He had been restless during the night, muttering incoherently, and occasionally striking at the fancied shapes which surrounded him; but towards morning he grew more violent, and at last with a shriek which chilled my blood, he sprang from the bed, and pointing towards the window, whispered, “Hark! Don’t you hear it?—music from the infernal regions! They are come, every demon of them, for me. It’s a grand turnout. There! Don’t you see them with their flaming eyes looking through the windows, and that shriveled hag, whose hair is curling snakes! See! She beckons me with her bony claws, and says I am to be her son. Do you hear that mother? Her son! Go back!” he shouted, leaping towards the window. “You don’t get me this time. I won’t die yet. Give me the Prayer Book, and let me hurl it at her head—that’ll settle her, I reckon.”
He would have gone through the window, had not Mr. Watson taken him in his arms and borne him back to the bed, where he held him fast, soothing him as best he could by assuring him there were no such unearthly objects in the room as he supposed.
“I know it,” said Herbert, for a moment comparatively rational. “I know what it is. It is DELIRIUM TREMENS, and I know what causes it, too; shall I tell you?”
Mr. Watson nodded, and Herbert continued: “Cider, beer, wine, brandy—DEATH: that’s the programme which keeps the fire of hell eternally burning. Where is my boy—Anna’s boy and mine?” he asked after a pause.
“Do you wish to see him,” asked Mr. Watson.
“See him? Yes. I want to do one good deed before I die. I would kill him—murder my only child, and send him to Heaven, where rumsellers never go—where women, with witching eyes and luring words, never tempt men to drink. Bring him in: why do you loiter?” turning to Anna. “Is it that you would have him live to be the wreck I am—to curse the mother who bore him and the day he was born! Bring him quick, I tell you, for time hastens, and in the distance I hear the clank of the hag’s footsteps.”
“Oh, Herbert, Herbert, my poor husband,” was all Anna could say, as she wound her arms around his neck and laid her colorless cheek against his fevered brow.
In a moment he grew calm, and drawing her to his bosom, his tears fell like rain upon her face, while he called her his “wounded dove,” and asked her forgiveness for all he had made her suffer. “You will live with mother when I am gone,” he said. “You and Jamie. God forbid that I should harm our beautiful boy; but I would see him once more. Don’t be afraid,” he added, as he saw her hesitate. “I will not hurt him.”
Disengaging herself from her husband’s embrace, Anna glided from the room, to which she soon returned, leading little Jamie, now two years of age. Very lovingly the dying man looked upon his son, and then laying his shaking hand upon the golden curls, he said, “God keep you, my boy, from being what I am; and if a drunkard’s blessing can be of any avail, you have mine, my precious, precious child.”
“Would you like to kiss him?” asked Aunt Charlotte; to which he replied, “No, no; I am too polluted to touch aught so pure. But take him away,” he continued, growing excited. “Take him away, for the demon on my pillow is again whispering of murder.”