Chapter XXXIX: Finis

“They walk together life’s paths to-day,
And their hearts are tender and light and gay,
And life is as sweet, as sweet can be;
And the happy years glide swiftly from view,
And their love though old, seems ever new,
Which trouble or grief can never decay.”--E. C. PRATT.

“Your story is ending too sadly,” say some of my readers to me--light-hearted friends, who love that all should go merrily as marriage bells.

Dear friends, I have written this story to warn you, not to amuse you. I have tried to show you in one man the evil results of intemperance, in another the dignity and glory of total abstinence.

I have tried to show my sister-woman that she, after all, is the greatest sufferer from the curse of wine, and that she should set her face against it as a flint, dread it as a serpent coiling in her path, and fight the way inch by inch with the deadly destroyer, fight for total abstinence, fight for every moral right and every legal law to chain the demon in his lair. There is not under heaven a more forlorn and miserable creature than a drunkard’s hapless wife.

“You ask me what my fancy deems
As woman’s surest, deadliest foe;
What agent strongest in its power
To work her gentle spirit woe.
What rival base enough to steal
All precious things that make her blest,
And plant the thorns of sharp despair
Forever in her tender breast.

“And as I ponder o’er the thought,
From past and present round me throng
Pale women, wild-eyed, sad-eyed, wan--
All crushed with grief or crazed with wrong.
These are the victims, these are they
Whose myriad voices swell with mine;
Oh, woman’s surest, deadliest foe
Lurks in the tempting glass of wine.

“Then rally, sisters, to the fight!
’Tis we should lead the forward van,
’Tis we should bear the standard high
Of total abstinence for man.
’Tis we should frown the drunkard down,
’Tis we should shun the spirits low
That dally with the fatal glass,
Fond woman’s surest, deadliest foe.”

Few stories of intemperance ever end in real life even as well as this fiction I have woven to point a moral for the thoughtful reader. Few women ever find their martyrdom ended save with life.

For Vivian, our sweet heroine, the clouds that overshadowed her sky have happily passed away, but there are anguished memories, haunting regrets that will not pass save with life.

She whose thoughtless little hand once held the tempting glass of wine to another’s lips will tremble and shudder now at a glimpse of “the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup.” She will not cross the threshold of Doctor Verne’s successful Inebriate Asylum, because her very heart grows sick within her at sight of the poor, struggling victims of the Destroyer, out of whose power her noble husband lifts so many souls, sending them forth to the world again cured of their madness.

* * * * *

One picture more ere we close the story of those eventful years.

We leave fair Vivian at Leigh Place, where we saw her first. Madame Orne’s will, made many months before her sudden death, divided her property equally between Vivian and her brother, and especially desired that their old home, lost to them through Earle Essex’s sin, might be repurchased for their summer home. Vivian complied with her wish, but Charlton donated the whole amount of his bequest to the famous Inebriate Asylum. The only souvenir he retains of her is the little silver comb.

Charlton is growing into an old bachelor now. People say he will never marry, and tell him he has no heart; at which Charlton laughs in his old cynical way, and replies that “there is an aching void in its place.” Perhaps it is true.

Anyway, Charlton Leigh is a changed man, though outwardly the careless cynic of old. He has looked upon life’s graver aspects now, has buried the best of his hopes in a woman’s grave, and long ago yielded to Marie’s memory dead what he would not yield to her living love--his pledge of total abstinence.

As for the Kingsleys, Vivian and Charlton see little of them. Diana has grown fat, and is more selfish than ever. Eve is a sour old maid still looking for the rich husband she will never get.

* * * * *

A summer sunset in the golden days of June--a lady waiting on the long piazza at Leigh Place, a lovely lady, dark-haired and dark-eyed, clad in a fresh white gown with pink roses at her waist. She alternately plays with her beautiful, frolicsome little boy, pelting him with roses, or watches the winding paths of the lawn for her husband who returns to-day from Richmond. He is punctual to the hour, and presently she is flying down the steps for his glad kiss of greeting.

“My darling,” murmurs Doctor Verne, and draws her aside into a shady bower wreathed with honeysuckle and roses, “how cool, how sweet, how lovely you look--like Tennyson’s ‘queen rose of the rosebud garden.’”

She laughs softly at his lover-like praises.

“You are growing poetical, like the Max I knew of old.”

“That reminds me!” he exclaimed smilingly. “I have brought you, my darling, a new volume of poems. They attracted much attention by their simple beauty, in the magazines for several years, and now they have been collected in a sweet little book, under the author’s _nom de plume_, with a pathetic dedication, ‘To the memory of Marie.’”

He turns a tender, quizzical glance on her face and it flushes like the roses at her belt.

“Why don’t you share your secret with me, darling? I knew it long ago from our dear lost Marie,” says the proud husband.

“I meant to tell you to-day, but--I was timid. They are such trifles--written,” she says sadly, “to keep the wolf from the door in those dark days.”

He draws her more closely within the clasp of his loving arms.

“My Vivian, ever since I knew you I have worshiped your beauty, and grace, and sweetness. Words alone could never tell you how much more I have loved the pure white soul and gifted mind that won this laurel for your womanly brow.”

Do women ever feel the strong stirrings of ambition, I wonder, or do they only write as the birds sing, because they cannot keep all the music in their hearts? Sometimes I think the latter, for Vivian lets the pretty blue-and-gold volume slide down to the grass unheeded, and touching with one taper finger the spot his lips had pressed on her brow a moment ago, answers, with a smile and a tear:

“Max, dear, I prize your loving caress as a dearer trophy than the _laurel_!”

THE END.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Underscores (_) denote italics.

This novel was originally serialized as _Vivian; or, The Curse of Wine_ by Mittie Point Davis in _The Temperance Advocate_ from January 5 to June 1, 1878. It was later reprinted in _Street & Smith’s New York Weekly_ from February 11 to April 18, 1893 as _A Little Southern Beauty; or, Tortured Hearts_ by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller. This edition is derived from the 1897 paper-covered reprint, but some obvious typographical errors have been corrected with reference to the original serial.

On page 48, a typographical error has omitted an entire line of text reading “older and sadder than Viva’s, and bearing too plainly”. This has been restored from the original serialization.

This edition has significant differences from the first appearance. For example, the interaction between Charlton Leigh and Madame Orne in chapter XI is significantly different in this edition than in the original _Temperance Advocate_ version, which included a longer conversation during which Charlton confesses to kissing Madame Orne while she was unconscious. Additionally, the original version included a chapter XXIV entitled “The Vernes” which has been condensed into part of chapter XXIII in this version. Similarly, a chapter XXVIII (“Dust to Dust”) has been condensed into this version’s chapter XXVI.

Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by the transcriber.