The Danger Mark Part 92

"Oh, h.e.l.l, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together.

Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope out; I'll do any turn you call for----"

"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go _now_!"

"All right, doctor. Only they're too d.a.m.n rough with a man. All right; I'll go. I _did_ go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?"

"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the doctor, coldly using the vernacular.

"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I hit began the whole thing again!"

"Why did you take it? You didn't have to."

"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily.

"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?"

"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said the young man sullenly.

"Drink like a--_what_? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are peculiar to fools."

Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the physician.

"I don't know what you just said," snapped Dr. Bailey, "but I'll tell you this: alcohol is poison and it has not--and never had--in any guise whatever, the slightest compensating value for internal use. It isn't a food; it's a poison; it isn't a beneficial stimulant; it's a poison; it isn't an aid to digestion; it's a poison; it isn't a life saver; it's a life taker. It's a parasite, forger, thief, pander, liar, brutalizer, murderer!

"Those are the plain facts. There isn't, and there never has been, one word to say for it or any excuse, except morbid predisposition or self-inculcated inclination, to offer for swallowing it. Now go to your brewers, your wine merchants, your champagne touts, your fool undergraduates, your clubmen, your guzzling viveurs--and they'll all tell you the contrary. So will some physicians. And you can take your choice. Any a.s.s can. That is all, my boy."

The young man glowered sulkily at the prescription.

"Do I understand that this will stop the jumps?"

"If you really believe that, you have never heard me say so," snapped Dr. Bailey.

"Well, what the devil will it do?"

"The directions are there. You have my memorandum of the regime you are to follow. It will quiet you till you get to Mulqueen's. Those two bits of paper, however, are useless unless you help yourself. If you want to become convalescent you can--even yet. It won't be easy; it will hurt; but you can do it, as I say, even yet. But it is _you_ who must do it, not I or that bit of paper or Mulqueen!

"Just now you happen to want to get well because the effect of alcohol poison disturbs you. Things crawl, as you say, on the back of your hand.

Naturally, you don't care for such phenomena.

"Well, I've given you the key to mental and physical regeneration. Yours is not an inherited appet.i.te; yours is not one of those almost foredoomed and pitiable cases. It's a stupid case; and a case of gross self-indulgence in stupidity that began in idleness. And that, my son, is the truth."

"Is that so?" sneered Quest, rising and pocketing the prescription.

"Yes, it is so. I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done to yourself.

"You stood high in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good English--by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted by nature to live regularly and beyond the coa.r.s.er temptations. But you were lazy!"

Dr. Bailey struck his desk in emphasis.

"The germ of your self-indulgence lay in gross selfishness. You did what pleased you; and it suited you to do nothing. I'm telling you how you've betrayed yourself--how far you'll have to climb to win back. Some men need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's strong helping arm around them. You need the jab. I'm trying to administer it without anaesthetics, by telling you what some men think of you--that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your normal common sense and landed you where you are.

"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of your sister--your only living relative--in a deliberate relapse into slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your sister's income after gambling away your own fortune.

"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium. And I say to you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum--possibly one reserved for the _criminal_ insane."

A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face. For several minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other, his pale, prominent eyes glaring.

"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last.

"Thank G.o.d you think it so," returned the doctor. "If you will stand by your better self for one week--for only one week--after leaving Mulqueen's, I'll stand by you for life, my boy. Come! You were a good sport once. And that little sister of yours is worth it. Come, Stuyvesant; is it a bargain?"

He stepped forward and held out his large, firm, rea.s.suring hand. The young fellow took it limply.

"Done with you, doctor," he said without conviction; "it's h.e.l.l for mine, I suppose, if I don't make my face behave. You're right; I'm the goat; and if I don't quit b.u.t.ting I'll sure end by slapping some sissy citizen with an axe."

He gave the doctor's hand a perfunctory shake with his thin, damp fingers; dropped it, turned to go, halted, retraced his steps.

"Will it give me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s if I kiss a c.o.c.ktail good-bye before I start for that fresh guy, Mulqueen?"

"Start _now_, I tell you! Haven't I your word?"

"Yes--but on the way to buy transportation can't I offer myself one last----"

"_Can't_ you be a good sport, Stuyve?"

The youth hesitated, scowled.

"Oh, very well," he said carelessly, turned and went out.

As he walked along in the slush he said to himself: "I guess it's up the river for mine.... By G.o.d, it's a shame, for I'm feeling pretty good, too, and that's no idle quip!... Old Squills handed out a line of talk all right-o!... He landed it, too.... I ought to find something to do."

As he walked, a faint glow stimulated his enervated intelligence; ideas, projects long abandoned, desires forgotten, even a far echo from the old ambition stirring in its slumber, quickened his slow pulses. The ghost of what he might have been, nay, what he _could_ have made himself, rose wavering in his path. Other ghosts, long laid, floated beside him, accompanying him--the ghosts of dead opportunities, dead ideals, lofty inspirations long, long strangled.

"A job," he muttered; "that's the wholesome dope for w.i.l.l.y. There isn't a newspaper or magazine in town where I can't get next if I speak easy.

I can deliver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar----"

In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful bartender.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy, Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and salt it."

A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics, stood leaning against the bar, watching him.

They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy, pulled a long face and said:

"We're a pair of 'em, all right."

"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom.