Out of the Primitive Part 38

By this time they had come in beside Blake's own cot, which extended out of the corner of the room, at the foot of Griffith's equally simple bed. Griffith opened the door of a tiny bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. Lord James fell to stripping Blake, regardless of his protests that he could undress himself.

"Chuck it!" ordered his lordship, as Blake sought to interfere. "You don't want to keep us waiting our turn, do you?"

Blake launched upon an elaborate and envolved disclaimer that he had harbored the remotest idea of causing his friends the slightest trouble. In the midst Griffith came out of the bathroom. With his help, Blake was soon got ready, and the two led him in between them. In the corner of the bathroom was a small cabinet shower-bath with a wooden door. Blake turned toward it, but Griffith drew him about to the steaming tub.

"Hot room first, Tommy," he said. "Haven't forgotten how to take a Turkish, have you?"

Blake entered upon another profuse apology, meantime docily permitting the others to immerse him in the tub of hot water. Griffith promptly added still hotter water to the bath, while Lord James held the vapor curtains tight about the patient's neck. Before many minutes Blake began to grow restless, then to curse. But between them, Griffith and Lord James managed to keep him in the tub for more than a quarter of an hour.

"All right, Tommy. Now for the shower," said Griffith, at last.

Blake came out of the tub red and still wobbly. They rushed him over and shoved him into the cabinet. Lord James stepped clear, and Griffith slammed shut the door, latched it with an outside hook, and jerked open the lever of the shower-faucet, which was outside the cabinet.

"_Oof!_" grunted Blake, as the cold deluge poured down upon his bare head and body.

"Fine, hey?" called Griffith.

"_Wow!_ Lemme ou'! _Oo-ou!_"

The cabinet shook with a b.u.mp that would have upset it had it not been screwed fast to the wall.

"Aw, now, don't do the baby-act, Tommy!" jeered Griffith. "Yowling like a b.u.m, over a bath!"

"Be game, old man!" chimed in Lord James. "Take your medicine."

"Bu-but 'sh cole! _W-whew!_"

"Stay with it, old man--stay with it!" urged Lord James. "Don't lay down. Be a sport!"

"G-gosh! 'M free-freezin'! Lemme out!"

Griffith rubbed his hands together and cackled: "Stay with it, Tommy.

It's doing the work. Stay with it."

"d.a.m.nation!" swore Blake. "O-open that door!"

"Time we were moving, Mr. Scarbridge," said Griffith.

He followed Lord James out of the bathroom, and closed the door. He led the way through into the front room, and closed that door. They stood waiting, silent and expectant.

The walls shook with a m.u.f.fled crash.

"Repairs, five dollars," said Griffith. "Better stand farther over this way."

The bathroom door slammed open violently. The two men glanced into each other's eyes.

"You've played football?" croaked the engineer.

Lord James nodded.

"Tackle him low--fouler the better," advised Griffith.

There was a pause ... One of the cots in the bedroom creaked complainingly.

"Huh," muttered Griffith. "Sulking, eh? Good thing for us." He gazed full into the Englishman's face, and offered his hand. "I hope you'll overlook what I said, Mr. Scarbridge--Lord Scarbridge. Under the circ.u.mstances--"

"Don't mention it, Mr. Griffith! It's--it's the most positive proof of your friendship for him--that you should have been so angered. Deuce take it, I'd give anything if this hadn't happened!"

"How did it happen?" asked Griffith. "Sit down--No; no chance of his coming out now."

Lord James slipped off his heavy topcoat, and seated himself, his dress clothes and immaculate linen offering an odd contrast to the shabby room. But the engineer looked only at the face of his visitor.

"It's a beastly shame--when he was holding his own so well!" exclaimed the Englishman.

"That's what gets me," said Griffith. "He seemed to have staved it off indefinitely. I didn't notice a single one of the usual signs. And he has let out that the dam was almost a certainty. If he had fizzled on it, I could understand how that and the way he's been grinding indoors night and day--"

"No; he's stood that better than I had feared. What a shame! what a beastly shame! When Miss Leslie learns--"

"Miss Leslie?" cut in Griffith. "If she shakes him for this, she's not much account--after all he did for her. If she's worth anything, now's the time for her to set to and help pull him up again. But you haven't said yet how it happened."

"That's the worst of it! To be sure, she was perfectly innocent. She must have thought it simply impossible that the communion wine--"

"Hey!--communion wine? That's what he meant by church saloons and religious lushing, then. She steered him up against that--knowing his one weakness?"

"My dear sir, how could she realize?"

"He told me she knew."

"But the communion wine!"

"Communion alcohol! Alcohol is alcohol, I don't care whether it's in a saloon or a church or pickling snakes in a museum. I tell you, Tommy's case has made a prohibition crank of me. Talk about it's being a man's lack of will and moral strength--_bah!_ I never knew a man who had more will power than he, or who was more on the square. You know it."

"I--to be sure--except, you know, when he gives way to these attacks."

"Gives way!--and you've seen him fight! It's a disease, I tell you--a monomania like any other monomania. Why don't they say to a crazy man in his lucid intervals, 'Trouble with you is your lack of will power and moral strength. Brace up. Go to church'?"

"But you'd surely not say that Tom's insane? He himself lays it to his own weakness."

"What else is insanity but a kind of weakness--a broken cog in the machine which slips and throws everything out of gear, no matter how big the dynamo? I tell you, a dipsomaniac is no more to be blamed for lack of will power or moral strength than is a kleptomaniac, or than an epileptic is to be blamed for having fits. It's a disease. I'm giving it to you straight what the doctors say."

All the hopefulness went out of the Englishman's boyish face.

"Gad!" he murmured. "Gad! Then he can't overcome it."

"I don't know. The doctors don't seem to know. They say that a few seem to outgrow it--they don't know how, though. But all agree that the thing to do is to keep the patient braced--keep him boosted up."

"Count on me for that!" exclaimed Lord James.