"Passionate and yet calculating at the same time; eager to rule and capable of ruling, though occasionally responsive to the right control; generous in confidence and trust, though with suspicion never very far away."Merrily false and frankly furtive in many of the actions of life. A dear egoist! yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm, a brilliant embryo really wanting the guiding hand and master brain but reluctant to accept them until the last moment."
"Passionate and yet calculating at the same time; eager to rule and capable of ruling, though occasionally responsive to the right control; generous in confidence and trust, though with suspicion never very far away.
"Merrily false and frankly furtive in many of the actions of life. A dear egoist! yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm, a brilliant embryo really wanting the guiding hand and master brain but reluctant to accept them until the last moment."
There was more of it, all compact of his hopes and fears, an entirely false conception of her, an emanation of poison which, nevertheless, affords some indication of his mental state.
The sheet concluded:—
"A white and graceful yacht seriously setting out into dangerous waters with no more certainty than hangs upon the result of a toss up or the tinkle of a tambourine. Deeply desiring a pilot, but unwilling that he should come aboard too soon and spoil the fun of beating up into the wind to see what happens. Weak, but not with the charm of dependence and that trusting weakness which stiffens a man's arm."
"A white and graceful yacht seriously setting out into dangerous waters with no more certainty than hangs upon the result of a toss up or the tinkle of a tambourine. Deeply desiring a pilot, but unwilling that he should come aboard too soon and spoil the fun of beating up into the wind to see what happens. Weak, but not with the charm of dependence and that trusting weakness which stiffens a man's arm."
A futile, miserable dissection with only a half-grain of truth in it.
Gilbert knew it for what it was directly it had been written. He crumpled it up with a curse and flung it into the fireplace.
Yet the truth about the girl was simple enough. She was only an exceptionally clever and attractive example of a perfectly well-defined and numerous type.
Lothian was ignorant of the type, had never suspected its existence in his limited experience of young women, that was all.
Rita Wallace was just this. Heredity had given her a quick, good brain and an infinite capacity for enjoyment. It was an accident also that she was a very lovely girl. All beautiful people are spoiled. Rita was spoiled at school. Girls and mistresses alike adored her. With hardly any interregnum she had been plumped into Podley's Pure Literature Library and begun to earn her own living.
She lived with a good, commonplace girl who worshipped her.
Except that she could attract them and that on the whole they were silly moths she knew nothing of men. Her heart, unawakened as yet save by school-girl affections, was a kind and tender little organ. But, with all her beauty and charm she was essentially shallow, from want of experience rather than from lack of temperament.
Gilbert Lothian had come to her as the most wonderful personality she had ever known. His letters were things that any girl in the world might be proud of receiving. He was giving her, now, a time which, upon each separate evening, was to her like a page out of the "Arabian Nights." Every day he gave her a tablet upon which "Sesame" was written.
Had he been free to ask her honourably, she would have married Gilbert within twenty-four hours, had it been possible. He was delightful to be with. She liked him to kiss her and say adoring things to her. Even his aberrations—of which of course she had become aware—only excited her interest. The bad boy drank far too many whiskies and sodas. Of course! She would cure him of that. If any one had told her that her nightly and delightful companion was an inebriate approaching the last stages of lingering sanity, Rita would have laughed in her informant's face.
She knew what a drunkard was! It was a horrid wretch who couldn't walk straight and who said, "My dearsh"—like the amusing pictures in "Punch."
Poor dear Gilbert's wife would be in a fury if she knew. But fortunately she didn't know, and she wasn't in England. Meanwhile, for a short time, life was entrancing, and why worry about the day after to-morrow?
It was ridiculous of Gilbert to want her to run away with him. That would be really wicked. He might kiss her as much as he liked, and when Mrs. Lothian came back they could still go on much as before. Certainly they would continue being friends and he would write her beautiful letters again.
"I'm a wicked little devil," she said to herself once or twice with a naughty inward chuckle, "but dear old Gilbert is so perfectly sweet, and I can do just what I like with him!"
Nearly three weeks had gone by. Gilbert and Rita had been together every evening, on the Saturday afternoons when she was free of Podley's Library, and for the whole of Sunday.
Gilbert had almost exhausted his invention in thinking out surprises for her night after night.
There had been many dull moments and hours when pleasure trembled in the balance. But no night had been quite a failure. The position was this.
Lothian, almost convinced that Rita was unassailable, assailed her still. She was sweet to him, gave her caresses but not herself. They had arrived at a curious sort of understanding. He bewailed with bitter and burning regret that he could not marry her. Lightly, only half sincerely, but to please him, she joined in his sorrow.
She had been seen about with him, constantly, in all sorts of places, and that London that knew him was beginning to talk. Of this Rita was perfectly unconscious.
He had written to his wife at Nice, letters so falsely sympathetic that he felt she must suspect something. He followed up every letter with a long, costly telegram. A telegram is not autograph and the very lesions of the prose conceal the lesions of the sender's dull intention. His physical state was beginning to be so alarming that he was putting himself constantly under the influence of bromide and such-like drugs. He went regularly to the Turkish Bath in Jermyn Street, had his face greased and hammered in the Haymarket each morning, and fought with a constantly growing terror against an advancing horror which he trembled to think might not be far off now.
Delirium Tremens.
But when Rita met him at night, drugs, massage and alcohol had had their influence and kept him still upon the brink.
In his well-cut evening clothes, with his face a little fatter, a little redder perhaps, he was still her clever, debonnair Gilbert.
A necessity to her now.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS
"Let us have a quiet hour,Let us hob-and-nob with Death."—Tennyson.
"Let us have a quiet hour,Let us hob-and-nob with Death."
"Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death."
—Tennyson.
—Tennyson.
Three weeks passed. There was no change in the relations of Rita Wallace and Gilbert Lothian.
She was gay, tender, silent by turns, and her thirst for pleasure seemed unquenchable. She yielded nothing. Things were as they were. He was married: there was no more to be said, they must "dree their wierd"—endure their lot.
Often the man smiled bitterly to hear her girlish wisdom, uttered with almost complacent finality. It was not very difficult forherto endure. She had no conception of the dreadful state into which he had come, the torture he suffered.
When he was alone—during the long evil day when he could not see her—the perspiration his heated blood sent out upon his face and body seemed like the very night dews of the grave. He was the sensualist of whom Ruskin speaks, the sensualist with the shroud about his feet. All day long he fought for sufficient mastery over himself to go through the evening, fought against the feverish disease of parched throat and wandering eyes; senseless, dissolute, merciless.
And one dreadful flame burned steadily in the surrounding gloom—
"Love, which is lust, is the lamp in the tomb.Love, which is lust, is the call from the gloom."
"Love, which is lust, is the lamp in the tomb.Love, which is lust, is the call from the gloom."
"Love, which is lust, is the lamp in the tomb.
Love, which is lust, is the call from the gloom."
"Je me nourris de flammes" was the proud motto of an ancient ducal house in Burgundy. With grimmer meaning Lothian might have taken it for his own during these days.
He had heard from his wife that she was coming home almost at once. Lady Davidson had rallied. There was every prospect of her living for a month or two more. Sir Harold Davidson was on his way home from India. He would go to her at once and it was now as certain as such things can be that he would be in time.
Mary wrote with deep sadness. To bid her beloved sister farewell on this earth was heart-rending. "And yet, darling,"—so the letter had run—"how marvellous it is to know, not to just hope, but toknowthat I shall meet Dorothy again and that we shall see Jesus. When I think of that, tears of happiness mingle with the tears of sorrow. Sweet little Dorothy will be waiting for us when we too go, my dearest, dearest husband. God keep you, beloved. Day and night I pray for my dear one."
This letter had stabbed the man's soul through and through. It had been forwarded from Mortland Royal and was brought to him as he lay in bed at breakfast time. His heavy tears had bedewed the pillow upon which he lay. "Like bitter wine upon a sponge was the savour of remorse."
Shuddering and sobbing he had crawled out of bed and seized the whiskey bottle which stood upon the dressing table—his sole comforter, hold-fast and standby now; very blood of his veins.
And then, warmth, comfort—remorse and shame fading rapidly away—oblivion and a heavy sleep or stupor till long after midday.
He must go home at once. He must be at home to receive Mary. And, in the quiet country among familiar sights and sounds, he would have time to think. He could write to Rita again. He could say things upon paper with a force and power that escaped himà vive voix. He could pull himself together, too, recruit his physical faculties. He realised, with an ever growing dread, in what a shocking state he was.
Yes, he would go home. There would be peace there, some sort of kindly peace for a day or two. What would happen when Mary returned, how he would feel about her, what he would do, he did not ask. Sufficient for the day!
He longed for a few days' peace. No more late midnights—sleep. No nights of bitter hollow pleasure and longing. He would be among his quiet books again in his pleasant little library. He would talk wildfowling with Tumpany and they would go through the guns together. The Dog Trust who loved him should sleep on his bed.
It was Saturday. He was going down to Norfolk by the five o'clock train from St. Pancras. He would be able to dine on board—and have what drinks he wanted en route. The dining-car stewards on that line knew him well. He would arrive at Wordingham by a little after nine. By ten he might be in bed in his peaceful old house.
The Podley Library closed at 12:30 on Saturday. He was to call for Rita, when they were to lunch together, and at five she would come to the station to see him off. It was a dull, heavy day. London was chilly, there was a gloom over the metropolis; leaden opaque light fell from a sky that was ashen. It was as though cold thunder lurked somewhere up above, as Lothian drove to Kensington.
He had paid for his rooms and arranged for his luggage to be taken to the station where a man was to meet him with it a little before five.
Then he had crossed St. James' Street and spent a waiting hour at his club. For some reason or other, this morning he had more control over his nerves. There was a lull in his rapid physical progress downwards. Perhaps it was that he had at any rate made some decision in his mind. He was going to do something definite. He was going home. That was something to grasp at—a real fact—and it steadied him a little.
He had smoked a cigar in the big smoking room of the club. It was rather early yet and there was hardly any one there. Two whiskies and sodas had been sufficient for the hour.
The big room, however, was so dark that all the electric lamps were turned on and he read the newspapers in an artificial daylight that harmonised curiously with the dull, numbed peace of the nerves which had come to him for a short time.
He openedPunchand there was a joke about him—a merry little paragraph at the bottom of the column. It was the fourth or fifth time his name had appeared in the paper. He remembered how delighted he and Mary had been when it first happened. It meant so definitely that one had "got there."
He read it now without the slightest interest.
He glanced at theTimes. Many important things were happening at home and abroad, but he gazed at all the news with a lack-lustre eye. Usually a keen and sympathetic observer of what went on in the world, for three weeks now he hadn't opened a paper.
As he closed the broad, crackling sheet on its mahogany holding rod, his glance fell upon the Births, Deaths and Marriages column.
A name among the deaths captured his wandering attention. A Mr. James Bethune Dickson Ingworth, C.B., was dead at Hampton Hall in Wiltshire. It was Dicker's uncle, of course! The boy would come into his estate now.
"It's a good thing for him," Lothian thought. "I don't suppose he's back from Italy yet. The old man must have died quite suddenly. I hope he'll settle down and won't be quite so uppish in the future."
He was thinking drowsily, and quite kindly of Dickson, when he suddenly remembered something Mary had said on the night before she went to Nice.
He had tried to make mischief between them—so he had! And then there was that scene in the George at Wordingham, which Lothian had forgotten until now.
"What a cock-sparrow Beelzebub the lad really is," he said in his mind. "And yet I liked him well enough. Even now he's not important enough to dislike. Rita likes him. She often talks of him. He took her out to dinner—yes, so he did—to some appalling little place in Wardour Street. She was speaking of it yesterday. He's written to her from Milan and Rome, too. She wanted to show me the letters and she was cross because I wasn't interested. She tried to pique me and I wouldn't be! What was it she said, oh, 'he's such nice curly hair.'"
He gazed into the empty fireplace before which he was sitting in a huge chair of green leather. The remembered words had struck some chords of memory. He frowned and puzzled over it in his drowsy numbed state, and then it came to him suddenly. Of course! The barmaid at Wordingham, Molly what's-her-name whom all the local bloods were after, had said just the same thing about Ingworth.
Little fools! They were all alike, fluffy little duffers. . . .
He looked up at the clock. It was twenty minutes to one. He had to meet Rita at the library as the hour struck.
He started. The door leading into the outside world shut with a clang. His chains fell into their place once more upon the limbs of his body and soul.
He called a waiter, gulped down another peg, and got into a cab for the Podley Institute.
The pleasant numbness had gone from him now. Once more he was upon the rack. What he saw with his mental vision was as the wild phantasmagoria of a dream. . .a dark room in which a magic lantern is being worked, and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. Pictures as disconnected as a pack of cards.
Rita was waiting upon the steps of the Institute.
She wore a simple coat and skirt of dark brown tweed with a green line in it. Her face was pale. Her eyes were without sparkle—she also was exhausted by pleasure, come to the end of the Arabian Nights.
She got into the taxi-cab which was trembling with the power of the unemployed engines below it.
Tzim, tzim, tzim!
"Where shall we go, Gilbert?" she said, in a languid, uninterested voice.
He answered her in tones more cold and bloodless than her own. "I don't know, Rita, and I don't care. Ce que vous voulez, Mademoiselle des livres sans reproche!"
She turned her white face on him for a moment, almost savage with impotent petulance. Then she thrust her head out of the window and coiled round to the waiting driver.
"Go to Madame Tussaud's," she cried.
Tzim, tzim, bang-bang-bang, and then a long melancholy drone as the rows of houses slid backwards.
Gilbert turned on her. "Why did you say that?" he asked bitterly.
"What differencedoesit make?" she replied. "You didn't seem to care where we went for this last hour or two. I said the first thing that came into my mind. I suppose we can get lunch at Madame Tussaud's. I've never been there before. At any rate, I expect they can manage a sponge cake for us. I don't want anything more."
—"Yes, it's better for us both. It's a relief to me to think that the end has come. No, Rita dear, I don't want your hand. Let us make an end now—a diminuendo. It must be. Let it be. You've said it often yourself."
She bit her lips for a second. Then her eyes flashed. She put her arms round his neck and drew him to her. "You shan't!" she said. "You shan't glide away from me like this."
Every nerve in his body began to tremble. His skin pricked and grew hot.
"What will you give?" he asked in a muffled voice.
"I? What I choose to give!" she replied. "Gillie, I'll do what I like with you."
She shrank back in the corner of the cab with a little cry. Lothian's face was red and blazing with anger.
"No names like that, Rita!" he said roughly. "You shan't call me that."
It was a despairing cry of drowning conscience, honour bleeding to death, dissolving dignity and manhood.
However much he might long for her: however strongly he was enchained, it was a blot, an indignity, an outrage, that this girl should call him by the familiar home name. That was Mary's name for him. Mrs. Gilbert Lothian alone had the right to say that.
Just then the taxi-metre stopped outside the big red erection in the Marylebone Road, an unusual and fantastic silhouette against the heavy sky.
They went in together, and there was a chill over them both. They felt, on this grey day, as people who have lived for pleasure, sensation, and have fed too long on honeycomb, must ever feel; the bitterness of the fruit with the fair red and yellow rind. Ashes were in their mouths, an acrid flavour within their souls.
It is always and for ever thus, if men could only realise it. Since the Cross rose in the sky, the hectic joys of sin have been mingled with bitterness, torture, cold.
The frightful "Colloque Sentimental" of Verlaine expresses these two people, at this moment, well enough. Written by a temperamental saint turned satyr and nearly always influenced by drink; translated by a young English poet whose wings were always beating in vain against the prison wall he himself had built; you have these sad companions. . . .
Into the lonely park all frozen fast,Awhile ago there were two forms who passed.Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead,Hardly shall a man hear the words they said.Into the lonely park all frozen fastThere came two shadows who recall the past."Dost thou remember our old ecstasy?""Wherefore should I possess that memory?""Doth thy heart beat at my sole name alway?Still dost thou see my soul in visions?" "Nay!"—
Into the lonely park all frozen fast,Awhile ago there were two forms who passed.
Into the lonely park all frozen fast,
Awhile ago there were two forms who passed.
Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead,Hardly shall a man hear the words they said.
Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead,
Hardly shall a man hear the words they said.
Into the lonely park all frozen fastThere came two shadows who recall the past.
Into the lonely park all frozen fast
There came two shadows who recall the past.
"Dost thou remember our old ecstasy?""Wherefore should I possess that memory?"
"Dost thou remember our old ecstasy?"
"Wherefore should I possess that memory?"
"Doth thy heart beat at my sole name alway?Still dost thou see my soul in visions?" "Nay!"—
"Doth thy heart beat at my sole name alway?
Still dost thou see my soul in visions?" "Nay!"—
And on such a day as this, with such a weight as this upon their tired hearts, they entered the halls of Waxwork and stood forlorn among that dumb cloistered company.
They passed through "Room No. 1. Commencing Right-hand side" and their steps echoed upon the floor. On this day and at this hour hardly any visitors were there; only a few groups moved from figure to figure and talked in hissing whispers as if they were in some church.
All around them they saw lifeless and yet half convincing dolls in rich tarnished habiliments. They walked, as it were, in a mausoleum of dead kings, and the livid light which fell upon them from the glass roof above made the sordid unreality more real.
"There's Charles the First," Rita said drearily.
Gilbert glanced at the catalogue. "He was fervently pious, a faithful husband, a fond parent, a kind master, and an enthusiastic lover and patron of the fine arts."
"How familiar that sort of stuff sounds," she answered. "It's written for the schools which come here to see history in the flesh—or wax rather. Every English school girl of the upper middle classes has been brought here once in her life. Oh, here's Milton! What does it say about him?"
—"Sold his immortal poem 'Paradise Lost' for the sum of five pounds," Lothian answered grimly.
"Muchbetter to be a modern poet, Gilbert dear! But I'm disappointed. These figures don't thrill one at all. I always thought one was thrilled and astonished here."
"So you will be, Cupid, soon. Don't you see that all these people are only names to us. Here they are names dressed up in clothes and with pink faces and glass eyes. They're too remote. Neither of us is going to connect that thing"—he flung a contemptuous movement of his thumb at Milton—"with 'Lycidas.' We shall be interested soon, I'm sure. But won't you have something to eat?"
"No. I don't want food. After all, this is strange and fantastic. We've lots more to see yet, and these kings and queens are only for the schools. Let's explore and explore. And let's talk about it all as we go, Gilbert! Talk to me as you do in your letters. Talk to me as you did at the beginning, illuminating everything with your mind. That's what I want to hear once again!"
She thrust her arm in his, and desire fled away from him. The Dead Sea Fruit, the "Colloque Sentimental" existed no more, but, humour, the power of keen, incisive phrase awoke in him.
Yes, this was better!—their two minds with play and interplay. It would have been a thousand times better if it had never been anything else save this.
They wandered into the Grand Saloon, made their bow to Sir Thomas Lipton—"Wog and I find his tea really the best and cheapest," Rita said—decided that the Archbishop of Canterbury had a suave, but uninteresting face, admired the late Mr. Dan Leno, who was posed next to Sir Walter Scott, and gazed without much interest at the royal figures in the same room.
King George the Fifth and his spouse; the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn—Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert, K.G., K.T., K.P., G.C.M.C.; Princess Royal of England—Her Royal Highness Princess Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar; and, next to these august people, little Mr. Dan Leno!
"Poor little man," Rita said, looking at the sad face of the comedian. "Why should they put him here with the King and the Queen? Do they just plant their figures anywhere in this show?"
Gilbert shook his head. In this abnormal place—one of the strangest and most psychologically interesting places in the world—his freakish humour was to the fore.
"What a little stupid you are, Rita!" he said. "The man who arranges these groups is one of the greatest philosophers and students of humanity who ever lived. In this particular case the ghost of Heine must have animated him. The court jester! The clown of the monarch—I believe he did once perform at Sandringham—set cheek by jowl with the great people he amused. It completes the picture, does it not?"
"No, Gilbert, since you pretend to see a design in the arrangement, I don't think itdoescomplete the picture. Why should a mere little comic man be set to intrude—?"
He caught her up with whimsical grace. "Oh, but you don't see it at all!" he cried, and his vibrating voice, to which the timbre and life had returned, rang through "Room No. 2."
—"This place is designed for the great mass of the population. They all visit it. It is a National Institution. People like you and me only come to it out of curiosity or by chance. It's out of our beat. Therefore, observe the genius of the plan! The Populace has room in its great stupid heart for only a few heroes. The King is always one, and the popular comedian of the music halls is always another. These, with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, satisfy all the hunger for symbols to be adored. Thus Dan Leno in this splendid company. Room No. 2 is really a subtle and ironic comment upon the psychology of the crowd!"
Rita laughed happily. "But where are the Toftrees?" she said.
"In the Chamber of Horrors, probably, for murdering the public taste. We are sure to find them here, seated before two Remingtons and with the actual books with which the crime was committed on show."
"Oh, I've heard about the 'Chamber of Horrors.' Can we go, Gilbert? Do let's go. I want to be thrilled. It's such a funereal day."
"Yes it is, grey as an old nun. I'm sorry I was unkind in the cab, dear. Forgive me."
"I'll forgive you anything. I'm so unhappy, Gilbert. It's dreadful to think of you being gone. All my days and my nights will be grey now. However shall I do without you?"
There was genuine desolation in her voice. He believed that she really regrettedhisdeparture and not the loss of the pleasures he had been giving her. His blood grew hot once more—for a single moment—and he was about to embrace her, for they were alone in the room.
And then listlessness fell upon him before he had time to put his wish into action. His poisoned mind was vibrating too quickly. An impulse was born, only to be strangled in the brain before the nerves could telegraph it to the muscles. His whole machinery was loose and out of control, the engines running erratically and not in tune. They could not do their work upon the fuel with which he fed them.
He shuddered. His heart was a coffer of ashes and within it, most evil paramours, dwelt the quenchless flame and the worm that dieth not.
. . .They went through other ghostly halls, thronged by a silent company which never moved nor spake. They came to the entrance of that astounding mausoleum of wickedness, The Chamber of Horrors.
There they saw, as in a faint light under the sea, the legion of the lost, the horrible men and women who had gone to swell the red quadrilles of hell.
In long rows, sitting or standing, with blood-stained knives and hangmen's ropes in front of them, in their shameful resurrection they inhabited this place of gloom and death.
Here, was a man in shirt-sleeves, busy at work in a homely kitchen lit by a single candle. Alone at midnight and with sweat upon his face he was breaking up the floor; making a deep hole in which to put something covered with a spotted shroud which lay in a bedroom above.
There, was the "most extraordinary relic in the world," the knife of the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and twenty thousand human beings besides.
The strange precision of portraiture, the somewhat ghastly art which had moulded these evil faces was startlingly evident in its effect upon the soul.
When agreatnovelist or poet creates an evil personality it shocks and terrifies us, but it is never wholly evil. We know of the monster's antecedents and environment. However stern we may be in our attitude towards the crime, sweet charity and deep understanding of the motives of human action often give us glimmerings which enable us to pity a lamentable human being who is a brother of ours whatever he may have done.
But here? No. All was sordid and horrible.
Gilbert and Rita saw rows upon rows of faces which differed in every way one from the other and were yet dreadfully alike.
For these great sinister dolls, so unreal and so real, had all a likeness. The smirk of cruelty and cunning seemed to lie upon the waxen masks. Colder than life, far colder than death, they gave forth emanations which struck the very heart with woe and desolation.
To many visitors the Chamber of Horrors is all its name signifies. But it is a place of pleasure nevertheless. The skin creeps but the sensation is pleasant. It provides a thrill like a switchback railway. But it is not a place that artists and imaginative people can enter and easily forget. It epitomises the wages of sin. It ought to be a great educational force. Young criminals should be taken there between stern guardians, to learn by concrete evidence which would appeal to them as no books or sermons could ever do, the Nemesis that waits upon unrepentant ways.
The man and the girl who had just entered were both in a state of nervous tension. They were physically exhausted, one by fierce indulgence in poison, the other by three weeks of light and feverish pleasure.
And more than this.
Each, in several degree, knew that they were doing wrong, that they had progressed far down the primrose path led by the false flute-players.
"I couldn't have conceived it was so, so unnerving, Gilbert," Rita said, shrinking close to him.
"It is pretty beastly," Lothian answered. "It's simply a dictionary of crime though, that's all—rather too well illustrated."
"I don't want to know of these horrors. One sees them in the papers, but it means little or nothing. How dreadful life is though, under the surface!"
Gilbert felt a sudden pang of pity for her, so young and fair, so frightened now.—Ah!heknew well how dreadful life was—under the surface!
For a moment, in that tomb-like place a vision came to him, sunlit and splendid, calm and beautiful.
He saw his life as it might be—as doubtless God meant it to be, a favoured, fortunate and happy life, for God does not, in His inscrutable wisdom chastise all men. Well-to-do, brilliant of mind, with trained capacity to exact every drop of noble joy from life; blessed with a sweet and beautiful woman to watch over him and complement him; did ever a man have a fairer prospect, a luckier chance?
His Hell was so real. Heaven was so near. He had but to say, "I will not," and the sun would rise again upon his life. To the end he would walk dignified, famous, happy, loving and deeply-loved—if only he could say those words.
A turn of the hand would banish the Fiend Alcohol for ever and ever!
But even as the exaltation of the thought animated him, the dominant false Ego, crushed momentarily by heavenly inspiration, growled and fought for life.
Immediately the longing for alcohol burned within him. They had been nearly an hour among the figures. Lothian longed for drink, to satisfy no mere physical craving, but to keep the Fiend within quiescent.
He had come to that alternating state—the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" has etched it upon the plate for all time—when he must drug the devil in order to have a little license in which to speak the words and think the thoughts of a clean man leading a Christian life.
So the vision of what might be faded and went. The present asserted itself, and asserted itself merely as a brutish desire for poison.
All these mental changes and re-adjustments took place in a mere second of time.
Rita had hardly made an end of speaking before he was ready with an answer.
"Poor little Rita," he said. "It was your choice you know. Itishorrible. But I expect that the weather, and the inexorable fact that we have to part this afternoon for a time, has something to do with it. Oh, and then we haven't lunched. There's a great influence in lunch. I want a drink badly, too. Let's go."
Rita was always whimsical. She loved to assert herself. She wanted to go at least as ardently as her companion, but she did not immediately agree.
"Soon," she said. "Look here, Gilbert, we'll meet at the door. I'm going to flit down this aisle of murderers on the other side. You go down this side. And if you meet the Libricides—Toftrees et femme I mean, call out!"
She vanished with noiseless tread among the stiff ranks of figures.
Gilbert walked slowly down his own path, looking into each face in turn.
. . .This fat matronly woman, a sort of respectable Mrs. Gamp who probably went regularly to Church, was a celebrated baby farmer. She "made angels" by pressing a gimlet into the soft skulls of her charges—there was the actual gimlet—and save for a certain slyness, she had the face of a quite motherly old thing. Yet she, too, had dropped through the hole in the floor—like all her companions here. . . .
He turned away from all the faces with an impatient shudder.
He ought never to have come here. He was a donkey ever to have let Rita come here. Where was she?—he was to meet her at the end of this horrid avenue. . . .
But the place was large. Rita had disappeared among the waxen ghosts. The door must be this way. . . .
He pressed onwards, walking silently—as one does in a place of the dead—but disregarding with averted eyes, the leers, the smiles, the complacent appeal, of the murderers who had paid their debt to the justice of the courts.
He was beginning to be most unpleasantly affected.
Walking onwards, he suddenly heard Rita's voice. It was higher in key than usual—whom was she speaking to? His steps quickened.
. . ."Gilbert, how silly to try and frighten me! It's not cricket in this horrid place, get down at once—oh!"
The girl shrieked. Her voice rang through the vault-like place.
Gilbert ran, turned a corner, and saw Rita.
She was swaying from side to side. Her face was quite white, even the lips were bloodless. She was staring with terrified eyes to where upon the low dais and behind the confining rail a figure was standing—a wax-work figure.
Gilbert caught the girl by the hands. They were as cold as ice.
"Dear!" he said in wild agitation. "What is it? I'm here, don't be frightened. What is it, Rita?"
She gave a great sob of relief and clung to his hands. A trace of colour began to flow into her cheeks.
"Thank goodness," she said, gasping. "Oh, Gilbert, I'm a fool. I've been so frightened."
"But, dear, what by?"
"By that——"
She pointed at the big, still puppet immediately opposite her.
Gilbert turned quickly. For a moment he did not understand the cause of her alarm.
"I talked toit," she said with an hysterical laugh. "I thoughtitwas you! I thought you'd got inside the railing and were standing there to frighten me."
Gilbert looked closely at the effigy. He was about to say something and then the words died away upon his lips.
It was as though he saw himself in a distorting glass—one of those nasty and reprehensible toys that fools give to children sometimes.
There was an undeniable look of him in the staring face of coloured wax. The clear-cut lips were there. The shape of the head was particularly reminiscent, the growing corpulence of body was indicated, the hair of the stiff wig waved as Lothian's living hair waved.
"Good God!" he said. "Itislike me! Poor little girl—but you know I wouldn't frighten you for anything. But itislike! What an extraordinary thing. We looked for the infamous Toftrees! the egregious Herbert who has split so many infinitives in his time, and we find—Me!"
Rita was recovering. She laughed, but she held tightly to Gilbert's arm at the same time.
"Let's see who the person is—or was—" Gilbert went on, drawing the catalogue from his pocket.
"Key of the principal gate of the Bastille—no, that's not it. Number 365, oh, here we are! Hancock, the Hackney Murderer. A chemist in comfortable circumstances, he——"
Rita snatched the book from his hand. "I don't want to hear any more," she said. "Let's go away, quick!"
In half an hour they were lunching at a little Italian restaurant which they found in the vicinity. The day was still dark and lowering, but a risotto Milanese and something which looked like prawns inpolenta, but wasn't, restored them to themselves.
There was a wine list in this quite snug little place, but the proprietor advanced and explained that he had no license and that money must be paid in advance before the camerière could fetch what was required from an adjacent public house.
It was a bottle of whiskey that Gilbert ordered, politely placed upon the table by a pathetic little Genoese whose face was sallow as spaghetti and who was quite unconscious that for the moment the Fiend Alcohol had borrowed his poor personality.
. . ."You must have a whiskey and soda, Rita. I dare not let you attempt any of the wines from the public house at the corner."
"I've never tried it in my life. But I will now, out of curiosity. I'll taste what you are so far too fond of."
Rita did so. "Horrible stuff," she said. "It's just like medicine."
Gilbert had induced the pleasant numbness again. "You've said exactly what it is," he replied in a dreamy voice.—"'Medicine for a mind diseased.'"
They hardly conversed at all after that.
The little restaurant with its red plush seats against the wall, its mirrors and hanging electric lights, was cosy. They lingered long over their coffee and cigarettes. No one else was there and the proprietor sidled up to them and began to talk. He spoke in English at first, and then Gilbert answered him in French.
Gilbert spoke French as it is spoken in Tours, quite perfectly. The Italian spoke it with the soft, ungrammatical fluency of his race.
The interlude pleased the tired, jaded minds of the sad companions, and it was with some fictitious reconstruction of past gaiety and animation that they drove to St. Pancras.
The train was in.
Gilbert's dressing-case was already placed in a first-class compartment, his portmanteau snug in the van.
When he walked up the long platform with Rita, a porter, the Guard of the train and the steward of the dining-car, were grouped round the open door.
He was well known. All the servants of the line looked out for him and gave him almost ministerial honours. They knew he was a "somebody," but were all rather vague as to the nature of his distinction.
He was "Mr. Gilbert Lothian" at least, and his bountiful largesse was generally spoken of.
The train was not due to start for six minutes. The acute guard, raising his cap, locked the door of the carriage.
Gilbert and Rita were alone in it for a farewell.
He took her in his arms and looked long and earnestly into the young lovely face.
He saw the tears gathering in her eyes.
"Have you been happy, sweetheart, with me?"
"Perfectly happy." There was a sob in the reply.
"You really do care for me?"
"Yes."
His breath came more quickly, he held her closer to him—only a little rose-faced girl now.
"Do you care for me more than for any other man you have ever met?"
She did not answer.
"Tell me, tell me! Do you?"
"Yes."
"Rita, my darling, say, if things had been different, if I were free to ask you to be my wife now, would you marry me?"
"Yes."
"Would you be my dear, dear love, as I yours, for ever and ever and ever?"
She clung to him in floods of tears. He had his answer. Each tear was an answer.
The guard of the train, looking the other way, opened the door with his key and coughed.
"Less than a minute more, sir," said the guard.
. . ."Once more, say it once more! Youwouldbe my wife if I were free?"
"I'd be your wife, Gilbert, and I'd love you—oh, what shall I do without you? How dull and dreadful everything is going to be now!"
"But I shall be back soon. And I shall write to you every day!"
"You will, won't you, dear? Write, write—" The train was almost moving.
It began to move. Gilbert leaned out of the window and waved his hand for a long time, to a forlorn little girl in a brown coat and skirt who stood upon the platform crying bitterly.
The waiter of the dining-car, knowing his man well, brought Lothian a large whiskey and soda before the long train was free of the sordid Northwest suburbs.
Lothian drank it, arranged about dinner, and sank back against the cushions. He lit a cigarette and drew the hot smoke deep into his lungs.
The train was out of the town area now. There was no more jolting and rattling over points. Its progress into the gathering night was a continuous roar.
Onwards through the gathering night. . . .
"I'd be your wife, Gilbert, and I'd love you—if you were free."
CHAPTER V
THE NIGHT JOURNEY FROM NICE WHEN MRS. DALY SPEAKS WORDS OF FIRE
"Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,It is but for a time; I press God's lampClose to my breast: its splendour, soon or lateShall pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day."—Browning.
"Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,It is but for a time; I press God's lampClose to my breast: its splendour, soon or lateShall pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day."
"Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast: its splendour, soon or late
Shall pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day."
—Browning.
—Browning.
A carriage was waiting outside a white and gilded hotel on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice.
The sun was just dipping behind the Esterelle mountains and the Mediterranean was the colour of wine. Already the Palais du Jetée was being illuminated and outlined itself in palest gold against the painted sky above the Cimiez heights, where the olive-coloured headland hides Villefranche and the sea-girt pleasure city of Monte Carlo.
The tall palms in the gardens which front the gleaming palaces of the Promenade were bronze gold in the fading light, and their fans clicked and rustled in a cool breeze which was eddying down upon the Queen of the Mediterranean from the Maritime Alps.
Mary Lothian came out of the hotel. Her face was pale and very sad. She had been crying. With her was a tall, stately woman of middle-age; grey-haired, with a massive calmness and peace of feature recalling the Athena of the Louvre or one of those noble figures of the Erectheum crowning the hill of the Acropolis at Athens.
She was Mrs. Julia Daly, who had been upon the Riviera for two months. Dr. Morton Sims had written to her. She had called upon Mary and the two had become fast friends.
Such time as Mary could spare from the sickbed of her sister, she spent in the company of this great-souled woman from America, and now Mrs. Daly, whose stay at Nice was over, was returning to London with her friend.
The open carriage drove off, by the gardens and jewellers' shops in front of the Casino and Opera House and down the Avenue de la Gare. The glittering cafés were full of people taking an apéritif before dinner. There was a sense of relaxation and repose over the pleasure city of the South, poured down upon it in a golden haze from the last level rays of the sun.
Outside one of the cafés, as the carriage turned to the station, some Italians were singing "O Soli Mio" to the accompaniment of guitars and a harp, with mellow, passionate voices.
The long green train rolled into the glass-roofed station, the brass-work of the carriage doors covered thick with oily dust from the Italian tunnels through which it had passed. The conductor of the sleeping-car portion found the two women their reserved compartment. Their luggage was already registered through to Charing Cross and they had only dressing bags with them.
As the train started again Mrs. Daly pulled the sliding door into its place, the curtains over it and the windows which looked out into the corridor. Then she switched on the electric light in the roof and also the lamp which stood on a little table at the other end.
"There, my dear," she said, "now we shall be quite comfortable."
She sat down by Mary, took her hand in hers and kissed her.
"I know what you are experiencing now," she said in her low rich voice, "and it is very bitter. But the separation is only for a short, short time. God wants her, and we shall all be in heaven together soon, Mrs. Lothian. And you're leaving her with her husband. It is a great mercy that he has come at last. They are best alone together. And see how brave and cheery he is!—There's a real man, a Christian soldier and gentleman if ever one lived. His wife's death won't kill him. It will make him live more strenuously for others. He will pass the short time between now and meeting her again in a high fever of righteous works and duty. There is no death."
Mary held the firm white hand.
"You comfort me," she said. "I thank God that you came to me in my affliction. Otherwise I should have been quite alone till Harold came."
"I'm real glad that dear good Morton Sims asked me to call. Edith Sims and I are like". . .She broke off abruptly. "Like sisters," she was about to say, but would not.
Mary smiled. Her friend's delicacy was easy to understand. "I know," she answered, "like sisters! You needn't have hesitated. I am better now. All you tell me is just what I amsureof and it is everything. But one's heart grows faint at the moment of parting and the reassuring voice of a friend helps very much. I hope it doesn't mean that one's faith is weak, to long for a sympathetic and confirming voice?"
"No, it does not. God has made us like that. I know the value of a friend's word well. Nothing heartens one so. I have been in deep waters in my time, Mary. You must let me call you Mary, my dear."
"Oh, do, do! Yes, it is wonderful how words help, human living words."
"Nothing is more extraordinary in life than the power of the spoken word. How careful and watchful every one ought to be over words. Spoken, they always seem to me to have more lasting influence than words in a book. They pass through mind after mind. Just think, for instance, how when we meet a man or woman with a sincere intellectual belief which is quite opposed to our own, we are chilled into a momentary doubt of our own opinions—however strongly we may hold them. And when it is the other way about, what strength and comfort we get!"
"Thank you," Mary said simply, "you are very helpful. Dr. Morton Sims"—she hesitated for a moment—"Dr. Morton Sims told me something of your life. And of course I know all about your work, as the whole world knows. I know, dear Mrs. Daly, how much you have suffered. And it is because of that that you help me so, who am suffering too."
There was silence for a space. The train had stopped at Cannes and started again. Now it was winding and climbing the mountain valleys towards Toulon. But neither of the two women knew anything of it. They were alone in the quiet travelling room that money made possible for them. Heart was meeting heart in the small luxurious place in which they sat, remote from the outside world as if upon some desert island.
"Dear Morton Sims," the American lady said at length. "The utter sane goodness of that man! My dear, he is an angel of light, as near a perfect character as any one alive in the world to-day. And yet he doesn't believe in Jesus and thinks the Church and the Sacraments—I've been a member of the Episcopalian Church from girlhood—only make-believe and error."
"He is the finest natured man I have ever met," Mary answered. "I've only known him for a short time, but he has been so good and friendly. What a sad thing it is that he is an infidel. I don't use the word in the popular reprehensible sense, but as just what it means—without faith."
"It's a sad thing to us," Mrs. Daly said briskly, "but I have no fears for him. God hasn't given him the gift of Faith. Now that's all we can say about it. In the next world he will have to go through a probation and learn his catechism, so to speak, before he steps right into his proper place. But he won't be a catechumen long. His pure heart and noble life will tell where hearts and wills are weighed. There is a place by the Throne waiting for him."
"Oh, I am sure. He is wonderfully good. Indeed one seems to feel his goodness more than one does that of our clergyman at home, though Mr. Medley is a good man too!"
"Brains, my dear! Brains! Morton Sims, you see, is of the aristocracy. Your clergyman probably is not."
"Aristocracy?"
"The only aristocracy, the aristocracy of brain-power. Don't forget I'm an American woman, Mary! Goodness has the same value in Heaven however it is manifested upon earth. The question of bimetallism doesn't trouble God and His Angels. But a brilliant-minded Saint has certainly more influence down here than a fool-saint."
Mary nodded.
Such a doctrine as this was quite in accord with what she wished to think. She rejoiced to hear it spoken with such sharp lucidity. She also worshipped at a shrine, that of no saint, certainly, but where a flaming intellect illuminated the happenings of life. In his way, quite a different way, of course, she knew that Gilbert had a finer mind than even Morton Sims. And yet, Gilbert wasn't good, as he ought to be. . .. How these speculations and judgments coiled and recoiled upon themselves; puzzled weary minds and, when all was done, were very little good after all!
At any rate, she loved Gilbert more than anything or anybody in the world. So that was that!
But tears came into her eyes as she thought of her husband with deep and yearning love. If he would only give up alcohol!Whywouldn't he? To her, such an act seemed so simple and easy. Only a refusal, that was all! The young man who came to Jesus in the old days was asked to give up so much. Even for Jesus and immortality he found himself unable to do it. But Gilbert had only to give up one thing in order to be good and happy, to make her happy.
It was true that Dr. Morton Sims had told her many scientific facts, had explained and explained. He had definitely said that Gilbert was in the clutches of a disease; that Gilbert couldn't really help himself, that he must be cured as a man is cured of gout. And then, when she had asked the doctor how this was to be done, he had so little comfort to give. He had explained that all the advertised "cures"—even the ones backed up by people of name, bishops, magistrates, and so on, were really worthless. They administered other drugs in order to sober up the patient from alcohol. That was easy and possible—though only with the thorough co-operation of the patient. After a few weeks, when health appeared to be restored, and the will power was certainly strengthened, the "cure" did nothing more. Thepre-dispositionwas not eradicated. That was an affair to be accomplished only by two or three years of abstinence and not always then.
—"I'll talk to Mrs. Daly about it," the sad wife said to herself. "She is a noble, Christian woman. She understands more than even the doctor. Shemustdo so. She loves our Lord. Moreover she has given her life to the cause of temperance.". . .
But she must be careful and diplomatic. The natural reticence and delicacy of a well-bred woman shrank from the unveiling, not only of her own sorrow, but of a beloved's shame. The coarse, ill-balanced and bourgeois temperament bawls its sorrow and calls for sympathy from the sweepings of any Pentonville omnibus. It writes things upon a street wall and enjoys voluptuous public hysterics. The refined and gracious mind hesitates long before the least avowal.
"You said," she began, after a period of sympathetic silence, "that you had been in deep waters."
Julia Daly nodded. "I guess it's pretty well known," she said with a sigh. "That's the worst of a campaign like mine. It's partly because every one knows all about what you've gone through that they give you a hearing. In the States the papers are full of my unhappy story whenever I lecture in a new place. But I'm used to it now and it doesn't hurt me. Most of the stories are untrue, though. Mr. Daly was a pretty considerable ruffian when he was in drink. But he wasn't the monster he's been made out to be, and he couldn't help himself, poor, poisoned man. But which story have you read, Mary?"
"None at all. Only Dr. Morton Sims, when he wrote, told me that you had suffered, that your husband, that——"
"That Patrick was an alcoholic. Yes, that's the main fact. He did a dreadful thing when he became insane through drink. There's no need to speak of it. But I loved him dearly all the same. He might have been such a noble man!"
"Ah, that's just what I feel about my dear boy. He's not as bad as—as some people. But he does drink quite dreadfully. I hate telling you. It seems a sort of treachery to him. But you may be able to help me."
"I knew," Mrs. Daly said with a sigh. "The doctor has told me in confidence. I'd do anything to help you, dear girl. Your husband's poems have been such a help and comfort to me in hours of sadness and depression. Oh, what a dreadful scourge it is! this frightful thing that seizes on noble and ignoble minds alike! It is the black horror of the age, the curse of nations, the ruin of thousands upon thousands. If only the world would realise it!"
"No one seems to realise the horror except those who have suffered dreadfully from it."
"More people do than you think, Mary, but, still, they are an insignificant part of the whole. People are such fools! I was reading 'Pickwick' the other day, a great English classic and a work of genius, too, in its way, I suppose. The principal characters get drunk on every other page. Things are better now, as far as books are concerned, though the comic newspapers keep up their ghastly fun about drunken folk. But the cause of Temperance isn't a popular one, here or in my own country."
"A teetotaller is so often called a fanatic in England," Mary said.
"I know it well. But I say this, with entire conviction, absolute bed-rock certainty, my dear, the people who have joined together to go without alcohol themselves and to do all they can to fight it, are in the right whatever people may say of them. And it doesn't matter what people say either. As in all movements, there is a lot of error and mistaken energy. The Bands of Hope, the Blue Ribbon Army, the Rechabites are not always wise. Some of them make total abstinence into a religion and think that alcohol is the only Fiend to fight against. Most of them—as our own new scientific party think—are fighting on wrong lines. That's to say they are not doing a tenth as much good as they might do, because the scientific remedy has not become real to them. That will come though, if we can bring it about. But I tire you?"
"Please go on."
"Well, you know our theory. It is a certain remedy. You can't stop alcohol. But by making it a penal offence for drunkards to have children, drunkenness must be almost eliminated in time."
"Yes," Mary said. "Of course, I have read all about it. But I know so little of science. But what is theindividualcure? Is there none, then? Oh, surely if it is a disease it can be cured? Dr. Morton Sims tried to be encouraging, but I could see that he didn't think there reallywasmuch chance for a man who is a slave to drink. It is splendid, of course, to think that some day it may all be eliminated by science. But meanwhile, when women's hearts are bleeding for men they love. . ."
Her voice broke and faltered. Her heart was too full for further speech.
The good woman at her side kissed her tenderly. "Do not grieve," she said. "Listen. I told you just now that so many of the great Temperance organisations err in their rejection of scientific advice and scientific means to a great end. They place their trust in God, forgetting that science only exists by God's will and that every discovery made by men is only God choosing to reveal Himself to those who search for Him. But the Scientists are wrong, too, in their rejection—in so many cases—of God. They do not see that Religion and Science are not only non-antagonistic, but really complement each other. It is beginning to be seen, though. In time it will be generally recognised. I read the admission of a famous scientist the other day, to this effect. He said, 'It is generally recognised that any form of treatment in which the "occult," the "supernatural," or anything secret or mysterious is allowed to play a dominant part in so neurotic an affection as inebriety, often succeeds.' And he closed a most helpful and able essay on the arrest of alcohol with something like these words: