In the days when there were not many people in Fentown Falls, and when
much money was made by the lumber trade, Bartholomew Toyner's father
grew rich. He was a Scotchman, not without some education, and was
ambitious for his son; but he was a hard, ill-tempered man, and
consequently neither his example nor his precepts carried any weight
whatever with the son when he was grown. The mother, who had begun life
cheerfully and sensibly, showed the weakness of her character in that
she became habitually peevish. She had enough to make her so. All her
pleasure in life was centred in her son Bart. Bart came out of school to
lounge upon the streets, to smoke immoderately, and to drink such large
quantities of what went into the country by the name of "Jamaica," that
in a few years it came to pass that he was nearly always drunk.
Poor Bart! the rum habit worked its heavy chains upon him before he was
well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that
he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was
not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in
the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also
that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the
world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some--his mother among
them--gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a charitable
view of his case. How could any man know? He was not born with the
nature that reveals itself in many words, or that gets rid of its
intolerable burdens of grief and shame by passing them off upon others.
All that any one could see was the inevitable failure.
The failure was the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable
instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he
would certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense
of agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and
sinkings of discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul
suspicion of self, suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort.
All this was in the region of unseen spirit, almost as much unseen to
those about him as are the spirits of the dead men and angels, often a
mere matter of faith to himself, so apart did it seem from the outward
realities of life.
Outwardly the years went easily enough. The father railed and stormed,
then relapsed into a manner of silent contempt; but he did not drive his
son from the plain, comfortable home which he kept. Bart would not work,
but he took some interest in reading. Paper-covered infidel books, and
popular books on modern science, were his choice rather than fiction.
The choice might have been worse, for the fiction to which he had access
was more enervating. Outside his father's house he neglected the better
class of his neighbours, and fraternised with the men and women that
lived by the lowest bank of the river; but his life there was still one
into which the fresh air and the sunshine of the Canadian climate
entered largely. If he lounged all day, it was on the benches in the
open air; if he played cards all night, he was not given much money to
waste; and there were few women to lend their companionship to the many
drunkards of whom he was only one. Then, also, Bart did not do even all
the evil that he might. What was the result of that long struggle of his
which always ended in failure? The failure was only apparent; the
success was this mighty one--that he did not go lower, he did not leave
Fentown Falls for the next town upon the river, a place called The
Mills, where his life could have been much worse. He fell in love with
Ann Markham; and although she was the daughter of the wickedest man in
Fentown, she was--according to the phraseology of the place--"a lady."
She kept a small beer-shop that was neat and clean; she lived so that no
man dared to say an uncivil word to her or to the sister whom she
protected. She did for her father very much what Bart's father did for
him: she kept a decent house over his head and decent clothes upon his
back, and threw a mantle of thrifty respectability over him.
Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was
the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that
stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly
sort, Ann and her sister danced. It was their amusement; they had no
other except the idle talking and laughing that went on over the table
at which Ann sold her home-brewed beer. Ann's end in life was just the
ordinary one--respectability, or a moderate righteousness, first, and
after that, pleasure. She was a strong, vigorous, sunbrowned maiden; she
worked hard to brew her beer and to sell it. She ruled her sister with
an inflexible will. She had much to say to men whom she liked and
admired. She neither liked nor admired Bart Toyner, never threw him a
word unless in scorn; yet he loved her. She was the star by which he
steered his ship in those intervals in which his eyes were clear enough
to steer at all; and the ship did not go so far out of the track as it
would otherwise have gone. When a man is in the right course, with a
good hope of the port, rowing and steering, however toilsome, is a
cheerful thing; but when the track is so far lost that the sailor
scarcely hopes to regain it--then perhaps (God only knows) it requires
more virtue to row and steer at all, even though it be done fitfully.
This belief that he could never come to any desired haven was the one
force above all others that went to the ruining of Toyner's life.