"He 's a drunkard—he goes to bed drunk. His nerves were like banjo strings this afternoon; he couldn't keep his hands still. You noticed it? That was last night's drinking; he didn't get to bed till daylight. I heard him struggling up the stairs, with Mrs. Jakes whispering to him not to make a noise and helping him. That was just before you came."
"Poor thing!"
"Yes—poor thing!" Ford looked up at the girl sharply. "You 've got it, Miss Harding. It 's Mrs. Jakes that suffers. Jakes has got his liquor, and that makes up to him for a lot. You and I, we 've got—whatever we have got, little or much. Old Samson 's got his memories and his pose; he gets along all right with them. But she 's got nothing at all—only the feeling that she 's managed to screen him and prop him and fooled people into thinking she 's the wife of a decent man. That 's all."
"But," said Margaret, "is he safe?"
"Safe? Oh, I forgot that he was to see you in his study. He won't reel about and fall down, if that 's what you mean. That part of it is all done in private; Mrs. Jakes gets the benefit of that. And as to his patients, he really does know a little about lungs when he 's sober, and there 's always the air. Oh, he 's safe enough."
"It's dreadful," said Margaret. She was at a loss; the men she knew did not get drunk. When they went to the bad, they chose different roads; this one seemed ankle-deep with defilement. She recalled Mrs. Jakes when she had come forth from the silent house to meet her in the chill dawn, and a vision flashed upon her of the vigil that must have been hers through the slow night, listening to the chink of bottle on glass and waiting, waiting in misery and fear to do that final office of helping the drunken man to his bed. Her primness, her wan gentility, her little affectations of fashion, seemed monstrously heroic in the light of that vision—she had carried them with her to the pit of her humiliation and brought them forth again unsullied, the spotless armor of a woman of no account.
"You understand now?" asked Ford, watching her.
"Yes," answered Margaret, slowly. "But it frightens me. I wish I hadn't got to see him in his study. What will he do?"
"Hush!" said Ford. "Here comes Mrs. Jakes. Don't let her hear you. He won't do anything."
He fell to his work again, and Margaret turned to receive the doctor's wife.