Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician, Marietta Holley [best books to read ever txt] 📗
- Author: Marietta Holley
Book online «Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician, Marietta Holley [best books to read ever txt] 📗». Author Marietta Holley
So they went on, clear to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, and dead with liquor.
And they both, the broken-hearted mother and the broken-hearted wife, with the tears running down their white cheeks, besought the saloon-keeper to let him alone from that night.
The mother says, “Paul is so good, that if you did not tempt him, entice him here, he would, out of pity to us, stop his evil ways.”
And the saloon-keeper was jest as polite as any man wus ever seen to be,—took his hat off while he told 'em, so I hearn, “that he couldn't go against his own interests: if Paul chose to spend his money there, he should take it.”
“Will you break our hearts?” cried the mother.
“Will you ruin my husband, the father of my boy?” sobbed out Cicely, her big, sorrowful eyes lookin' right through his soul—if he had a soul.
And then the man, in a pleasant tone, reminded 'em,—
“That it wuzn't him that wus a doin' this. It wus the law: if they wanted things changed, they must look further than him. He had a license. The great Government of the United States had sold him, for a few dollars, the right to do just what he was doing. The law, and all the respectability that the laws of our great and glorious Republic can give, bore him out in all his acts. The law was responsible for all the consequenses of his acts: the men were responsible who voted for license—it was not him.”
“But you can do what we ask if you will, out of pity to Paul, pity to us who love him so, and who are forced to stand by powerless, and see him going to ruin—we who would die for him willingly if it would do any good. You can do this.”
He was a little bit intoxicated, or he wouldn't have gid 'em the cruel sneer he did at the last,—though he sneeren polite,—a holdin' his hat in his hand.
“As I said, my dear madam, it is not I, it is the law; and I see no other way for you ladies who feel so about it, only to vote, and change the laws.”
“Would to God I could!” said the old white-haired mother, with her solemn eyes lifted to the heavens, in which was her only hope.
“Would to God I could!” repeated my sweet Cicely, with her eyes fastened on the face of him who had promised to cherish her, and comfort her, and protect her, layin' there at her feet, a mark for jeers and sneers, unable to speak a word, or lift his hand, if his wife and mother had been killed before him.
But they couldn't do any thing. They would have lain their lives down for him at any time, but that wouldn't do any good. The lowest, most ignorant laborer in their employ had power in this matter, but they had none. They had intellectual power enough, which, added to their utter helplessness, only made their burden more unendurable; for they comprehended to the full the knowledge of what was past, and what must come in the future unless help came quickly. They had the strength of devotion, the strength of unselfish love.
They had the will, but they hadn't nothin' to tackle it onto him with, to draw him back. For their prayers, their midnight watches, their tears, did not avail, as I said: they went jest so far; they touched him, but they lacked the tacklin'-power that was wanted to grip holt of him, and draw him back. What they needed was the justice of the law to tackle the injustice; and they hadn't got it, and couldn't get holt of it: so they had to set with hands folded, or lifted to the heavens in wild appeal,—either way didn't help Paul any,—and see him a sinkin' and a sinkin', slippin' further and further down; and they had to let him go.
He drunk harder and harder, neglected his business, got quarrelsome. And one night, when the heavens was curtained with blackness, like a pall let down to cover the accursed scene, he left Cicely with her pretty baby asleep on her bosom, went down to the saloon, got into a quarrel with that very friend of hisen, the saloon-keeper, over a game of billiards,—they was both intoxicated,—and then and there Paul committed murder, and would have been hung for it if he hadn't died in State's prison the night before he got his sentence.
Awful deed! Dreadful fate! But no worse, as I told Josiah when he wus a groanin' over it; no worse, I told the children when they was a cryin' over it; no worse, I told my own heart when the tears wus a runnin' down my face like rain-water,—no worse because Cicely happened to be our relation, and we loved her as we did our own eyes.
And our broad land is full of jest such sufferin's, jest such crimes, jest such disgrace, caused by the same cause;—as I told Josiah, suffering, disgrace, and crime made legal and protected by the law.
And Josiah squirmed as I said it; and I see him squirm, for he believed in it: he believed in licensing this shame and disgrace and woe; he believed in makin' it respectable, and wrappin' round it the mantilly of the law, to keep it in a warm, healthy, flourishin' condition. Why, he had helped do it himself; he had helped the United States lift up the mantilly; he had voted for it.
He squirmed, but turned it off by usin' his bandana hard, and sayin', in a voice all choked down with grief,—
“Oh, poor Cicely! poor girl!”
“Yes,” says I, “'poor girl!' and the law you uphold has made her; 'poor girl'—has killed her; for she won't live through it, and you and the United States will see that she won't.”
He squirmed hard; and my feelin's for him are such that I can't bear to see him squirm voyalently, as much as I blamed him and the United States, and as mad as I was at both on 'em.
So I went to cryin' agin silently under my linen handkerchief, and he cried into his bandana. It wus a awful blow to both on us.
Wall, she lived, Cicely did, which was more than we any one of us thought she could do. I went right there, and stayed six weeks with her, hangin' right over her bed, night and day; and so did his mother,—she a brokenhearted woman too. Her heart broke, too, by the United States; and so I told Josiah, that little villain that got killed was only one of his agents. Yes, her heart was broke; but she bore up for Cicely's sake and the boy's. For it seemed as if she felt remorsful, and as if it was for them that belonged to him who had ruined her life, to help her all they could.
Wall, after about three weeks Cicely begun to live. And so I wrote to Josiah that I guessed she would keep on a livin' now, for the sake of the boy.
And so she did. And she got up from that bed a shadow,—a faint, pale shadow of the girl that used to brighten up our home for us. She was our sweet Cicely still. But she looked like that posy after the frost has withered it, and with the cold moonlight layin' on it.
Good and patient she wuz, and easy to get along with; for she seemed to hold earthly things with a dretful loose grip, easy to leggo of 'em. And it didn't seem as if she had any interest at all in life, or care for any thing that was a goin' on in the world, till the boy wus about four years old; and then she begun to get all rousted up about him and his future. “She must live,” she said: “she had got to live, to do something to help him in the future.”
“She couldn't die,” she told me, “and leave him in a world that was so hard for boys, where temptations and danger stood all round her boy's pathway. Not only hidden perils, concealed from sight, so he might possibly escape them, but open temptations, open dangers, made as alluring as private avarice could make them, and made as respectable as dignified legal enactments could make them,—all to draw her boy down the pathway his poor father descended.” For one of the curius things about Cicely wuz, she didn't seem to blame Paul hardly a mite, nor not so very much the one that enticed him to drink. She went back further than them: she laid the blame onto our laws; she laid the responsibility onto the ones that made 'em, directly and indirectly, the legislators and the voters.
Curius that Cicely should feel so, when most everybody said that he could have stopped drinking if he had wanted to. But then, I don't know as I could blame her for feelin' so when I thought of Paul's chin and lips. Why, anybody that had them on 'em, and was made up inside and outside accordin', as folks be that have them looks; why, unless they was specially guarded by good influences, and fenced off from bad ones,—why, they could not exert any self-denial and control and firmness.
Why, I jest followed that chin and that mouth right back through seven generations of the Slide family. Paul's father wus a good man, had a good face; took it from his mother: but his father, Paul's grandfather, died a drunkard. They have got a oil-portrait of him at Paul's old home: I stopped there on my way home from Cicely's one time. And for all the world he looked most exactly like Paul,—the same sort of a irresolute, handsome, weak, fascinating look to him. And all through them portraits I could trace that chin and them lips. They would disappear in some of 'em, but crop out agin further back. And I asked the housekeeper, who had always lived in the family, and wus proud of it, but honest; and she knew the story of the hull Slide race.
And she said that every one of 'em that had that face had traits accordin'; and most every one of 'em got into trouble of some kind.
One or two of 'em, specially guarded, I s'pose, by good influences, got along with no further trouble than the loss of the chin, and the feelin' they must have had inside of 'em, that they wuz liable to crumple right down any minute.
And as they wus made with jest them looks, and jest them traits, born so, entirely unbeknown to them, I don't know as I can blame Cicely for feelin' as she did. If temptation hadn't stood right in the road in front of him, why, he'd have got along, and lived happy. That's Cicely's idee. And I don't know but she's in the right ont.
But as I said, when her child wus about four years old, Cicely took a turn, and begun to get all worked up and excited by turns a worryin' about the boy. She'd talk about it a sight to me, and I hearn it from others.
She rousted up out of her deathly weakness and heartbroken, stunted calm,—for such it seemed to be for the first two or three years after her husband's death. She seemed to make an effort almost like that of a dead man throwin' off the icy stupor of death, and risin' up with numbed limbs, and shakin' off the death-robes, and livin' agin. She rousted up with jest such a effort, so it seemed, for the boy's sake.
She must live for the boy; she must work for the boy; she must try to throw some safeguards around his future. What could she do to help him? That wus the
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