Circumstances altered cases; times were changed; self-preservation was the first law of nature; in view of the present danger, his pledge was not binding; "for if he kept his pledge, he might lose his life," they would argue.
"That was the Lord's affair; all he had to do was to keep his pledge; and if he should die, so much the better; life had no charms for him," Valentine would reply.
And in truth the wretched young man was much to be compassionated. His wife and child alone and helpless in the midst of the plague, exposed to the united horrors of pestilence, famine and solitary death from desertion; himself forbidden to seek them at their utmost need. Thrice had he escaped and sought the city, and as often had he fallen into the hands of the voluntary police; they did not maltreat him, except inasmuch as they would not suffer him to pass without a permit from his master, and this permit could not be obtained. He could think of nothing but his wife and child. Were they living, and suffering unimagined miseries? Were they among the uncounted dead, whose rude coffins lay one upon another, three or four feet deep, not in graves, but in trenches? He did not even know. But all his thoughts by day, and his fitful dreams by night, were haunted with the forms of Fannie and of Coralie. He saw little Coralie in every phase of memory, and hope, and fear. He saw her bright and beautiful, as she had been in the sweet springtime; he saw her pale and pining, as he had seen her last in her wasting sickness; and he saw her lying dead in her coffin, and woke with a loud cry of anguish. His heart, his spirit, seemed broken.
Seeing his haggard and despairing looks, his mistress expostulated with him, and counseled the use of wine or brandy, saying that the depressing effects of the atmosphere were felt by everybody, even by those living in the country; that it affected all persons with despondency, causing them to look only on the darkest side of all things; and that it was only to be counteracted by the stimulating effects of alcohol.
At last Valentine followed this counsel and took the prescribed "medicine." Not to prevent contagion did he take it, though that purpose would have exonerated him from the charge of a broken pledge; but to dull the poignant sense of suffering, which was greater than he could bear.
Oh, fatal day that he placed again to his lips the maddening glass! All have seen how dangerous is such a relapse. It is generally a sudden and hopeless fall. It was so in the case of this poor fellow. He took the first glass, and, liking its effects, took a second and a third before stopping. If he awoke in the morning to remember his troubles, he drank all day to forget them, and fell at night into a heavy sleep. He zealously followed the medical prescription—nay, he quite overdid it, and kept himself not "slightly" under the influence of alcohol. And in a short space of time, if his master or his mistress remonstrated with him, it was not for total abstinence from intoxicating spirits, but for the opposite extreme of an habitual intemperance. Such was the state of affairs at Red Hill for a few weeks, during which Valentine had no direct or certain intelligence of Fannie and his little child.
CHAPTER VII.
CAIN.
I pray thee take thy fingers from my throat:
For though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!—Shakespeare.