Oh,it was good to be alive that night while the supper was preparing,the two of us alone in the kitchen.I,personally,was at the top of life.Such things as the books and ultimate truth did not exist.My body was gloriously healthy,and healthily tired from the long ride.It had been a splendid day.The night was splendid.I was with the woman who was my mate,picnicking in gleeful abandon.I had no troubles.The bills were all paid,and a surplus of money was rolling in on me.The future ever-widened before me.And right there,in the kitchen,delicious things bubbled in the chafing-dish,our laughter bubbled,and my stomach was keen with a most delicious edge of appetite.
I felt so good,that somehow,somewhere,in me arose an insatiable greed to feel better.I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my happiness even higher.And I knew the way.Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn had taught me.Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle,and each time I left it diminished by one man's size cocktail.The result was splendid.
I wasn't jingled,I wasn't lighted up;but I was warmed,I glowed,my happiness was pyramided.Munificent as life was to me,I added to that munificence.It was a great hour--one of my greatest.
But I paid for it,long afterwards,as you will see.One does not forget such experiences,and,in human stupidity,cannot be brought to realise that there is no immutable law which decrees that same things shall produce same results.For they don't,else would the thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar delights to the first,else would one cocktail,instead of several,produce an equivalent glow after a year of cocktails.
One day,just before I ate midday dinner,after my morning's writing was done,when I had no guest,I took a cocktail by myself.Thereafter,when there were no guests,I took this daily pre-dinner cocktail.And right there John Barleycorn had me.Iwas beginning to drink regularly.I was beginning to drink alone.
And I was beginning to drink,not for hospitality's sake,not for the sake of the taste,but for the effect of the drink.
I WANTED that daily pre-dinner cocktail.And it never crossed my mind that there was any reason I should not have it.I paid for it.I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted.
And what was a cocktail--one cocktail--to me who on so many occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities of stiffer stuff and been unharmed?
The programme of my ranch life was as follows:Each morning,at eight-thirty,having been reading or correcting proofs in bed since four or five,I went to my desk.Odds and ends of correspondence and notes occupied me till nine,and at nine sharp,invariably,I began my writing.By eleven,sometimes a few minutes earlier or later,my thousand words were finished.
Another half-hour at cleaning up my desk,and my day's work was done,so that at eleven-thirty I got into a hammock under the trees with my mail-bag and the morning newspaper.At twelve-thirty I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode.
One morning,at eleven-thirty,before I got into the hammock,Itook a cocktail.I repeated this on subsequent mornings,of course,taking another cocktail just before I ate at twelve-thirty.Soon I found myself,seated at my desk in the midst of my thousand words,looking forward to that eleven-thirty cocktail.
At last,now,I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol.
But what of it?I wasn't afraid of John Barleycorn.I had associated with him too long.I was wise in the matter of drink.
I was discreet.Never again would I drink to excess.I knew the dangers and the pitfalls of John Barleycorn,the various ways by which he had tried to kill me in the past.But all that was past,long past.Never again would I drink myself to stupefaction.
Never again would I get drunk.All I wanted,and all I would take,was just enough to glow and warm me,to kick geniality alive in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots of imagination slightly in my brain.Oh,I was thoroughly master of myself,and of John Barleycorn.
