The Drunkard

"You know, darling! He wants to have a long talk with you."

"Apropos of the reformation stakes I suppose."

"To give you back your wonderful brain in peace, darling!" she answered, bending down, catching him to her breast in her sweet arms.

".. Gillie! Gillie! I love you so!"

"And now suppose you send up Tumpany, dear."

"Yes, at once."

She went away, smiling and kissing her hand, hoping with an intensity of hope which burned within her like a flame, that when the doctor came and talked to Gilbert as had been arranged, the past might be wiped out and a new life begun in this quiet village of East England.

In a minute there was a knock at the bedroom door.

"Come in," Gilbert called out.

Tumpany entered.

Upon the red face of that worthy person there was a grin of sheer delight as he made his bow and scrape.

Then he held up his right arm. He was grasping a leash of mallard, and the metallic blue-green and white upon the wings of the ducks shone in the sun.

Gilbert leapt in his bed, and then put his hand to his bandaged head with a half groan. – "Good God!" he cried, "how the deuce did you get those?"

"First of August, sir. Wildfowling begins!"

"Heavens! so it is. I ought to have been out! I never thought about the date. Damn you for pitching me out of the dog-cart, William!"

"Yessir! You've told me so before," Tumpany answered, his face reflecting the smile upon his master's.

"What are they, flappers?"

"No, sir, mature birds. I was out on the marshes before daylight. The birds were coming off the meils – and North Creake flat. First day since February, sir! You know what I was feeling like!"

"Don't I, oh, don't I, by Jove! Now tell me. What were you using?"

"Well, sir, I thought I would fire at nothing but duck on the first day. Just to christen the day, sir. So I used five and a half and smokeless diamond. Your cartridges."

"What gun?"

"Well, I used my old pigeon gun, sir. It's full choke, both barrels and on the meils it's always a case of long shots."

"Why didn't you have one of my guns? The long-chambered twelve, or the big Greener ten-bore – they're there in the cupboard in the gun room, you've got the key! Did a whole sord of mallard come over, or were those three stragglers?"

"A sord, sir. The two drakes were right and left shots and this duck came down too. As I said to the mistress just now, 'last year,' I said, 'Mr. Gilbert and I were out for two mornings after the first of August and we never brought back nothing but a brace of curlew – and now here's a leash of duck, M'm.'"

"If you'd had a bigger gun, and a sord came over, you'd have got a bag, William! Why the devil didn't you take the ten-bore?"

"Well, sir, I won't say as I didn't go and have a look at 'im in the gun room – knowing how they're flighting just now and that a big gun would be useful. But with you lying in bed I couldn't do it. So I went out and shot just for the honour of the house, as it were."

"Well, I shall be up in a day or two, William, and I'll see if I can't wipe your eye!"

"I hope you will, sir, I'm sure. There's quite a lot of mallard about, early as it is."

"I'll get among them soon, Tumpany!"

"Yessir – the Mistress I think, sir, and the doctor."

Tumpany's ears were keen, like those of most wildfowlers, – he heard voices coming along the passage towards the bedroom.

The door opened and Morton Sims came in with Mary.

He shook hands with Gilbert, admired Tumpany's leash of duck, and then, left alone with the poet, sat down upon the bed.

The two men regarded each other with interest. They were both "personalities" and both of them made their mark in their several ways.

"Good heavens!" the doctor was thinking. "What a brilliant brain's hidden behind those lint bandages! This is the man who can make the throat swell with sorrow and the heart leap high with hope! With all my learning and success, I can only bring comfort to people's bowels or cure insomnia. This fellow here can heal souls – like a priest! Even for me – now and then – he has unlocked the gates of fairyland."

"Good Lord!" Gilbert said to himself. "What wouldn't I give to be a fellow like this fellow. He is great. He can put a drug into one's body and one's soul awakes! He's got a magic wand. He waves it, and sanity returns. He pours out of a bottle and blind eyes once more see God, dull ears hear music! I go and get drunk at Amberleys' house and cringe before a Toftrees, Mon Dieu! This man can never go away from a house without leaving a sense of loss behind him."

– "Well, how are you, Mr. Lothian?"

"Much better, thanks, Doctor. I'm feeling quite fit, in fact."

"Yes, but you're not, you know. I made a complete examination of you yesterday, you remember, and now I've tabulated the results."

"Tell me then."

"If you weren't who you are, I wouldn't tell you at all, being who you are, I will."

Lothian nodded. "Fire away!" he said with his sweet smile, his great charm of manner – all the greater for the enforced abstinence of the last three days – "I shan't funk anything you tell me."

"Very well, then. Your liver is beginning – only beginning – to be enlarged. You've got a more or less permanent catarrh of the stomach, and a permanent catarrh of the throat and nasal passages from membranes inflamed by alcohol and constant cigarette smoking. And there is a hint of coming heart trouble, too."

Lothian laughed, frankly enough. "I know all that," he said. "Really, Doctor, there's nothing very dreadful in that. I'm as strong as a horse, really!"

"Yes, you are, in one way. Your constitution is a fine one. I was talking to your man-servant yesterday and I know what you are able to go through when you are shooting in the winter. I would not venture upon such risks myself even."

"Then everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds?" Gilbert answered lightly, feeling sure that the other would take him.

"Unfortunately, in your case, it's not," Morton Sims replied. "You seem to forget two things about 'Candide' – that Dr. Pangloss was a failure and a fool, and that one must cultivate one's garden! Voltaire was a wise man!"

Gilbert dropped his jesting note.

"You've something to say to me," he answered, "probably a good deal more. Say it. Say anything you like, and be quite certain that I shan't be offended."

"I will. It's this, Mr. Lothian. Your stomach will go on digesting and your heart performing its functions long after your brain has gone."

Then there was silence in the sunlit bedroom.

"You think that?" Lothian said at length, in a quiet voice.

"I know it. You are on the verge of terrible nervous and mental collapse. I'm going to be brutal, but I'm going to speak the truth. Three months more of drinking as you have been of late and, for all effective purposes you go out!"

Gilbert's face flushed purple with rage.

"How dare you say such a thing to me, sir?" he cried. "How dare you tell me, tell me, that I have been drinking heavily. You are certainly wise to say it when there is no witness here!"

Morton Sims smiled sadly. He was quite unmoved by Lothian's rage. It left him cool. But when he spoke, there was a hypnotic ring in his voice which caught at the weak and tremulous will of the man upon the bed and held it down.

"Now really, Mr. Lothian!" he said, "what on earth is the use of talking like that to me? It means nothing. It does not express your real thought. Can you suppose that your condition is not an open book to me? You know that you wouldn't speak as you're doing if your nerves weren't in a terrible state. You have one of the finest minds in England; don't bring it to irremediable ruin for want of a helping hand."

Lothian lay back on his pillow breathing quickly. He felt that his hands were trembling and he pushed them under the clothes. His legs were twitching and a spasm of cramp-pain shot into the calf of one of them.

"Look here, Doctor," he said after a moment, "I spoke like a fool, which I'm not. I have been rather overdoing it lately. My work has been worrying me and I've been trying to whip myself up with alcohol."

Morton Sims nodded. "Well, we'll soon put you right," he said.

Mary Lothian had told him the true history of the case. For three years, at least, her husband had been drinking steadily, silent, persistent, lonely drinking. For a long time, a period of months to her own fear and horror-quickened knowledge, Lothian had been taking a quantity of spirits which she estimated at two-thirds of a bottle a day. Without enlightening her, and adding what an inebriate of this type could easily procure in addition, the doctor put the true quantity at about a bottle and a half – say for the last two months certainly.

He knew also, that whatever else Lothian might do, either now or when he became more confidential, he would lie about the quantity of spirits he was in the habit of consuming. Inebriates always do.

"Of course," he said, talking in a quiet man-of-the-world voice, "I know what a strain such work as yours must be, and there is certainly temptation to stimulate flagging energies with some drug. Hundreds of men do it, doctors too! – literary men, actors, legal men!"

He noted immediately the slight indication of relief in the patient, who thought he had successfully deceived him, and he saw also that sad and doubting anxiety in the eyes, which says so poignantly, "what must I do to be saved?"

Could he save this man?

Everything was against it, his history, his temperament, the length to which he had already gone. The whole stern and horrible statistics of experience were dead against it.

But he could, and would, try. There was a chance.

A great doctor must think more rapidly than a general upon the field of battle; as quickly indeed as one who faces a deadly antagonist with the naked foil. There was one way in which to treat this man. He must tell him more about the psychology – and even if necessary the pathology – of his own case than he could tell any ordinary patient.

"I'll tell you something," he said, "and I expect your personal experience will back me up. You've no 'craving' for alcohol I expect? On the sensual side there's no sense of indulging in a pleasurable self-gratification?"

Lothian's face lighted up with interest and surprise. "Not a bit," he said excitedly, "that's exactly where people make a mistake! I don't mind telling you that when I've taken more than I ought, people, my wife and so on, have remonstrated with me. But none of them ever seem to understand. They talk about a 'craving' and so on. Religious people, even the cleverest, don't seem to understand. I've heard Bishop Moultrie preach a temperance sermon and talk about the 'vice' of indulgence, the hideous 'craving' and all that. But it never seemed to explain anything to me, nor did it to all the men who drink too much, I ever met."

"There is no craving," the Doctor answered quietly – "in the sense these people use the word. And there is no vice. It is a disease. They mean well, they even effect some cures, but they are misinformed."

"Well, it's very hard to answer them at any rate. One somehow knows within oneself that they're all wrong, but one can't explain."

"I can explain to you – I couldn't explain to, well to your man Tumpany for instance, he couldn't understand."

"Tumpany only drinks beer," Lothian answered in a tone of voice that a traveller in Thibet would use in speaking of some one who had ventured no further from home than Boulogne.

It was another indication, an unconscious betrayal. His defences were fast breaking down.

Morton Sims felt the keen, almost æsthetic pleasure the artist knows when he is doing good work. Already this mind was responsive to the skilled touch and the expected, melancholy music sounding from that injured instrument.

"He seems a very good sort, that fellow of yours," the doctor continued indifferently, and then, with a more eager and confidential manner, "But let me explain where the ordinary temperance people are wrong. First, tell me, haven't you at times quarrelled with friends, because you've become suspicious of them, and have imagined some treacherous and concealed motive in the background?"

"I don't know that I've quarrelled much."

"Well, perhaps not. But you've felt suspicious of people a good deal. You've wondered whether people were thinking about you. In all sorts of little ways you've had these thoughts constantly. Perhaps if a correspondent who generally signs himself 'yours sincerely' has inadvertently signed 'yours truly' you have worried a good deal and invented all sorts of reasons. If some person of position you know drives past you, and his look or wave of the hand does not appear to be as cordial as usual, don't you invent all kinds of distressing reasons to account for what you imagine?"

Lothian nodded.

His face was flushed again, his eyes – rather yellow and bloodshot still – were markedly startled, a little apprehensive.

"If this man knew so much, a wizard who saw into the secret places of the mind, what more might he not know?"

But it was impossible for him to realise the vast knowledge and supreme skill of the pleasant man with the cultured voice who sat on the side of the bed.

The fear was perfectly plain to Morton Sims.

"May I have a cigarette?" he said, taking his case from his pocket.

Lothian became more at ease at once.

"Well," – puff-puff – "these little suspicions are characteristic of the disease. The man who is suffering from it says that these feelings of resistance cannot arise in himself. Therefore, they must be caused by somebody. Who more likely then than by those who are in social contact with him?"

"I see that and it's very true. Perhaps truer than you can know!" Lothian said with a rather bitter smile. "But how does all this explain what we were talking about at first. The 'Craving' and all that?"

"I am coming to it now. I had to make the other postulate first. In this way. We have seen in this suspicion – one of many instances – that an entirely fictitious world is created in the mind of a man by alcohol. It is one in which he must live. It is peopled with unrealities and phantasies. As he goes on drinking, this world becomes more and more complex. Then, when a man becomes in a state which we call 'chronic alcoholism' a new Ego, a new self is created. This new personality fails to recognise that it was ever anything else– mark this well —and proceeds to harmonise everything with the new state. And now, as the new consciousness, the new Ego, is the compelling mind of the moment, the Inebriate is terrified at any weakening in it. The preservation of this new Ego seems to be his only guard against the imagined pitfalls and treacheries. Therefore he does all in his power to strengthen his defences. He continues alcohol, because it is to him the only possible agent by which he can keep grasp of his identity. For him it is no poison, no excess. It sustains his very being. His stomach doesn't crave for it, as the ignorant will tell you. It has no sensual appeal. Lots of inebriates hate the taste of alcohol. In advanced stages it is quite a matter of indifference to a man what form of alcohol he drinks. If he can't get whiskey, he will drink methylated spirit. He takes the drug simply because of the necessity for the maintenance of a condition the falsity of which he is unable to appreciate."

Lothian lay thinking.

The lucid statement was perfectly clear to him and absorbingly interesting in its psychology. He was a profound psychologist himself, though he did not apply his theories personally, a spectator of others, turning away from the contemplation of himself during the past years in secret terror of what he might find there.

How new this was, yet how true. It shed a flood of light upon so much that he had failed to understand!

"Thank you," he said simply. "I feel certain that what you say is true."

Morton Sims nodded with pleasure. "Perhaps nothing is quite true," he said, "but I think we are getting as near truth in these matters as we can. What we have to do, is to let the whole of the public know too. When once it is thoroughly understood what Inebriety is, then the remedy will be applied, the only remedy."

"And that is?"

"I'll tell you our theories at my next visit. You must be quiet now."

"But there are a dozen questions I want to ask you – and my own case?"

"I am sending you some medicine, and we will talk more next time. And, if you like, I will send you a paper upon the Psychology of the Alcoholic, which I read the other day before the Society for the Study of Alcoholism. It may interest you. But don't necessarily take it all for gospel! I'm only feeling my way."

"I'll compare it with such experiences as I have had – though of course I'm not what you'd call an inebriate." There was a lurking undercurrent of suspicion creeping into his voice once more.

"Of course not! Did I ever say so, Mr. Lothian! But what you propose will be of real value to me, if I may have your conclusions."

Lothian was flattered. He would show this great scientist how entirely capable he could be of understanding and appreciating his researches. He would collaborate with him. It would be new and exhilarating!

"I'll make notes," he replied, "and please use them as you will!"

The doctor rose. "Thanks," he answered. "It will be a help. But what we really require is an alcoholic De Quincey to detail in his graphic manner the memories of his past experiences – a man who has the power and the courage to lay open the cravings and the writhings of his former slavery, and to compare them with his emancipated self."

Lothian started. When the kindly, keen-faced man had gone, he lay long in thought.

In the afternoon Mary came to him. "Do you mind if I leave you for an hour or two, dear?" she asked. "I have some things to get and I thought I would drive into Wordingham."

"Of course not, I shall be quite all right."

"Well, be sure and ring for anything you want."

"Very well. I shall probably sleep. By the way, I thought of asking Dickson Ingworth down for a few days. There are some duck about, you know, and he can bring his gun."

"Do, darling, if you would like him."

"Very well, then. I wonder if you'd write a note for me, explaining that I'm in bed, but shall be up to-morrow. Supposing you ask him to come in a couple of days."

"Yes, I will," she replied, kissing him with her almost maternal, protective air, "and I'll post it in Wordingham."

When she had left the room he began to smoke slowly.

He felt a certain irritation at all this love and regard, a discontent. Mary was always the same. With his knowledge of her, he could predict with absolute accuracy what she would do in almost every given moment.

She would do the right thing, the kind and wise thing, but the certain, the predicted thing. She lived from a great depth of being and peace personified was hers, the peace of God indeed! – but —

"She has no changes, no surprises," he thought, "all even surface, even depth."

He admired all her care and watchfulness of him with deep æsthetic pleasure. It was beautiful and he loved beauty. But now and then, it bored him as applied to himself. After six months of the unchanging gold and blue of Italy and Greece, he remembered how he had longed for a grey, weeping sky, with ashen cirrus clouds, heaped tumuli of smoke-grey and cold pearl. And sometimes after a lifeless, rotting autumn and an iron-winter, how every fibre cried out for the sun and the South!

He remembered that a man of letters, who had got into dreadful trouble and had served a period of imprisonment, had remarked to him that the food of penal servitude was plentiful and good, but that it was its dreadful monotony that made it a contributory torture.

And who could live for ever upon honey-comb? Not he at any rate.

Mary was "always her sweet self" – just like a phrase in a girl's novel. There were men who liked that, and preferred it, of course. Even when she was angry with him, he knew exactly how the quarrel would go – a tune he had heard many times before. The passion of their early love had faded; as it must always do. She was beautiful and desirable still, but too calm, too peaceful, sometimes!

This was one of those times. One must be trained to appreciate Heaven properly, Paradise must be experienced first – otherwise, would not almost every one want a little holiday sometimes? He thought of a meeting of really good people, men and women – one stumbled in upon such a thing now and then. How appallingly dull they generally were! Did they never crave for madder music and stronger wine?

.. He could not read. Restless and rebellious thoughts occupied his mind.

The Fiend Alcohol was at work once more, though Lothian had no suspicion of it. The new and evil Ego, created by alcohol, which the doctor had told him of, was awake within him, asserting itself, stirring uneasily, finding its identity diminishing, its vitality lowered and thus clamant for its rights.

And if this, in all its horror, is not true demoniacal possession, what else is? What more does the precise scientific language of those who study the psychology of the inebriate mean than "He was possessed of a Devil"?

The fiend, the new Ego, went on with its work as the poet lay there and the long lights of the summer afternoon filled the room with gold-dust.

The house was absolutely still. Mary had given orders that there was to be no noise at all, "in order that the Master might sleep, if he could."

It was a summer's afternoon, the scent of some flowers below in the garden came up to Gilbert with a curious familiarity. What was the scent? What memory, which would not come, was it trying to evoke?

A motor-car droned through the village beyond the grounds.

Memory leaped up in a moment.

Of course! The ride to Brighton, the happy afternoon with Rita Wallace.

That was it! He had thought of her a good deal on the journey down from London – until he had sat in the dining car with those shooting men from Thetford and had had too many whiskeys and sodas. During the last three days in bed, she had not "occurred" to him vividly. Yet all the time there had been something at the back of his mind of which he had been conscious, but was unable to explain to himself. The nasty knock on his head, when he had taken a toss from the dogcart, was the reason, no doubt.

Yet, there had been a distinct sense of hidden thought-treasure, something to draw upon as it were. And now he knew! and abandoned himself to the luxury of the discovery.

He must write to her, of course. He had promised to do so at once. Already she would be wondering. He would write her a wonderful letter. Such a letter as few men could write, and certainly such as she had never received. He would put all he knew into it. His sweet girl-friend should marvel at the jewelled words.

The idea excited him. His pulses began to beat quicker, his eyes grew brighter. But he would not do it now. Night was the time for such a present as he would make for her, when all the house was sleeping and Mary was in her own room. Then, in the night-silence, his brain should be awake, weaving a coloured tapestry of prose with words for threads, this new, delicious impulse of friendship the shuttle to carry them.

Like some coarser epicure, arranging and gloating over the details of a feast to come, he made his plans.

He pressed the electric button at the side of the bed and Blanche, the housemaid, answered the summons.

"Where is Tumpany, Blanche?" he asked.

"In the garden, sir."

"Well, tell him to come up, please. I want to speak to him."

In a minute or two heavy steps resounded down the corridor, accompanied by a curious scuffling noise. There was a knock, the door opened, a yelp of joy, and the Dog Trust had leapt upon the bed and was rolling over and over upon the counterpane, licking his master's hands, making loving dashes for his face, his faithful little heart bursting with emotions he was quite unable to express.

"Thought you'd like to see him, sir," said Tumpany. "He know'd you'd come back right enough, and he's been terrible restless."