That night she could not sleep, and could find none of the ordinary
defences against unhappiness. That is to say, she was unable to affect
any kind of superiority to her troubles, besides which she saw them
exactly as they were, in their naked horror, and was not able to put
them in conventional categories. For could Miss Lackett have said to
herself: “I have been in love with John, now I find he is mad. This is a
terrible tragedy, it is very painful to think of people being mad, for
me it is a disappointment in love. Such disappointments are the most
painful to which a girl in my position can be exposed,” and so on--if
she could have done this then Miss Lackett would have found a sure way
to reduce her suffering to a minimum. For by putting forward such
general ideas as madness and disappointment in love she could very soon
have come to feel only the general emotion suited to these ideas. But as
it was she could only think of John Cromartie, his face, voice, manners,
and way of moving; of the particular cage in which she had last seen
him, the smell of apes, the swarm of people staring at him and laughing,
and of her own loneliness and misery which John had deliberately caused.
That is to say she thought only of her pain, and did not cast about to
give it a name. And naming a sorrow is a first step to forgetting it.
About three o’clock in the morning she got out of bed and went down to
the dining room, where she found a decanter of port, another of whiskey,
and some Bath Olivers. She poured herself out a glass of port and
tasted it, but its sweetness disgusted her, so she put it down and
helped herself to the whiskey. After she had got down half a wineglass
of the spirit, taking it neat as it came from the bottle, she felt much
calmer. She drank another glass of it and then went up to her room,
threw herself on her bed, and at once fell into a heavy, drunken sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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