The fountain and the bottle comprising thrilling examples of the opposite effects of temperance and intemperance |
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THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. |
 | The fountain and the bottle |  |
THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH.
By Charles Diokens.
We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a
man in the constant habit of walking, day after day,
through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London,
who cannot recollect, among the people whom he
“knows by sight,” to use a familiar phrase, some
being of abject and wretched appearance, whom he
remembers to have seen in a very different condition;
whom he has observed sinking lower and lower by
almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbiness and
utter destitution of whose appearance, at last, strike
forcibly and painfully upon him, as he passes by.
Is there any man, who has mixed much with society,
or whose avocations have caused him to mingle, at
one time or other, with a great number of people, who
cannot call to mind the time when some shabby,
miserable wretch, in rags and filth, who shuffles
past him now in all the squalor of disease and poverty,
was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or a man following
some thriving pursuit, with good prospects,
and decent means?—or cannot any of our readers call
to mind from among the list of their quondam acquaintance,
about the pavement in hungry misery—from
whom every one turns coldly away, and who preserves
himself from sheer starvation, nobody knows
how? Alas! such cases are of too frequent occurrence
to be rare items in any man's experience; and
but too often arise from one cause—drunkenness,—
that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that over-steps
every other consideration; that casts aside wife,
children, friends, happiness, and station; and hurries
its victims madly on to degradation and death.
Some of these men have been impelled by misfortune
and misery, to the vice that has degraded them.
The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those
they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will
not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they
present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly
dying by their own hands. But, by far the greater
part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into
the gulf from which the man who once enters it never
rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and
deeper down, until recovery is hopeless.
Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of
his dying wife, while his children knelt around, and
mingled low bursts of grief with their innocent
prayers. The room was scantily and meanly furnished;
and it needed but a glance at the pale form
from which the light of life was fast passing away, to
know that grief, and want, and anxious care, had
been busy at the heart for many a weary year. An
elderly female, with her face bathed in tears, was supporting
on her arm. But it was not towards her that the
wan face turned; it was not her hand that the cold
and trembling fingers clasped; they pressed the husband's
arm; the eyes, so soon to be closed in death,
rested on his face, and the man shook beneath their
gaze. His dress was slovenly and disordered, his
face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. He had
been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed
of sorrow and death.
A shaded lamp by the bedside cast a dim light on
the figures around, and left the remainder of the room
in thick, deep shadow. The silence of night prevailed
without the house, and the stillness of death
was in the chamber. A watch hung over the mantelshelf;
its low ticking was the only sound that broke
the profound quiet, but it was a solemn one, for well
they knew, who heard it, that before it had recorded
the passing of another hour, it would beat the knell
of a departed spirit.
It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach
of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery
impossible; and to sit and count the dreary
hours through long, long nights—such nights as only
watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the
blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the
pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth
by the unconscious, helpless being before you; and
to think how little the reserve and cunning of a whole
life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the
mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the
crime, that those who stood by the sick person's
couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they
should be scared to madness by what they heard and
saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of
deeds, the very name of which has driven the boldest
man away.
But no such ravings were to be heard at the bed-side
by which the children knelt. Their half-stifled
sobs and moanings alone broke the silence of the
lonely chamber. And when at last the mother's grasp
relaxed, and turning one look from the children to
their father, she vainly strove to speak, and fell backward
on the pillow, all was so calm and tranquil that
she seemed to sink to sleep. They leaned over her;
they called upon her name, softly at first, and then in
the loud and piercing tones of desperation. But there
was no reply. They listened for her breath, but no
sound came. They felt for the palpitation of the
heart, but no faint throb responded to the touch.
That heart was broken, and she was dead!
The husband sunk into a chair by the bedside, and
clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He
gazed from child to child, but when a weeping eye
met his, he quailed beneath its look. No word of
comfort was whispered in his ear, no look of kindness
lighted on his face. All shrunk from, and avoided
him; and when at last he staggered from the room,
no one sought to follow, or console the widower.
The time had been, when many a friend would
have crowded round him in his affliction, and many
grief. Where were they now? One by one, friends,
relations, the commonest acquaintance, even, had
fallen off from, and deserted the drunkard. His wife
alone had clung to him in good and evil, in sickness
and poverty. And how had he rewarded her? He
had reeled from the tavern to her bedside, in time to
see her die!
He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly
through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded
on his mind. Stupified with drink, and bewildered
with the scene he had just witnessed, he reentered
the tavern he had quitted shortly before.
Glass succeeded glass. His blood mounted, and his
brain whirled round. Death! Every one must die,
and why not she? She was too good for him; her
relations had often told him so. Curses on them!
Had they not deserted her, and left her to whine away
the time at home? Well; she was dead, and happy,
perhaps. It was better as it was. Another glass—
one more—hurrah! It was a merry life while it
lasted; and he would make the most of it.
Time went on; the three children who were left to
him, grew up, and were children no longer;—the
father remained the same—poorer, shabbier, and more
dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irreclaimable
drunkard. The boys had, long ago, run
wild in the streets, and left him; the girl alone remained,
but she worked hard, and words or blows
could always procure him something for the tavern. So
he went on in the old course, and a merry life he led.
One night, as early as ten o'clock—for the girl had
been sick for many days, and there was, consequently,
little to spend at the public house—he bent his steps
homewards, bethinking himself that if he would have
her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply
to the parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the
trouble of inquiring what ailed her, which he had not
yet thought it worth while to do. It was a wet December
night; the wind blew piercing cold, and the
rain poured heavily down. He begged a few half-pence
from a passer-by, and having bought a small
loaf (for it was his interest to keep the girl alive, if he
could) he shuffled onwards, as fast as the wind and
rain would let him.
At the back of Fleet street, and lying between it
and the water-side, are several mean and narrow
courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars; it was
to one of these that he directed his steps.
The alley into which he turned, might, for filth
and misery, have competed with the darkest corner
of this ancient sanctuary in its dirtiest and most lawless
time. The houses, varying from two stories in
height to four, were stained with every indescribable
hue that long exposure to the weather, damp, and
rottenness can impart to tenements composed originally
of the roughest and coarsest materials. The
windows were patched with paper, and stuffed with
the foulest rags; the doors were falling from their
hinges; poles with lines on which to dry clothes
projected from every casement, and sounds of quarrelling
or drunkenness issued from every room.
The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had
been blown out, either by the violence of the wind
or the act of some inhabitant who had excellent reasons
for objecting to his residence being rendered too
conspicuous; and the only light which fell upon the
broken and uneven pavement, was derived from the
miserable candles that here and there twinkled in the
rooms of such of the more fortunate residents as could
afford to indulge in so expensive a luxury. A gutter
ran down the centre of the alley—all the sluggish
odours of which had been called forth by the rain;
and, as the wind whistled through the old houses,
the doors and shutters creaked upon their hinges, and
the windows shook in their frames, with a violence
which every moment seemed to threaten the destruction
of the whole place.
The man whom we have followed into this den,
walked on in the darkness, sometimes stumbling into
the main gutter, and at others, into some branch repositories
of garbage which had been formed by the
rain, until he reached the last house in the court.
The door, or rather what was left of it, stood ajar, for
the convenience of the numerous lodgers; and he
proceeded to grope his way up the old and broken
stair, to the attic story.
He was within a step or two of his room door, when
it opened, and a girl, whose miserable and emaciated
appearance was only to be equalled by that of the
candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped anxiously
out.
“Is that you, father?” said the girl.
“Who else should it be?” replied the man gruffly.
“What are you trembling at? It's little enough that
I've had to drink to-day for there's no drink without
money, and no money without work. What the
devil's the matter with the girl?”
“I am not well, father—not at all well,” said the
girl, bursting into tears.
“Ah!” replied the man, in the tone of a person
who is compelled to admit a very unpleasant fact, to
which he would rather remain blind, if he could.
“You must get better some how, for we must have
money. You must go to the parish doctor, and make
him give you some medicine. They're paid for it,
damn 'em. What are you standing before the door
for? Let me come in can't you?”
“Father,” whispered the girl, shutting the door
behind her, and placing herself before it, “William
has come back.”
“Who?” said the man with a start.
“Hush,” replied the girl, “William; brother William.”
“And what does he want?” said the man, with an
effort at composure—“money? meat? drink? He's
come to the wrong shop for that, if he does. Give
me the candle—give me the candle, fool—I ain't
going to hurt him.” He snatched the candle from
her hand, and walked into the room.
Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his
hand, and his eyes fixed on a wretched cinder fire
that was smouldering on the hearth, was a young
man of about two-and-twenty, miserably clad in an
his father entered.
“Fasten the door, Mary,” said the young man
hastily—“Fasten the door. You look as if you
didn't know me, father. It's long enough since you
drove me from home: you may well forget me.”
“And what do you want here, now?” said the
father, seating himself on a stool, on the other side of
the fireplace. “What do you want here now?”
“Shelter,” replied the son, “I'm in trouble: that's
enough. If I'm caught I shall swing: that's certain.
Caught I shall be, unless I stop here; that's as certain.
And there's an end of it.”
“You mean to say, you've been robbing, or murdering,
then?” said the father.
“Yes, I do,” replied the son. “Does it surprise
you, father?” He looked steadily in the man's face,
but he withdrew his eyes, and bent them on the
ground.
“Where's your brothers?” he said, after a long
pause.
“Where they'll never trouble you,” replied his
son. “John's gone to America, and Henry's dead.”
“Dead!” said the father, with a shudder, which
even he could not repress.
“Dead,” replied the young man. “He died in my
arms—shot like a dog, by a gamekeeper. He staggered
back, I caught him, and his blood trickled down
my hands. It poured out from his side like water.
He was weak, and it blinded him, but he threw himself
down on his knees, on the grass, and prayed to
her prayers for pardon for her youngest son. `I was
her favourite boy, Will,' he said, `and I am glad to
think, now, that when she was dying, though I was
a very young child then, and my little heart was
almost bursting, I knelt down at the foot of the bed,
and thanked God for having made me so fond of her
as to have never once done any thing to bring the
tears into her eyes. Oh, Will, why was she taken
away, and father left!' There's his dying words,
father,” said the young man; “make the best you
can of 'em. You struck him across the face, in a
drunken fit, the morning we ran away; and here's
the end of it.”
The girl wept aloud; and the father, sinking his
head upon his knees, rocked himself to and fro.
“If I am taken,” said the young man, “I shall be
carried back into the country, and hung for that man's
murder. They cannot trace me here without your
assistance, father. For aught I know, you may give
me up to justice; but unless you do, here I stop until
I can venture to escape abroad.”
For two whole days, all three remained in the
wretched room, without stirring out. On the third
evening, however, the girl was worse than she had
been yet, and the few scraps of food they had were
gone. It was indispensably necessary that somebody
should go out; and, as the girl was too weak and ill,
the father went, just at nightfall.
He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in
the way of pecuniary assistance. On his way back,
homewards with enough money to supply their most
pressing wants for two or three days to come. He had
to pass the public house. He lingered for an instant,
walked past it, turned back again, lingered once
more, and finally slunk in. Two men whom he had
not observed, were on the watch. They were on the
point of giving up their search in despair, when his
loitering attracted their attention; and when he entered
the public house they followed him.
“You'll drink with me, master,” said one of them,
proffering him a glass of liquor.
“And me too,” said the other, replenishing the
glass as soon as it was drained of its contents.
The man thought of his hungry children, and his
son's danger. But they were nothing to the drunkard.
He did drink, and his reason left him.
“A wet night, Warden,” whispered one of the men
in his ear, as he at length turned to go way, after
spending in liquor one-half of the money on which,
perhaps, his daughter's life depended.
“The right sort of night for our friends, in hiding
Master Warden,” whispered the other.
“Sit down here,” said the one who had spoken
first, drawing him into a corner. “We have been
looking arter the young un. We came to tell him
it's all right, now, but we couldn't find him 'cause
we hadn't got the precise direction. But that ain't
strange, for I don't think he know'd it himself, when
he come to London, did he?”
“No he didn't, “replied the father.
The two men exchanged glances.
“There's a vessel down at the docks, to sail at
midnight, when it's high water,” resumed the first
speaker, “and we'll put him on board. His passage
is taken in another name, and what's better than that,
it's paid for. It's lucky we met you.”
“Very,” said the second.
“Capital luck,” said the first, with a wink to his
companion.
“Great,” replied the second, with a slight nod of
intelligence.
“Another glass here; quick!” said the first speaker.
And in five minutes more, the father had unconsciously
yielded up his own son into the hangman's
hands.
Slowly and heavily the time dragged along as the
brother and sister, in their miserable hiding-place
listened in anxious suspense to the slightest sound.
At length a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair;
it approached nearer; it reached the landing, and the
father staggered into the room.
The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced
with the candle in her hand to meet him; she stopped
short, gave a loud scream, and fell senseless on the
ground. She had caught sight of the shadow of a
man reflected on the floor. They both rushed in,
and in another instant the young man was a prisoner,
and handcuffed.
“Very quietly done,” said one of the men to his
companion, “thanks to the old man. Lift up the
girl, Tom—come, come, come, it's no use crying,
helped.”
The young man stooped for an instant over the
girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father,
who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on
the group with drunken stupidity.
“Listen to me, father,” he said, in a tone that made
the drunkard's flesh creep. “My brother's blood,
and mine, is on your head; I never had a kind look,
or word, or care from you, and alive or dead, I never
will forgive you. Die when you will, or how, I will
be with you, I speak as a dead man now, and I warn
you, father, that as surely as you must one day stand
before your Maker, so surely shall your children be
there, hand in hand, to cry for judgment against
you.” He raised his manacled hands in a threatening
attitude, fixed his eyes on his shrinking parent, and
slowly left the room; and neither father nor sister
ever beheld him more, on this side of the grave.
When the dim and misty light of a winter's morning
penetrated into the narrow court, and struggled
through the begrimed window of the wretched room,
Warden awoke from his heavy sleep, and found himself
alone. He rose and looked around him; the old
flock mattrass on the floor was undisturbed; every
thing was just as he remembered to have seen it last:
there were no signs of any one, save himself, having
occupied the room during the night. He inquired
of the other lodgers, and of the neighbours; but his
daughter had not been seen or heard of. He rambled
through the streets, and scrutinized each wretched
anxious eyes. But his search was fruitless, and he
returned to his garret when night came on, desolate
and weary.
For many days he occupied himself in the same
manner, but no trace of his daughter did he meet
with, and no word of her reached his ears. At length
he gave up the pursuit as hopeless. He had long
thought of the probability of her leaving him, and
endeavouring to gain her bread in quiet, elsewhere.
She had left him at last to starve alone. He ground
his teeth, and cursed her!
He begged his bread from door to door. Every
halfpenny he could wring from the pity or credulity
of those to whom he addressed himself, was spent in
the old way. A year passed over his head; the roof
of a jail was the only one that had sheltered him for
many months. He slept under archways, and in
brick-fields—any where, where there was some
warmth and shelter from the cold and rain. But in
the last stage of poverty, disease, and houseless want,
he was a drunkard still.
At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door-step
faint and ill. The premature decay of vice and
profligacy had worn him to the bone. His cheeks
were hollow and livid, his eyes were sunken, and
their sight was dim. His legs trembled beneath his
weight, and a cold shiver ran through every limb.
And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent
life crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought
of the time when he had a home—a happy, cheerful
him then, until the forms of his elder children seemed
to rise from the grave, and stand about him—so plain,
so clear, and so distinct they were that he could touch
and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten
were fixed upon him once more; voices long since
hushed in death sounded in his ears like the music
of village bells. But it was only for an instant. The
rain beat heavily upon him; and cold and hunger
were gnawing at his heart again.
He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces
further. The street was silent and empty; the few
passengers who passed by, at that late hour, hurried
quickly on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the
violence of the storm. Again that heavy chill struck
through his frame, and his blood seemed to stagnate
beneath it. He coiled himself up in a projecting
doorway, and tried to sleep.
But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes.
His mind wandered strangely, but he was awake, and
conscious. The well known shout of drunken mirth
sounded in his ear, the glass was at his lips, the
board was covered with choice, rich food—they were
before him; he could see them all—he had but to
reach out his hand and take them—and, though the
illusion was reality itself, he knew that he was sitting
alone in the deserted street, watching the rain-drops
as they pattered on the stones; that death was coming
upon him by inches—and that there were none
to care for or help him.
Suddenly, he started up, in the extremity of terror.
air, he knew not what, or why. Hark! A groan!—
another! His senses were leaving him; half-formed
and incoherent words burst from his lips, and his
hands sought to tear and lacerate his flesh. He was
going mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice
failed him.
He raised his head, and looked up the long, dismal
street. He recollected that outcasts like himself,
condemned to wander day and night in those dreadful
streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their
own loneliness. He remembered to have heard many
years before that a homeless wretch had once been
found in a solitary corner; sharpening a rusty knife to
plunge into his own heart, preferring death to that
endless, weary, wandering to and fro. In an instant
his resolve was taken, his limbs received new life; he
ran quickly from the spot, and paused not for breath
until he reached the river-side.
He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that led
from the commencement of Waterloo bridge down to
the water's level. He crouched into a corner, and
held his breath as the patrol passed. Never did prisoner's
heart throb with the hope of liberty and life
half so eagerly as did that of the wretched man at the
prospect of death. The watch passed close to him,
but he remained unobserved; and after waiting till
the sound of footsteps had died away in the distance,
he cautiously descended, and stood beneath the gloomy
arch that forms the landing-place from the river.
The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet;
for the moment, still and quiet—so quiet that the
slightest sound on the opposite bank, even the rippling
of the water against the barges that were moored
there, was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream
stole lanquidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic
forms rose to the surface, and beckoned him to
approach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the
water, and seemed to mock his hesitation, while hollow
murmurs from behind urged him onwards. He
retreated a few paces, took a short run, desperate
leap, and plunged into the river.
Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the
water's surface—but what a change had taken place
in that short time, in all his thoughts and feelings!
Life—life, in any form,—poverty, misery, starvation
—any thing but death. He fought and struggled
with the water that closed over his head, and screamed
in agonies of terror. The curse of his own son rang in
his ears. The shore—but one foot of dry ground—he
could almost touch the step. One hand's breadth
nearer, and he was saved—but the tide bore him
onward, under the dark arches of the bridge, and he
sank to the bottom.
Again he rose, and struggled for life. For one instant—for
one brief instant—the buildings on the
river's banks, the lights on the bridge through which
the current had borne him, the black water, and the
fast flying clouds, were distinctly visible—once more
he sunk, and once again he rose. Bright flames of
fire shot up from earth to heaven, and reeled before
stunned him with its furious roar.
A week afterwards the body was washed ashore,
some miles down the river, a swollen and disfigured
mass. Unrecognized and unpitied, it was borne to
the grave; and there it has long since mouldered
away.
| The fountain and the bottle | |