Inside of the Cup, the — Volume 05 by Winston Churchill
page 16 of 89 (17%)
page 16 of 89 (17%)
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what anxiety they watched her! She grew strong again, went with Sally
Drover and the other girls on Sunday excursions to the country, applied herself to her embroidery with restless zeal for days, only to have it drop from her nerveless fingers. But her thoughts were uncontrollable, she was drawn continually to the edge of that precipice which hung over the waters whence they had dragged her, never knowing when the vertigo would seize her. And once Sally Drover, on the alert for just such an occurrence, pursued her down Dalton Street and forced her back . . . Justice to Miss Drover cannot be done in these pages. It was she who bore the brunt of the fierce resentment of the reincarnated fiends when the other women shrank back in fear, and said nothing to Mr. Bentley or Hodder until the incident was past. It was terrible indeed to behold this woman revert--almost in the twinkling of an eye--to a vicious wretch crazed for drink, to feel that the struggle had to be fought all over again. Unable to awe Sally Drover's spirit, she would grow piteous. "For God's sake let me go--I can't stand it. Let me go to hell--that's where I belong. What do you bother with me for? I've got a right." Once the doctor had to be called. He shook his head but his eye met Miss Grower's, and he said nothing. "I'll never be able to pull out, I haven't got the strength," she told Hodder, between sobs. "You ought to have left me be, that was where I belonged. I can't stand it, I tell you. If it wasn't for that woman watching me downstairs, and Sally Grower, I'd have had a drink before this. It ain't any use, I've got so I can't live without it--I don't want to live." |
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