In a small brown cottage in a distant part of the same village, another mother was watching beside her first-born, only son. They had been friends in their girlhood, she and Lina Hastings. Together they had conned the same hard tasks—together they had built their playhouse beneath the same old chestnut tree—together, hand in hand, had they wandered over the rocky hills and through the shady woods of New England, and at the same altar had they plighted their marriage vows, the one to the man she loved, the other to the man she tolerated for the sake of his surroundings. From this point their path diverged, Lina moving in the sphere to which her husband’s wealth had raised her, while Mabel Parkham one sad morning awoke from her sweet dream of bliss to find herself wedded to a drunkard! Only they who like her have experienced a similar awakening, can know the bitterness of that hour, and yet methinks she was happier than the haughty Lina, for her love was no idle passion, and though weal and woe she clung to her husband, living oft on the remembrance of what he had been, and the hope of what he might be again, and when her little Willie was first laid upon her bosom, and she felt her husband’s tears upon her cheek, as he promised to reform for her sake and her, his son’s, she would not have exchanged her lot with that of the proudest in the land. That vow, alas, was ere long broken, and then, though she wept bitterly over his fall, she felt that she was not desolate, for there was music in her Willie’s voice and sunshine in his presence.
But now he was dying, he was leaving her forever, and she thought of the long, dark days when she should look for him in vain; she staggered beneath the heavy blow, and in tones as heart broken as those which had fallen from Lina Hastings’ lips, she prayed, ‘If it be possible let this cup pass from me,’ adding, ‘Not my will, oh God, but thine be done.’
‘I will do all things well,’ seemed whispered in her ear, and thus comforted she nerved herself to meet the worst. All the day she watched by her child, chafing his little hands, smoothing his scanty pillow beneath his head, bathing his burning forehead, and forcing down her bitter tears when in his disturbed sleep he would beg of his father to ‘bring him an orange—a nice yellow orange—he was so dry.’
Alas, that father was where the song of the inebriate rose high on the summer air, and he heard not the pleadings of his son. ’Twas a dreary, desolate room where Willie Parkham lay, and when the sun went down and the night shadows fell, it seemed darker, drearier still. On the rude table by the window a candle dimly burned, but as the hours sped on it flickered awhile in its socket, then for an instant flashed up, illuminating the strangely beautiful face of the sleeping boy, and went out.
An hour later, and Willie awoke. Feeling for his mother’s hand, he said, ‘Tell me true, do drunkards go to heaven?’
‘There is for them no promise,’ was the wretched mother’s answer.
‘Then I shall never see pa again. Tell him good-by, good-by forever.’
The next time he spoke it was to ask his mother to come near to him, that he might see her face once more. She did so, bending low and stifling her own great agony, lest it should add one pang to his dying hour.
‘I cannot see you,’ he whispered, ‘it is so dark—so dark.’