"I can't do without my beer; I haven't strength to work without it."
"You've taken plenty of it, I reckon," remarked Ned, "and you don't seem
to thrive much on't."
"I've taken too much," said the other, "but I can't do without a
little."
"You can't do _with_ a little, I fear. It's first only a pint, and then
it's only a quart, and then it's only a gallon, till at last it's only a
fuddled head and an empty pocket. Come, join us, Thomas; take the first
step boldly like a man, and then just pray for grace, and you'll not
fear what other folks can do to you."
"But I shall never get through my work without a drop of beer to wash
dust out of my throat and spirit me up," persisted Johnson. "I feel
like another sort of man when I've had my pint."
"Yes, just for a bit," replied Ned. "Now it seems to me just the same
as what we might do with our fire. I bid our Esther look to the fire,
so she goes and sticks to the poker, and each now and then she pokes
away at the fire, and the fire blazes up and blazes up, but very soon
there's nothing left to blaze with. The fire'll be out directly, so I
says to our Mary, _you_ look after the fire, so our Mary goes to the
heap and fetches a shovel of coal, and claps it on the top of the hot
cinders, and she won't let our Esther poke it no more, so it burns
steady and bright, and throws out a good heat, and lasts a long time.
Now, when you take your drop of beer, you're just poking the fire,
you're not putting any coal on; you can work like a lion for a bit, but
you're only using up the old stock of strength faster and faster, you're
not putting on any new. I've helped you to put a little gradely coal on
to-night, and I hope it won't be the last time by many."
"Father," broke in Esther, laughing, and highly entertained at the part
she bore in her father's illustration, "when you tell your tale again,
you must make our Mary stick to the poker, and me clap the coal on."
"Ay, ay, child," said her father, "you shall each take it in turn."
"Well, you may be right," sighed Johnson; "but Jack Barnes says as he's
knowed scores of teetottallers that's wasted away to skin and bone for
want of the drink; he says beer strengthens the bone, and makes the
muscles tight and firm."
"Jack Barnes may say what he likes, but I'll just ask you, Thomas, to
think and judge for yourself. You see me and mine; you see seven total
abstainers here to-night. Not one of these childer knows the taste of
the drink; they work hard, you know, some in the pit, some in the mill:
do _they_ look nothing but skin and bone? Where'll you find healthier
childer? I'm not boasting, for it's the good Lord that's given 'em
health, yes, and strength too, without the drink."
"Ay, and just look at Jack Barnes's own lads, and the company they
keep," said John, the eldest son; "you may see them all at the four lane
ends, [Note 1], any Sunday morn, with their pigeons, looking more like
scarecrows than Christians; and afore night they'll be so weary that
they'll scarce know how to bide anywhere. They'll be lounging about,
looking as limp as a strap out of gear, till they've got the ale in
them, and then they're all for swearing and shouting up and down the
lanes."
"I can't deny," said Johnson, "that you teetottallers have the best of
it in many ways. It's a bad bringing-up for childer to see such goings-
on as is in Barnes's house."
"And, Thomas," said Brierley's wife, "you know how it is with Joe
Taylor's lads and wenches. There's a big family on 'em. They're not
short of brass in that house, or shouldn't be. There's drink enough and
to spare goes down their throats, and yet there's not one of the whole
lot but's as lean as an empty bobbin, and as white as a heap of cotton.
They're nearly starved to death afore reckoning-day comes; and with all
their good wage they cannot make things reach and tie."
"Well, I must wish you good night now," said Johnson, rising to go. "I
suppose I can do nothing about our Sammul but have patience."
"Yes, pray for patience, Thomas; and pray to be shown the right way: and
give up the drink, man--ay, give it up at once, for Betty's sake, for
Alice's sake, and for your own soul's sake."
"I'll try, I'll try; good night."
"Good night."
Johnson walked homewards sorrowful but calm. Should he take the pledge?
should he boldly break his chains, and brave the scorn of his ungodly
companions? He felt that he ought. He murmured a half prayer that he
might have strength to do it. He reached his own home; he entered--what
did, he see?
Round the fire, slatternly and dirty, with hair uncombed, dress
disordered, shoes down at heel, lolling, lounging, stooping in various
attitudes, were some half-dozen women, Alice being nearest the fire on
one side. Most of them had pipes in their mouths. On the table were
cups and saucers, a loaf and some butter, and also a jug, which
certainly did not hold milk; its contents, however, were very popular,
as it was seldom allowed to rest on the table, while the strong odour of
rum which filled the room showed pretty plainly that it had been filled
at the public-house and not at the farm. Every eye was flashing, and
every tongue in full exercise, when Johnson entered.
"Well, Thomas," said his wife, "I thought you were down at the `George.'
Our Betty's not so well, so she's gone up into the chamber to lay her
down a bit; and I've just been axing a neighbour or two to come in and
have a bit of a talk over our Sammul. Come, sit you down, and take a
cup of tea, and here's summat to put in it as'll cheer you up."
"I've just had my tea at Ned Brierley's," replied her husband; "I don't
want no more."
"Ah, but you must just take one cup. Reach me the jug, Molly. You look
as down as if you'd seen a boggart; [see note 2], you must drink a drop
and keep your spirits up."
He made no reply, but threw himself back on the couch, and drew his cap
over his eyes. Seeing that he was not likely to go out again, the women
dropped off one by one, and left him alone with his wife, who sat
looking into the fire, comforting herself partly with her pipe and
partly with frequent applications to the jug. After a while Thomas rose
from the couch, and took his seat by the fire opposite to her. There
was a long pause; at last he broke it by saying,--
"Alice."
"Well, Thomas."
"Alice, you know I have been up at Ned's. Ned's a quiet, civil man, and
a gradely Christian too. I wish our house had been like his; we
shouldn't have lost our Sammul then."
"Well, my word! what's come over you, Thomas? Why, sure you're not a-
going to be talked over by yon Brierley folk!" exclaimed his wife.
"Why, they're so proud, they can't look down upon their own shoes: and
as for Brierley's wenches, if a fellow offers to speak to 'em, they'll
snap his head off. And Martha herself's so fine that the likes of me's
afraid to walk on the same side of the road for fear of treading on her
shadow."
"Well, Alice, I've oft abused 'em all myself; but I were wrong all the
time. And you're wrong, Alice, too. They've never done us no harm, and
we've nothing gradely to say against 'em; and you know it too. They've
toiled hard for their brass, and they haven't made it away as _we_ have
done; and if they're well off, it's no more nor they deserve."
"Not made away their brass! No, indeed!" said his wife, contemptuously,
"no danger of that; they'll fist it close enough. They like it too well
to part with it. They'll never spend a ha'penny to give a poor chap a
drop of beer, though he's dying of thirst."
"No, 'cos they've seen what a curse the drink has been to scores and
hundreds on us. Ah, Alice, if you had but seen the happy faces gathered
round Ned's hearth-stone; if you had but heard Ned's hearty welcome--
though he can't but know that I've ever been the first to give him and
his a bad word--you couldn't say as you're saying now."
"Come, Thomas," said his wife, "don't be a fool. If Ned Brierley likes
his teetottal ways, and brings up his lads and wenches same fashion, let
him please himself; but he mustn't make teetottallers of you nor me."
"And why shouldn't he make a teetottaller of me?" cried Thomas, his
anger rising at his wife's opposition. "What has the drink done for us,
I'd like to know? What's it done with my wage, with our Betty's wage,
with our poor Sammul's wage? Why, it's just swallowed all up, and paid
us back in dirt and rags. Where's there such a beggarly house as this
in all the village? Why haven't we clothes to our backs and shoes to
our feet? It's because the drink has took all."
"It's not the drink," screamed Alice, her eyes flashing with rage.
"You've nothing to blame the drink for; the drink's right enough. It's
yourself; it's your own fault. You haven't any conduct in your drink
like other folk. You must sit sotting at the `George' till you can't
tell your hand from your foot; and then you must come home and
blackguard me and the childer, and turn the house out of the windows.
You've driven our Sammul out of the country; and you'll be the death of
our Betty, and of me too, afore you've done."
"Death of you!" shouted her husband, in a voice as loud as her own.
"And what odds then? No conduct in _my_ drink! And what have _you_ had
in yourn? What's there to make a man tarry by the hearth-stone in such
a house as this, where there's nothing to look at but waste and want? I
wish every drop of the drink were in the flames with this." So saying,
he seized the jug, threw the little that was left of the spirits in it
into the fire, and, without stopping to listen to the torrent of abuse
which poured from the lips of his wife, hurried out of the house. And
whither did he go? Where strong habit led him, almost without his being
conscious of it--he was soon within the doors of the "George." By this
time his anger had cooled down, and he sat back from the rest of the
company on an empty bench. The landlord's eye soon spied him.
"What are you for to-night, Thomas?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Johnson, moodily; "I'm better with nothing, I
think."
"No, no," said the other; "you're none of that sort. You look very
down; a pint of ale'll be just the very thing to set you right."
Johnson took the ale.
"Didn't I see you coming out of Ned Brierley's?" asked one of the
drinkers.
"Well, and what then?" asked Johnson, fiercely.
"Oh, nothing; only I thought, maybe, that you were for coming out in the
teetottal line. Ay, wouldn't that be a rare game?"
A roar of laughter followed this speech. But Johnson's blood was up.
"And why shouldn't I join the teetottallers if I've a mind?" he cried.
"I don't see what good the drink's done to me nor mine. And as for Ned
Brierley, he's a gradely Christian. I've given him nothing afore but
foul words; but I'll give him no more."
A fresh burst of merriment followed these words.
"Eh, see," cried one, "here's the parson come among us."
"He'll be getting his blue coat with brass buttons out of the pop-shop
just now," cried another; "and he'll hold his head so high that he won't
look at us wicked sinners."
A third came up to him with a mock serious air, and eyeing him with his
head on one side, said,--
"They call you Thomas, I reckon. Ah, well, now you're going to be one
of Ned's childer, we must take you to the parson and get him to christen
you Jonadab."
Poor Johnson! he started up, for one moment he meditated a fierce rush
at his persecutors, the next, he turned round, darted from the public-
house, and hurried away he knew not whither.
And what will he do? Poor man--wretched, degraded drunkard as he had
been--he was by natural character a man of remarkable energy and
decision; what he had fairly and fully determined upon, his resolution
grasped like a vice. Brought up in constant contact with drunkenness
from his earliest years, and having imbibed a taste for strong drink
from his childhood, that taste had grown with his growth, and he had
never cared to summon resolution or seek strength to break through his
miserable and debasing habit. Married to a woman who rather rejoiced to
see her husband moderately intoxicated, because it made him good-
natured, he had found nothing in his home, except its growing misery, to
induce him to tread a better path. True, he could not but be aware of
the wretchedness which his sin and that of his wife had brought upon him
and his; yet, hitherto, he had never seen _himself_ to be the chief
cause of all this unhappiness. He blamed his work, he blamed his
thirst, he blamed his wife, he blamed his children, he blamed his dreary
comfortless home--every one, everything but himself. But now light had
begun to dawn upon him, though as yet it had struggled in only through a
few chinks. God had made a partial entrance for it through his remorse
at the loss of his son; that entrance had been widened by his visit to
Ned Brierley, yet he was still in much darkness; his light showed him
evil and sin in great mis-shapen terrible masses, but was not so far
sufficiently bright to let him see anything in clear sharp outline. A
great resolve was growing, but it needed more hammering into form, it
wanted more prayer to bring it up to the measure of a Christian duty.
And here we must leave him for the present, and pass to other and very
different scenes and characters essential to the development of our
story.
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Note 1. "Four lane ends," a place where four roads meet.
Note 2. "Hoggart", a ghost.