"Still shaking!" he cried; "still 'chilled to the bone' and shivering? You are such an impossible fellow—you will not give my remedy a chance. Perhaps whisky doesn't suit you. I know—it was gin you wanted. 'The gin within the juniper began to make him merry.' Lots of people don't know that's Tennyson. Eh, Ringfield? Afraid? Afraid of imperilling your immortal soul? Nuisance—a soul. Great nuisance. Great mistake. Well—are you or are you not going to drink this other glass? I can't see good stuff wasted. I'm astonished at you. I'm—'stonished."
He leant forward and bent his elbows on the table; the papers fluttered in all directions, but he had forgotten about them. His gaze—wide, blue and choleric—was alternately bent on Ringfield and on the tumbler.
The minister went pale, his heart beat spasmodically and his fingers curled and tingled. No power, no wish to pray was left in him, no sense of responsibility; he was too far gone in jealous vindictiveness to be his own judge or critic, and he stared at the guide, saying: "If you get drunk it is your own fault. You'll be doing it yourself. I have nothing to do with it, nothing. I will not touch the stuff, you shall not make me."
Yet he did not attempt to remove the glass and Crabbe sniffed at the tempting fumes. His right hand embraced them, his hair fell over his forehead, his eyes and mouth worked strangely, and in a twinkling what the other had foreseen happened. With an unsteady, leering flourish Crabbe raised the coveted tumbler to his lips and drank it off.
Appalled and conscience-stricken, Ringfield fell back against the door, the room being small and contracted, and covered his face with his hands. In ten minutes the guide was coarsely drunk, but sensible enough to ring the bell and demand more whisky. Committed to his wrong course, the minister interfered no longer, and suffered a servant to deliver the stuff into his hands at the door, on the plea that the gentleman inside was not very well. Thus things went from bad to worse, Crabbe noisily reciting passages from English poets and the Greek anthology, and insisting on reading his lines to Ringfield after a third "go" of spirits.
"How does this strike you?" he cried, whipping a narrow piece of writing-paper out of his pocket; "I've written many an epitaph, but none that I liked better than this:—
"Chaste I was not, neither honourable, only kind;
And lo—the streets with mourners at my death were lined!"
And he added gravely that it was in the best Greek style. "I've got another, 'On a Woman Who Talked too Much,' but I can't remember it. Don't you write poetry? You don't? Oh! I remember now. You're the parson. Want to convert me, want to reform me, eh, Ringfield? You write something better than poetry—sermons. Look here—Ringfield—did you know I was intended for the Church myself at one time? I was. Honour bright—before I came out to this blasted country—excuse freedom of speech—before I knew you, and before I met Henry Clairville and Pauline."
The name seemed to convey some understanding of his condition with it, and he stopped a minute in his talk. The other man was still leaning by the door; it might be expedient to keep people of the house from seeing Crabbe's condition.
"Now—don't you say this isn't your fault," continued the guide, shaking his head wisely. "You ordered the whisky, you know you did. You were 'chilled to the bone' and you ordered it. And you're a parson all the same, can't get over that, can't help yourself, can you, Ringfield? Remember meetin' you many years ago somewhere, there was whisky too on that occasion, and you c'ngratulated me, you know, on going to be married. But you were—premature, that's what you were, Ringfield—premature. Wonder where I met you before! Must have been in the Old Country; must have been at Oxford together."