Plain Tales from the Hills

  IN ERROR.

  They burnt a corpse upon the sand-- The light shone out afar; It guided home the plunging boats That beat from Zanzibar. Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise. Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!

  Salsette Boat-Song.

  There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk moreoften that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinkssecretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never seen to drink.

  This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it. Moriarty'scase was that exception.

  He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put him quiteby himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk to and agreat deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four years hewas utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and solitarydrinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn andhaggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make him. You know thesaying that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more than ayear is never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty'squeerness of manner and moody ways to the solitude, and said it showedhow Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had builthimself the plinth of a very good reputation in the bridge-dam-girderline. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking stepsto undermine that reputation with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and littlenips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitutionand a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like asick camel in the district, as better men have done before him.

  Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the desert;and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant. That season, Mrs.Reiver--perhaps you will remember her--was in the height of her power,and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad that could be saidhas already been said about Mrs. Reiver, in another tale. Moriarty washeavily-built and handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to pleasehis neighbors when he wasn't sunk in a brown study. He started a gooddeal at sudden noises or if spoken to without warning; and, when youwatched him drinking his glass of water at dinner, you could see thehand shake a little. But all this was put down to nervousness, and thequiet, steady, "sip-sip-sip, fill and sip-sip-sip, again," that wenton in his own room when he was by himself, was never known. Which wasmiraculous, seeing how everything in a man's private life is publicproperty out here.

  Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver's set, because they were nothis sort, but into the power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in frontof her and made a goddess of her. This was due to his coming fresh outof the jungle to a big town. He could not scale things properly or seewho was what.

  Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he said she was stately anddignified. Because she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly, hesaid she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver shy! Because she was unworthyof honor or reverence from any one, he reverenced her from a distanceand dowered her with all the virtues in the Bible and most of those inShakespeare.

  This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous when a pony canteredbehind him, used to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing withpleasure when she threw a word or two his way. His admiration wasstrictly platonic: even other women saw and admitted this. He did notmove out in Simla, so he heard nothing against his idol: which wassatisfactory. Mrs. Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond seeingthat he was added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with himnow and then, just to show that he was her property, claimable as such.Moriarty must have done most of the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn'ttalk much to a man of his stamp; and the little she said could not havebeen profitable. What Moriarty believed in, as he had good reason to,was Mrs. Reiver's influence over him, and, in that belief, set himselfseriously to try to do away with the vice that only he himself knew of.

  His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been peculiar,but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off from everythingexcept water for a week. Then, on a rainy night, when no one had askedhim out to dinner, and there was a big fire in his room, and everythingcomfortable, he would sit down and make a big night of it by addinglittle nip to little nip, planning big schemes of reformation meanwhile,until he threw himself on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered nextmorning.

  One night, the big crash came. He was troubled in his own mind over hisattempts to make himself "worthy of the friendship" of Mrs. Reiver. Thepast ten days had been very bad ones, and the end of it all was that hereceived the arrears of two and three-quarter years of sipping in oneattack of delirium tremens of the subdued kind; beginning with suicidaldepression, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and ending withdownright raving. As he sat in a chair in front of the fire, or walkedup and down the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard whatpoor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about herand his own fall for the most part; though he ravelled some P. W. D.accounts into the same skein of thought. He talked, and talked, andtalked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him.He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried topull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but hismind ran out of control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and thestory of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like achild of all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep ofhis heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any onewho was in the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-fivenext morning.

  From what he said, one gathered how immense an influence Mrs. Reiverheld over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse. Hiswhisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were veryinstructive as showing the errors of his estimates.

  . . . . . . . . .

  When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances were pitying himfor the bad attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down, Moriartyswore a big oath to himself and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver tillthe end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential way as anangel from heaven. Later on he took to riding--not hacking, but honestriding--which was good proof that he was improving, and you could slamdoors behind him without his jumping to his feet with a gasp. That,again, was hopeful.

  How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning, nobodyknows. He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a man whohas drank heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner, but henever drank alone, and never let what he drank have the least hold onhim.

  Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great trouble, and how the"influence of a pure honest woman, and an angel as well" had saved him.When the man--startled at anything good being laid to Mrs. Reiver'sdoor--laughed, it cost him Moriarty's friendship. Moriarty, who ismarried now to a woman ten thousand times better than Mrs. Reiver--awoman who believes that there is no man on earth as good and clever asher husband--will go down to his grave vowing and protesting that Mrs.Reiver saved him from ruin in both worlds.

  That she knew anything of Moriarty's weakness nobody believed fora moment. That she would have cut him dead, thrown him over, andacquainted all her friends with her discovery, if she had known of it,nobody who knew her doubted for an instant.

  Moriarty thought her something she never was, and in that belief savedhimself. Which was just as good as though she had been everything thathe had imagined.

  But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have to the credit ofMoriarty's salvation, when her day of reckoning comes?