THE FALL OF MAN
Griffith, C.E., sat in the inner room of the bare living apartments
adjoining his office. His feet, clad in white socks and an ancient pair
of carpet slippers, were perched upon the top of a clicking steam
radiator. His lank body balanced itself perilously in a rickety
cane-seated chair, which was tilted far back on the rear legs. His
pipe, long since burnt out and cold, hung from his slack jaw, while his
eyes, bright and excited, galloped through the last pages of a
sensational society novel.
He reached the final climax of the series of climaxes, and sat for a
moment tense; then, flirting the cheap thing into a corner, he drew
down his feet and stood up, stretching and yawning. Having relieved his
cramped muscles, he drew out a tobacco pouch. But while in the act of
opening it, he glanced at the alarm-clock on the book-shelves, and
ended by replacing the pouch, without loading his pipe.
"Nine," he croaked, and again he stretched and yawned.
A sharp knock sounded at the hall-door of the outer room. Before he
could start in response, a second and far louder knock followed.
"H'm--must be a wire," he muttered, and he shuffled quickly over the
faded carpet into the front room.
The door shook with a third knocking that sounded like fist blows.
Griffith's eyes sharpened with the look of a man who has lived in rough
places and scents danger. He turned the night-catch and stepped to one
side as he flung the door open. Before him stood a tall young man in an
English topcoat. The visitor's curly yellow hair was bare and his
handsome face scarlet with embarrassment.
"I--er--I beg your pardon, Mr. Griffith. I--" he stammered.
A big hand swung up on his shoulder, and a deep voice, thick and
jocular, cut short his apology. "Thash all ri', Cheems. Wash ri' in.
Ish on'y ol' Grishsh. Wash ri' in, I shay."
Propelled by the hand on his shoulder, Lord James entered with a
precipitancy that carried him half across the room. Blake followed with
solemn deliberation, keeping a hand upon the door casing. Griffith
stepped around and shut and bolted the door. Without a second glance at
Blake, he shuffled close up to Lord James and demanded in a rasping,
metallic voice, "What's the meaning of this, Mr. Scarbridge?"
"Thash all ri', Grish," interposed Blake, "thash all ri'. M'frensh
Chimmy Ear' Albondash. Hish fa'er's Dush Rubby--y' shee?"
Without raising his voice, Griffith gave utterance to a volley of
blasphemous expletives that crackled on the air like an electric
discharge.
"If you will kindly permit me, sir--"
"Hell!" cut in the engineer. "You call yourself his friend. Good friend
you are, to let him touch a drop!"
"This is no time for misunderstandings between his friends, Mr.
Griffith," said Lord James, with a quiet insistence that checked the
other's anger. "He was hard at it when, I found him--had been for
hours."
"Ri' she are, Chi-Chimmy boy! Ching o' it, Grishsh!--thish ish a
relish--relishush lushingsh--church shaloo--loon."
Griffith went over to the swaying figure, and stared close into the
pallid face and glittering, bloodshot eyes.
"You damned fool!" he jerked out.
"Whash--whash 'at? Whash you shay, Grishsh?"
"You damned idiot!"
"Thash all ri'. Goo' frensh, Grishsh, youm me. Lesh hash a dro-drop."
"Come on in," said the engineer. "I'll give you several drops." He shot
a glance at the Englishman. "Lend a hand, will you?"
Lord James stepped quickly to the other side of Blake, who clasped each
about the neck in a maudlin but vice-like embrace. As they moved toward
the bedroom, Griffith exclaimed with strategic enthusiasm: "That's it,
boys, come right on in. It's so confounded dusty here, let's have a
bath."
"All ri', Grishsh, en'ching you shay. Bu' you wanna wash ou' y' don'
gi' wa'er insish. Wa'er insish a man'sh wor' ching--"
"That's all right, old man," cut in Lord James, "I'll see to that.
Leave it to me."
By this time they had come in beside Blake's own cot, which extended
out of the corner of the room, at the foot of Griffith's equally simple
bed. Griffith opened the door of a tiny bathroom and turned on the hot
water in the tub. Lord James fell to stripping Blake, regardless of his
protests that he could undress himself.
"Chuck it!" ordered his lordship, as Blake sought to interfere. "You
don't want to keep us waiting our turn, do you?"
Blake launched upon an elaborate and envolved disclaimer that he had
harbored the remotest idea of causing his friends the slightest
trouble. In the midst Griffith came out of the bathroom. With his help,
Blake was soon got ready, and the two led him in between them. In the
corner of the bathroom was a small cabinet shower-bath with a wooden
door. Blake turned toward it, but Griffith drew him about to the
steaming tub.
"Hot room first, Tommy," he said. "Haven't forgotten how to take a
Turkish, have you?"
Blake entered upon another profuse apology, meantime docily permitting
the others to immerse him in the tub of hot water. Griffith promptly
added still hotter water to the bath, while Lord James held the vapor
curtains tight about the patient's neck. Before many minutes Blake
began to grow restless, then to curse. But between them, Griffith and
Lord James managed to keep him in the tub for more than a quarter of an
hour.
"All right, Tommy. Now for the shower," said Griffith, at last.
Blake came out of the tub red and still wobbly. They rushed him over
and shoved him into the cabinet. Lord James stepped clear, and Griffith
slammed shut the door, latched it with an outside hook, and jerked open
the lever of the shower-faucet, which was outside the cabinet.
"_Oof!_" grunted Blake, as the cold deluge poured down upon his bare
head and body.
"Fine, hey?" called Griffith.
"_Wow!_ Lemme ou'! _Oo-ou!_"
The cabinet shook with a bump that would have upset it had it not been
screwed fast to the wall.
"Aw, now, don't do the baby-act, Tommy!" jeered Griffith. "Yowling like
a bum, over a bath!"
"Be game, old man!" chimed in Lord James. "Take your medicine."
"Bu-but 'sh cole! _W-whew!_"
"Stay with it, old man--stay with it!" urged Lord James. "Don't lay
down. Be a sport!"
"G-gosh! 'M free-freezin'! Lemme out!"
Griffith rubbed his hands together and cackled: "Stay with it, Tommy.
It's doing the work. Stay with it."
"Damnation!" swore Blake. "O-open that door!"
"Time we were moving, Mr. Scarbridge," said Griffith.
He followed Lord James out of the bathroom, and closed the door. He led
the way through into the front room, and closed that door. They stood
waiting, silent and expectant.
The walls shook with a muffled crash.
"Repairs, five dollars," said Griffith. "Better stand farther over this
way."
The bathroom door slammed open violently. The two men glanced into each
other's eyes.
"You've played football?" croaked the engineer.
Lord James nodded.
"Tackle him low--fouler the better," advised Griffith.
There was a pause ... One of the cots in the bedroom creaked
complainingly.
"Huh," muttered Griffith. "Sulking, eh? Good thing for us." He gazed
full into the Englishman's face, and offered his hand. "I hope you'll
overlook what I said, Mr. Scarbridge--Lord Scarbridge. Under the
circumstances--"
"Don't mention it, Mr. Griffith! It's--it's the most positive proof of
your friendship for him--that you should have been so angered. Deuce
take it, I'd give anything if this hadn't happened!"
"How did it happen?" asked Griffith. "Sit down--No; no chance of his
coming out now."
Lord James slipped off his heavy topcoat, and seated himself, his dress
clothes and immaculate linen offering an odd contrast to the shabby
room. But the engineer looked only at the face of his visitor.
"It's a beastly shame--when he was holding his own so well!" exclaimed
the Englishman.
"That's what gets me," said Griffith. "He seemed to have staved it off
indefinitely. I didn't notice a single one of the usual signs. And he
has let out that the dam was almost a certainty. If he had fizzled on
it, I could understand how that and the way he's been grinding indoors
night and day--"
"No; he's stood that better than I had feared. What a shame! what a
beastly shame! When Miss Leslie learns--"
"Miss Leslie?" cut in Griffith. "If she shakes him for this, she's not
much account--after all he did for her. If she's worth anything, now's
the time for her to set to and help pull him up again. But you haven't
said yet how it happened."
"That's the worst of it! To be sure, she was perfectly innocent. She
must have thought it simply impossible that the communion wine--"
"Hey!--communion wine? That's what he meant by church saloons and
religious lushing, then. She steered him up against that--knowing his
one weakness?"
"My dear sir, how could she realize?"
"He told me she knew."
"But the communion wine!"
"Communion alcohol! Alcohol is alcohol, I don't care whether it's in a
saloon or a church or pickling snakes in a museum. I tell you, Tommy's
case has made a prohibition crank of me. Talk about it's being a man's
lack of will and moral strength--_bah!_ I never knew a man who had more
will power than he, or who was more on the square. You know it."
"I--to be sure--except, you know, when he gives way to these attacks."
"Gives way!--and you've seen him fight! It's a disease, I tell you--a
monomania like any other monomania. Why don't they say to a crazy man
in his lucid intervals, 'Trouble with you is your lack of will power
and moral strength. Brace up. Go to church'?"
"But you'd surely not say that Tom's insane? He himself lays it to his
own weakness."
"What else is insanity but a kind of weakness--a broken cog in the
machine which slips and throws everything out of gear, no matter how
big the dynamo? I tell you, a dipsomaniac is no more to be blamed for
lack of will power or moral strength than is a kleptomaniac, or than an
epileptic is to be blamed for having fits. It's a disease. I'm giving
it to you straight what the doctors say."
All the hopefulness went out of the Englishman's boyish face.
"Gad!" he murmured. "Gad! Then he can't overcome it."
"I don't know. The doctors don't seem to know. They say that a few seem
to outgrow it--they don't know how, though. But all agree that the
thing to do is to keep the patient braced--keep him boosted up."
"Count on me for that!" exclaimed Lord James.
"It's where this girl--Miss Leslie--ought to come in, if she's worth
anything," thrust Griffith.
"But--but, my dear sir, you quite fail to understand. It will never do
to so much as hint to her that he has failed."
"Failed!" retorted Griffith. "When she herself forced him to take the
first drink--Don't cut in! If you know Tommy as well as you ought, you
know he would never have taken that drink in the condition he was
in--not a single drop of anything containing alcohol! No! the girl
forced him--she must have. He's dead in love with her. He'd butt his
head against a stone wall, if she told him to. Hell!--just when he had
his chance at last!"
"His chance?"
"I've been figuring it as a chance. Supposing he had pulled off this
big Zariba Dam, he'd have felt that he had made good. It might have
brought around that change the doctors tell about. Don't you see? It
might have fixed that broken cog--straightened him up somehow for good.
But now--hell!"
Griffith bent over, with a groan.
"Gad!" murmured Lord James. After a long pause, he added slowly, "But,
I assure you, regarding Miss Leslie, it will never do to tell her. If
she hears of this, he will have no chance--none! That occurred to me
immediately I inferred the deplorable truth. I told her we were
thinking of going with you to the bridge--Michamac."
"You did? Say, I thought Britishers were slow, but you got your finger
on the right button first shove. It's the very thing for him--change,
open air, the bridge--Wait a minute, though! With the chances more than
even that it's Tommy's own--Until he makes good on the dam, nobody
would take his word against that lallapaloozer's."
"I--er--beg pardon. I fail to take you," said Lord James.
"Just the question of his finding out something that's apt to make him
manhandle young Ashton."
"Ah--all the better, I say. Anything to divert his mind."
Griffith looked at the Englishman with an approving smile. "You sure
are the goods, Mr. Scarbridge! It'll take two or three days for him to
fight down the craving, even with all the help we can give him. Wait a
minute till I phone to a drug-store."
He shuffled out through a side doorway that led into his private
office. While he was telephoning, Lord James heard low moans from the
bedroom. He clenched his hands, but he did not go in to his friend
until Griffith returned and crossed to the inner door.
"Come in, Mr. Scarbridge," he said. "Next thing is to see if we can
talk him into going to Michamac."