Sweet Cicely | Page 5

again. He didn't mean to. He hadn't no idee of doin' so when he begun. It was the chin.
He begun to drink hard, spent his nights in the saloon, gambled,--slipped right down the old, smooth track worn by millions of jest such weak feet, towards ruin. And Cicely couldn't hold him back after he had got to slippin': her arms wuzn't strong enough.
She went to the saloon-keeper, and cried, and begged of him not to sell her husband any more liquor. He was very polite to her, very courteous: everybody was to Cicely. But in a polite way he told her that Paul wus his best customer, and he shouldn't offend him by refusing to sell him liquor. She knelt at his feet, I hearn,--her little, tender limbs on that rough floor before that evil man,--and wept, and said,--
"For the sake of her boy, wouldn't he have mercy on the boy's father."
But in a gentle way he gave her to understand that he shouldn't make no change.
And he told her, speakin' in a dretful courteous way, "that he had the law on his side: he had a license, and he should keep right on as he was doing."
[Illustration: CICELY IN THE SALOON.]
And so what could Cicely do? And time went on, carryin' Paul further and further down the road that has but one ending. Lower and lower he sunk, carryin' her heart, her happiness, her life, down with him.
And they said one cold night Paul didn't come home at all, and Cicely and his mother wus half crazy; and they wus too proud, to the last, to tell the servants more than they could help: so, when it got to be most mornin', them two delicate women started out through the deep snow, to try to find him, tremblin' at every little heap of snow that wus tumbled up in the path in front of 'em; tremblin' and sick at heart with the agony and dread that wus rackin' their souls, as they would look over the cold fields of snow stretching on each side of the road, and thinkin' how that face would look if it wus lying there staring with lifeless eyes up towards the cold moonlight,--the face they had kissed, the face they had loved,--and thinkin', too, that the change that had come to it--was comin' to it all the time--was more cruel and hopeless than the change of death.
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