After a Shadow and Other Stories

"Off home with you, this instant!" exclaimed Jenks, the crimson of his face deepening to a dark purple. As he spoke, he advanced towards the child, with his hand uplifted in a threatening attitude.

"Please don't, Mr. Jenks," persisted the child, not moving from where she stood, nor taking her eyes front the landlord's countenance. "Mother says, if you wouldn't sell him liquor, there'd be no trouble. He's kind and good to us all when he doesn't drink."

"Off, I say!" shouted Jenks, now maddened beyond self-control; and his hand was about descending upon the little one, when the stranger caught her in his arms, exclaiming, as he did so, with deep emotion,—

"God bless the child! No, no, precious one!" he added; "don't fear him. Plead for your father—plead for your home. Your petition must prevail! He cannot say nay to one of the little ones, whose angels do always behold the face of their Father in heaven. God bless the child!" added the stranger, in a choking voice. "O, that the father, for whom she has come on this touching errand, were present now! If there were anything of manhood yet left in his nature, this would awaken it from its palsied sleep."

"Papa! O, papa!" now cried the child, stretching forth her hands. In the next moment she was clinging to the breast of her father, who, with his arms clasped tightly around her, stood weeping and mingling his tears with those now raining from the little one's eyes.

What an oppressive stillness pervaded that room! Jenks stood subdued and bewildered, his state of mental confusion scarcely enabling him to comprehend the full import of the scene. The stranger looked on wonderingly, yet deeply affected. Quietly, and with moist eyes, the two or three drinking customers who had been lounging in the bar, went stealthily out; and the landlord, the stranger and the father and his child, were left the only inmates of the room.

"Come, Lizzie, dear! This is no place for us," said Leslie, breaking the deep silence. "We'll go home."

And the unhappy inebriate took his child by the hand, and led her towards the door. But the little one held back.

"Wait, papa; wait!" she said. "He hasn't promised yet. O, I wish he would promise!"

"Promise her, in Heaven's name!" said the stranger.

"Promise!" said Leslie, in a stern yet solemn voice, as he turned and fixed his eyes upon the landlord.

"If I do promise, I'll keep it!" returned Jenks, in a threatening tone, as he returned the gaze of Leslie.

"Then, for God's sake, promise!" exclaimed Leslie, in a half-despairing voice. "Promise, and I'm safe!"

"Be it so! May I be cursed, if ever I sell you a drop of drinking at this bar, while I am landlord of the 'Stag and Hounds'!" Jenks spoke with with an angry emphasis.

"God be thanked!" murmured the poor drunkard, as he led his child away. "God be thanked! There is hope for me yet."

Hardly had the mother of Lizzie missed her child, ere she entered, leading her father by the hand.

"O, mother!" she exclaimed, with a joy-lit countenance, and in a voice of exultation, "Mr. Jenks has promised."

"Promised what?" Hope sprung up in her heart, on wild and fluttering wings, her face flushed, and then grew deadly pale. She sat panting for a reply.

"That he would never sell me another glass of liquor," said her husband.

A pair of thin, white hands were clasped quickly together, an ashen face was turned upwards, tearless eyes looked their thankfulness to heaven.

"There is hope yet, Ellen," said Leslie.

"Hope, hope! And O, Edward, you have said the word!"

"Hope, through our child. Innocence has prevailed over vice and cruelty. She came to the strong, evil, passionate man, and, in her weakness and innocence, prevailed over him. God made her fearless and eloquent."

A year afterwards a stranger came again that way, and stopped at the "Stag and Hounds." As before, Jenks was behind his well-filled bar, and drinking customers came and went in numbers. Jenks did not recognize him until he called for water, and drank a full tumbler of the pure liquor with a hearty zest. Then he knew him, but feigned to be ignorant of his identity. The stranger made no reference to the scene he had witnessed there a twelvemonth before, but lingered in the bar for most of the day, closely observing every one that came to drink. Leslie was not among the number.

"What has become of the man and the little girl I saw here, at my last visit to Milanville?" said the stranger, speaking at last to Jenks.

"Gone to the devil, for all I care," was the landlord's rude answer, as he turned off from his questioner.

"For all you care, no doubt," said the stranger to himself. "Men often speak their real thoughts in a passion."

"Do you see that little white cottage away off there, just at the edge of the wood? Two tall poplars stand in front."

Thus spoke to the stranger one who had heard him address the landlord.

"I do. What of it?" he answered.

"The man you asked for lives there."

"Indeed!"

"And what is more, if he keeps on as he has begun, the cottage will be all his own in another year. Jenks, here, doesn't feel any good blood for him, as you may well believe. A poor man's prosperity is regarded as so much loss to him. Leslie is a good mechanic—one of the best in Milanville. He can earn twelve dollars a week, year in and year out. Two hundred dollars he has already paid on his cottage; and as he is that much richer, Jenks thinks himself just so much poorer; for all this surplus, and more too, would have gone into his till, if Leslie had not quit drinking."

"Aha! I see! Well, did Leslie, as you call him, ever try to get a drink here, since the landlord promised never to let him have another drop?"

"Twice to my knowledge."

"And he refused him?"

"Yes. If you remember, he said, in his anger, 'May I be cursed, if I sell him another drop.'"

"I remember it very well."

"That saved poor Leslie. Jenks is superstitious in some things. He wanted to get his custom again,—for it was well worth having,—and he was actually handing him the bottle one day, when I saw it, and reminded him of his self-imprecation. He hesitated, looked frightened, withdrew the bottle from the counter, and then, with curses, drove Leslie from his bar-room, threatening, at the same time, to horsewhip him if ever he set a foot over his threshold again."

"Poor drunkards!" mused the stranger, as he rode past the neat cottage of the reformed man a couple of hours afterwards. "As the case now stands, you are only saved as by fire. All law, all protection, is on the side of those who are engaged in enticing you into sin, and destroying you, body and soul. In their evil work, they have free course. But for you, unhappy wretches, after they have robbed you of worldly goods, and even manhood itself, are provided prisons and pauper homes! And for your children,"—a dark shadow swept over the stranger's face, and a shudder went through his frame. "Can it be, a Christian country in which I live, and such things darken the very sun at noonday!" he added as he sprung his horse into a gallop and rode swiftly onward.

XI

ALICE AND THE PIGEON

ONE evening in winter as Alice, a dear little girl whom everybody loved, pushed aside the curtains of her bedroom window, she saw the moon half hidden by great banks of clouds, and only a few stars peeping out here and there. Below, the earth lay dark, and cold. The trees looked like great shadows.

There was at change in her sweet face as she let fall the curtain and turned from the window.

"Poor birds!" she said.

"They are all safe," answered her mother, smiling. "God has provided for every bird a place of rest and shelter, and each one knows where it is and how to find it. Not many stay here in the winter time, but fly away to the sunny south, where the air is warm and the trees green and fruitful."

"God is very good," said the innocent child. Then she knelt with folded hands, and prayed that her heavenly further would bless everybody, and let his angels take care of her while she slept. Her mother's kiss was still warm upon her lips as she passed into the world of pleasant dreams.

In the morning, when Alice again pushed back the curtains from her window, what a sight of wonder and beauty met her eyes! Snow had fallen, and everything wore a garment of dazzling whiteness. In the clear blue sky, away in the cast, the sun was rising; and as his beams fell upon the fields, and trees, and houses, every object glittered as if covered all over with diamonds.

But only for a moment or two did Alice look upon this beautiful picture, for a slight movement drew her eyes to a corner of the window-sill, on the outside, and there sat a pigeon close against the window-pane, with its head drawn down and almost hidden among the feathers, and its body shivering with cold. The pigeon did not seem to be afraid of her, though she saw its little pink eyes looking right into her own.

"O, poor, dear bird!" she said in soft, pitying tones, raising the window gently, so that it might not be frightened away. Then she stepped back and waited to see if the bird would not come in. Pigeon raised its brown head in a half scared away; turned it to this side and to that; and after looking first at the comfortable chamber and then away at the snow-covered earth, quietly hopped upon the sill inside. Next he flew upon the back of a chair, and then down upon the floor.