In the course of a week the postman had explained away the other lady and was au mieux with Emily Trimmins, who, so far as this story is concerned, may now take a seat at the back.
A considerable number of Smithers' friends were waiting, when the magistrate had finished, to have the pleasure of shaking hands with Smithers, and congratulating him, and so on.
And that night one of the men of whom England had good cause to be proud went home most painfully and uncompromisingly drunk.
II
Alfred Smithers, as he made his modest breakfast of a cup of tea and two liver pills next morning, explained to his wife that it had not been the drink so much as the reaction.
She said that he needn't have taken the reaction. She should overlook it this time and say no more, knowing what he was when not misled. But no amount of ironing would make that hat look anything again. He went to work feeling that the glory had been turned a little lower.
There were more newspaper cuttings, and later there was something on vellum. Smithers said rather bitterly that the Society seemed to do things on the cheap. A medal came at last, presented by the vicar on behalf of a few friends and local inhabitants. It was of silver and very large. It was kept on the mantelpiece and shown to everybody who would look at it.
But the excitement was dying down. Glory was on the ebb. Mrs Smithers would sometimes allow two days to pass without alluding to the act of heroism. Smithers watched the ebbing of the tide with inward rage and with many vain efforts to stay it. The neighbourhood sickened slowly of conversations on the different ways of rescuing the drowning—conversations initiated by Smithers in order to lead to the case of the poor girl, Emily Trimmins. But he had eaten praise-poison, and no other diet was rich enough for him now. The neighbourhood wearying of him and hinting as much, he would slip the medal into his pocket on Saturday afternoons, get on his bicycle, and seek fresh fields. A little group and a bar-parlour sufficed. Whatever the group was discussing when Smithers first leaned his bicycle against the horse-trough outside, five minutes later they were listening while Smithers got in with "I remember once being on the Heath when some fool of a girl jumped into twenty feet of water. What did I do? Watched for the bubbles coming up and then dived. The devil of it was that there was a strong cross-current and—" etc. Later, the medal would be produced. Poor Alfred Smithers! Nature's low comedian, and yet smitten with a raging madness for the strut, the soliloquy, the limelight, the sympathetic music, the roar of applause!
In his new part of hero he invented business that was not good. He began to be, as he phrased it, "master in his own house." He interfered in matters which were the special province of Mrs Smithers. He gave detailed instructions in domestic subjects of which he was completely ignorant, and brought upon himself ridicule. He was rude to Mrs Smithers, and said that she needed to be driven with a firm hand. He told the eight-pound general that his word was law, and she forthwith gave notice on the ground that she could put up with anything except haughtiness.
Mrs Smithers told him with some frankness that she was glad to see his back when he went to business of a morning, for he was more nuisance in a house than a cartload of monkeys.