CHAPTER VI.

THE PRICE OF A DRAM.

RODNEY had not left the house many minutes when Bessie Dingle entered it, shading with her hand a candle which she had borrowed from a neighbour. She stepped softly across the room, and looked down with tearful eyes upon her friend's corpse. The hands had been disturbed, and the flowers were gone. Bessie started back for an instant with terror, but guessing instinctively what had happened, and whither the miserable man had gone, without hesitation she drew her shawl over her head, and ran down the street in the direction he had taken.

She had to peep into three or four gin-palaces before she found him, lolling against the counter, and slowly draining the last few drops of the dram he had bought. There were not many customers yet in the place, for it was still early in the night; and the man behind the counter was fastening into his button-hole the bunch of violets, with their delicate white blossoms, and the broad green leaf behind them. Bessie did not pause in her hurried steps, and she threw herself half across the counter, speaking in clear and eager tones.

"You don't know where those vi'lets come from," she cried; "he's taken 'em out of the hands of his poor dead wife, where I put 'em only this afternoon, because she loved 'em so, and I thought they'd be buried with her. I think she knows what he's done, I do. Her face is gone sadder—ever so—since I saw it this afternoon; for he's stolen the posy from her, I tell you, and she lying dead!"

Bessie's voice faltered with her eagerness and grief; and the people present gathered about her and Rodney, listening with curious and awed faces; while the purchaser of the flowers laid them down quickly upon the counter.

"Dead!" he exclaimed. "Come straight from a dead woman to me!"

"Ay!" said Bessie. "Straight! And she loving him so to the very last, and telling me when she could hardly speak, 'Take care of him, take care of him!' And he goes and robs her of the only thing I could give her. That's what you make of a man," she continued, more and more eagerly; "you give him drink till there isn't a brute beast as bad; and he was a kind man to begin with, I can tell you."

"It's his own fault, my girl," said the man, in a pacifying tone; "he comes here of his own accord. We don't force him to come."

"But you do all you can to 'tice him in," answered Bessie; "if it wasn't standing here so handy, and bright, and pleasant, he wouldn't come in. There's something wrong somewhere, or Mr. Rodney 'ud never be like that, or do such a thing as that, I know. Look at him! And when I was a little girl, he jumped into the river after me, and saved my life."

She pointed towards him as he was trying to slink away through the ring that encircled them, bowing his head with a terrified and hang-dog look. The little crowd was beginning to sneer and hiss at him, but Bessie drew his hand through her own strong, young arm, and faced them with flashing eyes and a glance of indignation, before which they were silent.

"You're just as bad, every one of you," she cried; "you take the bread out of your children's mouths, and that's as bad as stealin' vi'lets from your poor, dead wife. It doesn't do her any real harm, but you starve and pinch, and cheat little children, and it harms them ev'ry day they live. None of you have any call to throw stones at him."

She thrust her way through them, and was leading Rodney to the door, when the man behind the counter called to her to take away the flowers.

"Do you think I'd take 'em from such a place as this?" she asked, more vehemently than before. "Could I go and put 'em back into her poor, dead hands, after he'd bought a glass o' gin with 'em? No, no; keep 'em, and carry 'em home with you, and tell everybody you see what your customers will do for drink. I'd sooner cut my fingers off than touch them again."

The courage her agitation had given her was well-nigh spent now, and she was glad to get Rodney out of the place. She trembled almost as much as he did, and the tears rained down her face. She did not try to speak to him until Rodney began to talk to her in a whimpering and querulous voice.

"Hush!" she said. "Hush! Don't go to say you couldn't help it, and she loving you so to the very last minute of her life. 'If he'd only pray to God to help him!' she said. And then, just before she was going away, she said, 'Bessie, you take care of him and Nelly.' And I'm going to do it, Mr. Rodney. You saved me once, and I'm going to try to save you now, if God 'll only help me. It shan't be for want of praying to Him, I promise you. Oh! If you'd only give it up now at once before you get worse and worse."

[Illustration: BESSIE TAKES RODNEY FROM THE GIN-PALACE.]

"I can't be any worse," moaned the drunkard.

"Not much, may be," said Bessie, frankly; "you went and stole Nelly's doll for drink, and now you've stole the vi'lets. But you might be dead, and that's worse. And every day you're only getting nearer it, and if you go on drinking, you're sure to die pretty soon. Perhaps, if you go on as you are, you'll be dead in a very little while."

"I wish I was dead," he groaned.

"Why!" exclaimed Bessie, in a tone of astonishment. "And then you could never undo the harm you've done to poor little Nelly, that you love so, I know, spite of all. If you'd only think of Nelly, and think of God—I don't know much about God, you used to know more than me; but I've a feeling as if He really does care for us all, every one of us, and you, when you're drunk even. If you'd only think of Him and little Nelly, you wouldn't get drunk again, I'm sure."

"I never will again, Bessie; I never will again," he repeated fervently. And he continued saying it over and over again, till they reached the gallery at the top of the staircase.

Bessie drew him aside as he was about to turn into his own room.

"No," she said, "you couldn't bear to stay in there alone all night; it 'ud be too much for you. Mrs. Simpson, as is taking care of Nelly 'll let you sit up by her fire; and I'll go and stay in your house. I'm not afeard at all. She loved us all so—you, and Nelly, and me. We're going to bury her in the morning, and I'd like to sit up with her the last night of all."

Before long Rodney was seated by his neighbour's fire, in a silent and very sorrowful mood, with Nelly leaning against him, her arm round his neck, and her cheek pressed against his. He was quite sober now; and his spirit was filled with bitter grief, and a sense of intolerable degradation. He loathed and abhorred himself, cursed his own sin, and the greed of the people who lived upon it. If the owners of these places of temptation—members of Christian churches, some of them—could hear the deep, unutterable curses breathed against them, their souls would be ready to die within them for their own sin, and the terrible shame of it.