Chapter III

A drunkard’s wife! This was a real woe. What were all her little vexations compared with it? Mary’s resolution was a firm one, and in her earnestness to observe it, she knelt and prayed for strength from above to enable her to be equal to the duty before her.

Last night a terrible fate had menaced her. The lot of a drunkard’s wife—the most appalling woe that can overtake a woman—had threatened to be her portion. The sombre cloud had risen, and her destiny was in her own hands.

She knew her husband well enough to be satisfied that his pledge would be held sacred—that, till she drove him from his home by her unamiable peculiarity, he would be true to the words he had spoken.

Grumbling is only a habit. It may even have a root in the natural temperament of the individual; but it is not an incurable disease. Mary felt that happiness here and hereafter depended upon her fidelity to the promise she had made—that a single complaining word would be like a match placed near the magazine—and another word would involve her in hopeless ruin.

But she had sense enough to know, and she strove to feel that it were useless to avoid the word, while the disposition existed. It were useless to whitewash a sepulchre—it is still “full of dead men’s bones.” She determined to perform a radical cure. She resolved to be contented, and then the hasty word would not be spoken.

She went about her daily duties with a feeling that a mountain had been removed from her heart. She was cheerful—happy—happy to feel that it was in her power to avert the terrible catastrophe which had menaced her—that she could avoid the yawning abyss that was before her.

All her trials and vexations dwindled into trifles compared with the fate which last night had been so vividly presented to her imagination, and the comparison made her happy.

Punctual to his accustomed hour, Thomas came home. He had not drank any thing, and he appeared cheerful and happy. She met him with a smiling face, and never mentioned a word of the difficulty that had beset her. She had even been so far as to draw a pail of water herself, and bring up a hod of coal; but she said nothing about it.

They were happy again; but perhaps it was as much the effect in the contrast as the actual change in the circumstances. Thomas fondled little Bobby on his knees, and undressed and put him to bed himself. Mary was delighted, and from her soul she prayed that her own weakness might not dissolve the blissful picture of domestic happiness their home at that moment presented.

A year passed by. Thomas was true to his vow, and Mary to hers. Whenever things went wrong with her, and the old spirit rose in her heart, her husband had only to say—

“You absolve me from my oath, Mary?” and she became gentle and cheerful in an instant.

Those words were a charm. That solemn promise broken, and again the poorhouse, the penitentiary, the bloated father, the ragged child, the long procession of woes rose in her mind, and she was true to herself.

But she really improved her disposition. The habit was radically cured. The home of Thomas Butler is no more a “world of trouble;” it is “home, sweet home”—the abode of the angel of contentment, the dwelling-place of truth and love, and the most effectual preventive of the curse of drunkenness.

Our story is not all a story—it is true to the letter. We beg the complaining wife to ask herself if she is not making for her husband a path to the drunkard’s grave—for herself and her children a bed of thorns.