“I don’t want to believe it,” said Temperance, two bright spots burning on her cheeks; “but—but—well—Nathan was over at Brixton to-day, and Lanty was there, and he was—not himself.”
“Oh, poor Mabella!” said Sidney; “I’m so sorry. I never dreamt it could be true. What can be done?”
“Nothing—that I know of,” said Temperance. “M’bella’s close as wax and quite right too, but she’s got a worried look; I can see through M’bella, and as for Lanty, well—it would be a pretty brave one that would speak to Lanty—he has a look!”
Sidney was in truth more distressed than he could say. That Lanty, bold, bright, honest-hearted Lanty should give way to intemperance was grievous. Sidney had always entertained a great admiration for the young countryman, who was indeed almost the antithesis of Sidney. The simplicity of his nature was very charming to this supra-sensitive man who scourged his own soul with introspective inquisition. Lanty’s calm and careless acceptance of the facts of life, without question as to why and wherefore, his happy life of work with his wife and child, seemed to Sidney something to be admired as very wholesome, if not envied as being very desirable. That he should imperil this happiness seemed most tragic to Sidney.
After he parted from Temperance he walked slowly on.
It was true; Lanty had “a look.” His bold eyes which had once looked so fearlessly into all the eyes they met had now changed a little. There was a kind of piteous challenge in them as of one who should say to his fellows “accuse me if you dare.” Alas, over-eager denial is often an admission of guilt. The tongues had been hissing his name from house to house for long in Dole, and gradually the conviction spread that Lanty Lansing was drinking much and often—and it was true.
It was the direct result of his popularity. He had been going very often to Brixton during the past year, and there he had fallen in with a set of men who drank a great deal; the country lawyers, an old toper of a doctor, a banker and two or three idle men who spent their time in the back rooms of their friends’ offices. Mixed up with this set Lanty did his drinking unseen; but, alas! the effects were very visible. But strange to say up to this time not one of the Dole worthies had seen him drunk.
It would seem that even chance was constrained to aid Mabella Lansing in the really heroic efforts she made to hide her degradation from the censorious little world about her. That she and her husband were in any sense divisible she never dreamed. Her comprehension of the unity of marriage forbade that. That Lanty could sin apart from her, or be judged apart from her, or condemned apart from her never occurred to her simple loyal mind. As for turning upon his delinquencies the search-light of her righteousness; or posing as a martyr and bespeaking the pity of her friends as so many modern wives do—well, she had none of that treachery in her. She suffered all his repentances in her own proper person and without the anæsthetic poison which sometimes numbed him to the pain of his regrets.
At this time Mabella’s little child was a source of ineffable strength and solace to its mother. Its yellow head, so like Lanty’s own, brightened the days he was making so dark. Mabella, grown afraid to look at the future, spent many hours in contemplating her baby. Its eyes—like bits of the blue heaven; the tiny feet whose soles were yet all uncalloused by the stones of life; the clinging hands which had as yet let fall no joy, nor grasped any thorns—these were joys unspeakable to this mother as they have been to so many. Truly “heaven lies about us in our infancy,” and now and then from the celestial atmosphere about this child a warm sense of peace, a saving thrill of hope, reached out to the mother’s heart. O wonderful woman heart, which, like the wholesome maple, gives forth the more sweetness the more it is pierced!
Her neighbours took up the habit of visiting her frequently. Going early and staying late, with the laudable intention of forcing themselves into a confidence denied them.