Chapter XXIII: In the Space of Three Years

“I kept the path upon the hill
And you went down, and down, until--”--ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

November and December pass before Viva comes out of her sick-room, where she has fought a victorious battle with the grim fiend, Death. Painfully wasted, languid, listless, and indifferent, she is a changed Vivian. There will be no more gayety for her this winter. The physician has sternly interdicted it. The slight but tiresome cough that survives her illness forbids exposure to the night air, or any fashionable dissipation. Judge Leigh takes her home for a long visit, and her husband veers between Richmond and Fair View weekly.

He finds the country intolerably dull at this season of the year, and is heartily glad that Vivian readily assents to his wish to remain in the city. Perhaps it is a relief to him not to have her pale face and large, sad, dark eyes always before him. They are a silent reproach to him. He knows now that it is his fault and Charlton’s that she took cold at Diana’s wedding--knows that his reckless persistence in taking her sleigh-riding has hastened her illness and made it more dangerous--knows in his heart that if his young wife had died, he must have felt like a murderer. It sobers and frightens him to think how near, how perilously near her feet have been to the verge of that “one loose plank” that waits for all the living--the fatal step that launches into eternity. He is frightened, ashamed, remorseful, and to allay the pangs of accusing conscience makes a sacrifice that appears to him a sufficient atonement for his fault. That is, he makes Vivian a solemn promise never to drink again--a promise that sends her back to Leigh Place with a light heart, and a new hope that the future may yet hold some vistas of peace and happiness--a promise that he really means to keep, but which stands the test of time for about the space of a week after her departure. Then, urged on by his constant companion and evil genius, Monsieur Orne, he yields to his besetting temptation again. Alas, man’s vows are “writ in water.”

* * * * *

It is so hard to follow the course of repeated temptations--so saddening to trace the downward path of the weak soul that palters with wrong, and lacks moral courage to break loose from the bonds of sin! Let us pass but lightly over the next few years--sorrowful years to Vivian Essex, but which bring her to the eve of a deeper sorrow.

The close of three years finds Earle Essex much changed in fortune and position. Gambling, fast horses--all the evils that follow in the train of drinking--have sadly exhausted his revenues. Money does not last forever when it flows like water, as Mr. Essex finds to his dismay. His fortune, never so great as gossip reported, melted fast as successive extravagances followed each other. He had long ceased to regard his wife’s reproaches and pleadings, and gave up any attempt at reforming himself, and was drifting fast down the tide of destruction. The elegant residence that had made him “the finest catch in Richmond” had been sacrificed--had actually passed into Monsieur Orne’s hands in payment of a gambling debt. A suite of rooms in a hotel had next been taken, then given up for a rented house, small and in an obscure neighborhood, where one servant did the household work, instead of the half dozen that did duty on Grace street.

To add to the pathos of it all, Heaven had sent to Vivian a little dark-eyed son. It was the only solace to her sore heart. It soothed the bitterness of the past, the misery of the present, the hopelessness of the future. The unfathomable depths of tenderness, the holy sweetness of mother-love is beyond all telling. In the wounded depths of the wife’s heart this new love sprang like a fountain of healing.

Unto the house of Verne also a son and heir is born, and the elder Verne writes himself down a proud and happy father.

The handsome, quiet residence at the West End is quite transformed by its new dignity, and nursery maids invade the house, while the scholarly silence is broken by the cooing voice of a babe, and the rhapsodies of the gray-haired parents.

One spring morning there comes a foreign looking epistle for the master of the house, and an official looking one for the mistress.

Mr. Verne’s is from his nephew, but before he finishes the perusal Mrs. Verne breaks in eagerly:

“Such good news, my dear. There is a fortune coming to me over in England. I am so glad for my boy’s sake. This fortune added to yours will make our boy--the darling of our hearts--a millionaire.”

His dark eyes catch the infectious gleam in hers. What a fond, foolish pride the old couple take in this tender little life that is to perpetuate their memory.

“You will commission your lawyer, then, to go to England to represent you and attend to your interests?” asks the husband.

“Let us go ourselves,” eagerly.

“At my time of life, Clara?”

“You are not so old--only sixty-three,” she laughs. “Travel amid foreign sights and sounds would refresh and rejuvenate you. Besides England is my mother-land, and I long to revisit its blooming shores.”

“And there is Max--we should see Max,” he exclaims. “That would be delightful.”

A few weeks later the staid old pair, with the idolized heir, a nurse and a maid, embark on the grand tour of Europe in pursuit of “phantom fortune.”