Part 57 (2/2)

Heywood, the general pract.i.tioner from Wordingham.

There was nothing very serious the matter, but the Riviera fever brings collapse and great depression of spirits with it. Mary remained in bed, lying there in a dreamy, depressed state of both physical and mental faculties. She read but little, preferred to be alone as much as possible, and found it hard to take a lively interest in anything at all.

Gilbert was attentive enough. He saw that every possible thing was done for her comfort. But his manner was nervous and staccato, though he made great efforts at calm. He was a.s.siduous, eager to help and suggest, but there was no repose about him. In her great longing for rest and solitude--a necessary physical craving resulting upon her illness--Mary hardly wanted to see very much even of Gilbert. She was too weak and dispirited to remonstrate with him, but it was quite obvious to her experienced eyes that he was drinking heavily again.

His quite unasked-for references to the fact that he was taking nothing but a bottle of beer in the middle of the morning, a little claret at meals and a single whiskey and soda before going to bed, betrayed him at once. His tremulous anxiety, his furtive manner, the really horrible arrogation of gaiety and ease made upon a most anxious hope that he was deceiving her, told their own tale.

So did the heavy puffed face, yellowish red and with spots appearing upon it. His eyes seemed smaller as the surrounding tissues were dilated, they were yellowish, streaked with little veins of blood at the corners, and dull in expression.

His head jerked, his hands trembled and when he touched her they were hot and damp.

Her depression of mind, her sense of hopelessness, were greatly increased. Darkness seemed to be closing round her, and prayer--for it happens thus at times with even the most saintly souls--gave little relief.

”I shall be better soon,” she kept repeating to herself. ”The doctor says so. Then, when I am well, I shall be able to take poor Gillie really in hand. It won't be long now. Then I will save him with G.o.d's help.”

In her present feebleness she knew that it was useless to attempt to do anything in this direction. So she pretended to believe her husband, said nothing at all, and prayed earnestly to recover her health that she might set about the task of succour.

She did not know, had not the very slightest idea, of Lothian's real state. n.o.body knew, n.o.body could know.

On his part, freed of all restraint, his mind a cave of horror, a chamber of torture, he drank with lonely and systematic persistence.

It was about this time that he began to make these notes in the form of a diary which long afterwards pa.s.sed into the hands of Dr. Morton Sims.

The record of heated horror, the extraordinary glimpse into an inferno incredible to the sane man, has proved of immense value to those who are engaged in studying the psychology of the inebriate.

From much that they contain, it is obvious that the author had no intention of letting them be seen by any other eyes than his own, at the time of writing them. Dr. Morton Sims had certainly suggested the idea in the first place, but there can be no doubt whatever that Lothian soon abandoned his original plan and wrote for the mere relief of doing so, and doubtless with a sinister fascination at the spectacle of his own mind thus revealed by subtle a.n.a.lysis and the record of a skilled pen. Alcoholised and impaired as his mind was, it was nevertheless quite capable of doing this accurately and forcibly, and there are many corroborative instances of such an occurrence. More than one medical man during the progress of a protracted death agony has left minute statements of his sensations for the good of Society.

Such papers as these, for use in a book which has an appeal to all sorts of people, cannot, of course, be printed entire. There are things which it would serve no good purpose for the layman to know, valuable as they are to the patient students of morbid states. And what can be given is horrible enough.

The selected pa.s.sages follow herewith, and with only such comment as is necessary to elucidate the text.

... Last night a letter came from a stranger, one of the many that I get, thanking me for some of the poems in ”Surgit Amari”

which he said had greatly solaced and helped him throughout a period of mental distress. When I opened the letter it was after dinner, and I had dined well--my appet.i.te keeps good at any rate, and while that is so there is no fear of it--according to the doctors and the medical books. I opened the letter and read it without much interest. I am not so touched and pleased by these letters as I used to be. Then, after I had said good-night to my wife, I went into the library. After two or three whiskies and a lot of cigarettes the usual delusion of greatness and power came over me. I know, of course, that I have great power and am in a way celebrated, but at ordinary times I have no overmastering consciousness and bland, suave pride in this. When I am recovering from the effects of too much alcohol I doubt everything. My own work seems to me trivial and worthless, void of life and imitations of greater work.

Well, I had the usual quickening, but vague and incoherent sense of greatness, and I picked up the letter again. I walked up and down the room smoking furiously, and then I had some more whiskey. The constant walking up and down the room, by the way, is a well-marked symptom of my state. The nerves refuse me calm. I can't sit down for long, even with the most alluring book. Some thought comes into my mind like a stone thrown suddenly into a pool, and before I am aware of it I am marching up and down the room like a forest beast in a cage. When I had read the letter twice more I sat down and wrote a most effusive reply to my correspondent. I almost wept as I read it. I went into high things, I revealed myself and my innermost thoughts with the grave kindness and wish to be of help that a great and good man; intimate with a lesser and struggling man; might use.

In the morning I read the letter which I had thought so wonderful.

As usual, I tore it up. It was written in a handwriting which might have betrayed drunkenness to a child. Long words lacked a syllable, words ending in ”ing” were concluded by a single stroke, the letter ”l” was the same size as the letter ”e” and could not be distinguished from it. But what was worse, was the sickly sentiment, expressed in the most feeble sloppy prose.

It was sort of educated Chadband or Stiggins and there was an appalling lack of reticence.

It is a marked symptom of my state, that when I am drunk I always want to write effusive letters to strangers or mere acquaintances.

Sometimes, if I have been reading a book that I liked, I sit down and turn out pages of gush to the unknown author, hailing him as a brother and a master. Thank goodness I always tear the wretched things up next day. It is a good thing I live in the country. In London these wretched letters, which I am impelled to write, would be in some adjacent pillar box before I realised what I had done.

Oh, to be a sane man, a member of the usual sane army of the world who never do these things!

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