She no longer attempted to deny the impeachment.
‘Well, why should I not drink?’ she exclaimed, defiantly. ‘Who cares what becomes of me?’
‘I care: I have saved your life once, against long odds. You owe me something for that. But I cannot save you if you make up your mind to drink yourself to death. Brandy is a slow suicide, but for a woman of your temperament it’s as certain as prussic acid.’
Upon this La Chicot would dissolve in maudlin tears. It was a pitiful sight, and wrung the student’s heart. He could have loved her so well, would have tried so hard to save her, had it been possible. He did not know how heartless a piece of beautiful clay she was. He put down her errors to her husband’s neglect.
‘If she had been my wife, she might have been a very different woman,’ he said to himself, not believing the innate depravity of anything so absolutely beautiful as La Chicot.
He forgot how fair some poisonous weeds are, how beautiful the scarlet berries of the nightshade look when they star the brown autumn hedges.
So La Chicot went her way triumphantly. There was no danger to life or limb for her in the new piece—no perilous ascent to the sky borders. She drank as much brandy as she liked, and, so long as she contrived to appear sober before the audience, Mr. Smolendo said nothing.
‘I’m afraid she’ll drink herself into a dropsy, poor thing,’ he said compassionately one day to a friend at the Garrick Club. ‘But I hope she’ll last my time. A woman of her type could hardly be expected to draw for more than three seasons, and La Chicot ought to hold out for another year or so.’
‘After that, the hospital,’ said his friend.
Mr. Smolendo shrugged his shoulders.