called him, and finding out his condition, took him on board the steamer and gave him a bed. But Holcombe was so afraid the negro had some design upon him, as there were no others on board, that he stole away from the boat and wandered around, alone, all the rest of the night.
On that awful night the great deep of his heart was broken up and he felt a sense of loneliness that he had never felt before in his life. He was in a strange city among a strange people. He had no friends, he had no means. He had not where to lay his head. The darkness of the night shut off the sight of those objects which in the day would have diverted his mind[17] and relieved his painful reflections; and the awful stillness, broken only by the rattling of wheels that bore away the dead, made it seem to him as if his
8
thoughts were spoken to him by some audible voice. His past life came up before him, but there was in it nothing pleasant for him to remember. It had been from his earliest recollection one constant experience of pain and sin. He was uneasy about himself. He was frightened at the past, and the recollection of his hard, but vain, struggle to get his evil nature changed and bettered, cast a dark cloud over his future. What could he do? Where could he go? Who was there could help him? Who was there that loved him? At his own home, if home it could be called, there was nothing but strife and cruelty and sin. Father, he had none. He that was his father had lived a drunkard's life, had died a drunkard's death and was buried in a drunkard's grave. And his mother--she had no power to help him or even love him as most mothers love their children, and as on that lone dismal night he would have given the world to be loved. Of God's mercy and love he did not know, he thought only of his wrath, nor had he learned how to approach him in prayer. Alone, alone, he felt himself to be shut up between a past that was full of sin and crime and a future that promised nothing better. But he did think of one who had loved him and who had said she would always love him and he felt there was truth in her soul and in her words. It was the brown-haired, sweet-faced, strong-hearted little girl he had left in Shippingsport. He would go back to her. She alone of all people in the world seemed able to help him and this[18] seemed his last, his only hope. If she had remained true to him, and if she would love him, the world would not seem so dreary and the future would not seem so dark, and maybe she could help him to be a better man. "On the next day," says Mr. Holcombe, "an acquaintance of mine from Louisville ran across me as I was strolling about the streets, took me aboard a steamer and made me go home with him."
THE OLD MILL AT SHIPPINGSPORT.
[19] CHAPTER II.
As has already been said, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, the parents of Mrs. Holcombe, were people of excellent moral character and were so careful of their children that as long as they could prevent it, they did not allow them to associate freely with the Shippingsport children. But of Steve Holcombe, the worst of them all, they had a special dread. Mr. Evans could not endure to see him or to hear his name called. And yet, this same Steve Holcombe was in love with their own precious child, and had now come home to ask her to marry him. Of course, he did not visit her at her own home but he managed to see her elsewhere. He found that she had not wavered during his absence, but that the bond of their childhood had grown with her womanhood. And yet she knew full well his past career and his present character. She went into it "with her eyes open," to quote her own words. Against the will of her parents and against the advice of her friends she adhered to her purpose to marry Steve Holcombe when the time should come. Even his own mother, moved with pity at the thought of the sufferings and wretchedness which this marriage would bring the poor girl, tried
to dissuade her from it and warned her that she was going to marry "the very devil." She replied that she knew all about it, and when asked why she then did it, her simple answer was "because I love him."[20]
He promised her that he would try to be a better man and she, as well as he, believed it, though not because she expected he would some time become a Christian and not because she had the Christian's faith and hope. Her simple belief was that the outcome of her love would be his reformation and return to a better life. It was not thus definitely stated to herself by herself. It was an unconscious process of reasoning or rather it was the deep instinct of her strong and deeply-rooted love.
Mrs. Holcombe was recently asked if, during all the years of her husband's recklessness and disgraceful dissipation, his sins and crimes, his cruel neglect and heartless mistreatment of herself, her love ever faltered? She answered: "No; never. There never was
a time, even when Mr. Holcombe was at his worst, that I did not love him. It pained me, of course, that some things should come through him, but I never loved him any less." A rare and wonderful love it surely was. When she was asked if during those dark and bitter years she ever gave up her belief that her husband would change his life and become a good man, she answered, "No; I never gave it up." A woman of deep Insight, of large reading and wide observation, on hearing these replies of Mrs. Holcombe, said: "It is the most wonderful case of love and patience and faith I have ever known."
He had come home then to marry Mary Evans. He met her at the house of a mutual friend and proposed an elopement. She was frightened and refused. But he pleaded and besought her, and, wounded and vexed at what seemed a disregard of his feelings
and[21] rights, he ended by saying, "It must be to-night or never." Whereupon she consented, though with great reluctance, and they went together to the house of his mother, in the city of Louisville. But his own mother would not consent to their marriage under such circumstances until she could first go and see if she could get the consent of the girl's parents. Accordingly, she went at once
to Shippingsport, night as it was, and laid the case before them. They did not consent, but saw it would do no good to undertake to put a stop to it. So that, at the house of his mother in Louisville, they were married, Steve Holcombe and Mary Evans, the hardened gambler and the timid girl.
9
After his marriage he quit running on the river, settled down at Shippingsport and went to fishing for a living. And it did seem for a time that his hope was to be realized and that through the helpful influences of his young wife he was to become a better man. He grew steadily toward better purposes and toward a higher standard of character, and within two or three months after their marriage they joined the church together. Mrs. Holcombe says, however, that she does not now believe that she was a Christian at the time. They thought in a general way that it was right to join the church, and that it would do them good and somehow help them to be good. If they had had some one, wise and patient and faithful, to teach them and advise them and sympathize with them at this time of awakening and of honest endeavor after a spiritual life, they would probably have gone on happily and helpfully together in it. But alas! as is true in so many, many cases to-day, nobody understood or seemed to understand[22] them, nobody tried or cared to understand them; nobody cared for their souls. It was taken for granted, then as now, that when people are gotten into the church, nothing special is to be done for them any further, though, in fact, the most difficult and delicate part of training a soul and developing Christian character comes after conversion and after joining the church. Mr. Holcombe attributes his present success in the helping and guidance of inquiring and struggling souls to his lack on the one hand of careful and sympathetic training in his earlier efforts
to be a Christian and on the other hand to the great benefit of such training in his later efforts. In such a nature as his, especially, no mere form of religion and no external bond of union with the church was sufficient. The strength of his will, the tenacity of his
old habits, the intensity of his nature and the violence of his passions were such that only an extraordinary power would suffice to bring him under control. It was not long, therefore, before he was overcome by his evil nature, and he soon gave over the ineffectual struggle and fell back into his old ways. His poor wife soon found to her sorrow that reforming a bad man was a greater undertaking than she had dreamed of, and was often reminded of her mother-in-law's remark that she had married "the very devil." And Mr. Holcombe found out, too, that his wife, good as she was, could not make him good. Some men there are so hungry-hearted and so