The Drunkard Part 71

EPILOGUE

A Year Later

"A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise."

WHAT OCCURRED AT THE EDWARD HALL IN KINGSWAY

"Ah! happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win!

How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from sin?

How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?"

--_The Ballad of Reading Gaol._

A great deal of interest in high quarters, both in London and New York was being taken in the meeting of Leading Workers in the cause of Temperance that was to be held in Kingsway this afternoon.

The new Edward Hall, that severe building of white stone which was beginning to be the theatre of so many activities and which was so frequently quoted as a monument of good taste and inspiration on the part of Frank Flemming, the new architect, had been engaged for the occasion.

The meeting was to be at three.

It was unique in this way--The heads of every party were to be represented and were about to make common cause together. The scientific and the non-scientific workers for the suppression and cure of Inebriety had been coming very much together during the last years.

Never hostile to each other, they had suffered from a mutual lack of understanding in the past.

Now there was to be an _entente cordiale_ that promised great things.

One important fact had contributed to this _rapprochement_. The earnest Christian workers and ardent sociologists were now all coming to realise that Inebriety is a disease and not, specifically, a vice. The doctors had known this, had been preaching this for years. But the time had arrived when religious workers in the same cause were beginning to find that they could with safety join hands with those who (as they had come to see) _knew_ and could define the springs of action which made people intemperate.

The will of the intemperate individual was weakened by a _disease_. The doctors had shown and proved this beyond possibility of doubt.

It was a _disease_. Its various causes were discovered and put upon record. Its pathology was as clearly stated as a proposition in Euclid.

Its psychology was, at last, beginning to be understood.

And it was on the basis of psychology that the two parties were meeting.

Science could take a drunkard--though really only with the drunkard's personal connivance and earnest wish to reform--and in a surprisingly short time, varying with individual cases, restore him to the world sane, and in health.

But as far as individual cases went, science professed itself able to do little more than this. It could give a man back his health of mind and body, it could--thus--enable him to recall his soul from the red h.e.l.ls where it had strayed. But it could not enable the man to _retain_ the gifts.

Religion stepped in here. Christianity and those who professed it said that faith in Christ, and that only, could preserve the will; that, to put it shortly, a personal love of Jesus, a heart that opened itself to the mysterious operations of the Holy Spirit would be immune from the disease for ever more.

Christian workers proved their contention by statistics as clear and unmistakable as any other.

There was still one great question to be agreed upon. Religion and Science, working together, _could_, and _did_, cure the _individual_ drunkard. Sometimes Science had done this without the aid of Religion, more often Religion had done it without the aid of Science--that is to say that while Science had really been at work all the time Religion had not been aware of it and had not professedly called Science in to help.

To eradicate the disease from individuals was being done every day by the allied forces.

To eradicate the disease from nations, to stamp it out as cholera, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague was being stamped out--that was the question at issue.

That was, after all, the supreme question.

Now, every one was beginning--only beginning--to understand that recent scientific discovery had made this wonderful thing possible.

Yellow fever had been destroyed upon the Isthmus of Panama. Small-pox which ravaged countries in the past, was no more than a very occasional and restricted epidemic now. Soon--in all human probability--tuberculosis and cancer would be conquered.

The remedy for the disease of Inebriety was at hand.

Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers had enormous power in regard to other diseases. People who disregarded their orders and so spread disease were fined and imprisoned.

It was penal to do so.

In order that this beneficent state of things should come about, the scientists had fought valiantly against many fetishes. They had fought for years, and with the spread of knowledge they had conquered.

Now the biggest Fetish of all was tottering on its foolish throne. The last idol in the temples of Dagon, the houses of Rimmon and the sacred groves was attacked.

The great "Procreation Fetish" remained.

Were drunkards to be allowed to have children without State restriction, or were they not?

That was the question which some of the acutest and most altruistic minds of the English speaking races were about to meet and discuss this afternoon.

Dr. Morton Sims drove down to the Edward Hall a little after two o'clock.

The important conference was to begin at three, but the doctor had various matters to arrange first and he was in a slightly nervous and depressed state.

It was a grey day and a sharp East wind was blowing. People in the streets wore furs and heavy coats; London seemed excessively cheerless.

It was but rarely that Morton Sims felt as he did as this moment. But the day, or probably (as he thought) a recent spell of over-work, took the pith out of him.

"It is difficult to avoid doing too much--for a man in my position," he thought. "Life is so short and there is such an infinity of work. Oh, that I could see England in a fair way to become sober before I die!

Still I must go on hard. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.'"

He went at once to a large and comfortable room adjoining the platform of the big hall and communicating with it by a few steps and two doors, one of red baize. It was used as the artists' room when concerts were given, as a committee room now.

A bright fire burned upon the hearth, round which were several padded armchairs, and over the mantel-shelf was an excellent portrait in oils of King Edward the Seventh.

The Doctor took up a printed agenda of the meeting from a table. Bishop Moultrie was to be in the chair and the list of names beneath his was in the highest degree influential and representative. There were two or three peers--not figure heads but men who had done and were doing great work in the world. Mr. Justice Harley--Sir Edward Harley on the programme--would be there. Lady Harold Buckingham, than whose name none was more honoured throughout the Empire for her work in the cause of Temperance, several leading medical men, and--Mrs. Julia Daly, who had once more crossed the Atlantic and had arrived the night before at the Savoy. Edith Morton Sims, who was lecturing in the North of England, could not be present to-day, but she was returning to town at the end of the week, when Mrs. Daly was to leave the hotel and once more take up her residence with Morton Sims and his sister.

In a few minutes there was a knock at the door. The doctor answered, it was opened by a commissionaire, and Julia Daly came in.