“Those Fender’s pills are quite a good idea,” he remarked in a tone quite different from his professional rumble. “Just the things. They contain a small percentage of digitalin.”
One of Mr. Brownrigg’s least attractive habits was his method of. spending Saturday nights.
At half-past seven the patient but silently disapproving Millie would clear away the remains of the final meal of the day and place one glass and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda on the green serge tablecloth.
This done, she would retire to the kitchen, wash up, and complete the week’s ironing. She usually left this job until then, because it was a longish business, with frequent pauses for minor repairs to Henry’s shirts and her own underclothing, and she knew she had plenty of undisturbed time on her hands.
She had, in fact, until midnight. When the kitchen clock wheezed twelve Millie folded her ironing board and turned up the iron on the stove to cool.
Then she went into the living-room and took away the glass and the empty bottle, so that the daily help should not see them in the morning. She also picked up the papers and straightened the room.
Finally, when the gas fire had been extinguished, she attended to Henry.
A fortnight and three days after her first visit to Doctor Crupiner — the doctor, at Henry’s suggestion, had increased her dose of Fender’s pills from three to five a day — she went through her Saturday ritual as usual.
For a man engaged in Mr. Brownrigg’s particular program to get hopelessly and incapably drunk once, much less once a week, might well have been suicidal lunacy.
One small glass of whisky reduced him to taciturnity. Twelve large glasses of whisky, or one bottle, made of him a limp, silent sack of humanity, incapable of movement or speech, but, quite remarkably, not a senseless creature.
It might well have occurred to Millie to wonder why her husband should choose to transform himself into a Thérèse Raquin paralytic once every week in his life, but in spite of her awful stupidity she was a tolerant woman and honestly believed that men were odd, privileged creatures who took delight in strange perversions. So she humored him and kept his weakness secret even from her mother.
Oddly enough, Henry Brownrigg enjoyed his periodical orgy. He did not drink during the week, and his Saturday experience was at once an adventure and a habit. At the outset of his present project he had thought of foregoing it until his plan was completed, but he realized the absolute necessity of adhering rigidly to his normal course of life, so that there could be no hook, however small, on which the garment of suspicion could catch and take hold.
On this particular evening Millie quite exhausted herself getting him upstairs and into bed. She was so tired when it was all over that she sat on the edge of her couch and breathed hard, quite unable to pull herself together sufficiently to undress.
So exhausted was she that she forgot to take the two Fender’s pills that Henry had left on the dressing table for her, and once in bed she could not persuade herself to get out again for them.
In the morning Henry found them still in the little box. He listened to her startled explanations in silence and then, as she added apology to apology, suddenly became himself again.
“Dear Millie,” he said in the old exasperated tone she knew so well, “Isn’t it enough for me to do all I can to get you well without you hampering me at every turn?”
Millie bent low over the stove and, as if he felt she might be hiding sudden tears, his manner became more conciliatory.
“Don’t you like them?” he inquired softly. “Don’t you like the taste of them? Perhaps they’re too big? Look here, old dear, I’ll put them up in an easier form. You shall have them in jelly cases. Leave it to me. There, there, don’t worry. But you must take your medicine, you know.”
He patted her plump shoulder awkwardly and hurried upstairs to dress.
Millie became thoughtful. Henry was clearly very worried about her indeed, or he would never be so nice about her silly mistake.
Young Bill Perry, Brownrigg’s errand-boy assistant, was at the awkward stage, if indeed he would ever grow out of it.
He was scrawny, red-headed, with a tendency to acne, and great raw, scarlet wrists. Mr. Brownrigg he loathed as only the young can loathe the possessor of a sarcastic tongue, but Millie he liked, and his pale eyes twinkled kindly when she spoke to him.
Young Perry did not think Millie was half so daft as the Old Man made her out to be on a good number of occasions.
If only because she was kind to him, young Perry was interested in the state of Millie’s health.
On the Monday night young Perry saw Mr. Brownrigg putting up the contents of the Fender’s pills in jelly cases and he inquired about them.
Mr. Brownrigg was unusually communicative. He told young Perry in strict confidence that Mrs. Brownrigg was far from well and that Doctor Crupiner was worried about her.
Mr. Brownrigg also intimated that he and Doctor Crupiner were, as professional men, agreed that if complete freedom from care and Fender’s pills could not save Mrs. Brownrigg, nothing could.
“Do you mean she might die?” said young Perry, aghast. “Suddenly, I mean, sir?”
He was sorry as soon as he had spoken, because Mr. Brownrigg’s hand trembled so much that he dropped one of the jelly cases and young Perry realized that the Old Man was really wild about the Old Girl after all, and that his bullyragging her was all a sham to hide his feelings.
At that moment young Perry’s sentimental, impressionable heart went out to Mr. Brownrigg, and he generously forgave him for his observation that young Perry was patently cut out for the diplomatic service, since his tact and delicacy were so great.
The stores arrived. Bill Perry unpacked the two big cases; the smaller case he opened, but left the unpacking to his employer.
Mr. Brownrigg finished his pill-making, although he was keeping the boy waiting, rinsed his hands and got down to work with his usual deliberation.
There were not a great many packages in the case and young Perry, who had taken a peep at the mottled ledger some time before, thought he knew why. The Old Man was riding close to the edge. Bills and receipts had to be juggled very carefully these days.
The boy read the invoice from the wholesalers’, and Mr. Brownrigg put the drugs away.
“Sodii Bicarbonas, Magnesia Levis,” he head, stumbling over the difficult words. “Iodine, Quininae Hydrochloridum, Tincture Digitalin... that must be it, Mr. Brownrigg. There, in the biggish packet.”
Bill Perry knew he read badly and was only trying to be helpful when he indicated the parcel, but Mr. Brownrigg shot a truly terrifying glance in his direction as he literally snatched up the package and carried it off to the drug cabinet.
Young Perry was dismayed. He was late and he wanted to go. In his panic he floundered on, making matters worse.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I was only trying to help. I thought you might be — er — thinking of something else and got a bit muddled.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Brownrigg slowly, fixing him with those hot, round eyes in a way which was oddly disturbing. “And of what should I be thinking when I am doing my work, boy?”
“Of... of Mrs. Brownrigg, sir,” stammered the wretched Perry helplessly.
Henry Brownrigg froze. The blood congealed in his face and his eyes seemed to sink into his head.
Young Perry, who realized he had said the wrong thing, and who had a natural delicacy which revolted at prying into another’s sorrow, mistook his employer’s symptoms for acute embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was really trying to help. I’m a bit — er — windy myself, sir. Mrs. Brownrigg’s been very kind to me. I’m sorry she’s so ill.”