“Do you never touch them?”
“I have not done so for many years.”
“Because you are afraid? Well, I dare say you were no better once than your neighbours.”
“Lisabel!” I whispered, for I saw Doctor Urquhart wince under her rude words: but there is no stopping that girl's tongue.
“Now confess, Doctor, just for fun. Papa is not here, and we'll tell no tales out of school—were you ever in your life, to use your own ugly word, drunk?”
“Once.”
Writing this, I can hardly believe he said it, and yet he did, in a quiet, low voice, as if the confession were forced from him as a sort of voluntary expiation.
Doctor Urquhart drunk! What a frightful idea! Under what circumstances could it possibly have happened? One thing I would stake my life upon,—it never happened but that once.
I have been thinking, how horrible it must be to see anybody one cared for drunk: the honest eyes dull and meaningless; the wise lips jabbering foolishness; the whole face and figure, instead of being what one likes to look at, takes pleasure to see in the same room, even,—growing ugly, irrational, disgusting—more like a beast than a man.
Yet some women have to bear it, have to speak kindly to their husbands, hide their brutishness, and keep them from making worse fools of themselves than they can help. I have seen it done, not merely by working-men's wives, but lady-wives in drawing-rooms. I think, if I were married, and I saw my husband the least overcome by wine, not “drunk” may be, but just excited, silly, otherwise than his natural self, it would nearly drive me wild. Less on my own account than his. To see him sink—not for a great crime, but a contemptible, cowardly bit of sensualism—from the height where my love had placed him; to have to take care of him, to pity him—ay, and I might pity him, but I think the full glory and passion of my love would die out, then and there, for ever.