sentence was lost.
I was swallowing with avidity the scalding liquid in my glass.
Rawdon watched me with malignant satisfaction gleaming in every repulsive feature, then turned away again to a couch, and, with his arm hanging limply over the side, seemed to be dozing off.
As I sat there, a second and more insidious change began to creep over me. The feeling of double consciousness was becoming less distinct. The predominant alien will, to which my own personality had succumbed, appeared to be deserting the captured citadel. My thoughts, that had hitherto been so agonisingly clear, were becoming blurred and dim, until my head fell forward in stupor and partial oblivion. I took no note of the time as I crouched there in that chair, while a little marble clock ticked off the seconds and added them to the irrevocable past. I only know that it was dark when I again stirred to some faint knowledge of my surroundings.
I have a dim recollection of someone, it must have been Rawdon, ushering me ceremoniously out of the house. He hailed a passing rickshaw, into which, with his sympathetic help, I clambered. He gave my address to the coolie, and, as we clattered off, stood bowing and smiling his farewells at the gate. And as the rickshaw sped through the night, jolting down North Szechuen Road with my head hanging helplessly over the side, keeping time to every jar and jolt, I realised dimly that I was hopelessly, sottishly inebriated. Drunk as the dipsomaniac who, having eluded the vigilance of his watchers, has stolen undetected into a wellstocked wine cellar—and with the tooth untouched! VIII.
We reached the house at last, and the coolie lowered the shafts to the ground. I half-stepped, half-rolled out on to the pavement. Dropping a handful of coins on the flags, I staggered up to the door, clinging to the rails, grabbing desperately at every slender means of support.
It was much beyond my usual time for returning, and Ethel must have been looking out for me, for as I stumbled up to the door, it opened ere I could touch it, and I almost fell across the threshold.
Ethel's first expression was one of surprise—
" Why, Harry, where's your hat ? "
It was the first intimation I had of having lost it. I mumbled something in reply about having left it somewhere, as I leaned up against the hatstand, striving, with that pitiful gravity a drunken man assumes, to appear sober.
My poor wife thought at first that I was feigning, and evidently admired my powers of mimicry. But as I stumbled into the dining - room and sprawled in a chair, her face, even to my blunted perceptions, showed traces of impatience.
" Come, Harry," she said, " enough of this. Dinner has been waiting ever so long."
I looked at her with a maudlin smile and mumbled something irrelevant about my lost hat.
" Harry! " she cried again, " please don't act like that! You hurt me, dear."
There was a note of pathos and love in her voice that penetrated even to my drink-sodden brain, but I only looked at her with that ghastly grin, and tried to pull myself together.
" Do you hear me, sir!" she said brightly, changing her tactics, as she came across to me and placed her hands on my shoulders with that imperiousness of gesture so characteristic of her. She was about to shake me playfully, but as she bent toward me, her nostrils caught the reeking odour of spirits in my thick breathing.
She dropped her arms to her side as if I had struck her, and her eyes dilated with sudden wonder and something of fear.
" Harry, what is it ? " she whispered.
" Ish ar-right, me dear! "
She had shrunk away from me a step; now she came close to me again, regardless of the stench of the liquor, and, laying a trembling hand on my arm, stooped and looked for a moment straight into my eyes.
" Harry!" was all she said. It was as a cry wrung from a soul in agony.
" Ish ar-right!" I muttered again fretfully. " Lesh have dinner."
But I could eat nothing, could hardly sit up to the table.
I was swallowing with avidity the scalding liquid in my glass.
Rawdon watched me with malignant satisfaction gleaming in every repulsive feature, then turned away again to a couch, and, with his arm hanging limply over the side, seemed to be dozing off.
As I sat there, a second and more insidious change began to creep over me. The feeling of double consciousness was becoming less distinct. The predominant alien will, to which my own personality had succumbed, appeared to be deserting the captured citadel. My thoughts, that had hitherto been so agonisingly clear, were becoming blurred and dim, until my head fell forward in stupor and partial oblivion. I took no note of the time as I crouched there in that chair, while a little marble clock ticked off the seconds and added them to the irrevocable past. I only know that it was dark when I again stirred to some faint knowledge of my surroundings.
I have a dim recollection of someone, it must have been Rawdon, ushering me ceremoniously out of the house. He hailed a passing rickshaw, into which, with his sympathetic help, I clambered. He gave my address to the coolie, and, as we clattered off, stood bowing and smiling his farewells at the gate. And as the rickshaw sped through the night, jolting down North Szechuen Road with my head hanging helplessly over the side, keeping time to every jar and jolt, I realised dimly that I was hopelessly, sottishly inebriated. Drunk as the dipsomaniac who, having eluded the vigilance of his watchers, has stolen undetected into a wellstocked wine cellar—and with the tooth untouched! VIII.
We reached the house at last, and the coolie lowered the shafts to the ground. I half-stepped, half-rolled out on to the pavement. Dropping a handful of coins on the flags, I staggered up to the door, clinging to the rails, grabbing desperately at every slender means of support.
It was much beyond my usual time for returning, and Ethel must have been looking out for me, for as I stumbled up to the door, it opened ere I could touch it, and I almost fell across the threshold.
Ethel's first expression was one of surprise—
" Why, Harry, where's your hat ? "
It was the first intimation I had of having lost it. I mumbled something in reply about having left it somewhere, as I leaned up against the hatstand, striving, with that pitiful gravity a drunken man assumes, to appear sober.
My poor wife thought at first that I was feigning, and evidently admired my powers of mimicry. But as I stumbled into the dining - room and sprawled in a chair, her face, even to my blunted perceptions, showed traces of impatience.
" Come, Harry," she said, " enough of this. Dinner has been waiting ever so long."
I looked at her with a maudlin smile and mumbled something irrelevant about my lost hat.
" Harry! " she cried again, " please don't act like that! You hurt me, dear."
There was a note of pathos and love in her voice that penetrated even to my drink-sodden brain, but I only looked at her with that ghastly grin, and tried to pull myself together.
" Do you hear me, sir!" she said brightly, changing her tactics, as she came across to me and placed her hands on my shoulders with that imperiousness of gesture so characteristic of her. She was about to shake me playfully, but as she bent toward me, her nostrils caught the reeking odour of spirits in my thick breathing.
She dropped her arms to her side as if I had struck her, and her eyes dilated with sudden wonder and something of fear.
" Harry, what is it ? " she whispered.
" Ish ar-right, me dear! "
She had shrunk away from me a step; now she came close to me again, regardless of the stench of the liquor, and, laying a trembling hand on my arm, stooped and looked for a moment straight into my eyes.
" Harry!" was all she said. It was as a cry wrung from a soul in agony.
" Ish ar-right!" I muttered again fretfully. " Lesh have dinner."
But I could eat nothing, could hardly sit up to the table.
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