CHAPTER IX.
The arrangement had been a very pleasant one, every way, but somehow John did not feel as if David had as much outside help as he needed. The young man was not imaginative; an ideal, however high, was a far less real thing to David than to old John. He pondered during many sleepless hours the advisability of having David sign the pledge. David had always refused to do it hitherto. He had a keen sense of shame in breaking a verbal promise on this subject; but he had an almost superstitious feeling regarding the obligation of anything he put his name to; and this very feeling made John hesitate to press the matter. For, he argued, and not unwisely, "if David should break this written obligation, his condition would seem to himself irremediable, and he would become quite reckless."
In the morning this anxiety was solved. When John came down to breakfast, he found David walking about the room with a newspaper in his hand, and in a fever heat of martial enthusiasm. "Uncle," he cried, "O Uncle John, such glorious news! The Alamo is taken. Colin Campbell and his Highlanders were first at the ramparts, and Roy and Hector Callendar were with them. Listen?" and he threw the passion and fervor of all his military instincts into the glowing words which told, how in a storm of fire and shot, Sir Colin and his Highland regiment had pushed up the hill; and how when the Life Guards were struggling to reach their side, the brave old commander turned round and shouted, "We'll hae nane but Hieland bonnets here!" "O Uncle John, what would I not have given to have marched with Roy and Hector behind him? With such a leader I would not turn my back on any foe."
"David, you have a far harder fight before you, and a far grander Captain."
"Uncle, uncle, if I could see my foe; if I could meet him face to face in a real fight; but he steals into my heart, even by my nostrils, and unmans me, before I am aware."
John rang the bell sharply, and when Jenny came, he amazed her by saying, "Bring me here from the cellar three bottles of whiskey." He spoke so curt and determined that for once Jenny only wondered, and obeyed.
"That will do, my woman." Then he turned to David, and putting one bottle on the table said, "There is your foe! Face your enemy, sir! Sit down before him morning, noon, and night. Dare him to master you! Put this bottle on the table in your ain room; carry this in your hand to your office, and stand it before your eyes upon your desk. If you want a foe to face and to conquer, a foe that you can see and touch, here is one mighty enough to stir the bravest soul. And, if you turn your back on him you are a coward; a mean, poor-hearted coward, sir. And there ne'er was a coward yet, o' the Callendar blood, nor o' the Campbell line! Your Captain is nane less than the Son o' God. Hear what he says to you! 'To him that overcometh! To him that overcometh!' O Davie, you ken the rest!" and the old man was so lifted out of and above himself, that his face shone and his keen gray eyes scintillated with a light that no market-place ever saw in them.
David caught the holy enthusiasm; he seized the idea like a visible hand of God for his help. The black bottle became to him the materialization of all his crime and misery. It was a foe he could see, and touch, and defy. It seemed to mock him, to tempt him, to beg him just to open the cork, if only to test the strength of his resolutions.
Thank God he never did it. He faced his enemy the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. He kept him in sight through the temptations of a business day. He faced him most steadily in the solitude of his own room. There, indeed, his most dangerous struggles took place, and one night John heard him after two hours of restless hurried walking up and down, throw open his window, and dash the bottle upon the pavement beneath it. That was the last of his hard struggles; the bottle which replaced the one flung beyond his reach stands to-day where it has stood for nearly a quarter of a century, and David feels now no more inclination to open it than if it contained strychnine.
This is no fancy story. It is a fact. It is the true history of a soul's struggle, and I write it—God knows I do—in the strong hope that some brave fellow, who is mastered by a foe that steals upon him in the guise of good fellowship, or pleasure, or hospitality, may locate his enemy, and then face and conquer him in the name of Him who delivers his people from their sins. I do not say that all natures could do this. Some may find safety and final victory in flight, or in hiding from their foe; but I believe that the majority of souls would rise to a warfare in which the enemy was confronting them to face and fight, and would conquer.