Part 31 (1/2)

For three days Lothian had had nothing to drink but a gla.s.s of Burgundy at lunch and dinner. Lying in bed, perfectly tranquil, calling upon no physical resources, the sense of nerve-rest within him was grateful and profound.

But the inebriate lives almost entirely upon momentary sensation. The slightest recrudescence of health makes him forget the horrors of the past.

In the false calm of his quiet room, his tended state, the love and care surrounding him, Gilbert had already come to imagine that he was what he hoped to be in his saner moments. He had, at the moment, not the least desire for a drink. In three days he was already complacent and felt himself strong!

Yet his nerves were still unstable and every impulse was on a hair trigger, so to speak.

The fact became evident at once.

He knew well enough that when he began to smoke pipes the most pressing desire of the other narcotic, alcohol, became numbed. Cigarettes stimulated that desire, or at least accompanied it. He could not live happily without cigarettes.

He knew that Mary knew this also--experience of him had given her the sad knowledge--and he was quite certain that Dr. Morton Sims must know too.

The extraordinary transitions of the drunkard from one mental state to another are more symptomatic than any other thing about him. Gilbert's face altered and became sullen. A sharp and acid note tuned his voice.

”I see,” he said, ”you've been talking me over with Morton Sims. Thank you so _very_ much!”

He began to brag about himself, a thing he would have been horrified to do to any one but Mary. Even with her it was a weak weapon, and sometimes in his hands a mean and cruel one too.

”... You were kind enough to marry me, but you don't in the least seem to understand whom you have married! Is my art nothing to you? Do you realise who I am at all--in any way? Of course you don't! You're too big a fool to do so. But other women know! At any rate, I beg you will not talk over your husband with stray medical men who come along.

You might spare me that at least. I should have thought you would have had more sense of personal dignity than that!”

She winced at the cruelty of his words, at the wounding bitterness which he knew so well how to throw into his voice. But she showed no sign of it. He was a poisoned man, and she knew it. Morton Sims had made it plainer than ever to her at their talks downstairs during the last three days. It wasn't Gillie who said these hard things, it was the Fiend Alcohol that lurked within him and who should be driven out.

It wasn't her Gilbert, really!

In her mind she said one word. ”Jesus!” It was a prayer, hope, comfort and control. The response was instant.

That secret help had been discovered long since by her. Of her own searching it had come, and then, one day she had picked up one of her husband's favourite books and had read of this very habit she had acquired.

”Inglesant found that repeating the name of Jesus simply in the lonely nights kept his brain quiet when it was on the point of distraction, being of the same mind as Sir Charles Lucas when 'Many times calling upon the sacred name of Jesus,' he was shot dead at Colchester.”

The spiritual telegraphy that goes on between Earth and Heaven, from G.o.d to His Saints is by no means understood by the World.

”You old duffer,” Mary said. ”Really, you are a perfect blighter--as you so often call me! Haven't you just been boasting about feeling so much better? And, fat wretch! am I not doing everything possible for you. _Of course_ I've talked you over with the doctor. We're going to make you right! We're going to make you slim and beautiful once more. My dear thing! it's all arranged and settled. Don't bubble like a frog! Don't look at your poor Missis as if she were a nasty smell! It's no use, Gillie dear, we've got you now!”

No momentary ill-humour could stand against this. He was, after all, quite dependent upon the lady with the golden hair who was sitting upon his bed.

And it was with no more Oriental complacence, but with a very humble-minded reverence, that the poet drew his wife to him and kissed her once more.

”... But I may have a cigarette, Molly?”

”Of course you may, if you want one. It was only a general sort of remark that the doctor made. A few cigarettes can't harm any one. Don't I have two every day myself--since you got me into the habit? But you've been smoking fifty a day, for _weeks_ before you went to town.”

”Oh, Molly! What utter rot! I _never_ have!”

”But you _have_, Gilbert. You smoke the Virginian ones in the tins of fifty. You always have lots of tins, but you never think how they come into the house. I order them from the grocer in Wordingham.

They're put down in the monthly book--so you see I _know_!”