Part 15 (2/2)
The effects of opium and the strength of the habit, as is the case with other stimulants, vary with the temperament and const.i.tution of the victims. A few can use it with comparative moderation and with no great detriment for a long time, especially if they allow considerable intervals to elapse between the periods of indulgence, but they eventually sink into as horrible a thraldom as that which degrades the least cautious. Upon far more the drug promptly fastens its deathly grip, and too often when they awaken to their danger they find themselves almost powerless. Still if they would then seek a physician's advice and resolutely cease using the poison in any form, they would regain their physical and mental tone within a comparatively brief time. I am glad to believe that some do stop at this period and escape. Their sufferings for a time must be severe, and yet they are nothing compared with the tortures awaiting them if they do not abstain. The majority, however, temporize and attempt a gradual reformation. There is not a ray of hope or the faintest prospect of cure for those who at this stage adopt half-way measures. They soon learn that they cannot maintain the moderation which they have resolved upon. A healthful man of good habits may be said to be at par. One indulgence in opium lifts him far above par, but in the inevitable reaction he sinks below it, and wronged nature will not rally at once; therefore she is hastened and spurred by the stimulant, and the man rises above par again, yet not quite so high as before, and he sinks lower in the reaction. With this process often repeated the system soon begins to lose its elasticity; the man sinks lower and more heavily every time; the amount of the drug that once produced a delightful exhilaration soon scarcely brings him up to par, and he must steadily strengthen the fatal leverage until at last even a deadly dose cannot lift him into any condition like his old exhilaration or serenity.
There are a vast number of men and women who ought never to take stimulants at all. They had better die than to begin to use them habitually, and even to touch them is hazardous. There is slumbering in their natures a predisposition toward their excessive use which a slight indulgence may kindle into a consuming, clamorous desire.
Opium had apparently found something peculiarly congenial in Mr.
Jocelyn's temperament and const.i.tution, and at first it had rewarded him with experiences more delightful than most of its votaries enjoy. But it is not very long content to remain a servant, and in many instances very speedily becomes the most terrible of masters.
He had already reached such an advanced stage of dependence upon it that its withdrawal would now leave him weak, helpless, and almost distracted for a time. It would probably cost him his situation; his weakness would be revealed to his family and to the world, and the knowledge of it might prevent his obtaining employment elsewhere; therefore he felt that he must hide the vice and fight it to its death in absolute secrecy. Under the terrible necromancy of his sin the wife from whom he had scarcely concealed a thought in preceding years was the one whom he most feared. As yet the habit was a sin, because he had the power to overcome it if he would simply resolve to do right regardless of the consequences; and these would be slight indeed compared with the results of further indulgence. He had better lose his situation a hundred times; he had better see his family faint from hunger for weeks together, should such an ordeal be an essential part of his struggle for freedom, for only by such an unfaltering effort could he regain the solid ground on which enduring happiness and prosperity could be built. As it was, he was rapidly approaching a point where his habit would become a terrible and uncontrollable disease, for which he would still be morally responsible--a responsibility, however, in which, before the bar of true justice, the physician who first gave the drug without adequate caution would deeply share. He felt his danger as he sat cowering over the dying fire; even with its warmth added to that of the summer night he s.h.i.+vered at his peril, but he did not appreciate it in any proper sense. He resolved again, as he often had before, that each day should witness increasing progress, then feeling that he MUST sleep he bared his arm and sent enough of Magendie's solution into his system to produce such rest as opium bestows.
To her surprise Mildred found the awakening of her father a difficult task the following morning. The boat on which his wife and children were to arrive was probably already at the wharf, and she had thought he would be up with the sun to meet them, but he seemed oppressed with an untimely stupor. When at last he appeared he explained that the fire on the hearth had induced a fit of brooding over the past and future, and that he had sat up late.
”Here's a cup of coffee, papa,” she said briskly, ”and it will wake you up. I'll have breakfast ready for you all by the time you can return, and I'm so eager to see mamma that I could fly to her.”
Mortified that he should even appear dilatory at such a time, he hastened away, but he was far beyond such a mild stimulant as coffee. Even now, when events were occurring which would naturally sustain from their deep personal interest, he found himself reduced to an almost complete dependence on an unnatural support. Before sleeping he had appealed to his dread master, and his first waking moments brought a renewed act of homage. Opium was becoming his G.o.d, his religion. Already it stood between him and his wife and children. It was steadily undermining his character, and if not abandoned would soon leave but the hollow semblance of a man.
As the steamboat arrived in the night, Mrs. Jocelyn had no sense of disappointment at not being met, and through Mildred's persistency it was still early when her husband appeared. His greeting was so affectionate, and he appeared so well after his hasty walk, that the old glad, hopeful look came into her eyes. To Belle and the children, coming back to the city was like coming home as in former years, only a little earlier. The farm had grown to be somewhat of an old story, and Belle had long since voted it dull.
”Well, Nan, we've come down to two rooms in very truth, and in an old, old house, too, that will remind you of some of the oldest in the South,” and he drew such a humorous and forlorn picture of their future abode that his wife felt that he had indeed taken her at her word, and that they would scarcely have a place to lay their heads, much less to live in any proper sense; and when she stopped before the quaint and decrepit house without any front door; when she followed her husband up the forlorn stairway to what seemed a side entrance with its most dismal outlook, she believed that the time for fort.i.tude had come, in bitter truth. The hall was dark to her sun-blinded eyes, as it had been to Mildred's, yet not so dark but that she saw doors open and felt herself scanned with an unblus.h.i.+ng curiosity by slattern-looking women, her near neighbors, and the thought that they were so very near made her s.h.i.+ver. As for Belle, she did not take pains to hide her disgust. With a sinking heart and faltering courage the poor gentlewoman mounted the winding stairs, but before she reached the top there was a rush from an open doorway, and Mildred clasped her in close embrace.
”Welcome home!” she cried, in her clear, sweet, girlish voice.
”Home, Millie! what a mockery that word is in this strange, strange place!” she half whispered, half sobbed in her daughter's ear.
”Courage, mamma. We promised papa we'd ask nothing better than he could afford,” Mildred murmured. ”Don't let him see tears--he has already put Fred down and is turning to welcome you to the best home he can offer.”
Had the rooms been cells only, with but a pallet of straw upon the floors, Mrs. Jocelyn would have responded to that appeal, and she stepped forward resolved to smile and appear pleased with everything, no matter how stifled she might feel for want of s.p.a.ce, air, and light.
But when she crossed the threshold into the s.p.a.cious, sun-lighted room, and looked up at the high ceiling and across its wide area; when she had glanced around and seen on every side the results of the strong spells laid upon stout Mrs. Wheaton by Mildred's domestic magic, and the dainty touches with which the solid work had been supplemented, her face lighted up with a sweet surprise.
”Oh, OH, how much better this is than you led me to expect! Is all this really ours? Can we afford so large a room? Here are the dear old things, too, with which I first went to housekeeping.” Then stepping to her husband's aide she put her arm around his neck as she looked into his eyes and said, ”Martin, this is home. Thank G.o.d, it is home-like after all. With you and the children around me I can be more than content--I can be very happy in this place.
I feared that we might be too crowded, and that the children might suffer.”
”Of course you didn't think of yourself, Nan. Millie's the good fairy to thank for all this. The way she and another female divinity have conjured in these rooms the last three days is a matter wholly beyond the masculine mind.”
”Father did a great deal, too, and did it much better than you could expect from a man. But, come, I'm mistress of this small fraction of the venerable mansion till after breakfast, and then, mamma, I'll put the baton of rule in your hands. I've burned my fingers and spoiled my complexion over the stove, and I don't intend that a cold breakfast shall be the result.”
”Millie,” cried Belle, rus.h.i.+ng out of the second room, which she had inspected in her lightning-like way before greeting her sister, ”our room is lovely. You are a gem, an onyx, a fickle wild rose.
It's all splendid--a perpetual picnic place, to which we'll bring our own provisions and cook 'em our own way. No boss biddies in this establishment. It's ever so much better than I expected after you once get here; but as the hymn goes, 'How dark and dismal is the way!'”
It was with difficulty that the children, wild over the novelty of it all, could be settled quietly at the table. It was the family's first meal in a tenement-house. The father's eye grew moist as he looked around his board and said, deep in his heart, ”Never did a sweeter, fairer group grace a table in this house, although it has stood more than a century. If for their sakes I cannot be a man--”
”Martin,” began his wife, her delicate features flus.h.i.+ng a little, ”before we partake of this our first meal I want you all to join me in your hearts while I say from the depths of mine, G.o.d bless our home.”
An hour later, as he went down-town, Mr. Jocelyn finished his sentence. ”If for the sake of such a wife and such children I cannot stop, I'm d.a.m.ned.”
CHAPTER XVI
BELLE AND MILDRED
The cosmopolitan bachelor living in apartments knows far more of Sanscrit than of a domestic woman's feelings as she explores the place she must call her home. It may be a palace or it may be but two rooms in a decaying tenement, but the same wistful, intent look will reveal one of the deepest needs of her nature. Eve wept not so much for the loss of Eden as for the loss of home--the familiar place whose homeliest objects had become dear from a.s.sociation. The restless woman who has no home-hunger, no strong instinct to make a place which shall be a refuge for herself and those she loves, is not the woman G.o.d created. She is the product of a sinister evolution; she is akin to the birds that will not build nests, but take possession of those already constructed, ousting the rightful occupants.
<script>