If Ralston had really been drinking, he could not have been in a more excited state than when he left the club, leaving his best friend stretched on his back in the hall. He was half conscious of having done something which would be considered wholly outrageous among his associates, and among gentlemen at large. The fact that Bright was his distant cousin was hardly an excuse for tripping him up even in jest, and if the matter were to be taken in earnest, Bright’s superior strength would not excuse Ralston for using his own far superior skill and quickness, in the most brutal way, and on rather slender provocation. No one but he himself, however, even knew that he had been making a great effort to cure himself of a bad habit, and that although it was now Thursday, he had taken nothing stronger than a little weak wine and water and an occasional cup of coffee since Monday afternoon. Bright could therefore have no idea of the extent to which his accusation had wounded and exasperated the sensitive man—rendered ten times more sensitive than usual by his unwonted abstention.
Ralston, however, did not enter into any such elaborate consideration of the matter as he hurried along, too much excited just then to stop and look for a cab. He was still whole-heartedly angry with Bright, and was glad that he had thrown him, be the consequences what they might. If Bright would apologize for having laid rough hands on him, Ralston would do as much—not otherwise. If the thing were mentioned, he would leave the club and frequent another to which he belonged. Nothing could be simpler.
But he had received a much more violent impression than he fancied, and he forgot many things—forgetting even for a moment where he was going. Passing an up-town hotel on his way, he entered the bar by sheer force of habit—the habit of drinking something whenever his nerves were not quite steady. He ordered some whiskey, still thinking of Bright, and it was not until he had swallowed half of it that he realized what he was doing. With a half-suppressed oath he set down the liquor unfinished, dropped his money on the metal table and went out, more angry than ever.
Realizing that he was not exactly in a condition to talk quietly to any one, he turned into a side street, lit a strong cigar and walked more slowly for a few minutes, trying to collect his thoughts, and at last succeeding to a certain extent, aided perhaps by the tonic effect of the spoonful of alcohol he had swallowed.
The whole thing had begun in a very simple way—the gradual increase of tension from the early morning until towards evening had been produced by small incidents following upon the hasty marriage ceremony, which, as has been said, had produced a far deeper impression upon him than upon Katharine herself. The endless hours of waiting, the solitary luncheon, the waiting again, Katharine’s summary dismissal of him, almost without a word of explanation—then more waiting, and Miner’s tiresome questions, and the sudden call to the telephone, and stumbling against Crowdie—and all the rest of it. Small things, all of them, after the marriage itself, but able to produce at least a fit of extremely bad temper by their cumulative action upon such a character. Ralston was undoubtedly a dangerous man to exasperate at five o’clock on that Thursday afternoon.
He had been summoned by Robert Lauderdale himself, and this had contributed not a little to the haste which had brought him into collision with Bright. The old gentleman had asked him to come up to his house at once; John had said that he would come immediately, but on asking a further question he found the communication closed.
It immediately struck him that Katharine had not found uncle Robert at home in the morning, that she had very possibly gone to him again in the afternoon, and that they were perhaps together at that very moment, and had agreed to send for Ralston in order to talk matters over. It was natural enough, considering his strong desire to see Katharine before the ball, and his anxiety to hear Robert Lauderdale’s definite answer, upon which depended everything in the immediate present and future, that he should not have cared to waste time in exchanging civilities in the hall of the club with Bright, whom he saw almost every day, or with Crowdie, whom he detested. The rest has been explained.
Nor was it at all unnatural that the three men should all have been simultaneously deceived into believing that he had been drinking more than was good for him. A man who is known to drink habitually can hardly get credit for being sober when he is perfectly quiet—never, when he is in the least excited. Ralston had been more than excited. He had been violent. He had disgraced himself and the club by a piece of outrageous brutality. If any one but Bright had suffered by it, there would have been a meeting of the committee within twenty-four hours, and John Ralston’s name would have disappeared from the list of members forever. It was fortunate for him that Bright chanced to be his best friend.
Ralston scarcely realized how strongly the man was attached to him. Embittered as he was by being constantly regarded as the failure of the family, he could hardly believe that any one but his mother and Katharine cared what became of him. A young man who has wasted three or four years in fruitless, if not very terrible, dissipation, whose nerves are a trifle affected by habits as yet by no means incurable, and who has had the word ‘failure’ daily branded upon him by his discriminating relatives, easily believes that for him life is over, and that he can never redeem the time lost—for he is constantly reminded of this by persons who should know better. And if he is somewhat melancholic by nature, he is very ready to think that the future holds but two possibilities,—the love of woman so long as it may last, and an easy death of some sort when there is no more love. That was approximately John Ralston’s state of mind as he ascended the steps of Robert Lauderdale’s house on that Thursday afternoon.