"THE SIN BURDEN."
After Gilbert Allison arrived home from that ride, the ghostly night on
which he saw the fruits of a sinful traffic in all its horror, he
hastily disrobed and turned into bed, hoping to sleep away the
unpleasant thoughts and pictures that had possession of his mind; but no
sooner had sleep overtaken him than a face, framed in a halo of
red-brown hair, looked down upon him from an eminence; a white hand with
a phosphorescent glow pointed at him, while a voice kept repeating, to
the accompaniment of a childish wail, "Man--atom of the great iniquity,
man--atom of the great iniquity."
In his dream he did not recognize the face nor voice, and yet both
seemed strangely familiar to him.
When daylight came, the face and the white hand and the moaning child
went away and the face of the woman whose misery he had looked upon
haunted him, and her bitter prayer came to him in snatches.
The experience was distressing in no small degree to the ease-loving
man. He could not analyze his feelings and was not aware that what one
strange little woman called a "sin burden" had fallen with its weight
upon him. He was in the act of rubbing his eyes before his moral
resurrection.
* * * * *
Damon Crowley was behind the bars for the last time. Perhaps he did not
know, at any rate he did not care. He had reached the beginning of the
end.
From the corners of his cell dark faces leered at him; cruel, sharp
claws closed around his limbs and icy fingers grasped his throat--yet he
was not dead. Outlines of things he saw became to him living creatures
of destruction and crouched over him, grinning in his face and tearing
him to bits--yet he was not dead. Snarling beasts sank their fangs into
his flesh, a thousand poison insects rushed and swarmed upon him, and he
felt the virus of their sting bounding through his body--yet he lived.
Slimy serpents wriggled over him, thrusting their forked tongues into
his nose and ears, and when he grabbed frantically to tear them away
they had gone.
A fire burned within him and he tore his flesh and hair, while death
like a dark shadow hovered nearer and nearer, closing in slowly but
surely. The end of Damon Crowley was not as a child falls to sleep nor
as a Christian steps into the great beyond.
It was a time of screams and groans; of frantic clutchings and hard
grapplings. Those in neighboring cells were glad for once that the walls
were thick and the bolts secure.
* * * * *
Gilbert Allison imagined he would feel better when he knew that Damon
Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the
case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary
burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at
peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her
perfect course, and the victim of a nation's sin had been hung by the
neck until dead. But even the news of the tragic death of the murderer
did not prove a cure for his nameless and indefinable ill-feeling.
Then it occurred to him that perhaps his name had not been taken from
over the doors of the establishment of which he had so long been a part.
Being fully resolved to completely sever his connection with the
business, he looked upon this as a necessary step, and not without some
small hope that it might help a little toward restoring his upset
conscience.
Turning a corner, he raised his eyes. There, in the glow of the full
sunlight, blazed the richly-wrought words, "Allison, Russell & Joy."
They looked positively ugly to him and he felt that he had been injured
by the other members of the firm. Entering the establishment to request
that the sign be altered he came upon a trio discussing trade items, and
the old familiar phraseology fell upon his ears like jangling voices.
As he passed out an old customer slapped him familiarly on the back and
asked after business. Hardly had he escaped this one before another
grasped his hand and inquired in jovial manner how times were. Then a
drummer approached him, and, on being informed that he was no longer
connected with the trade interests, assured him that the trade had
suffered a loss. As he halted a moment in front of a hotel, a
half-intoxicated man with a tale of woe, because of having been ordered
out of the palatial sample room of the late liquor dealer, drew some
attention to him and increased his feeling of disquiet and irritability.
Each time he informed his assailant that he had severed his connection
with the business, but it was not until the red-headed proprietor of a
groggery drew nigh with a grievance, that the last straw had been put
upon his already overtaxed nerves and conscience.
With more than the necessary amount of vigor he declared himself
innocent of the business and dropped remarks relative to groggeries that
would have delighted the ear of a temperance lecturer.
After this series of unpleasant encounters Gilbert Allison betook
himself to the office of his friend, Dr. Samuel Thomas, the companion of
his memorable ride, for advisement.
Entering the room without previous announcement, he dropped his hat onto
a promiscuous pile of books and papers and spread himself on the couch.
Here, with his hands clasped under his head, he studied the pattern of
the ceiling paper a few seconds before venturing a remark.
Dr. Sammie, used to moods and fancies, waited.
"Would you do anything for a friend in need, Sammie?" asked the visitor
at length, with a strong emphasis upon the "anything."
"To be sure. Speak out."
"Then laugh."
"Laugh?"
"Yes, laugh."
"Laugh? What about?"
"Anything or nothing--but laugh. I have not heard a suspicion of a laugh
in weeks. I have been prowling around in a valley of dry bones, and to
save my soul I cannot find my way out. I thought I had just begun the
ascent of a slope where smiles are occasionally seen, when the hope was
shattered by the vulgar familiarity of a mob belonging to the trade."
Dr. Sammie listened to the rather unusual remarks of his friend, and as
he recounted the day's experiences in his own original way the amused
look on his face drew itself into definite shape around his mouth, and,
when Allison had delivered himself of something unusual in the way of a
tirade on dive-keepers, the climax had been reached, and the listener
rested his head against the back of his chair and laughed in a manner
sufficiently hearty to have satisfied the request of his friend.
"Soured on the fraternity, have you?" he asked.
Gilbert Allison slowly raised himself to a sitting posture and, with an
elbow resting on either knee, transferred his study from the ceiling
pattern to that of the carpet. He did not answer the question.
"Crowley died," he at length observed.
"Yes--and I should think you would be the man to be glad. I imagine the
after feeling must be anything but pleasant when one has for years
helped fit a fellow creature for the gallows."
Gilbert Allison frowned between his hands and spoke sharply.
"It is a legal business," he said.
"Legal? Yes, legal--but you have sense enough to know that if it is
legal for you to sell, it must be legal for some other fellow to buy;
and if some other fellow spends his money for liquor he had the right to
drink it, and you can hardly be unreasonable enough to hold a man
responsible for what he does when the lining has been eaten out of his
stomach and his brain soaked with alcohol. Such a man is a legal
murderer, and the custom that breeds him should take care of the
finished production.
"Mind you, I am not giving a temperance lecture; that is out of my line.
But it has always seemed to me to be a rotten sort of justice that hangs
a man for doing what the government gives him a license to do."
Mr. Allison looked up suddenly.
"Do you suppose, Sammie, that Deacon Brown knows the Traffic as it
is--as we have seen it?"
"His church machinery grinds out resolutions annually of such a warlike
nature that I am inclined to believe he does," said the doctor grimly.
"He has been in every political caucus that I have, for the last five
years and has voted as I have from constable to President. I have voted
for the interests of the Trade. What has he been voting for?" demanded
Allison.
"I'll give it up," said Sammie, dusting the ashes from the end of his
cigar; "but the Lord have mercy on his brains if he thinks it has been
for 'temperance and morality.'"
Gilbert Allison arose and began a measured tread up and down the room.
"Laugh some more, Sammie! I have not yet recovered my normal condition.
I had as soon be dead as morbid. Laugh. Perhaps it will prove
infectious."
"I prefer to diagnose my case before applying a remedy," said the
doctor. "Tell me your symptoms. What ails you?"
"I am in a dilemma, Sammie--a dilemma. Tell me--will it be necessary for
me to wear a staring placard on my back the rest of my mortal days in
order that people may know I have everlastingly severed my connection
with the liquor business?"
Dr. Sammie was obliging enough to favor his guest with another hearty
laugh. Then he blew two clouds of smoke over his head and watched it
curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact
that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human
system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted
money and nerve force in his slavery to a habit.
"I tell you, my friend," he said, with an air of confidence, "there are
a set of people in the world--mind you, I do not say that they are
wise--who would tell you that by casting a single vote in a certain way
you would stamp yourself as the vile opponent of the Trade's interests
'forevermore, amen!'"
Gilbert Allison paused in his walk and looked into his friend's face a
second. A sigh of relief escaped his lips, and immediately he found
himself in the midst of a ringing laugh peculiar to one who has broken
through the meshes of a dilemma and finds himself free.
"The best speech of your life, Sammie! Thank you!" and hastily donning
his hat he left the room without further comment.
Dr. Sammie smiled when the door closed behind his friend. He had an idea
whither his way tended.