PAGE 12
The Ruined Family
by
They entered alone. Everything was hushed, and the silence that of the chamber of death. In the centre of the room lay the old man. A single glance told the fearful tale. He was dead! Dead in the pauper’s home! Seven years before, a millionaire–now sleeping his last sleep in the dead-room of an Alms-House, and his beggared wife and children weeping over him in heart-broken and hopeless sorrow.
From that time the energies of Mary and Anna seemed paralyzed; and it was only with a strong effort that Mrs. Graham could rouse herself from the stupor of mind and body that had settled upon her.
Mrs. Graham and her two daughters had nearly finished their evening meal, at the close of the day alluded to some pages back, when the sound of rapidly hurrying footsteps was heard on the pavement. In a moment after, a heavy blow was given just at their door, and some one fell with a groan against it. The weight of the body forced it open, and the son and brother rolled in upon the floor, with the blood gushing from a ghastly wound in his forehead. His assailant instantly fled. Bloated, disfigured, in coarse and worn clothing, how different, even when moving about, was he from the genteel, well-dressed young man of a few years back! Idleness and dissipation had wrought as great a change upon him as it had upon his father, while he was living. Now he presented a shocking and loathsome appearance.
The first impulse of Mary was to run for a physician, while the mother and Anna attempted to stanch the flow of blood, that had already formed a pool upon the floor. Assistance was speedily obtained, and the wound dressed; but the young man remained insensible. As the physician turned from the door, Mrs. Graham sank fainting upon her bed. Over-tried nature could bear up no longer.
“Doctor, what do you think of him?” asked the mother, anxiously, three days after, as the physician came out of Alfred’s room. Since the injury he had received, he had lain in a stupor, but with much fever.
“His case, Madam, is an extremely critical one. I have tried in vain to control that fever.”
“Do you think him very dangerous, Doctor?” Mary asked, in a husky voice.
“I certainly do. And, to speak to you the honest truth, have, myself, no hope of his recovery. I think it right that you should know this.”
“No hope, Doctor!” Mrs. Graham said, laying her hand upon the physician’s arm, while her face grew deadly pale. “No hope!–My only son die thus!–O! Doctor, can you not save him?”
“I wish it were in my power, Madam. But I will not flatter you with false hopes. It will be little less than a miracle should he survive.”
The mother and sisters turned away with an air of hopelessness from the physician, and he retired slowly, and with oppressed feelings.
When they returned to the sick chamber, a great change had already taken place in Alfred. The prediction of the physician, it was evident to each, as all bent eagerly over him, was about to be too surely and too suddenly realized. His face, from being slightly flushed with fever, had become sunken, and ghastly pale, and his respiration so feeble that it was almost imperceptible.
The last and saddest trial of this ruined family had come. The son and brother, for whom now rushed back upon their hearts the tender and confiding affection of earlier years, was lingering upon life’s extremest verge. It seemed that they could not give him up. They felt that, even though he were neglectful of them, they could not do without him. He was a son and brother; and, while he lived, there was still hope of his restoration. The strength of that hope, entertained by each in the silent chambers of affection, was unknown before–its trial revealed its power over each crushed and sinking heart.