New Temperance Tales. No. 1: The Son of My Friend
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T.S. Arthur >> New Temperance Tales. No. 1: The Son of My Friend
Three days went by. He had vanished and left no sign! The whole
police of the city sought for him, but in vain. Their theory was
that he had missed his home, and wandered on towards the docks,
where he had been robbed and murdered and his body cast into the
river. He had on his person a valuable gold watch, and a diamond pin
worth over two hundred dollars--sufficient temptation for robbery
and murder if his unsteady feet had chanced to bear him into that
part of the city lying near the river.
All hope of finding Albert alive was abandoned after a week's
agonizing suspense, and Mr. Martindale offered a reward of five
hundred dollars for the recovery of his son's body. Stimulated by
this offer, hundreds of boatmen began the search up and down the
rivers and along the shores of the bay, leaving no point unvisited
where the body might have been borne by the tides. But over large
portions of this field ice had formed on the surface, closing up
many small bays and indentations of the land. There were hundreds of
places into any one of which the body might have floated, and where
it must remain until the warm airs of spring set the water free
again. The search was fruitless.
Mrs. Martindale, meantime, had lapsed into a state of dull
indifference to everything but her great sorrow. That absorbed her
whole mental life. It was the house in which her soul dwelt, the
chamber of affliction wherein she lived, and moved, and had her
being--so darkly draped that no light came in through the windows.
Very still and passionless she sat here, refusing to be comforted.
Forced by duty, yet dreading always to look into her face, that
seemed full of accusations, I went often to see my friend. It was
very plain that, in her mind, I was an accessory to her son's death.
Not after the first few days did I venture to offer a word of
comfort; for such words from my lips seemed as mockery. They
faltered on my tongue.
One day I called and the servant took up my name. On returning to
the parlor, she said that Mrs. Martindale did not feel very well,
and wished to be excused. The servant's manner confirmed my instant
suspicion. I had looked for this; yet was not the pang it gave me
less acute for the anticipation? Was I not the instrumental cause of
a great calamity that had wrecked her dearest hope in life? And how
could she bear to see my face?
I went home very heavy-hearted. My husband tried to comfort me with
words that had no balm for either his troubled heart or mine. The
great fact of our having put the cup of confusion to that young
man's lips, and sent him forth at midnight in no condition to find
his way home, stood out too sharply defined for any self-delusion.
I did not venture to the house of my friend again. She had dropped a
curtain between us, and I said, "It shall be a wall of separation."
Not until spring opened was the body of Albert Martindale recovered.
It was found floating in the dock, at the end of the street down
which young Gordon saw him go with unsteady steps in the darkness
and storm on that night of sorrow. His watch was in his pocket, the
hands pointing to half-past two, the time, in all probability, when
he fell into the water. The diamond pin was in his scarf, and his
pocket-book in his pocket, unrifled. He had not been robbed and
murdered. So much was certain. To all it was plain that the
bewildered young man, left to himself, had plunged on blindly
through the storm, going he knew not whither, until he reached the
wharf. The white sheet of snow lying over everything hid from eyes
like his the treacherous margin, and he stepped, unheeding, to his
death! It was conjectured that his body had floated, by an incoming
tide, under the wharf, and that his clothes had caught in the logs
and held it there for so long a time.
Certainty is always better than doubt. On the Sunday after the
saddest funeral it has ever been my lot to attend, Mrs. Martindale
appeared for the first time in church. I did not see her face, for
she kept her heavy black veil closely drawn. On the following Sunday
she was in the family pew again, but still kept her face hidden.
From friends who visited her (I did not call again after my first
denial) I learned that she had become calm and resigned.
To one of these friends she said, "It is better that he should have
died than live to be what I too sadly fear our good society would
have made him--a social burden and disgrace. But custom and example
were all against him. It was at the house of one of my oldest and
dearest friends that wine enticed him. The sister of my heart put
madness in his brain, and then sent him forth to meet a death he had
no skill left to avoid."
Oh, how these sentences cut and bruised and pained my heart, already
too sore to bear my own thoughts without agony!
What more shall I write? Is not this unadorned story sad enough, and
full enough of counsel and warning? Far sooner would I let it sleep,
and go farther and farther away into the oblivion of past events;
but the times demand a startling cry of warning. And so, out of the
dark depths of the saddest experience of my life, I have brought
this grief, and shame, and agony to the light, and let it stand
shivering in the face of all men.