Chapter VII. Book V. Love scene between Claire and Lord Quinton. To run, say, 2,000 words. Find Biblical chapter caption. Mrs. T. at work on Chapter 145 in epilogue—discovery by Addie that Lord Q is really John Boone.
Chapter VII. Book V. Love scene between Claire and Lord Quinton. To run, say, 2,000 words. Find Biblical chapter caption. Mrs. T. at work on Chapter 145 in epilogue—discovery by Addie that Lord Q is really John Boone.
With experienced eyes, Toftrees surveyed the morning's work-menu as arranged by Miss Jones from painstaking scrutiny and dovetailing of the husband and wife's work on the preceding day.
"Biblical chapter caption"—that should be done at once.
Toftrees stretched out his hand and took down a "Cruden's Concordance." It was nearly two years ago now that he had discovered the Bible as an almost unworked mine for chapter headings.
"Love! hm, hm, hm,—why not 'Love one another'—? Yes, that would do. It was simple, direct, and expressed the sentiment of chapter VII. If there were any reason against it Miss Jones would spot it at once. She would find another quotation and so make it right."
Now then, to work!
"Claire, I am leaving here the day after to-morrow.""Yes?""Have you no idea, cannot you guess what it is that I have come to say to you?" He moved nearer to her and for a moment rested his hand on her arm."I have no idea," she told him with great gravity of manner."I have come to ask you to be my wife. Ah, wait before you bid me be silent. I love you—you surely cannot have failed to see that?—I love you, Claire!""Do not," she interrupted, putting up a warning hand. "I cannot hear you.""But you must. Forgive me, you shall. I love you as I never loved any woman in my life, and I am asking you to be my wife.""You do me much honour, Lord Quinton," she returned—and was it his fancy that made it seem to him that her lips curled a little?—"but the offer you make me I must refuse.""Refuse!" There was almost amusing wonder and a good deal of anger in his tone and look."You force me to repeat the word—refuse.""And why?""I do not want to marry you.""You do not love me?"—incredulously."I do not love you,"—colouring slightly."But I would teach you, Claire"—catching her arm firmly in his hold now and drawing her to him,—"I would teach you. I can give you all and more of wealth and luxury than——""Hush! And please let go my arm. If you could give me the world it would make no difference.""Claire, reconsider it! During the whole of my life I have never really wanted to marry any other woman. I will own that I have flirted and played at love.""No passport to my favour, I assure you, Lord Quinton.""Pshaw! I tell you women were all alike to me, all to be amusing and amused with, all so many butterflies till I met you. I won't mind admitting"—making his most fatal step—"that even when I first saw you—and it was not easy to do considering Warwick Howard kept you well in the background—I only thought of your sweet eyes and lovely face. But after—after—Oh, Claire, I learned to love you!""Enough!" cried the girl—
"Claire, I am leaving here the day after to-morrow."
"Yes?"
"Have you no idea, cannot you guess what it is that I have come to say to you?" He moved nearer to her and for a moment rested his hand on her arm.
"I have no idea," she told him with great gravity of manner.
"I have come to ask you to be my wife. Ah, wait before you bid me be silent. I love you—you surely cannot have failed to see that?—I love you, Claire!"
"Do not," she interrupted, putting up a warning hand. "I cannot hear you."
"But you must. Forgive me, you shall. I love you as I never loved any woman in my life, and I am asking you to be my wife."
"You do me much honour, Lord Quinton," she returned—and was it his fancy that made it seem to him that her lips curled a little?—"but the offer you make me I must refuse."
"Refuse!" There was almost amusing wonder and a good deal of anger in his tone and look.
"You force me to repeat the word—refuse."
"And why?"
"I do not want to marry you."
"You do not love me?"—incredulously.
"I do not love you,"—colouring slightly.
"But I would teach you, Claire"—catching her arm firmly in his hold now and drawing her to him,—"I would teach you. I can give you all and more of wealth and luxury than——"
"Hush! And please let go my arm. If you could give me the world it would make no difference."
"Claire, reconsider it! During the whole of my life I have never really wanted to marry any other woman. I will own that I have flirted and played at love."
"No passport to my favour, I assure you, Lord Quinton."
"Pshaw! I tell you women were all alike to me, all to be amusing and amused with, all so many butterflies till I met you. I won't mind admitting"—making his most fatal step—"that even when I first saw you—and it was not easy to do considering Warwick Howard kept you well in the background—I only thought of your sweet eyes and lovely face. But after—after—Oh, Claire, I learned to love you!"
"Enough!" cried the girl—
And enough also said the Remington, for the page was at an end. Toftrees withdrew it with a satisfied smile and glanced down it.
"Yes!" he thought to himself, "the short paragraph, the quick conversation, that's what they really want. A paragraph of ten consecutive lines would frighten them out of their lives. Their minds wouldn't carry from the beginning to the end. We know!"
At that moment there was a knock at the door and the butler entered. Smithers was a good servant and he enjoyed an excellent place, but it was the effort of his life to conceal from his master and mistress that he read Shakespeare in secret, and, in that household, his sense of guilt induced an almost furtive manner which Toftrees could never quite understand.
"Mr. Dickson Ingworth has called, sir," said Smithers.
"Ask him to come in," Toftrees said in his deep voice, and with a glint of interest in his eye.
Young Dickson Ingworth had been back from his journalistic mission to Italy for two or three weeks. His articles in the "Daily Wire" had attracted a good deal of attention. They were exceedingly well done, and Herbert Toftrees was proud of his protégé. He did not know—no one knew—that the Denstone master on the committee was a young man with a vivid and picturesque style who had early realised Ingworth's incompetence as mouthpiece of the expedition and representative of the Press. The young gentleman in question, anxious only for the success of the mission, had written nearly all Ingworth's stuff for him, and that complacent parasite was now reaping the reward.
But there was another, and greater, reason for Toftrees' welcome. Old Mr. Ingworth had died while his nephew was in Rome. The young man was now a squire in Wiltshire, owner of a pleasant country house, a personage.
"Ask Mr. Dickson Ingworth in here," Toftrees said again.
Ingworth came into the library.
He wore a morning coat and carried a silk hat—the tweeds and bowler of bohemia discarded now. An unobtrusive watch chain of gold had taken the place of the old silver-buckled lip-strap, and a largish black pearl nestled in the folds of his dark tie.
He seemed, in some subtle way, to have expanded and become less boyish. A certain gravity and dignity sat well upon his fresh good looks and the slight hint of alien blood in his features was less noticeable than ever.
Toftrees shook his young friend warmly by the hand. The worthy author was genuinely pleased to see the youth. He had done him a good service recently, pleased to exercise patronage of course, but out of pure kindness. Ingworth would not require any more help now, and Toftrees was glad to welcome him in a new relation.
Toftrees murmured a word or two of sorrow at Ingworth's recent bereavement and the bereaved one replied with suitable gravity. His uncle's sudden death had been a great grief to him. He would have given much to have been in England at the time.
"And the end?" asked Toftrees in a low voice of sympathy.
"Quite peaceful, I am glad to say, quite peaceful."
"That must be a great consolation!"
This polite humbug disposed of, both men fell immediately into bright, cheerful talk.
The new young squire was bubbling over with exhilaration, plans for the future, the sense of power, the unaccustomed and delightful feeling of solidity andsecurity.
He told his host, over their cigars, that the estate would bring him in about fifteen or sixteen hundred a year; that the house was a fine old Caroline building—who his neighbours were, and so on.
"Then I suppose you'll give up literature?" Toftrees asked.
Dickson Ingworth was about to assent in the most positive fashion to this question, when he remembered in whose presence he was, and his native cunning—"diplomacy" is the better word for a man with a Caroline mansion and sixteen hundred a year—came to his aid.
"Oh, no," he said, "not entirely. I couldn't, you know. But I shall be in a position now only to do my best work!"
Toftrees assented with pleasure. The trait interested him.
"I'm glad of that," he said. "To the artist, life without expression is impossible." Toftrees spoke quite sincerely. Although his own production was not of a high order he was quite capable of genuine appreciation of greater and more serious writers. It does not follow—as shallow thinkers tell us—that because a man does not follow his ideal that he is without one at all.
They smoked cigars and talked. As a matter of form the host offered Ingworth a drink, which was refused; they were neither of them men who took alcohol between meals from choice.
They chatted upon general matters for a time.
"And what of our friend the Poet?" Toftrees asked at length, with a slight sneer in his voice.
Ingworth flushed up suddenly and a look of hate came into his curious eyes. The acute man of the world noticed it in a second. Before Ingworth had left for his mission in Italy, he had been obviously changing his views about Gilbert Lothian. He had talked him over with Toftrees in a depreciating way. Even while he had been staying at Mortland Royal he had made confidences about Lothian's habits and the life of his house in letters to the popular author—while he was eating the Poet's salt.
But Toftrees saw now that there was something deeper at work. Was it, he wondered, the old story of benefits forgot, the natural instinct of the baser type of humanity to bite the hand that feeds?
Toftrees knew how lavish with help and kindness Lothian had been to Dickson Ingworth. For himself, he detested Lothian. The bitter epigrams Lothian had made upon him in a moment of drunken unconsciousness were by no means forgotten. The fact that Lothian had probably never meant them was nothing. They had some truth in them. They were uttered by a superior mind, they stung still.
"Oh, he's no friend of mine," Ingworth said in a bitter voice.
"Really? I know, of course, that you have disapproved of much that Mr. Lothian seems to be doing just now, but I thought you were still friends. It is a pity. Whatever he may do, there are elements of greatness in the man."
"He is a blackguard, Toftrees, a thorough blackguard."
"Iamsorry to hear that. Well, you needn't have any more to do with him, need you? He isn't necessary to your literary career any more. And even if you had not come into your inheritance, your Italian work has put you in quite a different position."
Ingworth nodded. He puffed quickly at his cigar. He was bursting with something, as the elder and shrewder man saw, and if he was not questioned he would come out with it in no time.
There was silence for a space, and, as Toftrees expected, it was broken by Ingworth.
"Look here, Toftrees," he said, "you are discreet and I can trust you."
The other made a grave inclination of his head—it was coming now!
"Very well. I don't want to say anything about a man whom I have liked, and whohasbeen kind to me. But there are times when one really must speak, whatever the past may have been—aren't there?"
Toftrees saw the last hesitation and removed it.
"Oh, he'll get over that drinking habit," he said, though he knew well that Ingworth was not bursting with that alone. "It's bad, of course, that such a man should drink. I was horribly upset—and so was my wife—at that dinner at the Amberleys'. But he'll get over it. And after all you know—poets!"
"It isn't that, Toftrees. It's a good deal worse than that. In fact I really do want your advice."
"My dear fellow you shall have it. We are friends, I hope, though not of long standing. Fire away."
"Well, then, it's just this. Lothian's wife is one of the most perfect women I have ever met. She adores him. She does everything for him, she's clever and good looking, sympathetic and kind."
Toftrees made a slight, very slight, movement of repugnance. He was a man who was temperamentally well-bred, born into a certain class of life. He might make a huge income by writing for housemaids at sixpence, but old training and habit became alive. One did not listen to intimate talk about other men's wives.
But the impulse was only momentary, a result of heredity. His interest was too keen for it to last.
"Yes?"
"Lothian doesn't care a bit for his wife—he can't. I know all about it, and I've seen it. He's doing a most blackguardly thing. He's running after a girl. Not any sort of girl, but alady."—
Toftrees grinned mentally, he saw how it was at once with the lad.
"No?" he said.
"Indeed, yes. She's a sweet and innocent girl whom he's getting round somehow or other by his infernal poetry and that. He's compromising her horribly and she can't see it. I've, I've seen something of her lately and I've tried to tell her as well as I could. But she doesn't take me seriously enough. She's not really in love with Lothian—I don't see how any young and pretty girl could really be in love with a man who looks like he's beginning to look. But they write—they've been about together in the most dreadfully compromising way. One never knows how far it may go. For the sake of the nicest girl I have ever known it ought to be put a stop to."
Toftrees smiled grimly. He knew who the girl was now, and he saw how the land lay. Young Ingworth was in love and frightened to death of his erstwhile friend's influence over the girl. That was natural enough.
"Suppose any harm were to come to her," Ingworth continued with something very like a break in his voice. "She's quite alone and unprotected. She is the daughter of a man who was in the Navy, and now she has to earn her own living as an assistant librarian in Kensington. A man like Lothian who can talk, and write beautiful letters—damned scoundrel and blackguard!"
Toftrees was not much interested in his young friend's stormy love-affairs. But hewasinterested in the putting of a spoke into Gilbert Lothian's wheel. And he had a genuine dislike and disgust of intrigue. A faithful husband to a faithful wife whose interests were identical with his, the fact of a married man of his acquaintance running after some little typewriting girl whose people were not alive to look after her, seemed abominable. Nice girls should not be used so. He thought of dodges and furtive meetings, sly telephone calls, and anxious country expeditions with a shudder. And if he thanked God that he was above these things, it was perhaps not a pharisaical gratitude that animated him.
"Look here," he said suddenly. "You needn't go on, Ingworth. I know who it is. It's Miss Wallace, of the Podley Library. She was at the Amberleys' that night when Lothian made such a beast of himself. She writes a little, too. Very pretty and charming girl!"
Ingworth assented eagerly. "Yes!" he cried, "that's just it! She's clever. She's intrigued by Lothian. She doesn'tlovehim, she told me so yesterday——"
He stopped, suddenly, realising what he had said.
Toftrees covered his confusion in a moment. Toftrees wanted to see this to the end.
"No, no," he said with assumed impatience. "Of course, she knows that Lothian is married, and, being a decent girl, she would never let her feelings—whatever they may be—run away with her. She's dazzled. That's what it is, and very natural, too! But it ought to be stopped. As a matter of fact, Ingworth, I saw them together at the Metropole at Brighton one night. They had motored down together. And I've heard that they've been seen about a lot in London at night. Most people know Lothian by sight, and such a lovely girl as Miss Wallace everyone looks at. From what I saw, and from what I've heard, they are very much in love with each other."
"It's a lie," Ingworth answered. "She's not in love with him. I know it! She's been led away to compromise herself, poor dear girl, that's all."
Now, Toftrees arose in his glory, so to speak.
"I'll put a stop to it," he said. The emperor of the sixpenny market was once more upon his virtuous throne.
His deep voice was rich with promise and power.
"I know Mr. Podley," he said. "I have met him a good many times lately. We are on the committee of the 'Pure Penny Literature Movement.' He is a thoroughly good and fatherly man. He's quite without culture, but his instincts are all fine. I will take him aside to-night and tell him of the danger—you are right, Ingworth, it is a real and subtle danger for that charming girl—that his young friend is in. Podley is her patron. She has no friends, no people, I understand. She is dependent for her livelihood upon her place at the Kensington Library. He will tell her, and I am sure in the kindest way, that she must not have anything more to do with our Christian poet, or she will lose her situation."
Ingworth thought for a moment. "Thanks awfully," he said, almost throwing off all disguise now. Then he hesitated—"But that might simply throw her into Lothian's arms," he said.
Toftrees shook his head. "I shall put it to Mr. Podley," he said, "and he, being receptive of other people's ideas and having few of his own, will repeat me, to point out the horrors of a divorce case, the utter ruin if Mrs. Lothian were to take action."
Ingworth rose from his seat.
"To-night?" he said. "You're to see this Podley to-night?"
"Yes."
"Then when do you think he will talk to Rit—to Miss Wallace?"
"I think I can ensure that he will do so before lunch to-morrow morning."
"You will be doing a kind and charitable thing, Toftrees," Ingworth answered, making a calculation which brought him to the doors of the Podley Institute at about four o'clock on the afternoon of the morrow.
Then he took his leave, congratulating himself that he had moved Toftrees to his purpose. It was an achievement! Rita would be frightened now, frightened from Gilbert for ever. The thing was already half done.
"Mine!" said Mr. Dickson Ingworth to himself as he got into a taxi-cab outside Lancaster Gate.
"I think I shall cook master Lothian's goose very well to-night," Herbert Toftrees thought to himself.
Mixed motives on both sides.
Half bad, perhaps, half good. Who shall weigh out the measures but God?
Ingworth was madly in love with Rita Wallace, who had become very fond of him. He was young, handsome, was about to offer her advantageous and honourable marriage.
Ingworth's passion was quite good and pure. Here he rose above himself. "All's fair"—treacheries grow small when they assist one's own desire and can be justified upon the score of morality as well.
Toftrees was outside the fierce burning of flames beyond his comprehension.
He was a cog-wheel in the machinery of this so swiftly-weaving loom.
But he also paid himself both ways—as he felt instinctively.
He and his wife owed this upstart and privately disreputable poet a rap upon the knuckles. He would administer it to-night.
And it was aduty, no less than a fortunate opportunity, to save a good and charming girl from a scamp.
When Toftrees told his wife all about it at lunch that morning she quite agreed, and, moreover, gave him valuable feminine advice as to the conduct of the private conversation with Podley.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AMNESIC DREAM-PHASE
"In the drunkenness of the chronic alcoholic the higher brain centres are affected more readily and more profoundly than the rest of the nervous system, with the result that the drinker, despite the derangement of his consciousness, is capable of apparently deliberate and purposeful acts. It is in this dream-state, which may last a considerable time, that the morbid impulses of the alcoholic are most often carried into effect."The Criminology of Alcoholismby William C. Sullivan, M.D., Medical Officer H.M. Prison Service.
"In the drunkenness of the chronic alcoholic the higher brain centres are affected more readily and more profoundly than the rest of the nervous system, with the result that the drinker, despite the derangement of his consciousness, is capable of apparently deliberate and purposeful acts. It is in this dream-state, which may last a considerable time, that the morbid impulses of the alcoholic are most often carried into effect."
The Criminology of Alcoholismby William C. Sullivan, M.D., Medical Officer H.M. Prison Service.
"The confirmed toper, who is as much the victim of drug-habit as the opium eater, may have amnesic dream phases, during which he may commit automatically offensive acts while he is mentally irresponsible."Medico-Legal Relations of Alcoholismby Stanley B. Atkinson, M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Barrister at Law.
"The confirmed toper, who is as much the victim of drug-habit as the opium eater, may have amnesic dream phases, during which he may commit automatically offensive acts while he is mentally irresponsible."
Medico-Legal Relations of Alcoholismby Stanley B. Atkinson, M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Barrister at Law.
At nine o'clock one evening Lothian went into his wife's room. It was a bitterly cold night and a knife-like wind was coming through the village from the far saltings. There was a high-riding moon but its light was fitful and constantly obscured by hurrying clouds.
Mary was lying in bed, patiently and still. She was not yet better. Dr. Heywood was a little puzzled at her continued listlessness and depression.
A bright fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections upon the bedroom ceiling. A shaded candle stood upon the bedside table, and there were also a glass of milk, some grapes in a silver dish, and the "Imitatio Christi" there.
Lothian was very calm and quiet in demeanour. His wife had noticed that whenever he came to see her during the last two or three days, there had been an unusual and almost drowsy tranquillity in his manner. His hands shook no more. His movements were no longer jerky. They were deliberate, like those of an ordinary and rather ponderous man.
And now, too, Gilbert's voice had become smooth and level. The quick and pleasant vibration of it at its best, the uneasy rise and fall of it at its worst, had alike given place to a suave, creamy monotone which didn't seem natural.
The face, also, enlarged and puffed by recent excesses, had further changed. The redness had gone from the skin. Even the eyes were bloodshot no longer. They looked fish-like, though. They had a steady introspective glare about them. The lips were red and moist, in this new and rather horrible face. The clear contour and moulding were preserved, but a quiet dreamy smile lurked about and never left them.
. . ."Gilbert, have you come to say goodnight?"
"Yes, dear,"—itwasan odd purring sort of voice—"How do you feel?"
"Not very well, dear. I am going to try very hard to sleep to-night. You're rather early in coming, are you not?"
"Yes, dear, I am. But the moon and the tides are right to-night and the wild duck are flighting. I am going out after widgeon to-night. I ought to do well."
"Oh, I see. I hope you'll have good luck, dear."
"I hope so. Oh, and I forgot, Mary, I thought of going off for three days to-morrow, down towards the Essex coast. I should take Tumpany. I've had a letter from the Wild Fowlers' Association man there to say that the geese are already beginning to come over. Would you mind?"
Mary saw that he had already made up his mind to go—for some reason or other.
"Yes, go by all means, dear," she said, "the change and the sport will do you good."
"You will be all right?"—how soapy and mechanical that voice was. . ..
"Oh, of course I shall. Don't think abitabout me. Perhaps—" she hesitated for a moment and then continued with the most winning sweetness—"perhaps, Gillie darling, it will buck you up so that you won't want to. . ."
The strange voice that was coming from him dried the longing, loving words in her throat.
"Well, then, dear, I shall say good-bye, now. You see I shall be out most of this night, and if Tumpany and I are to catch the early train from Wordingham and have all the guns ready, we must leave here before you will be awake. I mean, you sleep into the morning a little now, don't you?"
He seemed anxious as he asked.
"Generally, Gillie. Then if it is to be good-bye for two days, good-bye my dear, dear husband. Come——"
She held out her arms, lying there, and he had to bend into her embrace.
"I shall pray for you all the time you are away," she whispered. "I shall think of my boy every minute. God bless you and preserve you, my dear husband."
She was doubtless about to say more, to murmur other words of sacred wifely love, when her arms slid slowly away from him and lay motionless upon the counterpane.
Immediately they did so, the man's figure straightened itself and stood upright by the side of the bed.
"Well, I'll go now," he said. "Good-night, dear."
He turned his full, palish face upon her, the yellow point of flame, coming through the top of the candle shade, showed it in every detail.
Fixed, introspective eyes, dreamy painted smile, a suave, uninterested farewell.
The door closed gently behind him. It was closed as a bland doctor closes a door.
Mary lay still as death.
The room was perfectly silent, save for the fall of a red coal in the fire or the tiny hiss and spurt of escaping gas in thin pencils of old gold and amethyst.
Then there came a loud sound into the room.
It was a steady rhythmic sound, muffled but alarming. It seemed to fill the room.
In a second or two more Mary knew that it was only her heart beating.
"But I am frightened," she said to herself. "I am really frightened. This is FEAR!"
And Fear it was, such as this clear soul had not known. This daughter of good descent, with serene, temperate mind and body, had ever been high poised above gross and elemental fear.
To her, as to the royal nature of her friend Julia Daly, God had early given a soul-guard of angels.
Now, for the first time in her life, Mary knew Fear. And she knew an unnameable disgust also. Her heart drummed. The back of her throat grew hot—hotter than her fever made it. And, worse, a thousand times more chilling and dreadful, she felt as if she had just been holding something cold and evil in her arms.
. . .The voice was unreal and almost incredible. The waxen mask with its set eyes and the small, fine mouth caught into a fixed smile—oh! this was not her husband!
She had been speaking with someThing. SomeThing, dressed in Gilbert's flesh had come smirking into her quiet room. She had held it in her arms and prayed for it.
Drum, drum!—She put her left hand, the hand with the wedding ring upon it, over the madly throbbing heart.
And then, in her mind, she asked for relief, comfort, help.
The response was instant.
Her life had always been so fragrant and pure, her aims so single-hearted, her delight in goodness and her love of Jesus so transparently immanent, that she was far nearer the Veil than most of us can ever get.
She asked, and the amorphous elemental things of darkness dissolved and fled before heavenly radiance. The Couriers of the Wind of the Holy-Ghost came to her with the ozone of Paradise beating from their wings.
Doubtless it was now that some Priest-Angel gave Mary Lothian that last Viaticum which was to be denied to her from the hands of any earthly Priest.
It was a week ago that Mr. Medley had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Mary. It was seven days since she had thus met her Lord.
But He was with her now. Already of the Saints, although she knew it not, a Cloud of Witnesses surrounded her.
Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven were loving her, waiting for her.
Lothian went along the corridor to the library, which was on the first floor of the house. His footsteps made no noise upon the thick carpet. He walked softly, resolutely, as a man that had much to do.
The library was not a large room but it was a very charming one. A bright fire burned upon the hearth. Two comfortable saddle-back chairs of olive-coloured leather stood on either side of it, and there was a real old "gate-table" of dark oak set by one of the chairs with a silver spirit-stand upon it.
Along all one side, books rose to the ceiling, his beloved friends of the past, in court-dress of gold and damson colour, in bravery of delicate greens; in leather which had been stained bright orange, some of them; while others showed like crimson aldermen and red Lord Mayors.
Let into the wall at the end of the room—opposite to the big Tudor window—was the glass-fronted cupboard in which the guns were kept. The black-blue barrels gleamed in rows, the polished stocks caught the light from the candles upon the mantel-shelf. The huge double eight-bore like a shoulder-cannon ranked next to the pair of ten-bores by Greener. Then came the two powerful twelve-gauge guns by Tolley, chambered for three inch shells and to which many geese had fallen upon the marshes. . . .
Lothian opened the glass door and took down one of the heavy ten-bores from the rack.
He placed it upon a table, opened a cupboard, took out a leather cartridge bag and put about twenty "perfect" cases of brass, loaded with "smokeless diamond" and "number four" shot, into the bag.
Then he rang the bell.
"Tell Tumpany to come up," he said to Blanche who answered the summons.
Presently there was a somewhat heavy lurching noise as the ex-sailor came up the stairs and entered the library with his usual scrape and half-salute.
Tumpany was not drunk, but he was not quite sober. He was excited by the prospect of the three days' sport in Essex and he had been celebrating the coming treat in the Mortland Royal Arms. He had enjoyed beer in the kitchen of the old house—by Lothian's orders.
"Now be here by seven sharp to-morrow, Tumpany," Lothian said, still in his quiet level voice. "We must catch the nine o'clock from Wordingham without fail. I'm going out for an hour or two on the marshes. The widgeon are working over the West Meils with this moon and I may get a shot or two."
"Cert'nly, sir. Am I to come, sir?"
"No, I think you had better go home and get to bed. You've a long day before you to-morrow. I shan't be out late."
"Very good, sir. You'll take Trust? Shall I go and let him out?"
Lothian seemed to hesitate, while he cast a shrewd glance under his eyelids at the man.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "I ought to be able to pick up any birds I get myself in this light, and on the West Meils. I shan't stay out long either. You see, Trust has to go with us to-morrow and he's always miserable in the guard's van. He'll have to work within a few hours of our arrival and I thought it best to give him as much rest as possible beforehand. He isn't really necessary to me to-night. But what do you think?"
Tumpany was flattered—as it was intended that he should be flattered—at his advice being asked in this way. He agreed entirely with his master.
"Very well then. You'd better go down again to the kitchen. I'll be with you in ten minutes. Then you can walk with me to the marsh head and carry the bag."
Tumpany scrambled away to kitchen regions for more beer.
Lothian walked slowly up and down the library. His head was falling forward upon his chest. He was thinking, planning.
Every detail must be gone into. It was always owing to neglect of detail that things fell through, thatthingswere found out. Nemesis waited on the failure of fools!
A week ago the word "Nemesis" would have terrified him and sent him into the labyrinth of self-torture—crossings, touchings, and the like.
Now it meant nothing.
Yes: that was all right. Tumpany would accompany him to the end of the village—the farthest end of the village from the "Haven"—there could be no possible idea. . . .
Lothian nodded his head and then opened a drawer in the wall below the gun cupboard. He searched in it for a moment and withdrew a small square object wrapped in tissue paper.
It was a spare oil-bottle for a gun-case.
The usual oil-receptacle in a gun-case is exactly like a small, square ink-bottle, though with this difference; when the metal top is unscrewed, it brings with it an inch long metal rod, about the thickness of a knitting needle but flattened at the end.
This is used to take up beads of oil and apply them to the locks, lever, and ejector mechanisms of a gun.
Lothian slipped the thing into a side pocket of his coat.
In a few minutes, dressed in warm wildfowling clothes of grey wool and carrying his gun, he was tramping out of the long village street with Tumpany.
The wind sang like flying arrows, the dark road was hard beneath their feet.
They came to Tumpany's cottage and little shop, which were on the outskirts of the village.
Then Lothian stopped.
"Look here," he said, "you can give me the bag now. There really isn't any need for you to come to the marsh head with me, Tumpany.—Much better get to bed and be fresh for to-morrow."
The man was nothing loth. The lit window of his house invited him.
"Thank you, sir," he said, sobered now by the keen night wind, "then I'll say good-night."
—"Night Tumpany."
"G'night, sir."
Lothian tramped away into the dark.
The sailor stood for a moment with his hand upon the latch of his house door, listening to the receding footsteps.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked himself. "He speaks different like. Yesterday morning old Trust seemed positive afraid of him! Never saw such a thing before! And to-night he seems like a stranger somehow. I felt queer, in a manner of speaking, as I walked alongside of him. But what a bloody fool I am!" Tumpany concluded, using the richest adjective he knew, as his master's footsteps died away and were lost.
In less than ten minutes Lothian stood upon the edge of the vast marshes.
It was a ghostly place and hour. The wind wailed over the desolate miles like a soul sick for the love it had failed to win in life. The wide creeks with their cliff-like sides of black mud were brimming with sullen tidal water, touched here and there by faint moonbeams—lemon colour on lead.
Night birds passed high over head with a whistle of wings, heard, but not seen in the gloom. From distant Wordingham to far Blackney beyond which were the cliffs of Sherringham and Cromer, for twelve miles or more, perhaps not a dozen human beings were out upon the marshes.
A few bold wildfowlers in their frail punts with the long tapering guns in the bows, might be "setting to birds"; enduring the bitter cold, risking grave danger, and pursuing the wildest and most wary of living things with supreme endurance throughout the night.
Once the wind brought two deep booms to Lothian. His trained ear knew and located the sound at once. One of the Wordingham fowlers was out upon the flats three miles away, and had fired his double eight-bore, the largest shoulder gun that even a strong man can use.
But the saltings were given over to the night and the things of the night.
The plovers called, "'Tis dark and late." "'Tis late and dark."
The wind sobbed coldly; wan clouds sped to hood the moon with darkness. Brown hares crouched among the coarse marrum grasses, the dun owls were afloat upon the air, sounding their oboe notes, and always the high unseen flight of whistling ducks went on all over the desolate majesty of the marshes.
And beyond it all, through it all, could be heard the hollow organs of the sea.
Lothian was walking rapidly. His breathing was heavy and muffled. He skirted the marsh and did not go upon it, passing along the grass slope of foreshore which even a full marsh tide never conquered; going back upon his own trail, parallel to the village.
There were sharp pricking pains in his knees and ankles. Hot sweat clotted his clothes to his body and rained down his face. But he was unaware of this. His alarming physical condition was as nothing.
He went on through the dark, hurriedly, like a man in ambush.
Now and then he stumbled at inequalities of the ground or caught his foot in furze roots. Obscene words escaped him when this happened. They burst from between the hot cracked lips, mechanical and thin. The weak complaints of some poor filthy-minded ghost!
He knew nothing of what he said.
But with knife-winds upon his face, thin needles in his joints; sodden flesh quivering with nervous tremors and wet with warm brine, he went onwards with purpose.
He was in the Amnesic Dream-phase.
Every foul and bestial impulse which is hidden in the nature of man was riotous and awake.
The troglodytes showed themselves at last.
All the unnameable, unthinkable things that lie deep below the soul, far below the conscience, in the lowest and sealed cellars of personality, had burst from their hidden prisons.
The Temple of the Holy Ghost was full of the squeaking, gibbering Powers of utmost, nethermost Hell.
—These are similes which endeavour to hint at the frightful Truth.
Science sums it up in a simple statement. Lothian was now in "The Amnesic dream-phase."
He came to where a grass road bounded by high hedges led down to the foreshore.
Crouching under the sentinel hedge of the road's end, he lit a match and looked at his watch.
It was fifteen minutes past ten o'clock.
Old Phœbe Hannett and her daughter, the servants of Morton Sims at the "Haven," would now be fast in slumber. Christopher, the doctor's personal servant, was in Paris with his master.
The Person who walked in a Dream turned up the unused grass-grown road.
He was now at the East end of the village.
The path brought him out upon the highroad a hundred yards above the rectory, Church, and the schools. From there it was a gentle descent to the very centre of the village, where the "Haven" was.
There were no lights nor lamp-posts in the village. By now every one would be gone to bed. . . .
There came a sudden sharp chuckle into the night. Something was congratulating itself with glee that it had put water-boots with india-rubber soles upon its feet; noiseless soles that would make no sound upon the gravelled ways about the familiar house that had belonged to Admiral Custance.
. . .Lothian lifted the latch of the gate which led to the short gravel-drive of the "Haven" with delicate fingers. An expert handles a blown bird's-egg so.
It rose. It fell. Not a crack came from the slowly-pushed gate which fell back into its place with no noise, leaving the night-comer inside.
The gables of the house rose black and stark against the sky. The attic-windows where old dame Hannett and her daughter slept were black. They were fast in sleep now.
The night-intruder set his gun carefully against the stone pillar of the gate. Then he tripped over the pneumatic lawns before the house with almost a dance in his step.
He frisked over the lawns, avoiding the chocolate patches that meant flower-beds, with complacent skill.
Just then no clouds obscured the moon, which rode high before the advancing figure.
A fantastic shadow followed Lothian, coquetting with the flower beds, popping this way and that, but ever at his heels.
It threw itself about in swimming areas of grey vagueness and then concentrated itself into a black patch with moving outlines.
There was an ecstasy about this dancing shadow.
And now, the big building which had been a barn and which Admiral Custance had re-built and put to various uses, cut wedge-like into the lit sky.
The Shadow crept close to the Dream Figure and crouched at its heels.
It seemed to be spurring that figure on, to be whispering in its ear. . . .
We know all about the Dream Figure. Through the long pages of this chronicle we have learned how, and of what, It has been born.
And were it not that experts of the Middle Age—when Demonology was a properly recognised science—have stated that a devil has never a shadow, we should doubtless have been sure that it was our old friend, the Fiend Alcohol, that contracted and expanded with such fantastic measures over the moon-lit grass.
Lothian knew his way well about this domain.
Admiral Custance had been his good friend. Often in the old sailor's house, or in Lothian's, the two had tippled together and drank toasts to the supremacy which Queen Britannia has over the salt seas.
The lower floor of the barn had been used as a box-room for trunks and a general store-house, though the central floor-space was made into a court for Badminton; when nephews and nieces, small spars of Main and Mizzen and the co-lateral Yardarms, came to play upon a retired quarter-deck.
The upper floor had ever been sacred to the Admiral and his hobbies.
From below, the upper region was reached by a private stairway of wood outside the building. Of this entrance the sailor had always kept the key. A little wooden balcony ran round the angle of the building to where, at one end, a large window had been built in the wall.
Lothian went up the outside stairs noiselessly as a cat, and round the little gallery to the long window. Here he was in deep shadow.
The two leaves of the window did not quite meet. The wood had shrunk, the whole affair was rickety and old.
As he had anticipated, the night-comer had no difficulty in pushing the blade of his shooting knife through the crevice and raising the simple catch.
He stepped into the room, long empty and ghostly.
First, he closed the window again, and then let down the blue blind over it. A skylight in the sloped roof provided all the other light. Through this, now, faint and fleeting moonlights fell.
By the gallery door there was a mat. Lothian stepped gingerly to it and wiped the india-rubber boots he wore.
Then he took half a wax candle from a side-pocket and lit it. It was quite impossible that the light could be seen from outside, even if spectators there were, in the remote slumbering village.
In the corners of the long room, black-velvet shadows lurked as the yellow candle flame moved.
A huge spider with a body as big as sixpence ran up one canvas-covered wall. Despite the cold, the air was lifeless and there was a very faint aroma of chemical things in it.
On all sides were long deal tables covered with a multiplicity of unusual objects.
Under a big bell of glass, popped over it to keep the dust away, was a large microscope of intricate mechanism. Close by was a section-cutter that could almost make a paring of a soul for scrutiny. Leather cases stood here and there full of minute hypodermic syringes, and there was a box of thin glass tubes containing agents for staining the low protoplasmic forms of life which must be observed by those who wish to arm the world against the Fiend Alcohol.
At the far end of the room, on each side of the fireplace were two glass-fronted cupboards, lined with red baize. In one of them Admiral Custance had kept his guns.
These cupboards had been constructed by the village carpenter—who had also made the gun cupboard in Lothian's library. They were excellent cupboards and with ordinary locks and keys—the Mortland Royal carpenter, indeed, buying these accessories of his business of one pattern, and by the gross, from Messrs. Pashwhip and Moger's iron-mongery establishment in Wordingham.
Lothian took the key of his own gun cupboard from his waistcoat pocket. It fitted the hole of the cupboard here—on the right side of the fireplace, exactly as he had expected.
The glass doors swung open with a loud crack, and the contents on the shelves were clearly exposed to view.
Lothian set his candle down upon the edge of an adjacent table and thought for a moment.
During their intimate conversations—before Lothian's three weeks in London with Rita Wallace, while his wife was at Nice, Dr. Morton Sims had explained many things to him. The great man had been pleased to find in a patient, in an artist also, the capability of appreciating scientific truth and being interested in the methods by which it was sought.
Lothian knew therefore, that Morton Sims was patiently following and extending the experiments of Professor Fraenkel at his laboratory in Halle, varying the investigation of Deléarde and carrying it much farther.
Morton Sims was introducing alcohol into rabbits and guinea pigs, sub-cutaneously or into the stomach direct, exhibiting the alcohol in well-diluted forms and over long periods. He was then inoculating these alcoholised subjects, and subjects which had not been alcoholised, with the bacilli of consumption—tubercle bacilli—and diphtheria toxin—the poison produced by the diphtheria bacillus.
He was endeavouring to obtain indisputable evidence of increased susceptibility to infection in the animal body under alcoholic influences.
Of all this, Lothian was thoroughly aware. He stood now—if indeed itwasGilbert Lothian the poet who stood there—in front of an open cupboard; the cupboard he had opened by secrecy and fraud.
Upon those shelves, as he well knew, organic poisons of immeasurable potency were resting.
In those half-dozen squat phials of glass, surrounded with felt and with curious stoppers, an immense Death was lurking.
All the quick-firing guns of the navies of the world were not so powerful as one of these little glass receptacles.
The breath came thick and fast from the intruder. It went up in clouds from his heated body; vapourised into steam which looked yellow in the candlelight.
After a minute he drew near to the cupboard.
A trembling, exploring finger pushed among the phials. It isolated one.
Upon a label pasted on the glass, were two words in Greek characters, "διφθ. ποξιν."
Here, in this vessel of gelatinous liquid, lurked the destroying army of diphtheria bacilli, millions strong.
The man held up the candle and its light fell full upon the neat cursive Greek, so plain for him to read.
He stared at it with focussed eyes. His head was pushed forward a little and oscillated slowly from side to side. The sweat ran down it and fell with little splashes upon the floor.
Then his hand began to tremble and the light flickered and danced in the recesses of the cupboard.
He turned away, shaking, and set the candle end upon the table. It swayed, toppled over, flared for a moment and went out.
But he could not wait to light it again. His attendant devil was straying, he must be called back. . .to help.
Lothian plunged his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a flat flask of silver. It was full of undiluted whiskey.
He took a long steady pull, and the fire went through him instantly.
With firm fingers now, he screwed on the top of the flask and re-lit the candle stump. Then he took the marked phial from the cupboard shelf and set it on the table.
From a side pocket he took the little oil-bottle belonging to a travelling gun-case and unscrewed the top of that.
And now, with cunning knowledge, he takes the thick, grey woollen scarf from his neck and drenches a certain portion of its folds with raw whiskey from his flask. He binds the muffler round the throat and nose in such fashion that the saturated portion confines all the outlets of his breathing.
One must risk nothing one's self when one plays and conjures with the spawn and corruptions of death!
. . .It is done, done with infinite nicety and care—no trembling fingers now.
The vial is unstopped, the tube within has poured a drop or two of its contents into the oil-bottle, the projecting needle of which is damp with death.
The cupboard is closed and locked again. Ah! there is candle grease upon the table! It is scraped up, to the minutest portion, with the blade of the shooting knife.
Then he is out upon the balcony again. One last task remains. It is to close the long windows so that the catch will fall into its rusty holder and no trace be left of its ever having been opened.
This is not easy. It requires preparation, dexterity and thought. Cunning fingers must use the thin end of the knife to bend the little brass bracket which is to receive the falling catch. It must be bent outwards, and in the bending a warning creak suggests that the screws are parting from the rotten wood.
But it is done at last, surely dexterously. No gentlemanly burglar of the magazines could have done it better.
. . .There is no moon now. It is necessary to feel one's way in silence over the lawn and reach the outer gate.
This is done successfully, the Fiend is a good quick valet-fiend to-night and aids at every point.
The gate is closed with a gentle "click," there is only the "pad, pad" of the night-comer's footsteps passing along the dark village street towards the Old House with poison in his pocket and murder in his heart.
Outside his own gate, Lothian's feet assume a brisk and confidential measure. He rattles the latch of the drive gate and tries to whistle in a blithe undertone.
Bedroom windows may be open, it will be as well that his low, contented whistle—as of one returning from healthy night-sport—may be heard.
His lips are too cracked and salt to whistle, however. He tries to hum the burden of a song, but only a faint "croak, croak," sounds in the cold, quiet night—for the wind has fallen now.
Not far away, behind the palings of his little yard, The Dog Trust whines mournfully.
Once he whines, and then with a full-throat and opened muzzle Dog Trust bays the moon behind its cloud-pall.
When he hears the footfall of one he knows and loves, Dog Trust greets it with low, anxious whines.
He is no watch-dog. His simple duties are unvaried from the marsh and field. Growl of hostility to night-comers he knows not. His faithful mind has been attuned to no reveillé note.
But he howls mournfully now.
The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and hostile approaching the house.
So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into the warm straw of his kennel.
Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house.
The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one.
The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud anchored to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings. It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a bugle in the mind.
Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived fresh and happy at the Old House.
He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In Essex the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon anticipation and the morning.
In the kitchen Phœbe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of the hour.
The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready for the four-wheel dogcart.
"Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress will have a chance to get right. . . .Master said good-bye to Mistress last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche.
"Yes, but he may want to go in again and disturb her."
"I don't believe he will. She's asleep now. Those things Dr. Heywood give her keep her quiet. But still you'd better go quietly into her room with her morning milk, Blanche. If she's asleep, just leave it there, so she'll find it when she wakes up."
"Very well, cook, I will," the housemaid said—"Oh, there's that Tumpany!"
Tumpany came into the kitchen. He wore his best suit. He was quite dictatorial and sober. He spoke in brisk tones.
"What are you going to do, my girl?" he said to Blanche in an authoritative voice.
"Hush, you silly. Keep quiet, can't you?" Phœbe said angrily. "Blanche is taking up Mistress' milk in case she wakes."
"Where's master, then?"
"Master is in the library. He'll be down in a minute."
"Can I go up to him, cook?. . .There's something about the guns——"
"No. You cannot, Tumpany. But Blanche will take any message.—Blanche, knock at the library door and say Tumpany wants to see Master. But do it quietly. Remember Missis is sleeping at the other end of the passage."
As Blanche went up the stairs with her tray, the library door was open, and she saw her master strapping a suit case. She stopped at the open door.
—"Please, sir, Tumpany wants to speak to you."
Lothian looked up. It was almost as if he had expected the housemaid.
"All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got there—oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table, and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress."
The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the room, closing the door after her.
It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer in the table.
Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver plated top.
In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to the glass of milk.
Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top.
The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head, hung from the slanting point.
Lothian plunged the needle into the glass of milk, moving it this way and that.
He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer.
He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed by Tumpany.
"What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray and left the room with it.
"I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and locked now, sir. You've got the keys."
"By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had made at Tolley's—where are they?"
"Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard.
"Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the key of the ten-bore case."
"Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me."
"Yes. I'll be down in a minute."
Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom.
He met Blanche in the corridor.
"Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I just put her milk on the table and came out quietly."
"Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute."
In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the water, which immediately became a purplish pink.
He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now tightly stoppered again, in one of them.
For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the bottle, drying them on a towel.
. . .There was no possible danger of infection now. As for the bottle, he would throw it out of the window of the train when he was a hundred miles from Mortland Royal.
He came out into the corridor once more. His face was florid and too red. Close inspection would have disclosed the curiously bruised look of the habitual inebriate. But, in his smart travelling suit of Harris tweed, with well-brushed hair, white collar and the "bird's eye" tie that many country gentlemen affect, he was passable enough.
A dreamy smile played over his lips. His eyes—not quite so bloodshot this morning—were drowsed with quiet thought.
As he was about to descend the stairs he turned and glanced towards a closed door at the end of the passage.
It was the door of Mary's room and this was his farewell to the wife whose only thought was of him, with whom, in "The blessed bond of board and bed" he had spent the happy years of his first manhood and success.
A glance at the closed door; an almost complacent smile; after all those years of holy intimacy this was his farewell.
As he descended the stairs, the Murderer was humming a little tune.
The two maid servants were in the hall to see him go. They were fond of him. He was a kind and generous master.
"You're looking much better this morning, sir," said Phœbe. She was pretty and privileged. . . .
"I'm feeling very well, Phœbe. This little trip will do me a lot of good, and I shall bring home lots of birds for you to cook. Now mind both you girls look after your Mistress well. I shall expect to see her greatly improved when I return. Give her my love when she wakes up. Don't forward any letters because I am not certain where I shall be. It will be in the Blackwater neighbourhood, Brightlingsea, or I may make my headquarters at Colchester for the three days. But I can't be quite sure. I shall be back in three days."
"Good morning, sir. I hope you'll have good sport."
"Thank you, Phœbe—that's right, Tumpany, put Trust on the seat first and then get up yourself—what's the matter with the dog?—never saw him so shy. No, James, you drive—all right?—Let her go then."
The impatient mare in the shafts of the cart pawed the gravel and was off. The trap rolled out of the drive as Lothian lit a cigar.
It really was a most perfect early morning, and there was a bloom upon the stubble and Mortland Royal wood like the bloom upon a plum.
The air was keen, the sun bright. The pheasants chuckled in the wood, the mare's feet pounded the hard road merrily.
"What a thoroughly delightful morning!" Lothian said to the groom at his side and his eyes were still dreamy with subtle content.