Chapter Three.
The Swollen Stream.
It is the morning after the juvenile party at “The Firs.” A clear, bright frost still: everything outside the house fresh and vigorous: half-a-dozen labourers’ little children running to school with faces like peonies; jumping, racing, sliding, puffing out clouds of steaming breath as they shout out again and again for very excess of health and spirits.
Everything inside the house limp, languid, and lugubrious; the fires are sulky and won’t burn; the maids are sulkier still. Mr Rothwell breakfasts alone, feeling warm in nothing but his temper: the grate sends forth little white jets of smoke from a wall of black coal, instead of presenting a cheery surface of glowing heat: the toast is black at the corners and white in the middle: the eggs look so truly new laid that they seem to have come at once from the henhouse to the table, without passing through the saucepan: the coffee is feeble and the milk smoked: the news in the daily papers is flat, and the state of affairs in country and county peculiarly depressing. Upstairs, Mrs Rothwell tosses about with a sick headache, unable to rest and unwilling to rise. The young ladies are dawdling in dressing-gowns over a bedroom breakfast, and exchanging mutual sarcasms and recriminations, blended with gall and bitterness flung back on last night’s party. Poor Mark has the worst of it, nausea and splitting headache, with a shameful sense of having made both a fool and a beast of himself. So much for the delights of “lots of negus, wine, and punch!” He has also a humbling remembrance of having been rude to Mr Tankardew. A knock at his door. “Come in.”
“Please, sir, there’s a hamper come for you,” says the butler; “shall I bring it in?”
“Yes, if you like.”
The hamper is brought in and opened; it is only a small one. In the midst of a deep bed of straw lies a hard substance; it is taken out and the paper wrapped round it unfolded; only a glass tumbler! There is a paper in it on which is written, “To Mr Mark Rothwell, from Mr Esau Tankardew, to replace what he broke last night: keep it empty, my boy; keep it empty.”
Nine o’clock at “The Shrubbery.” Mary and her mother are seated at breakfast, both a little dull and disinclined to speak. At last Mary breaks the silence by a profound sigh. Mrs Franklin smiles, and says:
“You seem rather burdened with care, my child.”
“Well, I don’t know, dear mamma; I don’t think it is exactly care, but I’m dissatisfied or disappointed that I don’t feel happier for last night’s party.”
“You don’t think there was much real enjoyment in it?”
“Not to me, mamma; and I don’t imagine very much to anybody—except, perhaps, to some of the very little ones. There was a hollowness and emptiness about the whole thing; plenty of excitement and a great deal of selfishness, but nothing to make me feel really brighter and happier.”
“No, my child; I quite agree with you: and I was specially sorry for old Mr Tankardew. I can’t quite understand what induced him to come: his conduct was very strange, and yet there is something very amiable about him in the midst of his eccentricities.”
“What a horror he seems to have of wine and negus and suchlike things, mamma.”
“Yes; and I’m sure what he saw last night would not make him any fonder of them. Poor Mark Rothwell quite forgot himself. I was truly glad to get away early.”
“Oh! So was I, mamma; it was terrible. I wish he wouldn’t touch such things; I’m sure he’ll do himself harm if he does.”
“Yes, indeed, Mary; harm in body, and character, and soul. Those are fearful words, ‘No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God.’”
“I wish I was like Mr Tankardew,” says Mary, after a pause; “did you see, mamma, how he refused the negus? I never saw such a frown.”
“Well, Mary, I’m not certain that total abstinence would suit either of us, but it is better to be on the safe side. I am sure, in these days of special self-indulgence, it would be worth a little sacrifice if our example might do good; but I’ll think about it.”
It was a lovely morning in the September after the juvenile party, one of those mornings which combine the glow of summer with the richness of autumn. A picnic had been arranged to a celebrated hill about ten miles distant from Hopeworth. The Rothwells had been the originators, and had pressed Mary Franklin to join the party. Mrs Franklin had at first declined for her daughter. She increasingly dreaded any intimacy between her and Mark, whose habits she feared were getting more and more self-indulgent; and Mary herself was by no means anxious to go, but Mark’s father had been particularly pressing on the subject, more so than Mrs Franklin could exactly understand, so she yielded to the joint importunity of father and son, though with much reluctance. Mary had seen Mark occasionally since the night of the 6th of January, and still liked him, without a thought of going beyond this; but she was grieved to see how strongly her mother felt against him, and was inclined to think her a little hard. True, he had been betrayed into an excess on Twelfth night; but, then, he was no drunkard. So she argued to herself, and so too many argue; but how strange it is that people should argue so differently about the sin of drunkenness from what they argue about other sins! If a man lies to us now and then, do we call him habitually truthful? If a man steals now and then, do we call him habitually honest? Surely not; yet if a man is only now and then drunken, his fault is winked at; he is considered by many as habitually a sober man; and yet, assuredly, if there be one sin more than another which from the guilt and misery that it causes deserves little indulgence, it is the sin of drunkenness. Mary took the common view, and could not think of Mark as being otherwise than habitually sober, because he was only now and then the worse for strong drink.
It was, as we have said, a lovely September morning, and all the members of the picnic party were in high spirits. An omnibus had been hired expressly for the occasion. Mark sat by the driver, and acted as presiding genius. The common meeting-place was an old oak, above a mile out of the town, and thither by ten o’clock all the providers and their provisions had made their way. No one could look more bright than Mark Rothwell, no one more peacefully lovely than Mary Franklin. All being seated, off they started at an uproarious signal from Mark. Away they went, along level road, through pebbly lane, its banks gorgeous with foxgloves and fragrant with honeysuckles, over wild heath, and then up grassy slopes. There were fourteen in the party: Mr Rothwell, Mark and his three sisters, and a lady neighbour; Mrs Franklin and her daughter, with a female friend; and five young gentlemen who were or seemed to be cousins, more or less, to everybody. Five miles were soon passed, and then the road was crossed by a little stream. Cautiously the lumbering vehicle made its way down the shelving gravel, plunged into the sparkling water, fouling it with thick eddies of liquid mud, and then, with some slight prancings on the part of the willing horses, gained the opposite bank. The other five miles were soon accomplished, all feeling the exhilarating effect of drinking in copious draughts of mountain air—God’s pure and unadulterated stimulant to strengthen the nerves, string up the muscles, and clear the brain, free from every drop of spirit except the glowing spirit of health. And now the omnibus was abandoned by a little roadside inn to the care of a hostler, who took the horses (poor dumb brutes!) to feast on corn and water, God’s truly “good creatures,” unspoilt by the perverse hand of self-indulgent man!
The driver, with the rest of the party, toiled up the hill-side, and all, on gaining the summit, gazed with admiration across one of those lovely scenes which may well make us feel that the stamp of God’s hand is there, however much man may have marred what his Creator has made: wood and lane, cornfields red-ripe, turnip fields in squares of dazzling green, were spread out before them in rich embroidery with belts of silver stream flashing like diamonds on the robe of beauty with which Almighty love had clothed the earth. Oh! To think that sin should defile so fair a prospect! Yet sin was there, though unseen by those delighted gazers. Ay, and thickly sown among those sweet hills and dales were drunkards’ houses, where hearts were withering, and beings made for immortality were destroying body and soul by a lingering suicide.
An hour passed quickly by, and there came a summons to luncheon. Under a tall rock, affording an unbroken view of the magnificent landscape outspread below, the tablecloth was laid and secured at the corners by large stones. Pies both savoury and sweet were abundant, bread sufficient, salt scanty, and water absent altogether. Bottles were plentiful—bottles of ale, of porter, of wines heavy and light. Corks popped, champagne fizzed, ale sparkled. Mark surrendered the eatables into other hands, and threw his whole energies into the joint consumption and distribution of strong drink. He seemed in this matter, at least, to act upon the rule that “Example is better than precept”: if he pressed others to drink, he led the way by taking copious draughts himself. The driver, too, was not forgotten; the poor man was getting a chance of rising a little above his daily plodding as he looked out on the lovely scenery before him: but he was not to be left to God’s teachings; ale, porter, champagne, he must taste them all. Mark insisted on it; so the unfortunate man drank and drank, and then threw himself down among some heath to sleep off, if he could, the fumes of alcohol that were clouding his brains.
And what of Mrs Franklin and Mary? Both had declined all the stimulants, and had asked for water.
“Nonsense,” cried Mark; “water! I’ve taken very good care that there shall be no water drunk to-day; you must take some wine or ale, you must indeed.”
“We will manage without it, if you please,” said Mrs Franklin quietly.
Mark pressed the intoxicants upon them even to rudeness, but without effect. Mr Rothwell was evidently annoyed at his son’s pertinacity, and tried to check him; but all in vain, for Mark had taken so much as just to make him obstinate and unmanageable. But, finding that he could not prevail, the young man hurried away in anger, and plied the other members of the company with redoubled vigour.
So engrossing had been the luncheon that few of the party had noticed a sudden lull in the atmosphere, and an oppressive calm which had succeeded to the brisk and cheery breeze. But now, as Mary rose from her seat on the grass, she said to her mother:
“Oh, mamma, how close it has become! And look there in the distance: what a threatening bank of clouds! I fear we are going to have a storm.”
“I fear so indeed, Mary; we must give our friends warning, and seek out a shelter.”
All had now become conscious of the change. A stagnant heat brooded over everything; not a breath of wind; huge banks of magnificent storm-cloud came marching up majestically from the horizon, throwing out little jets of lightning, with solemn murmurs of thunder. Drop, drop, drop, tinkled on the gathered leaves, now quicker, now quicker, and thicker. Under a huge roof of overhanging rock the party cowered together. At last, down came the storm with a blast like a hurricane, and deluges of rain. On, on it poured relentlessly, with blinding lightning and deafening peals of thunder. Hour after hour! Would it never cease? At last a lull between four and five o’clock, and, as the tempest rolled murmuring away, the dispirited friends began their preparations for returning. Six o’clock before all had reached the inn. Where were the driver and Mark? Another tedious hour before they appeared, and each manifestly the worse for liquor. Past seven by the time they had fairly started. And now the clouds began to gather again. On they went, furiously at first, and then in unsteady jerks, the omnibus swaying strangely. It was getting dark, and the lowering clouds made it darker still. Not a word was spoken by the passengers, but each was secretly dreading the crossing of the stream. At last the bank was gained—but what a change! The little brook had become a torrent deep and strong.
“Oh! For goodness’ sake, stop! Stop! Let us get out,” screamed the Misses Rothwell.
“In with it! In with it!” roared Mark to the driver; “dash through like a trump.”
“Tchuck, tchuck,” was the half-drunken driver’s reply, as he lashed his horses and urged them into the stream.
Down they went: splash! Dash! Plunge! The water foaming against the
wheels like a millstream. Screams burst from all the terrified ladies except Mary and her mother, who held each other’s hand tightly. Mrs Franklin had taught her daughter presence of mind both by example and precept. But now the water rushed into the vehicle itself as the frightened horses struggled for the opposite bank. Mark’s voice was now heard in curses, as he snatched the whip from the driver and scourged the poor bewildered horses. Another splash: the driver was gone: the poor animals pulled nobly. Crash! Jerk! Bang! A trace had snapped: another jerk, a fearful dashing and struggling, the omnibus was drawn half out of the water, and lay partly over on its side: then all was still except the wails and the shrieks of the ladies. Happily a lamp had been lighted and still burned in the omnibus, which was now above the full violence of the water. The door was opened and the passengers released; but by whom?—certainly not by Mark. A tall figure moved about in the dusk, and coming up to Mary threw a large cloak over her shoulders, for it was now raining heavily, and said in a voice whose tones she was sure she knew:
“Come with me, my child, your mother is close at hand; there, trust to me; take my other arm, Mrs Franklin: very fortunate I was at hand to help. The drink, the drink,” he muttered in a low voice; “if they’d stuck to the water at the beginning they wouldn’t have stuck in the water at the end.”
And now a light flashed on them: it was the ruddy glow from a forge.
“Come in for a moment,” said their conductor, “till I see what is to be done. Tom Flint, lend us a lantern, and send your Jim to show some of these good people the way to the inn; they’ll get no strong drink there,” he said, half to himself.
And now several of the unlucky company had straggled into the smithy, which was only a few yards from the swollen stream. Among these was Mark, partially sobered by the accident, and dripping from head to foot.
“Here’s some capital stuff to stave off a cold,” he said, addressing Mrs Franklin and her daughter, whose faces were visible in the forge light: at the same time he rilled the cover of a small flask with spirits. “Come, let us be as jolly as we can under the circumstances.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs Franklin; “perhaps a very little mixed with water might be prudent, as Mary, I fear, is very wet.”
Mark stretched out the cup towards her, but before a drop could be taken the tall stranger had stepped forward, and snatching it, had emptied its contents on the glowing coals. Up there shot a brilliant dazzling flame to the smoky roof, and in that vivid blaze Mrs Franklin and Mary both recognised in their timely helper none other than Mr Esau Tankardew.