She lay on the
floor of her dressing-room, crushed in spirit to the dust. I raised her
up; she would not look at me, but hid her face in her hands; her eyes
were dry, she had wept away all her tears. I could not bear her grief,
and I tried to comfort her; all might yet be well. Again she confessed
all, her deceit, her heartlessness; but she laid it to the drink. True,
she was in this a self-deceiver, but how terrible must be the power for
evil in a stimulant which can so utterly degrade the soul, cloud the
intellect, and benumb the conscience! Well, she poured forth a torrent
of vows, promises, and resolutions for the future. I bade her turn them
into prayers, but she did not understand me. However, there was peace
for awhile: our Mary came home again, and I watched her with an
unwearying carefulness. Another year brought us a son: he sits among us
now: John Randolph we call him. There was a sort of truce till John was
ten years old. I knew that my poor unhappy wife still continued to
obtain strong drink, but she did not take it to excess to my knowledge,
and it was never placed upon our table. I was myself, at this time,
practically a total abstainer, but I had signed no pledge. I didn't see
the use of it then, so I had not got my children to sign. My poor wife
_professed_ to take no alcoholic stimulants, yet I could not but know
that she was deceiving herself. She was, alas! Too self-confident.
She seemed to think that all danger of _excess_ was now over, and that a
white lie about taking none was no real harm, so long as it satisfied
_me_; but it neither deceived nor satisfied me. At last, one winter's
day, she proposed that John should drive her in her pony-carriage to the
neighbouring village, where there was an old servant of ours who was
ill, whom she wanted to see. The pony was a quiet one, and was used to
John's driving, so I did not object, as I was very busy at the time, and
could not therefore drive myself. It was very late before she came
back; she had kept the poor boy at the cottage door nearly two hours,
and when she returned to the carriage was so excited that he was in fear
and trembling all the way home. That night his miserable mother lay
hopelessly intoxicated on a sofa when I retired to my resting-_place_,
for to rest I certainly did not retire. From that day she utterly broke
down, and became lost to all shame; one appetite, one passion alone,
possessed her; a mad thirst for the