"Why Mrs. Gladstone," said Miss Tabitha, "you are as zealous as a new
convert to the cause of woman suffrage. We single women who are
constantly taxed without being represented, know what it is to see
ignorance and corruption striking hands together and voting away our
money for whatever purposes they choose. I pay as large a tax as many of
the men in A.P., and yet cannot say who shall assess my property for a
single year."
"And there is another thing," said Mrs. Gladstone, "ought to be brought
to the consideration of the men, and it is this. They refuse to let us
vote and yet fail to protect our homes from the ravages of rum. My
young friend, whom I said died of starvation; foolishly married a
dissipated man who happened to be rich and handsome. She was gentle,
loving, sensitive to a fault. He was querulous, fault-finding and
irritable, because his nervous system was constantly unstrung by liquor.
She lacked tenderness, sympathy and heart support, and at last faded and
died, not starvation of the body, but a trophy of the soul, and when I
say the law helped, I mean it licensed the places that kept the
temptation ever in his way. And I fear, that is the secret of Jeanette's
faded looks, and unhappy bearing."
No Jeanette was not happy. Night after night would she pace the floor of
her splendidly furnished chamber waiting and watching for her husband's
footsteps. She and his friends had hoped that her influence would be
strong enough to win him away from his boon companions, that his home
and beautiful bride would present superior attractions to Anderson's
saloon, his gambling pool, and champaign suppers, and for a while they
did, but soon the novelty wore off, and Jeanette found out to her great
grief that her power to bind him to the simple attractions of home were
as futile as a role of cobwebs to moor a ship to the shore, when it has
drifted out and is dashing among the breakers. He had learned to live an
element of excitement, and to depend upon artificial stimulation, until
it seemed as if the very blood in his veins grew sluggish fictitious
excitement was removed. His father, hopeless of his future, had
dissolved partnership with him, and for months there had been no
communication between them; and Jeanette saw with agony and dismay that
his life was being wrecked upon the broad sea of sin and shame.
* * * * *
"Where is his father? The child can't live. It is one of the worst cases
of croup I have had this year, why didn't you send for me sooner? Where
is his father? It is now just twelve o'clock, time for all respectable
men to be in the house," said the bluff but kind hearted family doctor
looking tenderly upon Jeanette's little boy who lay gasping for breath
in the last stages of croup.
"Oh! I don't know," said Jeanette her face crimsoning beneath the
doctor's searching glance. "I suppose he is down to Anderson's."
"Anderson's!" said the doctor in a tone of hearty indignation, "what
business has he there, and his child dying here?"
"But doctor, he didn't know, the child had fever when he went out, but
neither of us thought much of it till I was awakened by his strange and
unnatural breathing. I sent for you as soon as I could rouse the
servants." "Well rouse them again, and tell them to go down to
Anderson's and tell your husband that his child is dying."
"Oh! no not dying doctor, you surely don't mean it." "Yes Jeanette,"
said the old family doctor, tenderly and sadly, "I can do nothing for
him, let me take him in my arms and rest you. Dear little darling, he
will be saved from the evils to come."
Just as his life was trembling on its frailest chords, and its delicate
machinery almost wound up, Charles Romaine returned, sober enough to
take in the situation. He strode up to the dying child, took the clammy
hands in his, and said in a tone of bitter anguish, "Charlie, don't you
know papa? Wouldn't you speak one little word to papa?" But it was too
late, the shadows that never deceive flitted over the pale beauty of the
marble brow, the waxen lid closed over the once bright and laughing eye,
and the cold grave for its rest had won the child.