Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1896-03-19

must nave oone most OF the taking, Tor
Mrs. Reiver couldn't talk much to a
man Of his stamp, and tho little she said
could not have been profitable. What
Moriarty believed in, as he had good
reason to, was Mrs. Reiver's influence
over him, and, in that belief, set him
self seriously TO try TO do away with the
vice that only he himself knew Of.
His experiences while he was fighting
with it must have been peculiar, but he
never described them. Sometimes he
would hold off from everything except
water for week. Then, on a rainy
night, when no one had asked him ont
to dinner, and there was big fire in
his room, and everything comfortable,
he would sit down and make big night
Of it by adding little nip to little nip,
planning big schemes of reformation
meanwhile, until he threw himself on
his bed hopclessly drunk. He suffered
next morning.
One night the big crash came He
was troubled in his own mind over his
attempts to make himself worthy of
the friendship" of Mrs. Rciver The
past ten days had been very bad ones,
and the end of it all was that he re-
Ccived the arrears of %. years of sip
ping i'll one attack of delirium trUmens
of the Subduod kind; beginning with
| suicidal depression, going on to fits and
starts and hysteria, and ending with
downright raving. As he sat i'll chair
in front IF the fire, or walked up and
down the room picking Il handkerchief
TO pieces, You heard what poor Moriarty
really thought Of Mrs. RcivCr, for he
raved about her and his own fall for the
most part, though he ravcled some p.
| W. ID. accounts into the same skein Of
| thought. He talked, and talked and
talked i'll low, dry whisper to himself,
and there was no stopping him. &c
seemed to know that there was some
thing wrong, and twice tried to pull
| himself together and confer nationally
with the doctor, but his mind ran out
of control at once, and he fell back to q
whisper and the story of his troubles. 1t
is terrible to hear big man babbling
like child of all that a man usually
locks up and puts away i'll the deep of
his heart. Moriarty read out his very
soul for the benefit of any one who was
in the room between 10 80 that night
and 40 next morning.
From what he said one gathered how
immense an influence Mrs Reiver held
over him, and how thoroughly he felt
for his own lapse. His whisperings can
not, of course, be put down here, but
they were very instructive as showing
the errors of his estimates.
|
When the trouble was over, and his
few acquaintances were plying him for
the bad attack of jungle fever that had
so pulled him down, Moriarty swore a
big oath to himself and went abroad
again with Mrs. Reiver till the end of
the season, adoring her in quiet and
deferential way as an angel from heav-
ell. Later on he took to riding-not
| hacking, but honest riding-which was
good proof that he was improving, and
you could slam doors behind him with
out his jumping to his feet with gasp.
That, again, was hopeful.
How he kept his oath, and what il
cost him i'll the beginning, nobody
knows. He certainly managed to com
pass the hardest thing that u man who
has drunk heavily can do. He took his
peg and wine at dinner, but he never
drank alone, and never let what Inc
drank have the least hold on him.
Once he told bosom friend the story
of his great trouble and how the "in
fluence of II pure, honest woman and al
angel as WE'LL had saved him. Wher
the man-Sturtlcd ut anything good be
ing laid to Mrs Reiver's door-laughod
it cost him Moriarly = friendship. Mort
arty, who is married now to woman
ten thousand times better than Mrs
Reiver-a woman who believes that
there is no man on earth as good anG
clever as her husband-will go down tc
his grave vowinR and protesting that
Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in
both worlds.
That she knew anything Of Moriarty (
weakness nobody believed for moment.
That she would have cut him dead
thrown him over and acquainted all hel
friends with her discovery, if she had
known of it, nobody who knew hel
doubted for an instant.
Moriarty thought her something she
never was, and in that belief saved him
self, which was just as good as though
she had been everything that he had i'm
agined
But the question is, What claim will
Mrs. Reiver have to the credit of Mort.
arty's salvation when her day of reckon.
ing comes ?-Rudyard Kipling