The Lights and Shadows of Real Life Part 36

The fearful, despairing scream that issued from the poor creature's lips, as he clung to his wife, curdled the very blood in the veins of Mr. Grim, who now comprehended the meaning of the scene. Dyer and his wife were friends of other days. With the latter he had grown up from childhood, and there were many reasons why he felt an interest in her. Her husband had learned drinking and idleness in his bar-room, many years before; and more than once during the time of his declension, had she called upon Mr. Grim, and earnestly besought him to do something to save the one she loved best on earth from impending ruin. But, he had entered the downward way, and it seemed that nothing could stop his rapid progress. Now he met him, after the lapse of ten years, and found him mad with the drunkard's madness.

The scene was too painful for Mr. Grim. He could not bear it. So, hurriedly drawing his purse from his pocket, he threw it upon the floor, and turning from the room made his way out of the house, trembling in every nerve. When he arrived at home, the perspiration stood cold and clammy on every part of his body. His mind was greatly excited. Most vividly did he picture, in imagination, the horrible fiend, striking the poor drunken wretch with his serpent spear, or blasting him with his terrific countenance. For an hour he walked the floor of his chamber, and then, exhausted in body and mind, threw himself on a bed, and tried to find oblivion in sleep.

But, though he wooed the gentle G.o.ddess, she came not with her soothing poppies. Too vivid was the impression of what he had seen, and too painful were the accompanying reflections, to admit of sweet repose. At last, however, exhaustion came, and he fell into that half sleeping and waking state--in which the imagination remains active, so painful to endure. In this state, one picture presented by imagination was most vivid of all; it was the picture of poor Dyer, shrinking from the fiend with the serpent, which latter was now as plainly visible to him as it had been to the unhappy drunkard. Presently the fiend began to turn his eyes upon him with a malignant expression; then it glanced from him to the drunkard, and pointing at the latter, said Grim heard the voice distinctly--

"_It is your work!_"

The distiller closed his eyes to hide from view the grinning phantom. But it did not shut out the vision. The fiend was before him still; and now it swung around its head a horrid serpent with distended jaws, and seemed about to dash it upon him. He cowered and groaned in fear. As he still gazed upon the dreadful form, it slowly changed into a female of stern yet beautiful aspect. In one hand she held a naked sword, and in the other a balance. Her knew her, and trembled still more intensely.

"I am JUSTICE," said the figure. "You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The world is sustained by mutual benefits. No man can live wholly for himself. Each must serve the others. What one man produces another enjoys. You have enjoyed, in abundance, the good things produced by others; but what has been your return? Let me show you the work of your hands. Look!"

Suddenly there was a murmur of voices; the sound came nearer and nearer, and a crowd of men and women came eagerly toward the prostrate distiller--all eyes upon him, and all countenances expressive of anger, rebuke, or despair. One poor mother held towards him her ragged, starving child, and cried--

"Your cursed trade has murdered his father. Give him back to us!"

Another marred and degraded wretch called, with clenched hand--

"Where is my money, my good name, my all?" You have robbed me of every thing!"

By his side was a poor drunkard, supporting the pale form of his sick wife, while their starving children stood weeping before them--

"Look at us?" said he. "It is _your_ handy-work!"

And there were dozens of others in the squalid crowd who called to him with bitter execrations, or pointed to their ruined homes and cried--

"It is your work! Your work! Rum--rum has cursed us!"

"Yes, this is your work," said Justice, sternly. "For the good things of life you received on all hands from your fellow-men, you gave them back a stream of fire to consume them. Wealth is the representative of use to society. It comes, or should come, as a reward for serving the common good. So earned, it is a blessing; and he who thus gains it has a right to its possession. But, in your eager pursuit of gain you have cursed every man who brought you a blessing; and now your ill-gotten wealth must be given up. See!"

And, as she spoke, she pointed to an immense bag of gold.

"It is all there!" continued Justice. "Your houses and lands, your stocks and your merchandise, have been converted into gold; and I now distribute it once more among the people, to be gathered by those more worthy to possess it than thou!"

Then a troop of fiends came rus.h.i.+ng down through the air, and, seizing the bag, were bearing it off in triumph, when the agonized sleeper sprang towards his gold, and in the effort threw off the terrible nightmare that was almost crus.h.i.+ng out his life.

There was no sleep for him during the hours that intervened until the daylight broke. The images he had seen, and the words he had heard, were before him all the time, crus.h.i.+ng his heart like the pressure of heavy footsteps. As soon as the day had dawned he started forth and sought the dwelling he had so hastily left on the night before. All was silent as he ascended the stairway. The door of the room where he had been stood partly open. He listened a moment--all was silent. He moved the door, but nothing stirred within. Then he entered. His purse lay upon the floor where he had thrown it; that was the first object which met his sight. The next was the ghastly face of death! The wretched drunkard had pa.s.sed to his account; and his body lay upon the bed. Close beside was the form of her who had been to Mr. Grim, in early years, as a tender sister. She was in a profound sleep; and on the floor lay the child, also wrapped in deep forgetfulness of the misery with which she was surrounded.--

"And this is the work I have been doing!" sighed the distiller; whose mind could not lose the vivid impression made by his dream.

A little while he contemplated the scene around him, and then taking up his purse he silently withdrew. But ere returning home he made known to a benevolent person the fact of the unhappy death which had occurred, and, placing money in his hand, asked him to do all that humanity required, and to do it at his expense.

Few men went about their daily business with a heavier heart than Mr. Andrew Grim. He felt that he was the possessor of ill-gotten gain; and felt, besides, a sense of insecurity.

"_Wealth is the representative of use to society. It comes, or should come, as a reward for serving the common good_," he repeated to himself, in the words he had heard in his dream. "And how have I served the common good? What good have I performed that corresponds to the blessings I have received and enjoy? Ah, me! I wish it were otherwise."

With such thoughts, how could the man be happy! When night came round again he feared to trust himself in the arms of sleep; and when exhausted nature yielded, painful dreams haunted him until morning. Weeks elapsed before the vivid impression he had received wore off, and before he enjoyed any thing like a quiet slumber. But, though he had a better sleep, his waking thoughts ceased to be peaceful and self-satisfying. A year went by, and then, fretted beyond endurance at his position of manufacturer of death and destruction, both natural and spiritual, for his fellow men, he broke up his distillery, and invested his money in a business that could be followed with benefit to all.

THE RUINED FAMILY.

PART FIRST.

"HOW beautiful!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mary Graham, as she fixed her eyes intently on the western sky, rich with the many-coloured clouds of a brilliant sunset in June.

"Beautiful indeed!" responded her sister Anna.

"I could gaze on it for ever!" Ellen, a younger and more enthusiastic sister remarked, with fervent admiration. "Look, Ma!

was ever anything more gorgeous than that pure white cloud, fringed with brilliant gold, and relieved by the translucent and sparkling sky beyond?"

"It is indeed very beautiful, Ellen," Mrs. Graham replied. But there was an abstraction in her manner, that indicated, too plainly, that something weighed upon her mind.

"You don't seem to enjoy a rich sunset as much as you used to do, Ma," Anna said, for she felt the tone and manner in which her mother had expressed her admiration of the scene.

"You only think so, perhaps," Mrs. Graham rejoined, endeavouring to arouse herself, and to feel interested in the brilliant exhibition of nature to which her daughter had alluded. "The scene is, indeed, very beautiful, Anna, and reminds me strongly of some of Wordsworth's exquisite descriptions, so full of power to awaken the heart's deepest and purest emotions. You all remember this:

"'Calm is the evening air, and loth to lose Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; Look up a second time, and, one by one, You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, And wonder how they could elude the sight.'"

"And this:

"'No sound is uttered,--but a deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep, And penetrates the glades.

Far distant images draw nigh, Called forth by wondrous potency Of beamy radiance, that imbues Whate'er it strikes with gem-like hues!

In vision exquisitely clear, Herds range along the mountain-side; And glistening antlers are descried; And gilded flocks appear.

Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!

But long as G.o.d-like wish, or hope divine, Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe That this magnificence is wholly thine!

From worlds not quickened by the sun A portion of the gift is won.'"

"How calm and elevating to the heart, like the hour he describes,"

Ellen said, in a musing tone, as she sat with her eyes fixed intently on the slow-fading glories of the many-coloured clouds.

The influence of the tranquil hour gradually subdued them into silence; and as the twilight began to fall, each sat in the enjoyment of a pure and refined pleasure, consequent upon a true appreciation of the beautiful in nature, combined with highly cultivated tastes, and innocent and elevated thoughts.

"There comes Pa, I believe," Anna remarked, breaking the silence, as the hall door opened and then closed with a heavy jar; and the well-known sound of her father's footsteps was heard along the pa.s.sage and on the stairs.

None of her children observed the hushed intensity with which Mrs.

Graham listened, as their father ascended to the chamber. But they noticed that she became silent and more thoughtful than at first. In about ten minutes she arose and left the room.

"Something seems to trouble Ma, of late," Ellen observed, as soon as their mother had retired.

"So I have thought. She is certainly, to all appearance, less cheerful, "Mary replied.

"What can be the cause of it?"