Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/378

370 He sat down amidst derisive cheers. About five minutes afterwards, in some intermittent flash of reason, he found he had got hold of something. He opened his hand, and lo, a note! On this he chuckled unreasonably, and distributed sage, cunning winks around, as if he, by special ingenuity, had caught a nightingale, or the like; then, with sudden hauteur and gravity, proceeded to examine his prize.

But he knew the handwriting at once; and it gave him a galvanic shock that half sobered him for the moment.

He opened the note, and spelled it with great difficulty. It was beautifully written, in long, clear letters; but then those letters kept dancing so!

Griffith put the note in his pocket, and tried to think; but he could not think to much purpose. Then this made him suspect he was drunk. Then he tried to be sober; but he found he could not. He sat in a sort of stupid agony, with Love and Drink battling for his brain. It was piteous to see the poor fool's struggles to regain the reason he had so madly parted with. He could not do it; and when he found that, he took up a finger-glass, and gravely poured the contents upon his head.

At this there was a burst of laughter.

This irritated Mr. Gaunt; and, with that rapid change of sentiments which marks the sober savage and the drunken European, he offered to fight a gentleman he had been hitherto holding up to the company as his best friend. But his best friend (a very distant acquaintance) was by this time as tipsy as himself, and offered a piteous disclaimer, mingled with tears; and these maudlin drops so affected Griffith that he flung his one available arm round his best friend's head, and wept in turn; and down went both their lachrymose, empty noddles on the table. Griffith's remained there; but his best friend extricated himself, and, shaking his skull, said, dolefully, "He is very drunk." This notable discovery, coming from such a quarter, caused considerable merriment.

"Let him alone," said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out of their power to ridicule him on the score of intoxication.

Griffith, keeping quiet, got a little better, and suddenly started up with a notion he was to go to Kate this very moment. He muttered an excuse, and staggered to a glass door that led to the lawn. He opened this door, and rushed out into the open air. He thought it would set him all right; but, instead of that, it made him so much worse that presently his legs came to a misunderstanding, and he measured his length on the ground, and could not get up again, but kept slipping down.

Upon this he groaned and lay quiet.

Now there was a foot of snow on the ground; and it melted about Griffith's hot temples and flushed face, and mightily refreshed and revived him.

He sat up and kissed Kate's letter, and Love began to get the upper hand of Liquor a little.

Finally he got up and half strutted, half staggered, to the turret, and stood under Kate's window.

The turret was covered with luxuriant ivy, and that ivy with snow. So the glass of the window was set in a massive frame of winter; but a bright fire burned inside the room, and this set the panes all aflame. It was cheery and glorious to see the window glow like a sheet of transparent fire in its deep frame of snow; but Griffith could not appreciate all that. He stood there a sorrowful man. The wine he had taken to drown his despair had lost its stimulating effect, and had given him a heavy head, but left him his sick heart.

He stood and puzzled his drowsy