‘Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy sirups of the world
Can ever medicine me to the sweet sleep’
I once slept beneath this hallowed roof.”
“No, my son—but there is a remedy more balmy and powerful than all the drugs of the East, which you can obtain without money and without price.”
Louis shook his head mournfully.
“I will give you an anodyne to-night, prepared by my own hand, and to-morrow—”
“Give me the anodyne, kindest and best of mothers, but don’t, for Heaven’s sake, talk of to-morrow.”
But whether man speak or be silent, Time, the unresting traveler, presses on. Never but once have its chariot wheels been stayed, when the sun stood still on the plains of Gibeon, and the moon hung pale and immovable over the vale of Ajalon. Sorrow and remorse are great prophets, but Time is greater still, and they can no more arrest or accelerate its progress than the breath of a new-born infant can move the eternal mountains from their base.
Louis slept, thanks to his step-mother’s anodyne, and the dreaded morrow came, when the broad light of day must reveal all the inroads the indulgence of guilty passions had caused. Another revelation must be made. He knew his father would demand a full history of his conduct, and it was a relief to his burdened conscience, that had so long groaned under the weight of secret transgressions, to cast itself prostrate at the feet of parental authority in the dust and ashes of humiliation. But while he acknowledged and deplored his own vices, he could not criminate Clinton. He implored his father to inflict upon him any penalty, however severe, he knew, he felt it to be just, but not to require of him to treat his friend with ingratitude and insult. His stay would not be long. He must return very soon to Virginia. He had been prevented from doing so by a fatal and contagious disease that had been raging in the neighborhood of his home, and when that subsided, other accidental causes had constantly interfered with his design. Must the high-spirited Virginian go back to his native regions with the story so oft repeated of New England coldness and inhospitality verified in his own experience?
“Say no more,” said his father. “I will reflect on all you have said, and you shall know the result. Now, come with me to the counting-house, and let me see if you can put your mathematics to any practical use. Employment is the greatest safeguard against temptation.”
There was one revelation which Louis did not make, and that was the amount of his debts. He dared not do it, though again and again he had opened his lips to tell it.