was some sort of an orthodox chapel. Through the narrow, open doorway the voice floated:
Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep,
From which none ever wake to weep—
A calm and undisturbed repose,
Unbroken by the last of foes.
Asleep in Jesus! Oh, how sweet
To be for such a slumber meet!
With holy confidence to sing
That death has lost its venom sting.
Both words and tune were unfamiliar to him. Was it the song itself, sung to the sweetly pathetic tune of "Rest," was it the strangely beautiful and solemn voice of the singer, or was it common curiosity to see the owner of the unusual voice that proved the attraction prompting him to step into the vestibule? Unseen he watched as the song went on:
Asleep in Jesus! peaceful rest,
Whose waking is supremely blest.
No fear nor foe shall dim the hour
That manifests the Savior's power.
Asleep in Jesus! Oh, for me
May such a blissful refuge be!
Securely shall my ashes lie
And wait the summons from the sky.
The sweet voice of the singer died away, and the stillness was broken only by low sobbing. Then the minister arose.
Gilbert Allison had seen enough. The plain, dark coffin just before the altar railing told him that another human soul had left its earthly body and had gone beyond.
He was not interested in this. His mind dwelt on the singer. She was rather small, a well-formed and graceful appearing young woman of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-four. She wore a plain dark dress, and a round hat rested on the masses of red-brown hair that framed her face and crowned her shapely head. Here and there in the mass a carved silver hair-pin showed itself, and Gilbert Allison found himself studying the effect as he walked down the street; found himself puzzled as to why he had stopped and noticed her hair or her. Evidently she had made an impression on him. He tried, in a way, to analyze this, and finally gave it up, yet found himself continually recalling the face in its frame of red-brown hair.
He had known many charming women in his three and thirty years of life, but he had never felt before the indescribable charm that had suddenly, like the fragrance of a hidden violet, come to him for the unknown singer in the dingy chapel. Gilbert Allison had guarded well his heart's affections, but there comes a time in the lives of most men when the heart refuses to be subject to the will and obstinately goes whither it pleases. This man's heart was about to assert its rights. The daughter of a Republican was to have a lover, for it was Miss Thorn who sang.
That Miss Thorn should sing had been the wish of the now lifeless sleeper, and Jean had done her best.
All that was mortal of Maggie Crowley rested in the plain, dark coffin. A life fraught with sorrow and tears and an innocent shame was ended; a body racked with hunger and pain and cold was at rest. From the time of her awful hurt, now a year ago, Maggie had been an invalid. The children had gone out to work, and the frail mother had tried to cheer them as she toiled in the valley of despair. A new sorrow had come into the wretched home: Cora, yet a child in years, because she had a fair face and a drunkard for a father, had been robbed of her one priceless possession—her unspotted character—by a man whose name was familiar in high circles, and whose hand was courted by more than one mother for some cherished daughter.
From the time that her sister had bartered away her purity, in the bitter, thankless battle that she fought for bread, Maggie had steadily grown weaker, and when the mother knew the time was near at hand for her to go she sent for Miss Thorn.
Jean had never been beside a death-bed, but she did not hesitate.
Maggie was lying, white and thin, upon the pillow. She looked eagerly toward the door. Her eyes lit with a lingering light, and a faint smile came around the corners of her drawn mouth when she saw that it was Jean. She spoke slowly and softly, without much effort, and quite distinctly.
"I'm going pretty soon, Miss Thorn, and I wanted to see you. You've been so good to us—God will bless you for it. When I am gone, don't forget poor mother. Please don't, Miss Thorn! She will be sad. I'm the only one that remembered the other days, and we used sometimes to talk of them and pray that they might come back. Maybe God will send them back some day—but I will not be here. I'm not afraid to die. Christ died for the drunkard's child—I'm sure he did. I'm so glad to go. In my Father's house are many mansions—many mansions—one for us."
She closed her eyes as she repeated the words softly.
"When I am gone, do not feel sad, mother—not too sad," she continued in a moment. "Think that I have only gone to sleep to wake up where there is no more sorrow. I'll be waiting in our mansion, mother, and there we will be happy, for the Book says he will not be there who puts the bottle to his neighbor's lips."
She stopped to rest. The room was very quiet.
"When my father comes," a look of intense longing came into her sunken eyes, and for a moment she struggled to force back the great sob of sorrow that seemed choking her, "tell him 'goodby' for Maggie. Perhaps he will be sorry—not like he once would have been—just a little. Don't let the children forget me. Dear children! How I wish I could take them all to the mansion. And Cora, poor Cora——"
The last tears that ever shone in Maggie's eyes filled them now.
"God knows about Cora," said Jean, tenderly, while the mother wept in silence.
The dying girl lay quite exhausted, and, while she rested, her eyes wandered from one to the other of the few around the bed and rested lovingly on her mother's face. Her minutes were numbered. Mortality was ebbing away. When she spoke again it was with more of an effort, pausing now and then for breath.
"Stoop over, mother; let me put—my arms around—your dear, kind neck. Put your face down—so I can put my cheek—against yours—as I did when we were happy. I'm going back—to it. I smell the roses. I hear the pigeons—on the roof. Lift me—mother—gently. I am—tired. Sing—my—good night—song—I'll—go—to—sleep."
Mrs. Crowley drew the dying girl's head close to her heart and tried to sing; but her voice failed. Then, in the presence of the death angel, Jean sang for the girl's long sleeping.
Suddenly a clear, happy, childish voice rang out on the stillness—"Papa's coming!"
It was the last. The arms around the mother's neck unclasped. The weary head sank upon the pillow. The eyelids fluttered. The breaths came shorter and shorter—the weary girl had entered into rest.
The soul of the drunkard's daughter had gone where justice reigns supreme; where a God of justice watches the kingdoms of the earth and in mercy stays the doom that comes a certain penalty of the nation that sells its maids and youths to the rum fiend.
Mrs. Crowley stood looking down on the wan face of her first-born.
"Thank God she is happy! But it's hard—so hard!"
A mother's love is the same the world around. This mother threw herself down by the bedside, and, holding one of the lifeless hands to her lips, sobbed bitterly.
It seemed a desecration that just now the father should come stumbling into the scene, filling the room with the fumes of liquor and muttering drunken curses. But Maggie was beyond the reach of human harm. This would never pain her heart again.
Neighbors came in, and Jean stepped out into the fresh air.
It was nearly noontime. The streets were busy, and as she went towards home she saw the beer wagons driving in every direction, loaded with their freight of sorrow and pain and death. As she passed the palaces of gilded doom, arrayed in cut glass and mirrors, luring the souls of men and boys to hell, she thought of the Christian voters of the nation who allow it to be so because, bound by party ties and fooled by party leaders, they will not force this mighty issue to the front and demand its recognition at the ballot-box; and these words rang in her ears: "Because I have called and ye have refused, ye have set at naught all my counsel. I also will laugh at your calamity when your destruction cometh as a whirlwind."
The words burned in her mind, and when she reached home she entered the library and without removing hat or gloves threw herself upon a sofa.
It was not quite time for luncheon. The house was quiet.
Vivian had, during the year, married the rector of a large and fashionable city church. For weeks before the eventful occasion life had been one round of shopping and fitting, of entertaining and rehearsing. Jean, as maid of honor, had figured conspicuously in the different functions, and for a time her mind was so absorbed with the fragrance and sunshine of life that its seamy side was forgotten. But after it was all over her thoughts and sympathies went out again to that family of the "other half" that she had so strangely become interested in, and the old question pressed itself for solution, why, in a Christian land of plenty, such a state of life for such vast numbers was allowable or even possible.
With the sound of the dying girl's voice in her ears and the sight of a nation's legalized poison yet before her vision she rested, and so engrossed was she with her thoughts that she did not notice the entrance of her father.
"A penny for your thoughts, my dear."
Jean looked up suddenly. Then she caught her father's hand and drew him to her side.
"I have seen a death to-day, father—a death, a drunkard, loads of beer and whisky."
"Crowley dead at last?"
"Maggie."
"Poor girl. No doubt she is better off."
"Yes, better off," repeated Jean. "But, father, I have been thinking of the whirlwind. You know the Book that has voiced unerringly the stage play of the ages says destruction is coming as a whirlwind—as a whirlwind. Can you not catch its roaring under the bluster of silver and tariff and war? Do you never hear the mutterings of its power? Are there not signs of the coming whirlwind—signs unmistakable—roastings in the South and lynchings in the North, bloody strikes from east to west, deep-seated unrest among the nation's laboring masses, and the steadily increasing cry of a multitude of suffering and helpless people writhing under the heel of the great iniquity? Couple the signs of the times, father, with an indisputable knowledge of corruption in politics, the inefficacy of the law because of the absolute power of rum and 'boodle' and the utter absence of any fixed moral principle in the dealings of the great majority of the old party leaders, and have we not an 'issue' that imperatively demands the attention of every loyal American?
"The more I think, the less I blame the laboring element for their dissatisfaction, bordering on madness at times. I feel that they have just cause to be alarmed. Am I a pessimist, father, or is there a cancer eating out the nation's life?"
The young woman stood in the center of the room, erect and with arm extended. The lawyer was looking at her with a gleam of fatherly admiration; but as she closed the outburst with her question he grew grave and stroked his beard. The facts were not unfamiliar to him.
"I do wish," he said thoughtfully, "that the laboring element would see that it is to their interests to stand by that party that promises them the most in the way of reform, instead of making so much fuss and striking and splitting into small parties that can hope to effect nothing and might cripple their best friend and put the country hopelessly in the hands of the political enemies of progress and reform."
Jean laughed.
"You look now for all the world, father, like a child whom I saw a few days ago. I came upon her holding a doll's body, with a stump of neck where the head had once been. She looked down at it tenderly and smiled a dear little motherly smile. 'What do you see, child?' I asked. 'My dolly's beautiful face,' she said. 'Where is it?' said I. 'It's gone,' she answered, proudly, but with the fond look still in her eyes. You view the reform element in your party in about the same light."
"When did you turn champion of the labor party?" said the judge, a trifle impatiently.
"I have done no turning. There is but one party standing for the real good of the people. What is the use of organizing a party to exterminate trusts and then being afraid to measure arms politically with the greatest trust on earth? The laboring element will seek their best interests sooner or later."
"Your party has added a few labor planks to catch votes."
"I beg your pardon, father. Almost from the beginning, some thirty years ago, this party stood as it does now. The trouble with you is, if I may be allowed to say it, you know nothing of the party I have discovered. Let me read you its platform."
And from a small, green book Jean began her reading, while Judge Thorn listened attentively. But before she had finished James appeared with the evening paper, and almost unconsciously he opened it. As he cast his eyes on the page a smile overspread his face, and the words of the reading were lost. Jean finished presently, and frowned a little, when she saw her father so deeply engrossed in his paper. Presently he looked up, the broad smile still upon his face.
"Jean, my girl, listen!" and he read an account of the dramatic passage of the anti-canteen law by Congress.
Judge Thorn had been deeply interested in the canteen question. He had known a boy, the son of a professional friend, who had been most carefully and prayerfully reared at home in fear of the inheritance of an appetite for liquor, but who had gone at his country's call to uphold her honor, and had become a drunkard through the regimental canteen. He himself had seen the fifty law-breaking canteens in Camp Thomas at Chickamauga, with their daily sales amounting to hundreds of dollars. He had seen something of the same evil at the little army post near their own city; and a young man who had been his confidential clerk before the war, and who was now with one of the volunteer regiments at Manila, had written to him of the canteen: "It has been the curse of this army, and has caused more deaths than the Mauser bullets. It is a recognized fact that in regiments where canteens are established drinking is not restrained, rather encouraged, and numerous sprees are started that are finished in the saloons just outside. Six cases of delirium tremens have resulted from the establishment of the regimental groggery. Our army is in danger a thousand times greater than any foreign foe may ever bring against us. When will the government take action?"
The lawyer's clear mind had seen where the responsibility for the whole system lay, and, sorely tried by the President's inaction, partly to lift from his party the odium of the canteen disgrace and partly as a matter of real heart choice, he had worked with more than his usual vigor to help bring to bear a pressure in Washington great enough to abolish the army saloon.
"Cheer, Jean!" he said. "Cheer for the party in power. The bill has passed."
"Was it your party or public sentiment in spite of your party that brought about the passage of the bill?" asked Jean.
"Sentiment, my dear girl," said the judge, dogmatically, "without machinery back of it, is good for nothing."
"Exactly. If you remember, father, that has been the burden of my plea for a new party. Answer me a question, and I will cheer so that I may be heard a block. You tell me that the position of this party you ask me to cheer for is high license; now here is a list of ninety-five of the principal cities of the country, forty-six high license and forty-nine low license. The total arrests for drunkenness in the high license cities was 288,907, as against 208,537 in the low license cities. What I want to know is this: How is this sort of a temperance measure going to 'promote temperance and morality'? Public control, local option, mulct tax and other measures you devise figure up about the same way. Take these statistics and in the light of them solve the puzzle for me."
"Statistics are hard to dwell in unity with. Take them to a preacher. This is a matter for them to deal with," laughed the judge.
"Why do they not deal with them, then? Seven million church member voters in this country! Why do not they focus their religion and do something? I divine a reason. While they live all the rest of the year with prayers and resolutions, they go out on a moral debauch on election day with a disreputable individual known as Party."
The judge stroked his beard and smiled. Then he turned again to his paper. "No need," he said, complacently, "for a better party than what we have. Listen!" and again he read the measure that had so pleased him. "Is it not splendid, and so plainly worded that a wayfaring man, though a fool or a third-rate lawyer, cannot mistake the meaning of it. Now watch the machinery work. We shall have 'father's boy' back cheering for the grand old party yet," and the judge placed his hand fondly on Jean's shoulder.
"I'll keep my eye on the 'machine,'" answered Jean, playfully, "but I am woefully afraid it is punctured, though I wouldn't mention it for anything."
