“Merciful Heavens! it’s as I feared!” was Aunt Charlotte’s exclamation, as she sank upon the lounge, moaning bitterly, and covering her face with the cushion, that she might not see the disgrace of her only son—for Herbert was drunk!
Lifting him out, my father and uncle laid him upon the settee in the sitting-room, just where little Jamie had been laid, and my mother, as she looked upon the senseless inebriate resting where once had lain the beautiful, inanimate form of her youngest born, thought how far less bitter was her cup of sorrow than was that of the half fainting woman, who would rather, far rather, her boy had died with the dew of babyhood upon his brow than to have seen him thus debased and fallen.
The story was soon told, my uncle supplying all points which Anna could not. It seems that early in life Herbert had acquired a love for the wine and porter which daily graced his mother’s dinner-table. As he grew older his taste increased for something stronger, until now nothing save brandy could satisfy the cravings of his appetite. More than once had he been brought home in a state of entire unconsciousness, for he was easily intoxicated, it usually taking but one glass to render him perfectly foolish, while a second was generally sure to finish the work. These drunken fits were always followed by resolutions of amendment, and it was now so long since he had drank that his mother began to have strong hopes of his reform, but these, alas! were now dashed to the ground. Unfortunately, Uncle Jason had offered the young man a glass of cider, which immediately awoke in its full vigor his old love for ardent spirits. Just across the road, creaking in the November wind, hung the sign of the “Golden Fleece,” and in that direction, soon after dinner, Herbert bent his steps, taking down at one time a tumbler two thirds full of raw brandy. This made him very talkative and very affectionate, insomuch that he kissed Aunt Betsey, who, as soon as she could, started him for home. When the half-way house, called in opposition to its neighbor “Silver Skin,” was reached, Herbert insisted upon stopping and taking another glass, which ere long rendered him so helpless that Anna was obliged to take charge of Sorrel herself, while her companion fell asleep, leaning his head upon her shoulder and gradually sinking lower and lower until he rested in her lap.
All that night he remained in the sitting-room, which in the morning presented so sorry and disgusting an appearance that when Aunt Charlotte for the hundredth time wished she had never come to Meadow Brook, our whole family mentally responded a fervent Amen. Herbert, when fully restored to consciousness, seemed heartily ashamed of himself, crying like a girl, and winding his arms around his mother’s neck so affectionately that I did not blame her when she forgave him and wiped away her tears.
She might not have had much faith in his sincerity could she have heard his conversation with Anna, whom he managed to withdraw from the family to the recess of a distant window. Alone with her, his manner changed, and with flashing eyes, he charged it to his mother, who, he said, first taught him to love it by allowing him, when a little boy, to drink the bottom of the wine glasses after dinner.
“And if I fill a drunkard’s grave,” said he, “she will be to blame; but,” he added, as he saw Anna involuntarily shudder, “it shall not be. I can reform. I will reform, and you must help me do it.”
Anna looked wonderingly at him, while he continued, taking her hand and removing from it a plain gold ring, which grandma had given her on her fifteenth birthday, “You must let me wear this as a talisman to protect me from evil. Whenever I am tempted I shall look at it and be saved.”
Anna hesitated awhile, but the soft, handsome eyes of Herbert Langley had woven around her a spell she could not break, and at last she consented, receiving from him in return a diamond ring, which he told her was worth two hundred dollars. When this became known to mother she very wisely insisted on Anna’s returning it, and together with the note explaining the why and the wherefore it went back to its owner, who immediately replied by a letter, the contents of which were carefully kept from us all. The effect, however, was plainly visible; for, from the time of its receipt we lost our merry, light-hearted sister, and in her place there moved among us a sober, listless girl, whom grandma called foolish, and whom Charlie pronounced “lovesick.”
Herbert’s letter was soon answered, but when Anna requested my father to put it in the P. O. he refused, telling her “she should not correspond with such a drunken dog.” Possibly it was wrong in him thus to address her, for kind words and persuasive arguments might have won her to reason, but now a spirit of opposition was roused—“Herbert was wronged—misunderstood”—so Anna thought, and the letter which father refused to take, was conveyed by other hands, a postscript longer than the letter itself being first added.
After this there was no more trouble. Anna wrote regularly to Herbert, who promptly responded; his missives always being directed to one of Anna’s schoolmates, who was just romantic enough to think her companion persecuted! Gradually I was let into the secret, and was occasionally employed to carry Anna’s notes to and from the house of her friend. I did not then consider the great wrong I was doing, but since I have shed many a bitter tear to think that I in any way helped to work my sister’s ruin.