Danger; or Wounded in the House of a Friend

T >> T. S. Arthur >> Danger; or Wounded in the House of a Friend

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"A more serious view of the case, doctor, than is usually taken."

"I know, but a moment's consideration--to say nothing of observed
facts--will satisfy any reasonable man of its truth."

"What do you mean by dypso-mania as a medical term?"

"The word," replied Dr. Angier, "means crazy for drink, and is used
in the profession to designate that condition of alcoholic disease
in which the subject when under its influence has no power of
self-control. It is characterized by an inordinate and irresistible
desire for alcoholic liquors, varying in intensity from a slight
departure from a normal appetite to the most depraved and entire
abandonment to its influence. When this disease becomes developed,
its action upon the brain is to deteriorate its quality and impair
its functions. All the faculties become more or less weakened.
Reason, judgment, perception, memory and understanding lose their
vigor and capacity. The will becomes powerless before the strong
propensity to drink. The moral sentiments and affections likewise
become involved in the general impairment. Conscience, the feeling
of accountability, the sense of right and wrong, all become
deadened, while the passions are aroused and excited."

"What an awful disease!" exclaimed one of the listeners.

"You may well call it an awful disease," returned the doctor, who,
under the influence of a few glasses of wine, was more inclined to
talk than usual. "It has been named the mother of diseases. Its
death-roll far outnumbers that of any other. When it has fairly
seized upon a man, no influence seems able to hold him back from the
indulgence of his passion for drink. To gratify this desire he will
disregard every consideration affecting his standing in society, his
pecuniary interests and his domestic relations, while the most
frightful instances of the results of drinking have no power to
restrain him. A hundred deaths from this cause, occurring under the
most painful and revolting circumstances, fail to impress him with a
sense of his own danger. His understanding will be clear as to the
cases before him, and he will even condemn the self-destructive acts
which he sees in others, but will pass, as it were, over the very
bodies of these victims, without a thought of warning or a sense of
fear, in order to gratify his own ungovernable propensity. Such is
the power of this terrible malady."

"Has the profession found a remedy?"

"No; the profession is almost wholly at fault in its treatment.
There are specialists connected with insane and reformatory
institutions who have given much attention to the subject, but as
yet we have no recorded line of treatment that guarantees a cure."

"Except," said one of his listeners, "the remedy of entire
abstinence from drinks in which alcohol is present."

The doctor gave a shrug:

"You do not cure a thirsty man by withholding water."

His mind was a little clouded by the wine he had taken.

"The thirsty man's desire for water is healthy; and if you withhold
it, you create a disease that will destroy him," was answered. "Not
so the craving for alcohol. With every new supply the craving is
increased, and the man becomes more and more helpless in the folds
of an enslaving appetite. Is it not true, doctor, that with few
exceptions all who have engaged in treating inebriates agree that
only in entire abstinence is cure possible?"

"Well, yes; you are probably right there," Dr. Angler returned, with
some professional reserve. "In the most cases isolation and
abstinence are no doubt the only remedies, or, to speak more
correctly, the only palliatives. As for cure, I am one of the
skeptics. If you have the diathesis, you have the danger of exposure
always, as in consumption."

"An occasion like this," remarked the other, "is to one with a
dypso-maniac diathesis like a draft of cold, damp air on the exposed
chest of a delicate girl who has the seeds of consumption in her
lungs. Is it not so, doctor?"

"Yes, yes."

"There are over three hundred persons here to-night."

"Not less."

"In so large a company, taking society as we have it to-day, is it
likely that we have none here with a hereditary or acquired love of
drink?"

"Scarcely possible," replied Dr. Angier.

"How large do you think the percentage?"

"I have no means of knowing; but if we are to judge by the large
army of drunkards in the land, it must be fearfully great."

"Then we cannot invite to our houses fifty or a hundred guests, and
give them as much wine and spirits as they care to drink, without
seriously hurting some of them. I say nothing of the effect upon
unvitiated tastes; I refer only to those with diseased appetites who
made happen to be present."

"It will be bad for them, certainly. Such people should stay at
home."

And saying this, Dr. Angier turned from the two gentlemen to speak
with a professional friend who came toward him at the moment.

CHAPTER XII.

"THE doctor likes his glass of wine," remarked one of the gentlemen
as Dr. Angier left them.

"Is that so?"

"Didn't you observe his heightened color and the gleam in his eyes?"

"I noticed something unusual in his manner, but did not think it the
effect of wine."

"He is a reticent man, with considerable of what may be called
professional dignity, and doesn't often let himself down to laymen
as he did just now."

"There wasn't much letting down, that I could see."

"Perhaps not; but professional pride is reserved and sensitive in
some persons. It hasn't much respect for the opinions of
non-experts, and is chary of discussion with laymen. Dr. Angier is
weak, or peculiar if you please, in this direction. I saw that he
was annoyed at your reply to his remark that you do not cure a
thirsty man by withholding water. It was a little thing, but it
showed his animus. The argument was against him, and it hurt his
pride. As I said, he likes his glass of wine, and if he does not
take care will come to like it too well. A doctor has no more
immunity from dypso-mania than his patient. The former may inherit
or acquire the disease as well as the latter."

"How does the doctor know that he has not from some ancestor this
fatal diathesis? Children rarely if ever betray to their children a
knowledge of the vices or crimes of their parents. The death by
consumption, cancer or fever is a part of oral family history, but
not so the death from intemperance. Over that is drawn a veil of
silence and secresy, and the children and grandchildren rarely if
ever know anything about it. There may be in their blood the taint
of a disease far more terrible than cancer or consumption, and none
to give them warning of the conditions under which its development
is certain."

"Is it not strange," was replied, "that, knowing as Dr. Angier
certainly does, from what he said just now, that in all classes of
society there is a large number who have in their physical
constitutions the seeds of this dreadful disease--that, as I have
said, knowing this, he should so frequently prescribe wine and
whisky to his patients?"

"It is a little surprising. I have noticed, now that you speak of
it, his habit in this respect."

"He might as well, on his own theory, prescribe thin clothing and
damp air to one whose father or mother had died of consumption as
alcoholic stimulants to one, who has the taint of dypso-mania in his
blood. In one case as in the other the disease will almost surely be
developed. This is common sense, and something that can be
understood by all men."

"And yet, strange to say, the very men who have in charge the public
health, the very men whose business it is to study the relations
between cause and effect in diseases, are the men who in far too
many instances are making the worst possible prescriptions for
patients in whom even the slightest tendency to inebriety may exist
hereditarily. We have, to speak plainly, too many whisky doctors,
and the harm they are doing is beyond calculation. A physician takes
upon himself a great responsibility when, without any knowledge of
the antecedents of a patient or the stock from which he may have
come, he prescribes whisky or wine or brandy as a stimulant. I
believe thousands of drunkards have been made by these unwise
prescriptions, against which I am glad to know some of the most
eminent men in the profession, both in this country and Europe, have
entered a solemn protest."

"There is one thing in connection with the disease of intemperance,"
replied the other, "that is very remarkable. It is the only one from
which society does not protect itself by quarantine and sanitary
restrictions. In cholera, yellow fever and small-pox every effort is
made to guard healthy districts from their invasion, and the man who
for gain or any other consideration should be detected in the work
of introducing infecting agents would be execrated and punished. But
society has another way of dealing with the men who are engaged in
spreading the disease of intemperance among the people. It enacts
laws for their protection, and gives them the largest liberty to get
gain in their work of disseminating disease and death, and, what is
still more remarkable, actually sells for money the right to do
this."

"You put the case sharply."

"Too sharply?"

"Perhaps not. No good ever comes of calling evil things by dainty
names or veiling hard truth under mild and conservative phrases. In
granting men a license to dispense alcohol in every variety of
enticing forms and in a community where a large percentage of the
people have a predisposition to intemperance, consequent as well on
hereditary taint as unhealthy social conditions, society commits
itself to a disastrous error the fruit of which is bitterer to the
taste than the ashen core of Dead Sea apples."

"What about Dead Sea apples?" asked Mr. Elliott, who came up at the
moment and heard the last remark. The two gentlemen were pew-holders
in his church. Mr. Elliott's countenance was radiant. All his fine
social feelings were active, and he was enjoying a "flow of soul,"
if not "a feast of reason." Wine was making glad his heart--not
excess of wine, in the ordinary sense, for Mr. Elliott had no morbid
desire for stimulants. He was of the number who could take a social
glass and not feel a craving for more. He believed in wine as a good
thing, only condemning its abuse.

"What were you saying about Dead Sea apples?" Mr. Elliott repeated
his question.

"We were speaking of intemperance," replied one of the gentlemen.

"O--h!" in a prolonged and slightly indifferent tone. Mr. Elliott's
countenance lost some of its radiance. "And what were you saying
about it?"

Common politeness required as much as this, even though the subject
was felt to be out of place.

"We were talking with Dr. Angier just now about hereditary
drunkenness, or rather the inherited predisposition to that
vice--disease, as the doctor calls it. This predisposition he says
exists in a large number of persons, and is as well defined
pathologically, and as certain to become active, under favoring
causes, as any other disease. Alcoholic stimulants are its exciting
causes. Let, said the doctor, a man so predisposed indulge in the
use of intoxicating liquors, and he will surely become a drunkard.
There is no more immunity for him, he added, than for the man who
with tubercles in his lungs exposes himself to cold, bad air and
enervating bodily conditions. Now, is not this a very serious view
to take of the matter?"

"Certainly it is," replied Mr. Elliott. "Intemperance is a sad
thing, and a most fearful curse."

He did not look comfortable. It was to him an untimely intrusion of
an unpleasant theme. "But what in the world set the doctor off on
this subject?" he asked, trying to make a diversion.

"Occasions are apt to suggest subjects for conversation," answered
the gentleman. "One cannot be present at a large social
entertainment like this without seeing some things that awaken
doubts and questionings. If it be true, as Dr. Angier says, that the
disease of intemperance is as surely transmitted, potentially, as
the disease of consumption, and will become active under favoring
circumstances, then a drinking festival cannot be given without
fearful risk to some of the invited guests."

"There is always danger of exciting disease where a predisposition
exists," replied Mr. Elliott. "A man can hardly be expected to make
himself acquainted with the pathology of his guests before inviting
them to a feast. If that is to be the rule, the delicate young lady
with the seeds of consumption in her system must be left at home for
fear she may come with bare arms and a low-necked dress, and expose
herself after being heated with dancing to the draught of an open
window. The bilious and dyspeptic must be omitted also, lest by
imprudent eating and drinking they make themselves sick. We cannot
regulate these things. The best we can do is to warn and admonish.
Every individual is responsible for his own moral character, habits
and life. Because some may become the slaves of appetite, shall
restraint and limitation be placed on those who make no abuse of
liberty? We must teach men self-control and self-mastery, if we
would truly help and save them. There is some exaggeration, in my
opinion, about this disease-theory of intemperance. The deductions
of one-idea men are not always to be trusted. They are apt to draw
large conclusions from small facts. Man is born a free agent, and
all men have power, if they will, to hold their appetites in check.
This truth should be strongly impressed upon every one. Your
disease-theory takes away moral responsibility. It assumes that a
man is no more accountable for getting drunk than for getting the
consumption. His diathesis excuses him as much in one case as in the
other. Now, I don't believe a word of this. I do not class
appetites, however inordinate, with physical diseases over which the
will has no control. A man must control his appetite. Reason and
conscience require this, and God gives to every one the mastery of
himself if he will but use his high prerogative."

Mr. Elliott spoke a little loftily, and in a voice that expressed a
settlement of the argument. But one at least of his listeners was
feeling too strongly on the subject to let the argument close.

"What," he asked, "if a young man who did not, because he could not,
know that he had dypso-mania in his blood were enticed to drink
often at parties where wine is freely dispensed? Would he not be
taken, so to speak, unawares? Would he be any more responsible for
acts that quickened into life an over-mastering appetite than the
young girl who, not knowing that she had in her lungs the seeds of a
fatal disease, should expose herself to atmospheric changes that
were regarded by her companions as harmless, but which, to her were
fraught with peril?"

"In both cases," replied Mr. Elliott, "the responsibility to care
for the health would come the moment it was found to be in danger."

"The discovery of danger may come, alas! too late for responsible
action. We know that it does in most cases with the consumptive, and
quite as often, I fear, with the dypso-maniac."

As the gentleman was closing the last sentence he observed a change
pass over the face of Mr. Elliott, who was looking across the room.
Following the direction of his eyes, he saw General Abercrombie in
the act of offering his arm to Mrs. Abercrombie. It was evident,
from the expression of his countenance and that of the countenances
of all who were near him that something had gone wrong. The
general's face was angry and excited. His eyes had a fierce
restlessness in them, and glanced from his wife to a gentleman who
stood confronting him and then back to her in a strange and menacing
way.

Mrs. Abercrombie's face was deadly pale. She said a few words
hurriedly to her husband, and then drew him from the parlor.

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Elliott, crossing over and speaking
to the gentleman against whom the anger of General Abercrombie had
seemed to be directed.

"Heaven knows," was answered, "unless he's jealous of his wife."

"Very strange conduct," said one.

"Been drinking too much," remarked another.

"What did he do?" inquired a third.

"Didn't you see it? Mr. Ertsen was promenading with Mrs.
Abercrombie, when the general swept down upon them as fierce as a
lion and took the lady from his arm."

This was exaggeration. The thing was done more quietly, but still
with enough of anger and menace to create something more than a
ripple on the surface.

A little while afterward the general and Mrs. Abercrombie were seen
coming down stairs and going along the hall. His face was rigid and
stern. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but with eyes
set forward made his way toward the street door. Those who got a
glimpse of Mrs. Abercrombie as she glided past saw a face that
haunted them a long time afterward.

CHAPTER XIII.

AS General and Mrs. Abercrombie reached the vestibule, and the door
shut behind them, the latter, seeing, that her husband was going out
into the storm, which was now at its height, drew back, asking at
the same time if their carriage had been called.

The only answer made by General Abercrombie was a fiercely-uttered
imprecation. Seizing at the same time the arm she had dropped from
his, he drew her out of the vestibule and down the snow-covered step
with a sudden violence that threw her to the ground. As he dragged
her up he cursed her again in a cruel undertone, and then, grasping
her arm, moved off in the very teeth of the blinding tempest, going
so swiftly that she could not keep pace with him. Before they had
gone a dozen steps she fell again.

Struggling to her feet, helped up by the strong grasp of the madman
whose hand was upon her arm, Mrs. Abercrombie tried to rally her
bewildered thoughts. She knew that her life was in danger, but she
knew also that much, if not everything, depended on her own conduct.
The very extremity of her peril calmed her thoughts and gave them
clearness and decision. Plunging forward as soon as his wife could
recover herself again, General Abercrombie strode away with a speed
that made it almost impossible for her to move on without falling,
especially as the snow was lying deep and unbroken on the pavement,
and her long dress, which she had not taken time to loop up before
starting, dragged about her feet and impeded her steps. They had not
gone half a block before she fell again. A wild beast could hardly
have growled more savagely than did this insane man as he caught her
up from the bed of snow into which she had fallen and shook her with
fierce passion. A large, strong man, with an influx of demoniac,
strength in every muscle, his wife was little more than a child in
his hands. He could have crushed the life out of her at a single
grip.

Not a word or sound came from Mrs. Abercrombie. The snow that
covered the earth was scarcely whiter than her rigid face. Her eyes,
as the light of a flickering gas-lamp shone into them, hardly
reflected back its gleam, so leaden was their despair.

He shook her fiercely, the tightening grasp on her arms bruising the
tender flesh, cursed her, and then, in a blind fury, cast her from
him almost into the middle of the street, where she lay motionless,
half buried in the snow. For some moments he stood looking at the
prostrate form of his wife, on which the snow sifted rapidly down,
making the dark garments white in so short a space of time that she
seemed to fade from his view. It was this, perhaps, that wrought a
sudden change in his feelings, for he sprang toward her, and taking
her up in his arms, called her name anxiously. She did not reply by
word or sign, He carried her back to the pavement and turned her
face to the lamp; it was white and still, the eyes closed, the mouth
shut rigidly.

But Mrs. Abercrombie was not unconscious. Every sense was awake.

"Edith! Edith!" her husband cried. His tones, anxious at first, now
betrayed alarm. A carriage went by at the moment. He called to the
driver, but was unheard or unheeded. Up and down the street, the air
of which was so filled with snow that he could see only a short
distance, he looked in vain for the form of a policeman or citizen.
He was alone in the street at midnight, blocks away from his
residence, a fierce storm raging in the air, the cold intense, and
his wife apparently insensible in his arms. If anything could free
his brain from its illusions, cause enough was here. He shouted
aloud for help, but there came no answer on the wild careering
winds. Another carriage went by, moving in ghostly silence, but his
call to the driver was unheeded, as before.

Feeling the chill of the intensely cold air going deeper and deeper,
and conscious of the helplessness of their situation unless she used
the strength that yet remained, Mrs. Abercrombie showed symptoms of
returning life and power of action. Perceiving this, the general
drew an arm around her for support and made a motion to go on again,
to which she responded by moving forward, but with slow and not very
steady steps. Soon, however, she walked more firmly, and began
pressing on with a haste that ill accorded with the apparent
condition out of which she had come only a few moments before.

The insane are often singularly quick in perception, and General
Abercrombie was for the time being as much insane as any patient of
an asylum. It flashed into his mind that his wife had been deceiving
him, had been pretending a faint, when she was as strong of limb and
clear of intellect as when they left Mr. Birtwell's. At this thought
the half-expelled devil that had been controlling him leaped back
into his heart, filling it again with evil passions. But the wind
was driving the fine, sand-like, sharp-cutting snow into his face
with such force and volume as to half suffocate and bewilder him.
Turning at this moment a corner of the street that brought him into
the clear sweep of the storm, the wind struck him with a force that
seemed given by a human hand, and threw him staggering against his
wife, both falling.

Struggling to his feet, General Abercrombie cursed his wife as he
jerked her from the ground with a sudden force that came near
dislocating her arm. She gave no word of remonstrance nor cry of
pain or fear, but did all in her power to keep up with her husband
as he drove on again with mad precipitation.

How they got home Mrs. Abercrombie hardly knew, but home they were
at last and in their own room, the door closed and locked and the
key withdrawn by her husband, out of whose manner all the wild
passion had gone. His movements were quiet and his voice when he
spoke low, but his wife knew by the gleam of his restless eyes that
thought and purpose were active.

Their room was in the third story of a large boarding-house in a
fashionable part of the city. The outlook was upon the street. The
house was double, a wide hall running through the centre. There were
four or five large rooms on this floor, all occupied. In the one
adjoining theirs were a lady and gentleman who had been at Mr. and
Mrs. Birtwell's party, and who drove up in a carriage just as the
general and Mrs. Abercrombie, white with snow, came to the door.
They entered together, the lady expressing surprise at their
appearance, at which the general growled some incoherent sentences
and strode away from them and up the stairs, Mrs. Abercrombie
following close after him.

"There's something wrong, I'm afraid," said the gentleman, whose
name was Craig, as he and his wife gained their own room. They went
in a carriage, I know. What can it mean?"

"I hope the general has not been drinking too much," remarked the
wife.

"I'm afraid he has. He used to be very intemperate, I've heard, but
reformed a year or two ago, A man with any weakness in this
direction would be in danger at an entertainment such as Mr. and
Mrs. Birtwell gave to-night."

"I saw the general taking wine with a lady," said Mrs. Craig.

If he took one glass, he would hardly set that as a limit. It were
much easier to abstain altogether; and we know that if a man over
whom drink has once gained the mastery ventures upon the smallest
indulgence of his appetite he is almost sure to give way and to fall
again. It's a strange thing, and sad as strange."

"Hark!"

Mr. Craig turned quickly toward the door which when opened made a
communication between their apartment and that of General and Mrs.
Abercrombie. It was shut, and fastened on both sides, so that it
could not be opened by the occupants, of either room.

A low but quickly-stifled cry had struck on the ears of Mr. and Mrs.
Craig. They looked at each other with questioning glances for
several moments, listening intently, but the cry was not repeated.

"I don't like that," said Mr. Craig. He spoke with concern.

"What can it mean?" asked his wife.

"Heaven knows!" he replied.

They sat silent and listening. A sharp click, which the ear of Mr.
Craig detected as the sound made by the cocking of a pistol, struck
upon the still air. He sprang to his feet and took a step or two
toward the door leading into the hall, but his wife caught his arm
and clung to it tightly.

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