CHAPTER V.

Darkness and Night.

THE day wore away, twilight came on, Annie grew tired of her play, her eyelids were heavy, she almost dropped asleep in her father's arms, as he carried her gently upstairs, and put her to bed.

Martin was vexed, but not alarmed at the prolonged absence of his wife; he knew that Ann would be unwilling to quit a party of pleasure early, and he was thankful that his little nestling was peacefully asleep in her cot, instead of being kept awake to a late hour in the midst of bustle and noise.

It was not till twilight had given place to night, and storm and rain had come on, that Martin became uneasy and restless. Many times he went to the outer door, and looked anxiously up the street, where the gas-lamps were throwing their yellow light on the brown, wet, glistening pavement. Few passed the shop on that rough night, save the policeman on his beat; even the public-house on the opposite side of the way looked empty and dark.

At last there was the rattle of a cab over the paved road. Martin did not expect his wife to come in such a conveyance and was surprised when the horse was suddenly pulled up, as the voice of Mrs. Batten called out from the window:

"Here! This is the place, the tobacconist's shop."

Then, catching sight of Martin standing at his door, Mrs. Batten called to him in a more subdued tone of distress—

"Oh! Mr. Laver, for mercy's sake come and help her. Gently, gently, we shall hardly be able to get her out of the cab."

"What has happened?" exclaimed Martin, scarcely able to utter the question, Mrs. Batten's tone had sent such a chill of dread to his heart, as he threw open the door of the cab.

"Steamers racing—boiler burst—she is frightfully scalded; we took her to a chemist's, where her hurts were dressed, but she moaned and prayed to be taken home. I thought she'd have died on the road."

Martin heard very few of the words of his neighbour, his whole attention was anxiously given to his miserable wife. Fearfully disfigured, her swollen features half-covered by bandages, Ann's husband would hardly have recognised her as the same flaunting woman who some hours before had quitted his home.

It was a difficult task, even with the aid of Mrs. Batten and the driver, to lift Mrs. Laver out of the cab, and, still more so, to carry her up the narrow staircase. Every touch caused agony, and the unhappy woman swooned as soon as she was laid upon the bed.

"She ought to have been taken to the Infirmary, I said she ought," cried Mrs. Batten; "but she would hear of no place but home."

Little Annie, roused from peaceful sleep, started up from her pillow, startled at the sound of voices in the room, and still more so at the strange and fearful-looking figure stretched on the bed so close to her crib.

"What's that?" cried the child in terror, pointing at her insensible mother.

"Hush! My lamb, lie down," whispered Martin. "Mother's come back from Greenwich, you must make no noise to disturb her."

Even in that hour of distress Martin thanked God from his heart that his child had not shared the fate of her parent.

Mrs. Batten hurried off in the cab for a doctor, whose arrival was anxiously awaited by Martin. When the medical man had come and examined the patient, he pronounced Mrs. Laver to be in a critical state. She was in great pain of body and anguish of mind, and passed the rest of that night in fearful misery. At an early hour of the morning, Martin, at Ann's own desire, sent an urgent message to Mr. Vale, the clergyman of the parish, to ask him to come and see his sick wife.

"Laver!" repeated Mr. Vale, when the message was delivered by Mrs. Batten. "Surely that is the name on the tobacconist's shop in John Street."

"The very same," said the fishmonger's wife. "I used always to see with regret that shop open when I passed it on Sundays," observed the clergyman, who had once entered it when on his way to church, in order to expostulate with Mrs. Laver both on her Sabbath-breaking, and on the character of some of the ballads exposed in her window. "Last Sunday, however, I noticed that, for the first time, the shutters were up. I suppose that both Laver and his wife had gone on this unfortunate party of pleasure."

"No, sir, not he," replied Mrs. Batten, frankly. "I wish that none of us had had more to do with the matter than Martin Laver. He had words with his wife, she told me herself, poor soul, about that same closing of the shop; he was determined to give up all selling and buying upon Sundays, and mighty angry was she at what she called his folly; but maybe he was the wiser of the two after all."

Poor Mrs. Laver, moaning on her sick-bed, had good cause to come to the same conclusion. What had she procured with those Sunday earnings which she had reserved for the Sunday treat? A few hours of boisterous pleasure, to be followed by many weeks of pain! And sickness drew poverty after it; for Martin's time was necessarily so much taken up with nursing his wife, and attending to their child, that business was much neglected, while illness brought many expenses. Ann Laver had to pay a very dear price indeed for her frolic down the river, undertaken against the will of her husband.

But this, it may be said, was quite accidental; Ann might have broken the Fourth Commandment every Sunday in her life, and yet have been never the worse.

No, never believe that, my reader, all money unlawfully earned may be called Satan's loan, and at one time or other, a fearful amount of interest has to be paid for every farthing thus borrowed. "Lightly won—lightly gone," says the proverb, but this expresses but half of the truth. Ill-gotten money not only seems to slip through the fingers, but it leaves a brand on the soul, and a fearful debt on the conscience. An account is kept, and all must be paid for in this world, in the next, or in BOTH! *

* Christ has paid all debts of His saints.

Let not only the godless rich, but the godless poor—the thief, the Sabbath-breaker, the wretched earner of the wages of sin—pause and reflect on this awful sentence, written in God's holy Book—"Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days!" †

† James v. 3.