IDELLA PEMBERTON.
BY REV. PHILIP P. NEELY.
“I am glad you have come, William,” said Idella Pemberton
to her husband, as he entered the room late one evening in
November; “I feel so lonely as the night winds beat against the
walls, and Agnes has been worse all the evening. William, I
know your business in town demands much of your time, yet
will you not try and spare yourself from it, so that you can spend
your evenings with me until our babe is beyond the danger of
another paroxysm? It frightens me so much when you are
away. When she has recovered, I will endeavor to resign myself
to your necessary absence.”
Her kind words and pleading eyes went directly to the
heart of William Pemberton, who, drawing his young wife
affectionately to his bosom, replied—
“Yes, Idella, I have neglected you and our little Agnes
too long. I promise you to watch with you until she is quite
well. To-morrow evening I will bring out a collection of books,
so that our hours of watching may pass pleasantly and profitably
away.”
“You are very kind to me,” said Idella, while tears, such
as she had not shed for weeks, gathered in her eyes.
William Pemberton was a young man of ardent and generous
feelings. Having received a liberal education under the
direction of his uncle, and possesing a handsome patrimony, he
embarked in the mercantile business in the loveliest village of the
South. It was there he saw Idella Chandler. She was just
seventeen, and such was the gentleness and amiability of her
disposition, that a few months' association was sufficient to win
his affections. He wooed her, and was successful. They were
as happy a pair as ever knelt before the bridal altar; and none
that gazed upon him, as he stood in the manliness of youth,
or on her, as she trembled beneath a robe of purest white—beautiful
emblem of a spotless heart—and were united in the most
hallowed relation on earth, would have dreamed that shadows
would ever darken the path on whose flowery threshold they
were then standing.
At the time our story opens, they were living in a retired
cottage house, a short distance from town. Two years had glided
by since their marriage, and the morn of their wedded love
had been unclouded. The frank, ingenuous nature of William
Pemberton made him the easy subject of temptation, and unfortunately
his resistance was but too unsuccessful. For some weeks
he had returned home late at night, maintaining throughout the
evening a silent and morose manner. He gave as his excuse,
that the opening of his fall stock of goods required his unceasing
attention, and the confiding Idella, with a credulity inseparable
from true affection, doubted it not. Perhaps, if she had marked
closely the expression of his eye, or had narrowly watched his
step, the wildness of one and the unsteadiness of the other would
have revealed, with a too dreadful certainty, the fearful peril to
which he was exposed. She knew that he was not as he once
was, but the voice of affection whispered an excuse for him, in
the worldly cares with which he was surrounded. Of his absence
she had not yet complained; but when her babe sickened, she
ventured to plead for the company of her husband, and prevailed.
The recovery of Agnes was rapid. During the evenings
which William passed at home, it seemed as if he and
Idella had entered upon a new existence. All his former tenderness
returned. He read to his wife, and hung around the
couch of the little invalid; administered needful restoratives
with a husband's kindness and a father's love. When the child
recovered entirely, William still spent his evenings with his
family, in reading or rambling. It was a season of quietude
and peace. Gradually he returned to his former habits—drank
deeper and deeper of the wine-cup, until it cast off the bonds
of moral restraint, and bound him in its damning vassalage.
Idella—the gentle, the devoted Idella—was the last to believe
William Pemberton a drunkard.
It was a stormy night in the winter of 1840. The wind
blew in fitful gusts, and the snow fell through the clap-board
roof of a miserable hovel in one of the miserable streets of—,
Gathered around a handful of wasting embers in that wretched
hut, was a pale woman and two children; one a daughter about
fourteen, the other a son, seemingly about six years old. The
mother was sewing by the feeble light of an old lamp fastened
to the wall, while the daughter read to her the experience of a
reformed drunkard, which had been slipped under a crazy door-shutter
by some unknown friend. This was the once happy
Idella Pemberton, and her worse than orphan children. Her
husband had drank till he was a sot—nay, more, a pauper.
His property was gone, his kindness was gone, and upon
the feeble Idella and her daughter fell the support of the family.
She was a frail creature, and the sufferings of the mind, combined
with those of the body, were wasting her away. It was
apparent that without a change she would soon be beyond the
griefs that were preying upon her bosom. Yet she murmured
not. Amid the want that poured upon her, and the reproache
of her husband, she was uncomplaining.
“Oh, mother, what shall we do? Is there no hope for my
dear father?” said Agnes, laying down the book, and sobbing
as if her heart would break.
“Yes, my child, there is hope in God. He has said, `Call
upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you.' In
Him have I confided, and in Him do I still hope. He has never
forsaken us altogether, nor will He while we trust in Him.”
“Dear mother, how can I bear it? You are dying every
day, and when you are gone, what will become of me and my
poor little brother Willie? Oh, mother, can't we get father to
sign the pledge?”
“Be calm, my child. The Lord is good, and should He
take me, He will provide for you and your brother. You must
go before Him with your wants. Take your mother's wants
before Him through Jesus Christ. Remember that the promise
is, that if you ask, you shall receive. Cast your burden on Him
and He will sustain you.”
“My dear mother, let us go to Him now. Now let us
kneel before Him here. I feel as if He would answer our prayers.
I know He will. O, mother, let us try and prove Him now.”
And in that lonely hour, while the wild wind was moaning
piteously without, and coldness was pinching the sufferers within,
did that girl and her mother bow before God, to test His faithfulness.
And never did purer aspirations ascend to Heaven than
the pleading of that suffering band. Never did angel-watchers
assist by their mysterious ministrations in a holier cause. It was
the agony of a breaking heart as it groaned under the accumu
lated wrongs of years. The vision of the past swept before the
wretched Idella, and her soul seemed to embody all its hopes
into one.
She wrestled, struggled, and wept, as if her heart was
rumbling beneath the intensity of her agony. She prayed for
he reformation of her husband—for it to begin then—that
moment, wherever he might be. Her words seemed to be the
raising of faith far above unbelief—the sundering of its fetters—
the laying of the torn, bleeding heart before God. “O, Thou
righteous Being!” she exclaimed, “who hast promised help in
need, hear from Thy holy habitation the wretched inmates of a
cold hovel. Thou who hast in Thy mysterious dispensations
banished me from the protection of parental love, and who hast
for Thine own wise purposes, left me and my little ones to
struggle on in misfortune and want; O, look upon us in our
misery, and answer our supplications. O, reclaim him around
whom my heart still clings, even in his degradation, and save
him from eternal woe. O, righteous God! I do believe,—help
Thou my unbelief! Bring him back to the path wherein we
once walked happily together, and”—
At that moment the door opened, and William Pemberton
rushed into the arms of his kneeling wife, exclaiming—
“O, my suffering angel, Idella, your prayer is answered.
I have this night joined the Washingtonians, and if there is
grace in heaven to aid a poor suffering worm, my pledge shall
be kept.”
“Amen,” fervently responded the bewildered, weeping
wife.
“O, Idella! can you, will you forgive all—my unkindness,
my cruelty? Then from this night forward, God being my
helper, I will be a sober man, and will seek to make you happy.”
“Dear husband! let the past be forgotten,” replied the
happy wife, while she cried aloud in the delirium of her joy;
“let us trust in God for the future.”
“Agnes, my daughter, will you forgive your father's unkindness,
and pray that I may never depart from my resolution?”
“O, my dear father, I will love you more than I ever did,
and will always pray for you,” said the sobbing girl, and she
threw her arms about her father's neck and kissed away his tears.
“And, father,” said Willie, who stood by weeping at the
strange scene, “you will let me love you, and kiss you, as I do
mother, won't you?”
“Yes, my son, and strive to be worthy of it too,” said the
father, as he pressed him to his bosom.
The wind, in its wild careerings that night, swept not over
a happier house than the lonely hovel of William Pemberton.
Five years have passed away, and William Pemberton, by
sobriety and industry, has regained his cottage home, and there,
with his pious Idella, to whose cheek the bloom of health has
returned, and their children, he is spending his days in quietude
and devotion.
Is your husband a drunkard? Be gentle with him and pray
for him. Are you a drunkard, or a moderate drinker? Remember
the wife of your bosom, the children of your love, and the
soul you possess, which is of incalulable worth. May God bless
this narrative to your good.
