“Well, you’re a fine young gentleman, I’ve no doubt; but you’ll not bide long in that fashion, I reckon.”
Then came a bit of a song in the younger voice,—
“Drink, boys, drink, and drive away your sorrow;
For though we’re here to-day, we mayn’t be here to-morrow.”
The superintendent knocked at the door, and both entered. The old woman uttered an exclamation of terror at the sight of the strangers, but the appearance of Lady Oldfield reassured her, for she divined almost immediately who she must be. On her part, Lady Oldfield instinctively shrunk back at her first entrance, and well she might; for the revolting sights and odours almost overpowered her, spite of her all-absorbing anxiety to find and rescue her beloved child.
The room, if it could be justly called so—for it was, more properly speaking, a kind of loft—was lighted, or rather, rendered less dark by a sort of half window, half skylight, which looked out upon a stack of decayed and blackened chimneys, and so much sickly-looking sky as could be seen through the undamaged panes, which were but few, for lumps of rags, old stockings, and similar contrivances blocked up many a space which had once been used to admit the light, while the glass still remaining was robbed of its transparency by accumulated dirt. There was neither stove nor fire-place of any kind. The walls, if they had ever been whitened, had long since lost their original hue, and exhibited instead every variety of damp discoloration. Neither chair nor table were there—an old stool and a box were the only seats. In the corner farthest from the light, and where the ceiling sloped down to the floor, was the only thing that could claim the name of a bedstead. Low and curtainless, its crazy, worm-eaten frame groaned and creaked ominously under the tossings to and fro of the poor sufferer, who occupied the mass of ragged coverings spread upon it. In the opposite corner was a heap of mingled shavings, straw, and sacking, the present couch of the aged tenant of this gloomy apartment. The box stood close at the bed’s head; there were bottles and a glass upon, it, which had plainly not been used for medicinal purposes, as the faded odour of spirits, distinguishable above the general rank close smell of the room, too clearly testified. Across the floor, stained with numberless abominations, Lady Oldfield made her shuddering way to the bed, on which lay, tossing in the delirium of fever, her unhappy son. His trousers and waistcoat were thrown across his feet; his hat lay on the floor near them; there was no coat, for it had been pawned to gratify his craving for the stimulant which had eaten away joy and peace, hope and heart. Flinging herself on her knees beside the prostrate form, his mother tried to raise him.
“O Frank, Frank, my darling boy,” she cried, with a bitter outburst of weeping; “look at me, speak to me; I’m your own mother. Don’t you know me? I’m come to take you home.”
He suddenly sat up, and jerked the clothes from him. His eyes glittered with an unnatural light, his cheeks were deeply flushed with fever heat; his hair, that mother’s pride in former days, waved wildly over his forehead. How fair, how beautiful he looked even then!
“Ah, poor young creetur,” croaked the old woman; “it’s a pity he’s come to this. I knowed he were not used to sich a life—more’s the shame to them as led him into it.”
Ay, shame to them, indeed! But oh, how sad, how grievous that the young hand, which might have raised to untainted lips none but those pure draughts which neither heat the brain nor warp the sense of right, should ever learn to grasp the cup that gives a passing brightness to the eye and glitter to the tongue, but clouds at length the intellect, fires the brain, and leaves a multitude of wretched victims cast ashore as shattered moral wrecks. To such results, though from the smallest beginnings, does the drink tend in its very nature. Oh, happy they who are altogether free from its toils!
The wretched young man stared wildly at his mother.