The Manticore

"It had been a wearing afternoon, and I had completed all my immediate tasks, so I thought I would permit myself a few drinks after dinner. I dined at my club and had the few drinks, but to my surprise they did nothing to dull my wretchedness. I am not a man who is cheered by drink. I don't sing or make jokes or chase girls, nor do I stagger and speak thickly; I become remote – possibly somewhat glassy-eyed. But I do manage to blunt the edge of that heavy axe that seems always to be chopping away at the roots of my being. That night it was not so. I went home and began to drink seriously. Still the axe went right on with its destructive work. At last I went to bed and slept wretchedly.

"It is foolish to call it sleep. It was a long, miserable reverie, relieved by short spells of unconsciousness. I had a weeping fit, which frightened me because I haven't cried for thirty years; Netty and my father had no use for boys who cried. It was frightening because it was part of the destruction of my mind that was going on; I was being broken down to a very primitive level, and absurd kinds of feeling and crude, inexplicable emotions had taken charge of me.

"Imagine a man of forty crying because his father hadn't loved him! Particularly when it wasn't true, because he obviously had loved me, and I know I worried him dreadfully. I even sank so low that I wanted my mother, though I knew that if that poor woman could have come to me at that very time, she wouldn't have known what to say or do. She never really knew what was going on, poor soul. But I wanted something, and my mother was the nearest identification I could find for it. And this blubbering booby was Mr. David Staunton, Q.C., who had a dark reputation because the criminal world thought so highly of him, and who played up to the role, and who secretly fancied himself as a magician of the courtroom. But in the interest of justice, mind you; always in the constant and perpetual wish that everyone shall have his due.

"Next morning the axe was making great headway, and I began with the bottle at breakfast, to Netty's indignation and dismay. She didn't say anything, because once before when she had interfered I had given her a few sharp cuffs, which she afterward exaggerated into 'beating her up.' Netty hasn't seen some of the beatings-up I have observed in court or she wouldn't talk so loosely. She has never mastered the Plain Style. Of course I had been regretful for having struck her, and apologized in the Plain Style, but she understood afterward that she was not to interfere.

"So she locked herself in her room that Saturday morning, taking care to do it when I was near enough to hear what she was doing; she even pushed the bed against the door. I knew what she was up to; she wanted to be able to say to Caroline, 'When he's like that I just have to barricade myself in, because if he flew off the handle like he did that time, the Dear knows what could happen to me.' Netty liked to tell Caroline and Beesty that nobody knew what she went through. They had a pretty shrewd notion that most of what she went through was in her own hot imagination.

"I went back to my club for luncheon on Saturday, and although the barman was as slow as he could be when I wanted him, and absent from the bar as much as he could manage, I got through quite a lot of Scotch before I settled down to having a few drinks before dinner. A member I knew called Femister came in and I heard the barman mutter something to him about 'tying on a bun' and I knew he meant me.

"A bun! These people know nothing. When I bend to the work it is no trivial bun, but a whole baking of double loaves I tie on. Only this time nothing much seemed to be happening, except for a generalized remoteness of things, and the axe was chopping away as resolutely as ever. Femister is a good fellow, and he sat down by me and chatted. I chatted right back, clearly and coherently, though perhaps a little fancifully. He suggested we have dinner together, and I agreed. He ate a substantial club dinner, and I messed my food around on my plate and tried to take my mind off its smell, which I found oppressive. Femister was kindly, but my courteous non sequiturs were just as discouraging as I meant them to be, and after dinner it was clear that he had had all the Good Samaritan business he could stand.

" 'I've got an appointment now,' he said. 'What are you going to do? You certainly don't want to spend the evening all alone here, do you? Why don't you go to the theatre? Have you seen this chap at the Royal Alee? Marvellous! Magnus Eisengrim his name is, though it sounds unlikely, doesn't it? The show is terrific! I've never seen such a conjuror. And all the fortune-telling and answering questions and all that. Terrific! It would take you right out of yourself.'