Crocker stood beside the table, steadying himself by gripping the back of his chair, and smiling with an air of rather self-conscious distinction. He bowed slightly to the breathless manager.
“It was quite unavoidable,” he said. “As a gentleman you will readily see that.” His tongue was thicker now. “Nobody regrets it more'n I—nobody more'n I.”
The manager gave me a look and caught him by one arm. I took the other. Crocker hung back.
“This is quite unnecessary,” he said, “quite unnecessary. I'm perf'kly sober, I assure you. As a matter o' fac', I'm soberes' man in th 'ole big room. Very big room. Ver' big room indeed. Bigges' room ever saw.”
Between, us, the manager and I got him upstairs and into his room. Then I was left alone with him to undress him and get him into his bed. The task consumed all of an hour. He was rough, almost violent, one moment, and absurdly polite the next. His mind developed a trick of leaping off on unexpected tangents. He tried to point out reasons against removing each article of clothing as we came to it. It was interesting, on the whole. I have since almost regretted that I did not make exact notes of these curious mental flights. But at the moment it seemed too remote from my own field of study. And I suppose my decision was reasonable.
It occurs to me, in glancing back over the foregoing paragraph, that Crocker—had I been the drunk one and he the sober—would not have drifted into this highly self-conscious theorizing; he would not have felt this detachment from the fact. Perhaps that is the secret of my difference from other men. Perhaps that is the peculiar respect in which I am not wholly normal. If this is so, am I doomed to dwell always apart from my fellows in a cold region of pure thought? I am going to set this confession down here: I have almost envied Crocker to-night—not, of course, the frightful things he does, but the human, yes, the animal quality of the man that makes it possible for him to get drunk now and then. For I can't do it! I am farther from the norm than he; on the opposite side, to be sure, but farther. Is not this why I have never had a man chum?
Is not this why no good
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