"ELLIS, my son."
There was a little break and tremor in the voice. The young man
addressed was passing the door of his mother's room, and paused on
hearing his name.
"What is it?" he asked, stepping inside and looking curiously into
his mother's face, where he saw a more than usually serious
expression.
"Sit down, Ellis; I want to say a word to you before going to Mrs.
Birtwell's."
The lady had just completed her toilette, and was elegantly dressed
for an evening party. She was a handsome, stately-looking woman,
with dark hair through which ran many veins of silver, large,
thoughtful eyes and a mouth of peculiar sweetness.
The young man took a chair, and his mother seated herself in front
of him.
"Ellis."
The tremor still remained in her voice.
"Well, what is it?"
The young man assumed a careless air, but was not at ease.
"There is a good old adage, my son, the remembrance of which Has
saved many a one in the hour of danger: _Forewarned, forearmed_."
"Oh, then you think we are going into danger to-night?" he answered,
in a light tone.
"I am sorry to say that we are going where some will find themselves
in great peril," replied the mother, her manner growing more
serious; "and it is because of this that I wish to say a word or two
now."
"Very well, mother; say on."
He moved uneasily in his chair, and showed signs of impatience.
"You must take it kindly, Ellis, and remember that it is your mother
who is speaking, your best and truest friend in all the world."
"Good Heavens, mother! what are you driving at? One would think we
were going into a howling wilderness, among savages and wild beasts,
instead of into a company of the most cultured and refined people in
a Christian city."
"There is danger everywhere, my son," the mother replied, with
increasing sobriety of manner, "and the highest civilization of the
day has its perils as well as the lowest conditions of society. The
enemy hides in ambush everywhere--in the gay drawing-room as well as
in the meanest hovel."
She paused, and mother and son looked into each other's faces in
silence for several moments. Then the former said:
"I must speak plainly, Ellis. You are not as guarded as you should
be on these occasions. You take wine too freely."
"Oh, mother!" His voice was, half surprised, half angry. A red flush
mounted to cheeks and forehead. Rising, he walked the room in an
agitated manner, and then came and sat down. The color had gone out
of his face:
"How could you say so, mother? You do me wrong. It is a mistake."
The lady shook her head:
"No, my son, it is true. A mother's eyes rarely deceive her. You
took wine too freely both at Mrs. Judson's and Mrs. Ingersoll's, and
acted so little like my gentlemanly, dignified son that my cheeks
burned and my heart ached with mortification. I saw in other eyes
that looked at you both pity and condemnation. Ah, my son! there was
more of bitterness in that for a mother's heart than you will ever
comprehend."
Her voice broke into a sob.
"My dear, dear mother," returned the young man, exhibiting much
distress, "you and others exaggerated what you saw. I might have
been a trifle gay, and who is not after a glass or two of champagne?
I was no gayer than the rest. When young people get together, and
one spurs another on they are apt to grow a little wild. But to call
high spirits, even noisy high spirits, intoxication is unjust. You
must not be too hard on me, mother, nor let your care for your son
lead you into needless apprehensions. I am in no danger here. Set
your heart at rest on that score."
But this was impossible. Mrs. Whitford knew there was danger, and
that of the gravest character. Two years before, her son had come
home from college, where he had graduated with all the honors her
heart could desire, a pure, high-toned young man, possessing talents
of no common order. His father wished him to study law; and as his
own inclinations led in that direction, he went into the office of
one of the best practitioners in the city, and studied for his
profession with the same thoroughness that had distinguished him
while in college. He had just been admitted to the bar.
For the first year after his return home Mrs. Whitford saw nothing
in her son to awaken uneasiness. His cultivated tastes and love of
intellectual things held him above the enervating influences of the
social life into which he was becoming more and more drawn. Her
first feeling of uneasiness came when, at a large party given by one
of her most intimate friends, she heard his voice ring out suddenly
in the supper-room. Looking down the table, she saw him with a glass
of champagne in his hand, which he was flourishing about in rather
an excited way. There was a gay group of young girls around him, who
laughed merrily at the sport he made. Mrs. Whitford's pleasure was
gone for that evening. A shadow came down on the bright future of
her son--a future to which her heart had turned with such proud
anticipations. She was oppressed by a sense of humiliation. Her son
had stepped down from his pedestal of dignified self-respect, and
stood among the common herd of vulgar young men to whom in her eyes
he had always been superior.
But greater than her humiliation were the fears of Mrs. Whitford. A
thoughtful and observant woman, she had reason for magnifying the
dangers that lay in the path of her son. The curse of more than one
member of both her own and husband's family had been intemperance.
While still a young man her father had lost his self-control, and
her memory of him was a shadow of pain and sorrow. He died at an
early age, the victim of an insatiable and consuming desire for
drink. Her husband's father had been what is called a "free
liver"--that is, a man who gave free indulgence to his appetites,
eating and drinking to excess, and being at all times more or less
under the influence of wine or spirits.
It was the hereditary taint that Mrs. Whitford dreaded. Here lay the
ground of her deepest anxiety. She had heard and thought enough on
this subject to know that parents transmit to their children an
inclination to do the things they have done from habit--strong or
weak, according to the power of the habit indulged. If the habit be
an evil one, then the children are in more than common danger, and
need the wisest care and protection. She knew, also, from reading
and observation, that an evil habit of mind or body which did not
show itself in the second generation would often be reproduced in
the third, and assert a power that it required the utmost strength
of will and the greatest watchfulness to subdue.
And so, when her son, replying to her earnest warning, said, "I am
in no danger. Set your heart at rest," she knew better--knew that a
deadly serpent was in the path he was treading. And she answered him
with increasing earnestness:
"The danger may be far greater than you imagine, Ellis. It _is_
greater than you imagine."
Her voice changed as she uttered the last sentence into a tone that
was almost solemn.
"You are talking wildly," returned the young man, "and pay but a
poor compliment to your son's character and strength of will. In
danger of becoming a sot!--for that is what you mean. If you were
not my mother, I should be angry beyond self-control."
"Ellis," said Mrs. Whitford, laying her hand upon the arm of her son
and speaking with slow impressiveness, "I am older than you are by
nearly thirty years, have seen more of life than you have, _and know
some things that you do not know._ I have your welfare at heart more
deeply than any other being except God. I know you better in some
things than you know yourself. Love makes me clear-seeing. And this
is why I am in such earnest with you to-night. Ellis, I want a
promise from you. I ask it in the name of all that is dearest to
you--in my name--in the name of Blanche--in the name of God!"
All the color had, gone out of Mrs. Whitford's face, and she stood
trembling before her son.
"You frighten me, mother," exclaimed the young man. "What do you
mean by all this? Has any one been filling your mind with lies about
me?"
"No; none would dare speak to me of you in anything but praise, But
I want you to promise to-night, Ellis. I must have that, and then my
heart will be at ease. It will be a little thing for you, but for me
rest and peace and confidence in the place of terrible anxieties."
"Promise! What? Some wild fancies have taken hold of you."
"No wild fancies, but a fear grounded in things of which I would not
speak. Ellis, I want you to give up the use of wine."
The young man did not answer immediately. All the nervous
restlessness he had exhibited died out in a moment, and he stood
very still, the ruddy marks of excitement going out of his face. His
eyes were turned from his mother and cast upon the floor.
"And so it has come to this," he said, huskily, and in a tone of
humiliation. "My mother thinks me in danger of becoming a
drunkard--thinks me so weak that I cannot be trusted to take even a
glass of wine."
"Ellis!" Mrs. Whitford again laid her hand upon the arm of her son.
"Ellis," her voice had fallen to deep whisper, "if I must speak, I
must. There are ancestors who leave fatal legacies to the
generations that come after them, and you are one accursed by such a
legacy. There is a taint in your blood, a latent fire that a spark
may kindle into a consuming flame."
She panted as she spoke with hurried utterance. "My father!"
exclaimed the young man, with an indignant flash in his eyes.
"No, no, no! I don't mean that. But there is a curse that descends
to the third and fourth generation," replied Mrs. Whitford, "and you
have the legacy of that curse. But it will be harmless unless with
your own hand you drag it down, and this is why I ask you to abstain
from wine. Others may be safe, but for you there is peril."
"A scarecrow, a mere fancy, a figment of some fanatic's brain;" and
Ellis Whitford rejected the idea in a voice full of contempt.
But the pallor and solemnity of his mother's face warned him that
such a treatment of her fears could not allay them. Moreover, the
hint of ancestral disgrace had shocked his family pride.
"A sad and painful truth," Mrs. Whitford returned, "and one that it
will be folly for you to ignore. You do not stand in the same
freedom in which many others stand. That is your misfortune. But you
can no more disregard the fact than can one born with a hereditary
taint of consumption in his blood disregard the loss of health and
hope to escape the fatal consequences. There is for every one of us
'a sin that doth easily beset,' a hereditary inclination that must
be guarded and denied, or it will grow and strengthen until it
becomes a giant to enslave us. Where your danger lies I have said;
and if you would be safe, set bars and bolts to the door of
appetite, and suffer not your enemy to cross the threshold, of
life."
Mrs. Whitford spoke with regaining calmness, but in tones of solemn
admonition.
A long silence followed, broken at length by the young man, who
said, in a choking, depressed voice that betrayed a quaver of
impatience:
"I'm sorry for all this. That your fears are groundless I know, but
you are none the less tormented by them. What am I to do? To spare
you pain I would sacrifice almost anything, but this humiliation is
more than I am strong enough to encounter. If, as you say, there has
been intemperance in our family, it is not a secret locked up in
your bosom. Society knows all about the ancestry of its members, who
and what the fathers and grandfathers were, and we have not escaped
investigation. Don't touch wine, you say. Very well. I go to Mrs.
Birtwell's to-night. Young and old, men and women, all are
partakers, but I stand aloof--I, of all the guests, refuse the
hospitality I have pretended to accept. Can I do this without
attracting attention or occasioning remark? No; and what will be
said? Simply this--that I know my danger and am afraid; that there
is in my blood the hereditary taint of drunkenness, and that I dare
not touch a glass of wine. Mother, I am not strong enough to brave
society on such an issue, and a false one at that. To fear and fly
does not belong to my nature. A coward I despise. If there is danger
in my way and it is right for me to go forward in that way, I will
walk steadily on, and fight if I must. I am not a craven, but a man.
If the taint of which you speak is in my blood, I will extinguish
it. If I am in danger, I will not save myself by flight, but by
conquest. The taint shall not go down to another generation; it
shall be removed in this."
He spoke with a fine enthusiasm kindling over his handsome face, and
his mother's heart beat with a pride that for the moment was
stronger than fear.
"Ask of me anything except to give up my self-respect and my
manliness," he added. "Say that you wish me to remain at home, and I
will not go to the party."
"No. I do not ask that. I wish you to go. But--"
"If I go, I must do as the rest, and you must have faith in me.
Forewarned, forearmed. I will heed your admonition."
So the interview ended, and mother and son went to the grand
entertainment at Mr. Birtwell's. Ellis did mean to heed his mother's
admonition. What she had said, about the danger in which he stood
had made a deeper impression on him than Mrs. Whitford thought. But
he did not propose to heed by abstinence, but by moderation. He
would be on guard and always ready for the hidden foe, if such a foe
really existed anywhere but in his mother's fancy.
"Ah, Mrs. Whitford! Glad to see you this evening;" and the Rev. Mr.
Brantley Elliott gave the lady a graceful and cordial bow. "Had the
pleasure of meeting your son a few moments ago--a splendid young
man, if you will pardon me for saying so. How much a year has
improved him!"
Mrs. Whitford bowed her grateful acknowledgment.
"Just been admitted to the bar, I learn," said Mr. Elliott.
"Yes, sir. He has taken his start in life."
"And will make his mark, or I am mistaken. You have reason to feel
proud of him, ma'am."
"That she has," spoke out Dr. Hillhouse, who came up at the moment.
"When so many of our young men are content to be idle drones--to let
their fathers achieve eminence or move the world by the force of
thought and will--it is gratifying to see one of their number taking
his place in the ranks and setting his face toward conquest. When
the sons of two-thirds of our rich men are forgotten, or remembered
only as idlers or nobodies, or worse, your son will stand among the
men who leave their mark upon the generations."
"If he escapes the dangers that lie too thickly in the way of all
young men," returned Mrs. Whitford, speaking almost involuntarily of
what was in her heart, and in a voice that betrayed more concern
than she had meant to express.
The doctor gave a little shrug, but replied:
"His earnest purpose in life will be his protection, Mrs. Whitford.
Work, ambition, devotion to a science or profession have in them an
aegis of safety. The weak and the idle are most in danger."
"It is wrong, I have sometimes thought," said Mrs. Whitford speaking
both to the physician and the clergyman, "for society to set so many
temptations before its young men--the seed, as some one has forcibly
said, of the nation's future harvest."
"Society doesn't care much for anything but its own gratification,"
replied Dr. Hillhouse, "and says as plainly as actions can do it
'After me the deluge.'"
"Rather hard on society," remarked Mr. Elliott.
"Now take, for instance, its drinking customs, its toleration and
participation in the freest public and private dispensation of
intoxicating liquors to all classes, weak or strong, young or old.
Is there not danger in this--great danger? I think I understand you,
Mrs. Whitford."
"Yes, doctor, you understand me;" and dropping her voice to a lower
tone, Mrs. Whitford added: "There are wives and mothers and sisters
not a few here to-night whose hearts, though they may wear smiles on
their faces, are ill at ease, and some of them will go home from
these festivities sadder than when they came."
"Right about that," said the doctor to himself as he turned away, a
friend of Mrs. Whitford's having come up at the moment and
interrupted the conversation--" right about that; and you, I greatly
fear, will be one of the number."
"Our friend isn't just herself to-night," remarked Mr. Elliott as he
and Dr. Hillhouse moved across the room. "A little dyspeptic, maybe,
and so inclined to look on the dark side of things. She has little
cause, I should think, to be anxious for her own son or husband. I
never saw Mr. Whitford the worse for wine; and as for Ellis, his
earnest purpose in life, as you so well said just now, will hold him
above the reach of temptation."
"On the contrary, she has cause for great anxiety," returned Dr.
Hillhouse.
"You surprise me. What reason have you for saying this?"
"A professional one--a reason grounded in pathology."
"Ah?" and Mr. Elliott looked gravely curious.
"The young man inherits, I fear, a depraved appetite."
"Oh no. I happen to be too well acquainted with his father to accept
that view of the case."
"His father is well enough," replied Dr. Hillhouse, "but as much
could not be said of either of his grandfathers while living. Both
drank freely, and one of them died a confirmed drunkard."
"If the depraved appetite has not shown itself in the children, it
will hardly trouble the grandchildren," said Mr. Elliott. "Your fear
is groundless, doctor. If Ellis were my son, I should feel no
particular anxiety about him."
"If he were your son," replied Dr. Hillhouse, "I am not so sure
about your feeling no concern. Our personal interest in a thing is
apt to give it a new importance. But you are mistaken as to the
breaking of hereditary influences in the second generation. Often
hereditary peculiarities will show themselves in the third and
fourth generation. It is no uncommon thing to see the grandmother's
red hair reappear in her granddaughter, though her own child's hair
was as black as a raven's wing. A crooked toe, a wart, a
malformation, an epileptic tendency, a swart or fair complexion, may
disappear in all the children of a family, and show itself again in
the grand-or great-grandchildren. Mental and moral conditions
reappear in like manner. In medical literature we have many curious
illustrations of this law of hereditary transmission and its strange
freaks and anomalies."
"They are among the curiosities of your literature," said Mr.
Elliott, speaking as though not inclined to give much weight to the
doctor's views--"the exceptional and abnormal things that come under
professional notice."
"The law of hereditary transmission," replied Dr. Hillhouse, "is as
certain in its operation as the law of gravity. You may disturb or
impede or temporarily suspend the law, but the moment you remove the
impediment the normal action goes on, and the result is sure. Like
produces like--that is the law. Always the cause is seen in the
effect, and its character, quality and good or evil tendencies are
sure to have a rebirth and a new life. It is under the action of
this law that the child is cursed by the parent with the evil and
sensual things he has made a part of himself through long
indulgence."
There came at this moment a raid upon Mr. Elliott by three or four
ladies, members of his congregation, who surrounded him and Dr.
Hillhouse, and cut short their conversation.
Meanwhile, Ellis Whitford had already half forgotten his painful
interview with his mother in the pleasure of meeting Blanche
Birtwell, to whom he had recently become engaged. She was a pure and
lovely young woman, inheriting her mother's personal beauty and
refined tastes. She had been carefully educated and kept by her
mother as much within the sphere of home as possible and out of
society of the hoydenish girls who, moving in the so-called best
circles, have the free and easy manners of the denizens of a public
garden rather than the modest demeanor of unsullied maidenhood. She
was a sweet exception to the loud, womanish, conventional girl we
meet everywhere--on the street, in places, of public amusement and
in the drawing-room--a fragrant human flower with the bloom of
gentle girlhood on every unfolding leaf.
It was no slender tie that bound these lovers together. They had
moved toward each other, drawn by an inner attraction that was
irresistible to each; and when heart touched heart, their pulses
took a common beat. The life of each had become bound up in the
other, and their betrothal was no mere outward contract. The manly
intellect and the pure heart had recognized each other, tender love
had lifted itself to noble thought, and thought had grown stronger
and purer as it felt the warmth and life of a new and almost divine
inspiration. Ellis Whitford had risen to a higher level by virtue of
this betrothal.
They were sitting in a bay-window, out of the crowd of guests, when
a movement in the company was observed by Whitford. Knowing what it
meant, he arose and offered his arm to Blanche. As he did so he
became aware of a change in his companion, felt rather than seen;
and yet, if he had looked closely into her face, a change in its
expression would have been visible. The smile was still upon her
beautiful lips, and the light and tenderness still in her eyes, but
from both something had departed. It was as if an almost invisible
film of vapor had drifted across the sun of their lives.
In silence they moved on to the supper-room--moved with the light
and heavy-hearted, for, as Dr. Hillhouse had intimated, there were
some there to whom that supper-room was regarded with anxiety and
fear--wives and mothers and sisters who knew, alas! too well that
deadly serpents lie hidden among the flowers of every
banqueting-room.
How bright and joyous a scene it was! You did not see the trouble
that lay hidden in so many hearts; the light and glitter, the flash
and brilliancy, were too strong.
Reader, did you ever think of the power of spheres? The influence
that goes out from an individual or mass of individuals, we
mean--that subtle, invisible power that acts from one upon another,
and which when aggregated is almost irresistible? You have felt it
in a company moved by a single impulse which carried you for a time
with the rest, though all your calmer convictions were in opposition
to the movement. It has kept you silent by its oppressive power when
you should have spoken out in a ringing protest, and it has borne
you away on its swift or turbulent current when you should have
stood still and been true to right. Again, in the company of good
and true men, moved by the inspiration of some noble cause, how all
your weakness and hesitation has died out! and you have felt the
influence of that subtle sphere to which we refer.
Everywhere and at all times are we exposed to the action of these
mental and moral spheres, which act upon and impress us in thousands
of different ways, now carrying us along in some sudden public
excitement in which passion drowns the voice of reason, and now
causing us to drift in the wake of some stronger nature than our own
whose active thought holds ours in a weak, assenting bondage.
You understand what we mean. Now take the pervading sphere of an
occasion like the one we are describing, and do you not see that to
go against it is possible only to persons of decided convictions and
strong individuality? The common mass of men and women are absorbed
into or controlled by its subtle power. They can no more set
themselves against it, if they would, than against the rush of a
swiftly-flowing river. To the young it is irresistible.
As Ellis Whitford, with Blanche leaning on his arm, gained the
supper-room, he met the eyes of his mother, who was on the opposite
side of the table, and read in them a sign of warning. Did it awaken
a sense of danger and put him on his guard? No; it rather stirred a
feeling of anger. Could she not trust him among gentlemen and
ladies--not trust him with Blanche Birtwell by his side? It hurt his
pride and wounded his self-esteem.
He was in the sphere of liberty and social enjoyment and among those
who did not believe that wine was a mocker, but something to make
glad the heart and give joy to the countenance; and when it began to
flow he was among the first to taste its delusive sweets. Blanche,
for whom he poured a glass of champagne, took it from his hand, but
with only half a smile on her lips, which was veiled by something so
like pain or fear that Ellis felt as if the lights about him had
suddenly lost a portion of their brilliancy. He stood holding his
own glass, after just tasting its contents, waiting for Blanche to
raise the sparkling liquor to her lips, but she seemed like one
under the influence of a spell, not moving or responding.