The Drunkard Part 33

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 aesthetic 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 fict.i.tious 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 ident.i.ty_.

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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 d.i.c.kson 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.