Mrs. Birtwell leaned toward Mr. Elliott as he read, the light of a new hope irradiating her countenance.
"Is not this a Church in the highest and best sense?" asked Mr. Elliott, with a glow of enthusiasm in his voice.
"It is; and if the membership is not full, I am going to join it," replied Mrs. Birtwell, "and do what I can to bring at least one straying sheep out of the wilderness and into its fold."
"And I pray God that your work be not in vain," said the clergyman. "It is that I might lead you to this work that I am now here. Some of the Christian men and women whose names I find here"—Mr. Elliott referred to the paper in his hand—"are well known to me personally, and others by reputation."
He read them over.
"Such names," he added, "give confidence and assurance. In the hands of these men and women, the best that can be done will be done. And what is to hinder if the presence and the power of God be in their work? Whenever two or three meet together in his name, have they not his promise to be with them? and when he is, present, are not all saving influences most active? Present we know him to be everywhere, but his presence and power have a different effect according to the kind and degree of reception. He is present with the evil as well as the good, but he can manifest his love and work of saving far more effectually through the good than he can through the evil.
"And so, because this Home has been made a Christian Home, and its inmates taught to believe that only in coming to God in Christ as their infinite divine Saviour, and touching the hem of his garments, is there any hope of being cured of their infirmity, has its great saving power become manifest."
Just then voices were heard sounding through the hall. Apparently there was an altercation between the waiter and some one at the street door.
"What's that?" asked Mrs Birtwell, a little startled at the unusual sound.
They listened, and heard the voice of a man saying, in an excited tone:
"I must see her!"
Then came the noise of a struggle, as though the waiter were trying to prevent the forcible entry of some one.
Mrs. Birtwell started to her feet in evident alarm. Mr. Elliott was crossing to the parlor door, when it was thrown open with considerable violence, and he stood face to face with Mr. Ridley.
CHAPTER XXIII
ON leaving the clergyman's residence, baffled in his efforts to get the wine he had hoped to obtain, Mr. Ridley strode hurriedly away, almost running, as though in fear of pursuit. After going for a block or two he stopped suddenly, and stood with an irresolute air for several moments. Then he started forward again, moving with the same rapid speed. His face was strongly agitated and nearly colorless. His eyes were restless, glancing perpetually from side to side.
There was no pause now until he reached the doors of a large hotel in the centre of the city. Entering, he passed first into the reading-room and looked through it carefully, then stood in the office for several minutes, as if waiting for some one. While here a gentleman who had once been a client came in, and was going to the clerk's desk to make some inquiry, when Ridley stepped forward, and calling him by name, reached out his hand. It was not taken, however. The man looked at him with an expression of annoyance and disgust, and then passed him without a word.
A slight tinge of color came into Ridley's pale face. He bit his lips and clenched his hands nervously.
From the office he went to the bar-room. At the door he met a well-known lawyer with whom he had crossed swords many times in forensic battles oftener gaining victory than suffering defeat. There was a look of pity in the eyes of this man when they rested upon him. He suffered his hand to be taken by the poor wretch, and even spoke to him kindly.
"B–," said Ridley as he held up one of his hands and showed its nerveless condition, "you see where I am going?"
"I do, my poor fellow!" replied the man; "and if you don't stop short, you will be at the end of your journey sooner than you anticipate."
"I can't stop; it's too late. For God's sake get me a glass of brandy! I haven't tasted a drop since morning."
His old friend and associate saw how it was—saw that his over-stimulated nervous system was fast giving way, and that he was on the verge of mania. Without replying the lawyer went back to the bar, at which he had just been drinking. Calling for brandy, he poured a tumbler nearly half full, and after adding a little water gave it to Ridley, who drank the whole of it before withdrawing the glass from his lips.
"It was very kind of you," said the wretched man as he began to feel along his shaking nerves the stimulating power of the draught he had taken. "I was in a desperate bad way."
"And you are not out of that way yet," replied the other. "Why don't you stop this thing while a shadow of hope remains?"
"It's easy enough to say stop"—Ridley spoke in a tone of fretfulness—"and of about as much use as to cry 'Stop!' to a man falling down a precipice or sweeping over a cataract. I can't stop."
His old friend gazed at him pityingly, then, shrugging his shoulders, he bade him good-morning. From the bar Ridley drifted to the reading-room, where he made a feint of looking over the newspapers. What cared he for news? All his interest in the world had become narrowed down to the ways and means of getting daily enough liquor to stupefy his senses and deaden his nerves. He only wanted to rest now, and let the glass of brandy he had taken do its work on his exhausted system. It was not long before he was asleep. How long he remained in this state he did not know. A waiter, rudely shaking him, brought him back to life's dreary consciousness again and an order to leave the reading room sent him out upon the street to go he knew not whither.
Night had come, and Ethel, with a better meal ready for her father than she had been able to prepare for him in many weeks, sat anxiously awaiting his return. Toward her he had always been kind and gentle. No matter how much he might be under the influence of liquor, he had never spoken a harsh word to this patient, loving, much-enduring child. For her sake he had often made feeble efforts at reform, but appetite had gained such mastery; over him that resolution was as flax in the flame.
It was late in the evening when Mr. Ridley returned home. Ethel's quick ears detected something unusual in his steps as he came along the entry. Instead of the stumbling or shuffling noise with which he generally made his way up stairs, she noticed that his footfalls were more distinct and rapid. With partially suspended breath she sat with her eyes upon the door until it was pushed open. The moment she looked into her father's face she saw a change. Something had happened to him. The heavy, besotted look was gone, the dull eyes were lighted up. He shut the door behind him quickly and with the manner of one who had been pursued and now felt himself in a place of safety.
"What's the matter, father dear?" asked Ethel as she started up and laying her hand upon his shoulder looked into his face searchingly.
"Nothing, nothing," he replied. But the nervousness of his manner and the restless glancing of his eyes, now here and now there, and the look of fear in them, contradicted his denial.
"What has happened, father? Are you sick?" inquired Ethel.
"No, dear, nothing has happened. But I feel a little strange."
He spoke with unusual tenderness in his manner, and his voice shook and had a mournful cadence.
"Supper is all ready and waiting. I've got something nice and hot for you. A strong cup of tea will do you good," said Ethel, trying to speak cheerily. She had her father at the table in a few minutes. His hand trembled so in lifting his cup that he spilled some of the contents, but she steadied it for him. He had better control of himself after drinking the tea, and ate a few mouthfuls, but without apparent relish.
"I've got something to tell you," said Ethel, leaning toward her father as they still sat at the table. Mr. Ridley saw a new light in his daughter's face.
"What is it, dear?" he said.
"Mrs. Birtwell was here to-day, and is going—"
The instant change observed in her father's manner arrested the sentence on Ethel's lips. A dark shadow swept across his face and he became visibly agitated.
"Going to do what?" he inquired, betraying some anger.
"Going to help me all she can. She was very kind, and wants me to go and see her to-morrow. I think she's very good, father."
Mr. Ridley dropped his eyes from the flushed, excited face of his child. The frown left his brow. He seemed to lose himself in thought. Leaning forward upon the table, he laid his face down upon his folded arms, hiding it from view.
A sad and painful conflict, precipitated by the remark of his daughter, was going on in the mind of this wretched man. He knew also too well that he was standing on the verge of a dreadful condition from the terrors of which his soul shrunk back in shuddering fear. All day he had felt the coming signs, and the hope of escape had now left him. But love for his daughter was rising above all personal fear and dread. He knew that at any moment the fiend of delirium might spring upon him, and then this tender child would be left alone with him in his awful conflict. The bare possibility of such a thing made him shudder, and all his thought was now directed toward the means of saving her from being a witness of the appalling scene.
The shock and anger produced by the mention of Mrs. Birtwell's name had passed off, and his thought was going out toward her in a vague, groping way, and in a sort of blind faith that through her help in his great extremity might come. It was all folly, he knew. What could she do for a poor wretch in his extremity? He tried to turn his thought from her, but ever as he turned it away it swung back and rested in-this blind faith.
Raising his eyes at last, his mind still in a maze of doubt, he saw just before him an the table a small grinning head. It was only by a strong effort that he could keep from crying out in fear and starting back from the table. A steadier look obliterated the head and left a teacup in its place.
No time was now to be lost. At any moment the enemy might be upon him. He must go quickly, but where? A brief struggle against an almost unconquerable reluctance and dread, and then, rising from the table, Mr. Ridley caught up his hat and ran down stairs, Ethel calling after him. He did not heed her anxious cries. It was for her sake that he was going. She heard the street door shut with a jar, and listened to her father's departing feet until the sound died out in the distance.
It was over an hour from this time when Mr. Ridley, forcing his way past the servant who had tried to keep him back, stood confronting Mr. Elliott. A look of disappointment, followed by an angry cloud, came into his face. But seeing Mrs. Birtwell, his countenance brightened; and stepping past the clergyman, he advanced toward her. She did not retreat from him, but held out her hand, and said, with an earnestness so genuine that it touched his feeling:
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Ridley."
As he took her extended hand Mrs. Birtwell drew him toward a sofa and sat down near him, manifesting the liveliest interest.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked.
"No, ma'am," he replied, in a mournful voice—"not for me. I didn't come for that. But you'll be good to my poor Ethel, won't you, and—and—"
His voice broke into sobs, his weak frame quivered.
"I will, I will!" returned Mrs. Birtwell with prompt assurance.
"Oh, thank you. It's so good of you. My poor girl! I may never see you again."
The start and glance of fear he now threw across the room revealed to Mr. Elliott the true condition of their visitor, and greatly alarmed him. He had never been a witness of the horrors of delirium tremens, and only knew of it by the frightful descriptions he had sometimes read, but he could not mistake the symptoms of the coming attack as now seen in Mr. Ridley, who, on getting from Mrs. Birtwell a repeated and stronger promise to care for Ethel, rose from the sofa and started for the door.
But neither Mr. Elliott nor Mrs. Birtwell could let him go away in this condition. They felt too deeply their responsibility in the case, and felt also that One who cares for all, even the lowliest and most abandoned, had led him thither in his dire extremity.
Following him quickly, Mr. Elliott laid his hand firmly upon his arm.
"Stop a moment, Mr. Ridley," he said, with such manifest interest that the wretched man turned and looked at him half in surprise.
"Where are you going?" asked the clergyman.
"Where?" His voice fell to a deep whisper. There was a look of terror in his eyes. "Where? God only knows. Maybe to hell."
A strong shiver went through his frame.
"The 'Home,' Mr. Elliott! We must get him into the' Home,'" said Mrs. Birtwell, speaking close to the minister's ear.
"What home?" asked Mr. Ridley, turning quickly upon her.
She did not answer him. She feared to say a "Home for inebriates," lest he should break from them in anger.
"What home?" he repeated, in a stronger and more agitated voice; and now both Mr. Elliott and Mrs. Birtwell saw a wild eagerness in his manner.
"A home," replied Mr. Elliott, "where men like you can go and receive help and sympathy. A home where you will find men of large and hopeful nature to take you by the hand and hold you up, and Christian women with hearts full of mother and sister love to comfort, help, encourage and strengthen all your good desires. A home in which men in your unhappy condition are made welcome, and in which they are cared for wisely and tenderly in their greatest extremity."
"Then take me there, for God's sake!" cried out the wretched man, extending his hand eagerly as he spoke.
"Order the carriage immediately," said Mrs. Birtwell to the servant who stood in the half-open parlor door.
Then she drew Mr. Ridley back to the sofa, from which he had started up a little while before, and said, in a voice full of comfort and persuasion:
"You shall go there, and I will come and see you every day; and you needn't have a thought or care for Ethel. All is going to come out right again."
The carriage came in a few minutes. There was no hesitation on the part of Mr. Ridley. The excitement of this new hope breaking in so suddenly upon the midnight of his despair acted as a temporary stimulant and held his nerves steady for a little while longer.
"You are not going?" said Mr. Elliott, seeing that Mrs. Birtwell was making ready to accompany them in the carriage.
"Yes," she replied. "I want to see just what this home is and how Mr. Ridley is going to be received and cared for."
She then directed their man-servant to get into the carriage with them, and they drove away. Mr. Ridley did not stir nor speak, but sat with his head bent down until they arrived at their destination. He left the carriage and went in passively. As they entered a large and pleasant reception-room a gentleman stepped forward, and taking Mr. Elliott by the hand, called him by name in a tone of pleased surprise.
"Oh, Mr. G–!" exclaimed the clergyman. "I am right glad to find you here. I remember seeing your name in the list of directors."
"Yes, I am one of the men engaged in this work," replied Mr. G–. Then, as he looked more closely at Mr. Ridley, he recognized him and saw at a glance his true condition.
"My dear sir," said he, stepping forward and grasping his hand, "I am glad you have come here."
Mr. Ridley looked at, or rather beyond, him in a startled way, and then drew back a few steps. Mr. G– saw him shiver and an expression of fear cross his face. Turning to a man who sat writing at a desk, he called him by name, and with a single glance directed his attention to Mr. Ridley. The man was by his side in a moment, and as Mr. Elliott did not fail to notice all on the alert. He spoke to Mr. Ridley in a kind but firm voice, and drew him a little way toward an adjoining room, the door of which stood partly open.
"Do the best you can for this poor man," said Mrs. Birtwell, now addressing Mr. G–. "I will pay all that is required. You know him, I see."
"Yes, I know him well. A sad case indeed. You may be sure that what can be done will be done."
At this moment Mr. Ridley gave a cry and a spring toward the door. Glancing at him, Mrs. Birtwell saw that his countenance was distorted by terror. Instantly two men came in from the adjoining room and quickly restrained him. After two or three fruitless efforts to break away, he submitted to their control, and was immediately removed to another part of the building.
With white lips and trembling limbs Mrs. Birtwell stood a frightened spectator of the scene. It was over in a moment, but it left her sick at heart.
"What will they do with him?" she asked, her voice husky and choking.
"All that his unhappy case requires," replied Mr. G–. "The man you saw go first to his side can pity him, for he has himself more than once passed through that awful conflict with the power of hell upon which our poor friend has now entered. A year ago he came to this Home in a worse condition than Mr. Ridley begging us for God's sake to take him in. A few weeks saw him, to use sacred words, 'clothed and in his right mind,' and since then he has never gone back a single step. Glad and grateful for his own rescue, he now devotes his life to the work of saving others. In his hands Mr. Ridley will receive the gentlest treatment consistent with needed restraint. He is better here than he could possibly be anywhere else; and when, as I trust in God the case may be, he comes out of this dreadful ordeal, he will find himself surrounded by friends and in the current of influences all leading him to make a new effort to reform his life. Poor man! You did not get him here a moment too soon."
CHAPTER XXIV
MRS. BIRTWELL slept but little that night and in the brief periods of slumber that came to her she was disturbed by unquiet dreams. The expression of Mr. Ridley's face as the closing door shut it from her sight on the previous evening haunted her like the face of an accusing spectre.
Immediately after breakfast she dressed herself to go out, intending to visit the Home for reforming inebriates and learn something of Mr. Ridley. Just as she came down stairs a servant opened the street door, and she saw the slender figure of Ethel.
"My poor child!" she said, with great kindness of manner, taking her by the hand and drawing her in. "You are frightened about your father."
"Oh yes, ma'am," replied Ethel, with quivering lips. "He didn't come home all night, and I'm so scared about him. I don't know what to do. Maybe you'll think it wrong in me to trouble you about it, but I am in such distress, and don't know where to go.
"No, not wrong, my child, and I'm glad you've come. I ought to have sent you word about him."
"My father! Oh, ma'am, do you know where he is?"
"Yes; he came here last night sick, and I took him in my carriage to a Home for just such as he is, where he will be kindly taken care of until he gets well."
Ethel's large brown eyes were fixed in a kind of thankful wonder on the face of Mrs. Birtwell. She could not speak. She did not even try to put thought or feeling into words. She only took the hand of Mrs. Birtwell, and after touching it with her lips laid her wet cheek against it and held it there tightly.
"Can I go and see him?" she asked, lifting her face after some moments.
"It will not be best, I think," replied Mrs. Birtwell—"that is, not now. He was very sick when we took him there, and may not be well enough to be seen this morning."
"Very sick! Oh, ma'am!" The face of Ethel grew white and her lips trembled.
"Not dangerously," said Mrs. Birtwell, "but yet quite ill. I am going now to see him; and if you will come here in a couple of hours, when I shall return home—"
"Oh. ma'am, let me go along with you," broke in Ethel. "I won't ask to see him if it isn't thought best, but I'll know how he is without waiting so long."
The fear that Mr. Ridley might die in his delirium had troubled Mrs. Birtwell all night, and it still oppressed her. She would have much preferred to go alone and learn first the good or ill of the case, but Ethel begged so hard to be permitted to accompany her that she could not persist in objection.
On reaching the Home, Mrs. Birtwell found in the office the man in whose care Mr. Ridley had been placed. Remembering what Mr. G– had said of this man, a fresh hope for Ethel's father sprang up in her soul as she looked into his clear eyes and saw his firm mouth and air of conscious poise and strength. She did not see in his manly face a single scar from the old battle out of which he had come at last victorious. Recognizing her, he called her by name, and not waiting for her to ask the question that looked out of her face, said:
"It is all right with him."
A cry of joy that she could not repress broke from Ethel. It was followed by sobbing and tears.
"Can we see him?" asked Mrs. Birtwell.
"The doctor will not think it best," replied the man. "He has had a pretty hard night, but, the worst is over. We must keep him quiet to-day."
"In the morning can I see him?" asked Ethel lifting her eyes, half blinded by tears, to the man's face.
"Yes; I think I can say yes," was the reply.
"How soon?"
"Come at ten o'clock."
"You'll let me call and ask about him this evening, won't you?"
"Oh yes, and you will get a good report, I am sure."
The care and help and wise consideration received in the Home by Mr. Ridley, while passing through the awful stages of his mania, had probably saved his life. The fits of frenzy were violent, so overwhelming him with phantom terrors that in his wild and desperate struggles to escape the fangs of serpents and dragons and the horrid crew of imaginary demons that crowded his room and pressed madly upon him he would, but for the restraint to which he was subjected, have thrown himself headlong from a window or bruised and broken himself against the wall.
It was the morning of the second day after Mr. Ridley entered the Home. He had so far recovered as to be able to sit up in his room, a clean and well ventilated apartment, neatly furnished and with an air of home comfort about it. Two or three pictures hung on the walls, one of them representing a father sitting with a child upon each knee and the happy mother standing beside them. He had looked at this picture until his eyes grew dim. Near it was an illuminated text: "WITHOUT ME YE CAN DO NOTHING."
There came, as he sat gazing at the sweet home-scene, the beauty and tenderness of which had gone down into his heart, troubling its waters deeply, a knock at the door. Then the matron, accompanied by one of the lady managers of the institution, came in and made kind inquiries as to his condition. He soon saw that this lady was a refined and cultivated Christian woman, and it was not long before he felt himself coming under a new influence and all the old desires and purposes long ago cast away warming again into life and gathering up their feeble strength.
Gradually the lady led him on to talk to her of himself as he would have talked to his mother or his sister. She asked him of his family, and got the story of his bereavement, his despair and his helplessness. Then she sought to inspire him with new resolutions, and to lead him to make a new effort.
"I will be a man again," he exclaimed, at last, rising to this declaration under the uplifting and stimulating influences that were around him.
Then the lady answered him in a low, earnest, tender voice that trembled with the burden of its great concern:
"Not in your own strength. That is impossible."
His lips dropped apart. He looked at her strangely.
"Not in your own strength, but in God's," she said reverently. "You have tried your own strength many times, but it has failed as often. But his strength never fails."
She lifted her finger and pointed to the text on the wall, "Without me ye can do nothing," then added: "But in him we can do all things. Trusting in yourself, my friend, you will go forth from here to an unequal combat, but trusting in him your victory is assured. You shall go among lions and they will have no power to harm you, and stand in the very furnace flame of temptation without even the smell of fire being left upon your garments."
"Ah, ma'am, you are doubtless right in what you say," Mr. Ridley answered, all the enthusiasm dying out of his countenance. "But I am not a religious man. I have never trusted in God."
"That is no reason why you should not trust in him now," she answered, quickly. "All other hope for you is vain, but in God there is safety. Will you not go to him now?"
There came a quick, nervous rap upon the door; then it was flung open, and Ethel, with a cry of "Oh, father, my father, my father!" sprang across the room and threw herself into Mr. Ridley's arms.
With an answering cry of "Oh, Ethel, my child, my child!" Mr. Ridley drew her to his bosom, clasped her slender form to his heart and laid his face, over which tears were flowing, down among the thick masses of her golden hair.
"Let us pray," fell the sweet, solemn voice of the lady manager on the deep stillness that followed. All knelt, Mr. Ridley with his arm drawn tightly around his daughter. Then in tender, earnest supplication did this Christian woman offer her prayers for help.
"Dear Lord and Saviour," she said, in hushed, pleading tones, "whose love goes yearning after the lost and straying ones, open the eyes of this man, one of thy sick and suffering children, that he may see the tender beauty of thy countenance. Touch his heart, that he may feel the sweetness of thy love. Draw him to come unto thee, and to trust and confide in thee as his ever-present and unfailing Friend. In thee is safety, in thee is peace, and nowhere else."
God could answer this prayer through its influence upon the mind of him for whom it was offered. It was the ladder on which his soul climbed upward. The thought of God and of his love and mercy with which it filled all his consciousness inspired him with hope. He saw his own utter helplessness, and felt the peril and disaster that were before him when his frail little vessel of human resolution again met the fierce storms and angry billows of temptation; and so, in despairing abandonment of all human strength, he lifted his thoughts to God and cried out for the help and strength he needed.
And then, for he was deeply and solemnly in earnest, there was a new birth in his soul—the birth of a new life of spiritual forces in which God could be so present with him as to give him power to conquer when evil assailed him. It was not a life of his own, but a new life from God—not a self-acting life by which he was to be taken over the sea of temptation like one in a boat rowed by a strong oarsman, but a power he must use for himself, and one that would grow by use, gaining more and more strength, until it subdued and subordinated every natural desire to the rule of heavenly principles, and yet it was a life that, if not cherished and made active, would die.
There was a new expression in Mr. Ridley's face when he rose from his knees. It was calmer and stronger.
"God being your helper," said the lady manager, impressively, "victory is sure, and he will help you and overcome for you if you will let him. Do not trust to any mere personal motives or considerations. You have tried to stand by these over and over again, and every time you have fallen their power to help you has become less. Pride, ambition, even love, have failed. But the strength that God will give you, if you make his divine laws the rule of your life, cannot fail. Go to him in childlike trust. Tell him as you would tell a loving father of your sin and sorrow and helplessness, and ask of him the strength you need. Read every morning a portion of his holy word, and lay the divine precepts up in your heart. He is himself the word of life, and is therefore present in a more real and saving way to those who reverence and obey this word than it is possible for him to be to those who do not.
"Herein will lie your strength. Hence will come your deliverance. Take hold upon God our Saviour, my friend, and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against you. You will be tempted, but in the moment you hear the voice of the tempter look to God and ask him for strength, and it will surely come. Don't parley, for a single moment. Let no feeling of security lead you to test your own poor strength in any combat with the old appetite, for that would be an encounter full of peril. Trust in God, and all will be safe. But remember that there is no real trust in God without a life in harmony with his commandments. All-abiding spiritual strength comes through obedience only."
Mr. Ridley listened with deep attention, and when the lady ceased speaking said:
"Of myself I can do nothing. Long ago I saw that, and gave up the struggle in despair. If help comes now, it must come from God. No power but his can save me."
"Will you not, then, go to him?"
"How am I to go? What am I to do? What will God require of me?"
He spoke hurriedly and with the manner of one who felt himself in imminent danger and looked anxiously for a way of escape.
"To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before him; he requires nothing more," was the calmly spoken reply.
A light broke into Mr. Ridley's face.
"You cannot be just and merciful if you touch the accursed thing, for that would destroy your power to be so. To touch it, then, will be to sin against God and hurt your neighbor. Just here, then, must your religious life be in. For you to taste any kind of intoxicating drink would be a sin. God cannot help you, unless you shun this evil as a sin against him, and he will give you the power to shun it if, whenever you feel the desire to drink, you resist that desire and pray for strength by which to gain a victory.