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CHAPTER I Part 2 THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS
Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born.
Morel was good to her, as good as gold. But she felt very lonely, miles away from
her own people.
She felt lonely with him now, and his presence only made it more intense.
The boy was small and frail at first, but he came on quickly.
He was a beautiful child, with dark gold ringlets, and dark-blue eyes which changed
gradually to a clear grey. His mother loved him passionately.
He came just when her own bitterness of disillusion was hardest to bear; when her
faith in life was shaken, and her soul felt dreary and lonely.
She made much of the child, and the father was jealous.
At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child; she turned from
the father.
He had begun to neglect her; the novelty of his own home was gone.
He had no grit, she said bitterly to herself.
What he felt just at the minute, that was all to him.
He could not abide by anything. There was nothing at the back of all his
show.
There began a battle between the husband and wife--a fearful, bloody battle that
ended only with the death of one.
She fought to make him undertake his own responsibilities, to make him fulfill his
obligations. But he was too different from her.
His nature was purely sensuous, and she strove to make him moral, religious.
She tried to force him to face things. He could not endure it--it drove him out of
his mind.
While the baby was still tiny, the father's temper had become so irritable that it was
not to be trusted. The child had only to give a little trouble
when the man began to bully.
A little more, and the hard hands of the collier hit the baby.
Then Mrs. Morel loathed her husband, loathed him for days; and he went out and
drank; and she cared very little what he did.
Only, on his return, she scathed him with her satire.
The estrangement between them caused him, knowingly or unknowingly, grossly to offend
her where he would not have done.
William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him, he was so pretty.
She was not well off now, but her sisters kept the boy in clothes.
Then, with his little white hat curled with an ostrich feather, and his white coat, he
was a joy to her, the twining wisps of hair clustering round his head.
Mrs. Morel lay listening, one Sunday morning, to the chatter of the father and
child downstairs. Then she dozed off.
When she came downstairs, a great fire glowed in the grate, the room was hot, the
breakfast was roughly laid, and seated in his armchair, against the chimney-piece,
sat Morel, rather timid; and standing
between his legs, the child--cropped like a sheep, with such an odd round poll--looking
wondering at her; and on a newspaper spread out upon the hearthrug, a myriad of
crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a
marigold scattered in the reddening firelight.
Mrs. Morel stood still. It was her first baby.
She went very white, and was unable to speak.
"What dost think o' 'im?" Morel laughed uneasily.
She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward.
Morel shrank back. "I could kill you, I could!" she said.
She choked with rage, her two fists uplifted.
"Yer non want ter make a *** on 'im," Morel said, in a frightened tone, bending
his head to shield his eyes from hers.
His attempt at laughter had vanished. The mother looked down at the jagged,
close-clipped head of her child. She put her hands on his hair, and stroked
and fondled his head.
"Oh--my boy!" she faltered. Her lip trembled, her face broke, and,
snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder and cried painfully.
She was one of those women who cannot cry; whom it hurts as it hurts a man.
It was like ripping something out of her, her sobbing.
Morel sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped together till the knuckles
were white. He gazed in the fire, feeling almost
stunned, as if he could not breathe.
Presently she came to an end, soothed the child and cleared away the breakfast-table.
She left the newspaper, littered with curls, spread upon the hearthrug.
At last her husband gathered it up and put it at the back of the fire.
She went about her work with closed mouth and very quiet.
Morel was subdued.
He crept about wretchedly, and his meals were a misery that day.
She spoke to him civilly, and never alluded to what he had done.
But he felt something final had happened.
Afterwards she said she had been silly, that the boy's hair would have had to be
cut, sooner or later.
In the end, she even brought herself to say to her husband it was just as well he had
played barber when he did.
But she knew, and Morel knew, that that act had caused something momentous to take
place in her soul.
She remembered the scene all her life, as one in which she had suffered the most
intensely.
This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for
Morel.
Before, while she had striven against him bitterly, she had fretted after him, as if
he had gone astray from her. Now she ceased to fret for his love: he was
an outsider to her.
This made life much more bearable. Nevertheless, she still continued to strive
with him. She still had her high moral sense,
inherited from generations of Puritans.
It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she
loved him, or had loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him.
If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she wielded
the lash unmercifully. The pity was, she was too much his
opposite.
She could not be content with the little he might be; she would have him the much that
he ought to be. So, in seeking to make him nobler than he
could be, she destroyed him.
She injured and hurt and scarred herself, but she lost none of her worth.
She also had the children.
He drank rather heavily, though not more than many miners, and always beer, so that
whilst his health was affected, it was never injured.
The week-end was his chief carouse.
He sat in the Miners' Arms until turning- out time every Friday, every Saturday, and
every Sunday evening. On Monday and Tuesday he had to get up and
reluctantly leave towards ten o'clock.
Sometimes he stayed at home on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, or was only out for
an hour. He practically never had to miss work owing
to his drinking.
But although he was very steady at work, his wages fell off.
He was blab-mouthed, a tongue-wagger. Authority was hateful to him, therefore he
could only abuse the pit-managers.
He would say, in the Palmerston: "Th' gaffer come down to our stall this
morning, an' 'e says, 'You know, Walter, this 'ere'll not do.
What about these props?'
An' I says to him, 'Why, what art talkin' about?
What d'st mean about th' props?' 'It'll never do, this 'ere,' 'e says.
'You'll be havin' th' roof in, one o' these days.'
An' I says, 'Tha'd better stan' on a bit o' clunch, then, an' hold it up wi' thy 'ead.'
So 'e wor that mad, 'e cossed an' 'e swore, an' t'other chaps they did laugh."
Morel was a good mimic. He imitated the manager's fat, squeaky
voice, with its attempt at good English.
"'I shan't have it, Walter. Who knows more about it, me or you?'
So I says, 'I've niver fun out how much tha' knows, Alfred.
It'll 'appen carry thee ter bed an' back."'
So Morel would go on to the amusement of his boon companions.
And some of this would be true. The pit-manager was not an educated man.
He had been a boy along with Morel, so that, while the two disliked each other,
they more or less took each other for granted.
But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these public-house sayings.
Consequently, although Morel was a good miner, sometimes earning as much as five
pounds a week when he married, he came gradually to have worse and worse stalls,
where the coal was thin, and hard to get, and unprofitable.
Also, in summer, the pits are slack.
Often, on bright sunny mornings, the men are seen trooping home again at ten,
eleven, or twelve o'clock. No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth.
The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug against the fence,
and count the wagons the engine is taking along the line up the valley.
And the children, as they come from school at dinner-time, looking down the fields and
seeing the wheels on the headstocks standing, say:
"Minton's knocked off.
My dad'll be at home." And there is a sort of shadow over all,
women and children and men, because money will be short at the end of the week.
Morel was supposed to give his wife thirty shillings a week, to provide everything--
rent, food, clothes, clubs, insurance, doctors.
Occasionally, if he were flush, he gave her thirty-five.
But these occasions by no means balanced those when he gave her twenty-five.
In winter, with a decent stall, the miner might earn fifty or fifty-five shillings a
week. Then he was happy.
On Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, he spent royally, getting rid of his sovereign
or thereabouts.
And out of so much, he scarcely spared the children an extra penny or bought them a
pound of apples. It all went in drink.
In the bad times, matters were more worrying, but he was not so often drunk, so
that Mrs. Morel used to say:
"I'm not sure I wouldn't rather be short, for when he's flush, there isn't a minute
of peace."
If he earned forty shillings he kept ten; from thirty-five he kept five; from thirty-
two he kept four; from twenty-eight he kept three; from twenty-four he kept two; from
twenty he kept one-and-six; from eighteen
he kept a shilling; from sixteen he kept sixpence.
He never saved a penny, and he gave his wife no opportunity of saving; instead, she
had occasionally to pay his debts; not public-house debts, for those never were
passed on to the women, but debts when he
had bought a canary, or a fancy walking- stick.
At the wakes time Morel was working badly, and Mrs. Morel was trying to save against
her confinement.
So it galled her bitterly to think he should be out taking his pleasure and
spending money, whilst she remained at home, harassed.
There were two days' holiday.
On the Tuesday morning Morel rose early. He was in good spirits.
Quite early, before six o'clock, she heard him whistling away to himself downstairs.
He had a pleasant way of whistling, lively and musical.
He nearly always whistled hymns.
He had been a choir-boy with a beautiful voice, and had taken solos in Southwell
cathedral. His morning whistling alone betrayed it.
His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden, his whistling ringing
out as he sawed and hammered away.
It always gave her a sense of warmth and peace to hear him thus as she lay in bed,
the children not yet awake, in the bright early morning, happy in his man's fashion.
At nine o'clock, while the children with bare legs and feet were sitting playing on
the sofa, and the mother was washing up, he came in from his carpentry, his sleeves
rolled up, his waistcoat hanging open.
He was still a good-looking man, with black, wavy hair, and a large black
moustache.
His face was perhaps too much inflamed, and there was about him a look almost of
peevishness. But now he was jolly.
He went straight to the sink where his wife was washing up.
"What, are thee there!" he said boisterously.
"Sluthe off an' let me wesh mysen."
"You may wait till I've finished," said his wife.
"Oh, mun I? An' what if I shonna?"
This good-humoured threat amused Mrs. Morel.
"Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft-water tub."
"Ha! I can' an' a', tha mucky little 'ussy."
With which he stood watching her a moment, then went away to wait for her.
When he chose he could still make himself again a real gallant.
Usually he preferred to go out with a scarf round his neck.
Now, however, he made a toilet.
There seemed so much gusto in the way he puffed and swilled as he washed himself, so
much alacrity with which he hurried to the mirror in the kitchen, and, bending because
it was too low for him, scrupulously parted
his wet black hair, that it irritated Mrs. Morel.
He put on a turn-down collar, a black bow, and wore his Sunday tail-coat.
As such, he looked spruce, and what his clothes would not do, his instinct for
making the most of his good looks would. At half-past nine Jerry Purdy came to call
for his pal.
Jerry was Morel's *** friend, and Mrs. Morel disliked him.
He was a tall, thin man, with a rather foxy face, the kind of face that seems to lack
eyelashes.
He walked with a stiff, brittle dignity, as if his head were on a wooden spring.
His nature was cold and shrewd.
Generous where he intended to be generous, he seemed to be very fond of Morel, and
more or less to take charge of him. Mrs. Morel hated him.
She had known his wife, who had died of consumption, and who had, at the end,
conceived such a violent dislike of her husband, that if he came into her room it
caused her haemorrhage.
None of which Jerry had seemed to mind. And now his eldest daughter, a girl of
fifteen, kept a poor house for him, and looked after the two younger children.
"A mean, wizzen-hearted stick!"
Mrs. Morel said of him. "I've never known Jerry mean in MY life,"
protested Morel.
"A opener-handed and more freer chap you couldn't find anywhere, accordin' to my
knowledge." "Open-handed to you," retorted Mrs. Morel.
"But his fist is shut tight enough to his children, poor things."
"Poor things! And what for are they poor things, I should
like to know."
But Mrs. Morel would not be appeased on Jerry's score.
The subject of argument was seen, craning his thin neck over the scullery curtain.
He caught Mrs. Morel's eye.
"Mornin', missis! Mester in?"
"Yes--he is." Jerry entered unasked, and stood by the
kitchen doorway.
He was not invited to sit down, but stood there, coolly asserting the rights of men
and husbands. "A nice day," he said to Mrs. Morel.
"Yes.
"Grand out this morning--grand for a walk." "Do you mean YOU'RE going for a walk?" she
asked. "Yes. We mean walkin' to Nottingham," he
replied.
"H'm!" The two men greeted each other, both glad:
Jerry, however, full of assurance, Morel rather subdued, afraid to seem too jubilant
in presence of his wife.
But he laced his boots quickly, with spirit.
They were going for a ten-mile walk across the fields to Nottingham.
Climbing the hillside from the Bottoms, they mounted gaily into the morning.
At the Moon and Stars they had their first drink, then on to the Old Spot.
Then a long five miles of drought to carry them into Bulwell to a glorious pint of
bitter.
But they stayed in a field with some haymakers whose gallon bottle was full, so
that, when they came in sight of the city, Morel was sleepy.
The town spread upwards before them, smoking vaguely in the midday glare,
fridging the crest away to the south with spires and factory bulks and chimneys.
In the last field Morel lay down under an oak tree and slept soundly for over an
hour. When he rose to go forward he felt ***.
The two had dinner in the Meadows, with Jerry's sister, then repaired to the Punch
Bowl, where they mixed in the excitement of pigeon-racing.
Morel never in his life played cards, considering them as having some occult,
malevolent power--"the devil's pictures," he called them!
But he was a master of skittles and of dominoes.
He took a challenge from a Newark man, on skittles.
All the men in the old, long bar took sides, betting either one way or the other.
Morel took off his coat. Jerry held the hat containing the money.
The men at the tables watched.
Some stood with their mugs in their hands. Morel felt his big wooden ball carefully,
then launched it.
He played havoc among the nine-pins, and won half a crown, which restored him to
solvency. By seven o'clock the two were in good
condition.
They caught the 7.30 train home. In the afternoon the Bottoms was
intolerable. Every inhabitant remaining was out of
doors.
The women, in twos and threes, bareheaded and in white aprons, gossiped in the alley
between the blocks. Men, having a rest between drinks, sat on
their heels and talked.
The place smelled stale; the slate roofs glistered in the arid heat.
Mrs. Morel took the little girl down to the brook in the meadows, which were not more
than two hundred yards away.
The water ran quickly over stones and broken pots.
Mother and child leaned on the rail of the old sheep-bridge, watching.
Up at the dipping-hole, at the other end of the meadow, Mrs. Morel could see the naked
forms of boys flashing round the deep yellow water, or an occasional bright
figure dart glittering over the blackish stagnant meadow.
She knew William was at the dipping-hole, and it was the dread of her life lest he
should get drowned.
Annie played under the tall old hedge, picking up alder cones, that she called
currants. The child required much attention, and the
flies were teasing.
The children were put to bed at seven o'clock.
Then she worked awhile.
When Walter Morel and Jerry arrived at Bestwood they felt a load off their minds;
a railway journey no longer impended, so they could put the finishing touches to a
glorious day.
They entered the Nelson with the satisfaction of returned travellers.
The next day was a work-day, and the thought of it put a damper on the men's
spirits.
Most of them, moreover, had spent their money.
Some were already rolling dismally home, to sleep in preparation for the morrow.
Mrs. Morel, listening to their mournful singing, went indoors.
Nine o'clock passed, and ten, and still "the pair" had not returned.
On a doorstep somewhere a man was singing loudly, in a drawl: "Lead, kindly Light."
Mrs. Morel was always indignant with the drunken men that they must sing that hymn
when they got maudlin.
"As if 'Genevieve' weren't good enough," she said.
The kitchen was full of the scent of boiled herbs and hops.
On the hob a large black saucepan steamed slowly.
Mrs. Morel took a panchion, a great bowl of thick red earth, streamed a heap of white
sugar into the bottom, and then, straining herself to the weight, was pouring in the
liquor.
Just then Morel came in. He had been very jolly in the Nelson, but
coming home had grown irritable.
He had not quite got over the feeling of irritability and pain, after having slept
on the ground when he was so hot; and a bad conscience afflicted him as he neared the
house.
He did not know he was angry. But when the garden gate resisted his
attempts to open it, he kicked it and broke the latch.
He entered just as Mrs. Morel was pouring the infusion of herbs out of the saucepan.
Swaying slightly, he lurched against the table.
The boiling liquor pitched.
Mrs. Morel started back. "Good gracious," she cried, "coming home in
his drunkenness!" "Comin' home in his what?" he snarled, his
hat over his eye.
Suddenly her blood rose in a jet. "Say you're NOT drunk!" she flashed.
She had put down her saucepan, and was stirring the sugar into the beer.
He dropped his two hands heavily on the table, and thrust his face forwards at her.
"'Say you're not drunk,'" he repeated. "Why, nobody but a nasty little *** like
you 'ud 'ave such a thought."
He thrust his face forward at her. "There's money to bezzle with, if there's
money for nothing else." "I've not spent a two-shillin' bit this
day," he said.
"You don't get as drunk as a lord on nothing," she replied.
"And," she cried, flashing into sudden fury, "if you've been sponging on your
beloved Jerry, why, let him look after his children, for they need it."
"It's a lie, it's a lie.
Shut your face, woman." They were now at battle-pitch.
Each forgot everything save the hatred of the other and the battle between them.
She was fiery and furious as he.
They went on till he called her a liar. "No," she cried, starting up, scarce able
to breathe.
"Don't call me that--you, the most despicable liar that ever walked in shoe-
leather." She forced the last words out of suffocated
lungs.
"You're a liar!" he yelled, banging the table with his fist.
"You're a liar, you're a liar." She stiffened herself, with clenched fists.
"The house is filthy with you," she cried.
"Then get out on it--it's mine. Get out on it!" he shouted.
"It's me as brings th' money whoam, not thee.
It's my house, not thine.
Then ger out on't--ger out on't!" "And I would," she cried, suddenly shaken
into tears of impotence. "Ah, wouldn't I, wouldn't I have gone long
ago, but for those children.
Ay, haven't I repented not going years ago, when I'd only the one"--suddenly drying
into rage. "Do you think it's for YOU I stop--do you
think I'd stop one minute for YOU?"
"Go, then," he shouted, beside himself. "Go!"
"No!" She faced round.
"No," she cried loudly, "you shan't have it ALL your own way; you shan't do ALL you
like. I've got those children to see to.
My word," she laughed, "I should look well to leave them to you."
"Go," he cried thickly, lifting his fist. He was afraid of her.
"Go!"
"I should be only too glad. I should laugh, laugh, my lord, if I could
get away from you," she replied.
He came up to her, his red face, with its bloodshot eyes, thrust forward, and gripped
her arms. She cried in fear of him, struggled to be
free.
Coming slightly to himself, panting, he pushed her roughly to the outer door, and
thrust her forth, slotting the bolt behind her with a ***.
Then he went back into the kitchen, dropped into his armchair, his head, bursting full
of blood, sinking between his knees. Thus he dipped gradually into a stupor,
from exhaustion and intoxication.
The moon was high and magnificent in the August night.
Mrs. Morel, seared with passion, shivered to find herself out there in a great white
light, that fell cold on her, and gave a shock to her inflamed soul.
She stood for a few moments helplessly staring at the glistening great rhubarb
leaves near the door. Then she got the air into her breast.
She walked down the garden path, trembling in every limb, while the child boiled
within her.
For a while she could not control her consciousness; mechanically she went over
the last scene, then over it again, certain phrases, certain moments coming each time
like a brand red-hot down on her soul; and
each time she enacted again the past hour, each time the brand came down at the same
points, till the mark was burnt in, and the pain burnt out, and at last she came to
herself.
She must have been half an hour in this delirious condition.
Then the presence of the night came again to her.
She glanced round in fear.
She had wandered to the side garden, where she was walking up and down the path beside
the currant bushes under the long wall.
The garden was a narrow strip, bounded from the road, that cut transversely between the
blocks, by a thick thorn hedge.
She hurried out of the side garden to the front, where she could stand as if in an
immense gulf of white light, the moon streaming high in face of her, the
moonlight standing up from the hills in
front, and filling the valley where the Bottoms crouched, almost blindingly.
There, panting and half weeping in reaction from the stress, she murmured to herself
over and over again: "The nuisance! the nuisance!"
She became aware of something about her.
With an effort she roused herself to see what it was that penetrated her
consciousness.
The tall white lilies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with
their perfume, as with a presence. Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear.
She touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals, then shivered.
They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight.
She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers by
moonlight. She bent down to look at the binful of
yellow pollen; but it only appeared dusky.
Then she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost made her dizzy.
Mrs. Morel leaned on the garden gate, looking out, and she lost herself awhile.
She did not know what she thought.
Except for a slight feeling of sickness, and her consciousness in the child, herself
melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air.
After a time the child, too, melted with her in the mixing-pot of moonlight, and she
rested with the hills and lilies and houses, all swum together in a kind of
swoon.
When she came to herself she was tired for sleep.
Languidly she looked about her; the clumps of white phlox seemed like bushes spread
with linen; a moth ricochetted over them, and right across the garden.
Following it with her eye roused her.
A few whiffs of the raw, strong scent of phlox invigorated her.
She passed along the path, hesitating at the white rose-bush.
It smelled sweet and simple.
She touched the white ruffles of the roses. Their fresh scent and cool, soft leaves
reminded her of the morning-time and sunshine.
She was very fond of them.
But she was tired, and wanted to sleep. In the mysterious out-of-doors she felt
forlorn. There was no noise anywhere.
Evidently the children had not been wakened, or had gone to sleep again.
A train, three miles away, roared across the valley.
The night was very large, and very strange, stretching its hoary distances infinitely.
And out of the silver-grey fog of darkness came sounds vague and hoarse: a corncrake
not far off, sound of a train like a sigh, and distant shouts of men.
Her quietened heart beginning to beat quickly again, she hurried down the side
garden to the back of the house. Softly she lifted the latch; the door was
still bolted, and hard against her.
She rapped gently, waited, then rapped again.
She must not rouse the children, nor the neighbours.
He must be asleep, and he would not wake easily.
Her heart began to burn to be indoors. She clung to the door-handle.
Now it was cold; she would take a chill, and in her present condition!
Putting her apron over her head and her arms, she hurried again to the side garden,
to the window of the kitchen.
Leaning on the sill, she could just see, under the blind, her husband's arms spread
out on the table, and his black head on the board.
He was sleeping with his face lying on the table.
Something in his attitude made her feel tired of things.
The lamp was burning smokily; she could tell by the copper colour of the light.
She tapped at the window more and more noisily.
Almost it seemed as if the glass would break.
Still he did not wake up.
After vain efforts, she began to shiver, partly from contact with the stone, and
from exhaustion. Fearful always for the unborn child, she
wondered what she could do for warmth.
She went down to the coal-house, where there was an old hearthrug she had carried
out for the rag-man the day before. This she wrapped over her shoulders.
It was warm, if grimy.
Then she walked up and down the garden path, peeping every now and then under the
blind, knocking, and telling herself that in the end the very strain of his position
must wake him.
At last, after about an hour, she rapped long and low at the window.
Gradually the sound penetrated to him.
When, in despair, she had ceased to tap, she saw him stir, then lift his face
blindly. The labouring of his heart hurt him into
consciousness.
She rapped imperatively at the window. He started awake.
Instantly she saw his fists set and his eyes glare.
He had not a grain of physical fear.
If it had been twenty burglars, he would have gone blindly for them.
He glared round, bewildered, but prepared to fight.
"Open the door, Walter," she said coldly.
His hands relaxed. It dawned on him what he had done.
His head dropped, sullen and dogged. She saw him hurry to the door, heard the
bolt chock.
He tried the latch. It opened--and there stood the silver-grey
night, fearful to him, after the tawny light of the lamp.
He hurried back.
When Mrs. Morel entered, she saw him almost running through the door to the stairs.
He had ripped his collar off his neck in his haste to be gone ere she came in, and
there it lay with bursten button-holes.
It made her angry. She warmed and soothed herself.
In her weariness forgetting everything, she moved about at the little tasks that
remained to be done, set his breakfast, rinsed his pit-bottle, put his pit-clothes
on the hearth to warm, set his pit-boots
beside them, put him out a clean scarf and snap-bag and two apples, raked the fire,
and went to bed. He was already dead asleep.
His narrow black eyebrows were drawn up in a sort of peevish misery into his forehead
while his cheeks' down-strokes, and his sulky mouth, seemed to be saying: "I don't
care who you are nor what you are, I SHALL have my own way."
Mrs. Morel knew him too well to look at him.
As she unfastened her brooch at the mirror, she smiled faintly to see her face all
smeared with the yellow dust of lilies. She brushed it off, and at last lay down.
For some time her mind continued snapping and jetting sparks, but she was asleep
before her husband awoke from the first sleep of his drunkenness.