A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 27

The well-meaning letter, written by the kindly editor, and full of wholesome advice, cut like a surgeon's knife in some desperate case when it is a question whether the patient can endure the heroic treatment necessary. Haldane's stilted and unnatural tales had been projected into being by such fiery and violent means that they might almost be termed volcanic in their origin; but the fused ma.s.s which was the result, resembled scoria or cinders rather than fine metal shaped into artistic forms. Although his ma.n.u.scripts could have been sold in the world's market only by the pound, he had believed, or, at least, strongly hoped otherwise, like so many others, who, with beating hearts, have sent the children of their brains out to seek their fortunes with no better results.

The unbroken and ominous silence of the returned ma.n.u.script is a severe disappointment even to those who from safe and happy homes have sought to gain the public ear, and whose impelling motive toward literature is scarcely more than an impulse of vanity. But to Haldane the letter, which in giving the editorial estimate of one of his stories revealed the fate of all the others, brought far more than a mere disappointment.

It brought despair and the recklessness and demoralization which inevitably follow. The public regarded him as a depraved, commonplace vagabond, eminent only in his capacity for evil and meanness, and he now inclined strongly to the same view of himself. True self-respect he had never possessed, and his best subst.i.tute, pride, at last gave way. He felt that he was defeated for life, and the best that life could now offer was a brief career of sensual pleasure. Mrs. Arnot and Laura Romeyn were so far removed from him as the stars; it was torment to think of them, and he would blot out their memory and the memory of all that he had hoped for, with wine and excitement. It seemed to him that the world said to him with united voice, "Go to the devil," and then made it impossible for him to do otherwise.

Since he was defeated--since all his proud a.s.surances to his mother that he would, alone and unaided, regain his lost good name and position in society, had proved but empty boasts--he would no longer hide the fact from her, not in the hope of being received at home as a repentant prodigal (even the thought of such a course was unendurable), but with the purpose of obtaining from her the means of entering upon a life of vicious pleasure.

The young man's father--impelled both by his strong attachment for his wife, and also by the prudent forethought with which men seek to protect and provide for those they love, long after they have pa.s.sed away from earthly life--had left his property wholly in trust to his wife, a.s.sociating with her one or two other chosen counsellors. As long as she lived and remained unmarried she controlled it, the husband trusting to her affection for her children to make suitable provision for them. He had seen with prophetic anxiety the mother's fond indulgence of their only son, and the practical man dreaded the consequences. He therefore communicated to her verbally, and also embodied in his will, his wish that his son should have no control over the princ.i.p.al of such portion of the estate as would eventually fall to him until he had established a character that secured the confidence of all good men, and satisfied the judgment of the cautious co-executors. The provisions of the will still further required that, should the young man prove erratic and vicious, his income should be limited in such ways as would, as far as possible, curb excess.

Haldane knew all this, and in the days of his confidence in himself and his brilliant future had often smiled at these "absurd restrictions."

The idea that there would ever be any reason for their enforcement was preposterous, and the thought of his fond, weak mother refusing anything that he demanded, was still further out of the range of possibility.

The wretched youth now sank into a far lower depth than he had ever yet reached. He deliberately resolved to take advantage of that mother's weakness, and for the basest ends. While under the influence of hope and pride, he had resolved to receive no a.s.sistance even from her, so that he might wholly claim the credit of regaining all that he had lost; but now, in the recklessness of despair, he proposed not only to ask for all the money he could obtain, but, if necessary, extort it by any means in his power.

He and the forlorn place of his bitter revery grew more and more into harmony. The small, half-finished apartment of the ruinous new house became more truly the counterpart of his life, it was bare; it was unsightly from the debris of its own discolored and crumbling walls. The possibility of sweet home scenes had pa.s.sed from it, and it had become a place in which an orgy might be hidden, or some revolting crime committed. To precisely this use Haldane put his temporary refuge before leaving it; for excesses and evil deeds that the mind has deliberately resolved upon are virtually accomplished facts as far as the wrong-doer is concerned. Before leaving his dingy hiding-place Haldane had in the depths of his soul been guilty of drunkenness and all kinds of excess.

He also purposed unutterable baseness toward the widowed mother whom, by every principle of true manhood, he was bound to cherish and s.h.i.+eld; and he had in volition more certainly committed the act of self-destruction than does the poor wretch who, under some mad, half-insane impulse, makes permanent by suicide the evils a little fort.i.tude and patient effort might have remedied. There is no self-murder so hopeless and wicked as that of deliberate sin against one's own body and soul.

No man becomes a saint or villain in an hour or by a single step; but there are times when evil tendencies combine with adverse influences and circ.u.mstances to produce sudden and seemingly fatal havoc in character.

As the world goes, Haldane was a well-meaning youth, although cursed with evil habits and tendencies, when he entered the isolated, half-finished house. He was bad and devilish when he came out upon the street again, and walked recklessly toward the city, caring not who saw or recognized him. In the depths of his heart he had become an enemy to society, and, so far from hoping to gain its respect and good-will, he defied and intended to outrage it to the end of life.

A man in such a mood gravitates with almost certainty toward the liquor-saloon, and Haldane naturally commenced drinking at the various dens whose doors stood alluringly open. His slender purse did not give him the choice of high-priced wines, and to secure the mad excitement and oblivion he craved, only fiery compounds were ordered--such as might have been distilled in the infernal regions to accomplish infernal results; and they soon began to possess him like a legion of evil spirits.

If Shakespeare characterized the "invisible spirit of wine" as a "devil"

in the unsophisticated days of old, when wine was wine, and not a h.e.l.l-broth concocted of poisonous drugs, what unspeakable fiends must lurk in the grimy bottles whose contents, a.n.a.lyzed and explained, would appall some, at least, of the stolid and stony-hearted venders!

Haldane soon felt himself capable of any wickedness, any crime. He became a human volcano, that might at any moment pa.s.s into a violent and murderous action, regardless of consequences--indeed, as utterly incapable of foreseeing and realizing them as the mountain that belches destruction on vineyard and village.

We regard ourselves as a civilized and Christian people, and yet we tolerate on every corner places where men are transformed into incarnate devils, and sent forth to run amuck in our streets, and outrage the helpless women and children in their own homes. The naked inhabitants of Dahomey could do no worse in this direction.

But Haldane was not destined to end his orgy in the lurid glare of a tragedy, for, as the sun declined, the miserable day was brought to a wretched and fitting close. Unconsciously he had strayed to the saloon on whose low steps Messrs. Van Wink and Ketchem had left him on the memorable night from which he dated his downfall. Of course he did not recognize the place, but there was one within that a.s.sociated him inseparably with it, and also with misfortunes of his own. As Haldane leaned unsteadily against the bar a seedy-looking man glared at him a moment, and then stepped to his side, saying:

"I'll take a few dhrinks wid ye. Faix! after all the trouble ye've been to me ye oughter kape me in dhrink the year."

Turning to the speaker, the young man recognized Pat M'Cabe, whom he also a.s.sociated with his evil fortunes, and toward whom he now felt a strong vindictiveness, the sudden and unreasoning anger of intoxication.

In reply, therefore, he threw the contents of his gla.s.s into Pat's face, saying with a curse:

"That is the way I drink with such as you."

Instantly there was a bar-room brawl of the ordinary brutal type, from whose details we gladly escape. Attracted by the uproar, a policeman was soon on hand, and both the combatants were arrested and marched off to the nearest police station. Bruised, bleeding, disheveled, and with rent garments, Haldane again pa.s.sed through the streets as a criminal, with the rabble hooting after him. But now there was no intolerable sense of shame as at first. He had become a criminal at heart; he had deliberately and consciously degraded himself, and his whole aspect had come to be in keeping with his character.

It may be objected that the transformation had been too rapid. It had not been rapid. His mother commenced preparing him for this in the nursery by her weak indulgence. She had sown the seeds of which his present actions were the legitimate outgrowth. The weeds of his evil nature had been unchecked when little, and now they were growing so rank as to overshadow all.

Mult.i.tudes go to ruin who must trace their wrong bias back to cultivated and even Christian homes.

CHAPTER XXVII

G.o.d SENT HIS ANGEL

The mad excitement of anger and drunkenness was speedily followed by stupor, and the night during which Haldane was locked up in the station-house was a blank. The next morning he was decidedly ill as the result of his debauch; for the after-effects of the vile liquor he had drank was such as to make any creature save rational man shun it in the future with utter loathing.

But the officers of the law had not the slightest consideration for his aching head and jarring nerves. He was hustled off to the police court with others, and he now seemed in harmony with the place and company.

Pat M'Cabe was a veteran in these matters, and had his witnesses ready, who swore to the truth, and anything else calculated to a.s.sist Pat, their crony, out of his sc.r.a.pe. Unfortunately for Haldane, the truth was against him, and he remained sullen and silent, making no defence. The natural result, therefore, of the brief hearing, was his committal to the common jail for ten days, and the liberation of Pat, with a severe reprimand.

Thus, after the lapse of a few brief weeks, Haldane found himself in the same cell whence he had gone out promising and expecting to accomplish so much. He could not help recalling his proud words to his mother and Mrs. Arnot as he looked around the bare walls, and he was sufficiently himself again to realize partially how complete and disgraceful had been his defeat. But such was his mood that it could find no better expression than a malediction upon himself and the world in general.

Then, throwing himself upon his rude and narrow couch, he again resigned himself to his stupor, from which he had been aroused to receive his sentence.

It was late in the afternoon when he awoke, and his cell was already growing dusky with the coming night. It was a place congenial to shadows, and they came early and lingered till the sun was high.

But as Haldane slowly regained full consciousness, and recalled all that had transpired, he felt himself to be under a deeper shadow than the night could cast. The world condemned him, and he deserved condemnation; but he was also deserving of pity. Scarcely more than twenty, he had seemingly spoiled his life utterly. It was torment to remember the past, and the future was still darker; for his outraged physical nature so bitterly resented its wrongs by racking pains that it now seemed to him that even a brief career of sensual gratification was impossible, or so counterbalanced with suffering as to be revolting. Though scarcely more than across the threshold of life, existence had become an unmitigated evil. Had he been brought up in an atmosphere of flippant scepticism he would have flung it away as he would a handful of nettles; but his childish memory had been made familiar with that ancient Book whose truths, like anchors, enable many a soul on the verge of wreck to outride the storm. He was too well acquainted with its teachings to entertain for a moment the shallow theory that a man can escape the consequences of folly, villany, and unutterable baseness by merely ceasing to breathe.

He could not eat the coa.r.s.e food brought to him for supper, and his only craving was for something to quench his feverish thirst. His long lethargy was followed by corresponding sleeplessness and preternatural activity of brain. That night became to him like the day of judgment; for it seemed as if his memory would recall everything he had ever done or said, and place all before him in the most dreary and discouraging aspect.

He saw his beautiful and aristocratic home, which he had forfeited so completely that the prison would be more endurable than the forced and painful toleration of his presence, which was the best he could hope for from his mother and sisters; and he felt that he would much rather stay where he was for life than again meet old neighbors and companions. But he now saw how, with that home and his father's honored name as his vantage ground, he might have made himself rich and honored.

The misspent days and years of the past became like so many reproachful ghosts, and he realized that he had idled away the precious seed-time of his life, or, rather, had been busy sowing thorns and nettles, that had grown all too quickly and rankly. Thousands had been spent on his education; and yet he was oppressed with a sense of his ignorance and helplessness. Rude contact with the world had thoroughly banished self-conceit, and he saw that his mind was undisciplined and his knowledge so superficial and fragmentary as to be almost useless. The editor of the paper whose columns he had hoped to illumine told him that he could not even write correctly.

While in bitterness of soul he cursed himself for his wasted life, he knew that he was not wholly to blame. Indeed, in accordance with a trait as old as fallen man, he sought to lay the blame on another. He saw that his own folly had ever found an ally in his mother's indulgence, and that, instead of holding him with a firm yet gentle hand to his tasks and duties, she had been the first to excuse him from them and to palliate his faults. Instead of recalling her fond and blind idolatry with tenderness, he felt like one who had been treacherously poisoned with a wine that was sweet while it rested on the palate, but whose after-taste is vile, and whose final effect is death.

There is no memory that we cherish so sacredly and tenderly as that of our parents' kind and patient love. It often softens the heart of the hardened man and abandoned woman when all other influences are powerless. But when love degenerates into idolatry and indulgence, and those to whom the child is given as a sacred trust permit it to grow awry, and develop into moral deformity, men and women, as did Haldane, may breathe curses on the blindness and weakness that was the primal cause of their life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from her, even by methods that savored of blackmail, the means of living a dissipated life in some city where he was unknown, and could lose himself in the mult.i.tude.

But the ten days of enforced seclusion and solitude that must intervene seemed like an eternity. With a shudder he thought of the real eternity, beyond, when the power to excite or stupefy his lower nature would be gone forever. That shadow was so dark and cold that it seemed to chill his very soul, and by a resolute effort of will he compelled his mind to dwell only on the immediate future and the past.

Day at last dawned slowly and dimly in his cell, and found him either pacing up and down like some wild creature in its cage, turning so often by reason of the limited s.p.a.ce as to be almost dizzy, or else sitting on his couch with his haggard face buried in his hands.

After fighting all night against the impulse to think about Mrs. Arnot and her niece, he at last gave up the struggle, and permitted his mind to revert to them. Such thoughts were only pain now, and yet for some reason it seemed as if his mind were drawn irresistibly toward them. He felt that his deep regret was as useless and unavailing as the November wind that sweeps back and forth the withered and fallen leaves. His whole frame would at times tremble with gusts of remorseful pa.s.sion, and again he would sigh long and drearily.

He now realized what a priceless opportunity he had lost. It was once his privilege to enter Mrs. Arnot's beautiful home a.s.sured of welcome.

She had been deeply interested in him for his mother's sake, and might have become so for his own. He had been privileged to meet Laura Romeyn as her equal, at least in social estimation, and he might have made himself worthy of her esteem, and possibly of her affection. He saw that he had foolishly clamored, like a spoiled child, for that which he could only hope to possess by patient waiting and manly devotion; and now, with a regret that was like a serpent's tooth, he felt that such devotion might have been rewarded.

But a few months ago, whose life had been more rich with promise than his, or to whom had been given a better vantage-ground? And yet he had already found the lowest earthly perdition possible, and had lost hope of anything better.

In his impotent rage and despair he fairly gnashed his teeth and cursed himself, his fate, and those who had led to his evil fortunes. Then, by a natural revulsion of feeling, he sobbed like a child that has lost its way and can discover no returning path, and whose heart the darkness of the fast-approaching night fills with unutterable dread.

He was a criminal--in his despair he never hoped to be anything else--but he was not a hardened criminal and was still capable of wis.h.i.+ng to be different. In the memory of his bitter experience a pure and honorable life now appeared as beautiful as it was impossible. He had no expectation, however, of ever living such a life, for pride, the cornerstone of his character, had given way, and he was too greatly discouraged at the time to purpose reform even in the future. Without the spur and incentive of hope we become perfectly helpless in evil; therefore all doctrines and philosophies which tend to quench or limit hope, or which are bounded by the narrow horizon of time and earth, are, in certain emergencies, but dead weights, dragging down the soul.

At last, from sheer exhaustion, he threw himself on his couch, and fell into a troubled sleep, filled with broken and distorted visions of the scenes that had occupied his waking hours. But he gradually became quieter, and it appeared in his dream as if he saw a faint dawning in the east which grew brighter until a distinct ray of light streamed from an infinite distance to himself. Along this s.h.i.+ning pathway an angel seemed approaching him. The vision grew so distinct and real that he started up and saw Mrs. Arnot sitting in the doorway, quietly watching him. Confused and oblivious of the past, he stepped forward to speak to her with the natural instinct of a gentleman. Then the memory of all that had occurred rolled before him like a black torrent, and he shrank back to his couch and buried his face in his hands. But when Mrs. Arnot came and placed her hand on his shoulder, saying gently, but very gravely, "Egbert, since you would not come to me I have come to you," he felt that his vision was still true, and that G.o.d had sent his angel.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FACING THE CONSEQUENCES