"Very well, Agnes," said my husband, when the final decision was made. "If the thing has to be done, let it be well and liberally done."
I had a very dear friend—a Mrs. Martindale. As school-girls, we were warmly attached to each other, and as we grew older our friendship became closer and tenderer. Marriage, that separates so many, did not separate us. Our lots were cast in the same city, and in the same social circle. She had an only son, a young man of fine intellect and much promise, in whom her life seemed bound up. He went into the army at an early period of the war, and held the rank of second lieutenant; conducting himself bravely. A slight, but disabling wound sent him home a short time previous to the surrender of Lee, and before he was well enough to join his regiment, it was mustered out of service.
Albert Martindale left his home, as did thousands of other young men, with his blood untouched by the fire of alcohol, and returned from the war, as thousands of other young men returned, with its subtle poison in all his veins.
The dread of this very thing had haunted his mother during all the years of his absence in the army.
"Oh, Agnes," she had often said to me, with eyes full of tears, "it is not the dread of his death that troubles me most. I have tried to adjust that sad event between myself and God. In our fearful crisis he belongs to his country. I could not withhold him, though my heart seemed breaking when I let him go. I live in the daily anticipation of a telegram announcing death or a terrible wound. Yet that is not the thing of fear I dread; but something worse—his moral defection. I would rather he fell in battle than come home to me with manhood wrecked. What I most dread is intemperance. There is so much drinking among officers. It is the curse of our army. I pray that he may escape; yet weep, and tremble, and fear while I pray. Oh, my friend I think his fall into this terrible vice would kill me."
Alas for my friend! Her son came home to her with tainted breath and fevered blood. It did not kill her. Love held her above despair, and gave her heart a new vitality. She must be a savior; not a weak mourner over wrecked hopes.
With what a loving care and wise discretion did she set herself to work to withdraw her son from the dangerous path in which his feet were walking! and she would have been successful, but for one thing. The customs of society were against her. She could not keep him away from the parties and evening entertainments of her friends; and here all the good resolutions she had led him to make were as flax fibres in the flame of a candle. He had no strength to resist when wine sparkled and flashed all around him, and bright eyes and ruby lips invited him to drink. It takes more than ordinary firmness of principle to abstain in a fashionable company of ladies and gentlemen, where wine and brandy flow as water. In the case of Albert Martindale, two things were against him. He was not strong enough to set himself against any tide of custom, in the first place; and in the second, he had the allurement of appetite.
I knew all this, when, with my own hand, I wrote on one of our cards of invitation, "Mr. and Mrs. Martindale and family;" but did not think of it, until the card was written. As I laid it aside with the rest, the truth flashed on me and sent a thrill of pain along every nerve. My heart grew sick and my head faint, as thoughts of the evil that might come to the son of my friend, in consequence of the temptation I was about to throw in his way, rushed through my mind. My first idea was to recall the card, and I lifted it from the table with a half-formed resolution to destroy it. But a moment's reflection changed this purpose. I could not give a large entertainment and leave out my nearest friend and her family.
The pain and wild agitation of that moment were dreadful. I think all good spirits and angels that could get near my conscious life strove with me, for the sake of a soul in peril, to hold me back from taking another step in the way I was going; for it was not yet too late to abandon the party.
When, after a long struggle with right convictions, I resumed my work of filling up the cards of invitation, I had such a blinding headache that I could scarcely see the letters my pen was forming; and when the task was done, I went to bed, unable to bear up against the double burden of intense bodily and mental anguish.
The cards went out, and the question of the party was settled beyond recall. But that did not soothe the disquietude of my spirit. I felt the perpetual burden of a great and troubling responsibility. Do what I would, there was for me no ease of mind. Waking or sleeping, the thought of Albert Martindale and his mother haunted me continually.
At last the evening came, and our guests began to arrive, in party dresses and party faces, richly attired, smiling and gracious. Among the earliest were Mr. and Mrs. Martindale, their son and daughter.
The light in my friend's eyes, as we clasped hands and looked into each other's faces, did not conceal the shadows of anxious fear that rested on them. As I held Albert's hand, and gazed at him for a moment, a pang shot through my heart. Would he go out as pure and manly as he had come in? Alas, no! for I had made provision for his fall.
The company was large and fashionable. I shall not attempt a description of the dresses, nor venture an estimate touching the value of diamonds. I have no heart for this. No doubt the guests enjoyed themselves to the degree usual on such occasions. I cannot say as much for at, least one of the hosts. In the supper-room stood a table, the sight of which had smitten my eyes with pain. Its image was perpetually before me. All the evening, while my outward eyes looked into happy faces, my inward gaze rested gloomily on decanters of brandy and bottles of wine crowding the supper-table, to which I was soon to invite the young men—mere boys, some of them—and maidens, whose glad voices filled the air of my drawing-rooms.