The Man Who Rose Again

by Joseph Hocking

"Anything 'blige you, doctor," he said, as he swallowed the draught. A few minutes later he was in bed asleep, while the whole town was talking eagerly about what had taken place that night. Many there were, in spite of what they had seen, who maintained that his mind had been unhinged by grief, and that instead of turning their backs upon him, they must support him all the more loyally; but in the main it was believed that the opposition editor's dictum was correct, and that he had insulted them by appearing on the platform in a state of intoxication. As the night went on, reports were afloat to the effect that Miss Castlemaine was not ill at all, but that it was a report which originated with Leicester himself, the real truth being that Miss Castlemaine, having at the last moment discovered him to be a drunkard, had ordered him from her home. Before the town had gone to sleep, Leicester was declared to be guilty of every sin in the calendar, and that they must be very thankful that they had found out his real character. Mr. Smith and his staff were in despair, while the agent of the other candidate was jubilant. Their success was now assured, they felt.

Hour after hour Leicester slept. The doctor's potion, together with the whisky fumes, had to be slept off, and he lay like a log, breathing heavily. More than once the proprietor of the hotel came and looked at him. As he looked, he wondered. Even in his drunken sleep there was something noble about him. The face, all discoloured as it was, suggested a strong, masterful man. It seemed impossible that the self-restrained man who came to his house a few hours before, and had ordered nothing but soda-water from the waiter, could have fallen on the platform in drunken helplessness. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt about it. As he listened to his maudlin mutterings there could be but one opinion about his condition.

When Leicester woke daylight had come, but although he felt that something terrible had happened, he did not fully realise what had taken place. His mouth was dry and parched, and his head throbbed terribly. He had a vague remembrance of having acted strangely, but he could not piece together the scattered thoughts which floated through his brain.

"What is it?" he asked, after vainly thinking. "Am I still asleep? Is it all a nightmare?"

He looked around the room, and saw the sun's rays streaming through the windows. No, he was not asleep, he was in the bedroom of his hotel. But why was he there? Why was his heart so heavy? Why did his head throb so terribly?

Slowly memory began to work: he remembered dimly the swaying crowds, the shouts of enthusiastic supporters. But it was all very vague, and it seemed a long way off. His tongue was dry and parched, it would hardly move in his mouth. He felt an all-devouring thirst.

"Whisky," he said, "I must have whisky!"

He moved to get out of bed; but as he did so, all the events of the past three days came to him as if in a flood. The wedding-day, the scorn of Olive Castlemaine, the black terror of hopeless darkness, the return to whisky, the dissolution of Parliament, the telegram summoning him to his constituency.

It all came to him with such a shock that for a moment his thirst left him. The scenes of the previous evening filled him with horror. Yes, he had been drinking hard all the day, and the whisky had proved too much for him. He had walked to the Public Hall all right; but the hot, fetid atmosphere, the sight of Olive Castlemaine's face thrown on the canvas had completely overmastered him. Had he not given up drinking whisky it would have been all right. He would have made his speech, and no one would have suspected that he had been drinking; but as it was he had become a maudlin fool, he had fallen down in drunken helplessness.

The thought stung him to madness. This, then, was his boasted strength; this was what Radford Leicester had come to. The warnings of the pious friends whom he had sneered at had come true. Whisky had made him as drunk as a navvy who had spent his week-end in debauchery on receiving his week's wage. Cynic as he had always been, even in his best hours, he had also been always a proud man. He had professed contempt for the men who had not been able to conquer the vices which disgraced them in the eyes of the world. This pride had checked him from the vulgar indulgence in sin, before he had met Olive Castlemaine. He had always acted and spoken as a gentleman, even when he had drunk enough whisky to make other men hopelessly incapable. However debauched he might have been by the habit which chained him, he had always dressed with scrupulous care, and he had never associated with those whom he regarded as low and debased.