. . ."So, Rita, I am going to write a great poem for you. Will you take it from your friend? I think you will, for it will be made for you in the first place and wrought with all my skill."I am going to call it 'A Lady in a Library.' No one will know the innermost inwardness of it but just you and me. Will not that be delightful, Rita mia amica? When you answer this letter, say that it will be delightful, please!"'A Lady in a Library!' Are not the words wonderful—say it quietly to yourself—'A Lady in a Library!'"
. . ."So, Rita, I am going to write a great poem for you. Will you take it from your friend? I think you will, for it will be made for you in the first place and wrought with all my skill.
"I am going to call it 'A Lady in a Library.' No one will know the innermost inwardness of it but just you and me. Will not that be delightful, Rita mia amica? When you answer this letter, say that it will be delightful, please!
"'A Lady in a Library!' Are not the words wonderful—say it quietly to yourself—'A Lady in a Library!'"
This was the poem which appeared two months afterwards in theEnglish Reviewand definitely established Gilbert Lothian's claim to stand in the very forefront of the poets of his decade. It is certain to live long. More than one critic of the highest standing has printed his belief that it will be immortal, and many lovers of the poet's work think so too.
. . ."The Lady and the Poet meet in a Library upon a golden afternoon. She is the very Spirit and Genius of the place. She has drawn beauty from many brave books. They have told her their secrets as she moves among them, and lavished all their store upon her. Some of the beauty which they hold has passed into her face, and the rosy tints of youth become more glorious."Oh, they have been very generous!"The thin volume of Keats gave her eyes their colour, but an old and sober-backed edition of Coleridge opened its dun boards and robbed the magic stanzas of 'Kubla Khan' to give them their mystery and wonder."Milton bestowed the music of her voice, but it came from the second volume in which Comus lies hid. Her smile was half Herrick and half Heine, and her hair was spun in a 'Wood near Athens' by the fairies—Tom III,Opera Glmi Shakespeare, Editio e Libris Podley!—upon a night in Midsummer.""Random thoughts, Cupid! random thoughts! They come to me like moths through the still night, and I put them down for you. A grey-fawnPapillon de nuitis fluttering round my candles now and sometimes he falls flapping and whirring on my paper like a tiny clock-work toy. But I will not kill him. I am happy in writing to my friend, distilling my friendship for you in the lonely laboratory of self, so he shall go unharmed. His ancestors may have feasted upon royal tapestries and laid their eggs in the purple robes of kings!"What are the moths like in Kensington this night, Cupid?—But of course you are asleep now. I make a picture for myself of you sleeping."The whole village is asleep now, save only me, and I am trying to reconstruct our afternoon and evening together, five days ago or was it six? It is more than ever possible to do that at midnight and alone, though every detail is etched upon my memory and I am only adding colour."How happy we were! It is so strange to me to think how instantly we became friends—as we are agreed we are always to be, you and I. And think of all we still have to find out about each other! There are golden days coming in our friendship, all sorts of revelations and surprises. There are so many enchanted places in the Kingdom of Thought to which I have the key, so many doors I shall open for you."Ours shall be a perfect friendship—of your bounty I crave again what you have already given!—and I will build it up as an artificer in rare woods or stained marbles, a carver of moon-stones, a builder of temples in honey-coloured Travertine, makes beautiful states in which the soul can dwell, out of beautiful perishable things."How often do two people meet as you and I have met? Most rarely. Men and women fall in love, sometimes too early, sometimes too late. There is a brief summer, and then a long winter of calm grey days which numb the soul into acquiescence, or stab the dull tranquillity with the lightnings of tragedy and woe."We have the better part! We are to be friends, Rita, you and I—that is the rivulet of repeated melody which runs through my first letter to you. Some sad dawn will rise for me, when you tell of something nearer and more poignant than anything I can offer you. It will be a dawn in which, for you the trumpets, the sackbuts and the psalteries of Heaven will sound. And your friend will bless you; and retire to the back of the scene with a most graceful bow!"In the last act of the play, when all the players appear as Nymphs and Graces, and Seasons, your friend will be found wearing the rich yet sober liveries of Autumn, saluting Spring and her Partner with a courtly song, and a dance which expresses his sentiments according to the best choreographic traditions."But, as he retires among the last red leaves of the year, and walks jauntily down the forest rides as the setting sun shows the trees already bare, he will know one thing, even if Spring does not know it then—when she turns to her Partner."He will know that in her future life, his voice, his face, can never be quite forgotten. Sometimes, at the feast, 'surgit amari aliquid' that he is not present there with the wistful glance, the hands that were ever reverent, the old familiar keys!"For a brief instant of recollection, he will have for you 'L'effet d'un clair-de-lune par une nuit d'été'. And you will say to yourself, 'Ami du temps passés, vos paroles me reviennent comme un écho lointain, comme le son d'un cloche apporté par le vent; et il me semble que vous êtes là quand je lis des passages d'amour dans vos livres'."
. . ."The Lady and the Poet meet in a Library upon a golden afternoon. She is the very Spirit and Genius of the place. She has drawn beauty from many brave books. They have told her their secrets as she moves among them, and lavished all their store upon her. Some of the beauty which they hold has passed into her face, and the rosy tints of youth become more glorious.
"Oh, they have been very generous!
"The thin volume of Keats gave her eyes their colour, but an old and sober-backed edition of Coleridge opened its dun boards and robbed the magic stanzas of 'Kubla Khan' to give them their mystery and wonder.
"Milton bestowed the music of her voice, but it came from the second volume in which Comus lies hid. Her smile was half Herrick and half Heine, and her hair was spun in a 'Wood near Athens' by the fairies—Tom III,Opera Glmi Shakespeare, Editio e Libris Podley!—upon a night in Midsummer."
"Random thoughts, Cupid! random thoughts! They come to me like moths through the still night, and I put them down for you. A grey-fawnPapillon de nuitis fluttering round my candles now and sometimes he falls flapping and whirring on my paper like a tiny clock-work toy. But I will not kill him. I am happy in writing to my friend, distilling my friendship for you in the lonely laboratory of self, so he shall go unharmed. His ancestors may have feasted upon royal tapestries and laid their eggs in the purple robes of kings!
"What are the moths like in Kensington this night, Cupid?—But of course you are asleep now. I make a picture for myself of you sleeping.
"The whole village is asleep now, save only me, and I am trying to reconstruct our afternoon and evening together, five days ago or was it six? It is more than ever possible to do that at midnight and alone, though every detail is etched upon my memory and I am only adding colour.
"How happy we were! It is so strange to me to think how instantly we became friends—as we are agreed we are always to be, you and I. And think of all we still have to find out about each other! There are golden days coming in our friendship, all sorts of revelations and surprises. There are so many enchanted places in the Kingdom of Thought to which I have the key, so many doors I shall open for you.
"Ours shall be a perfect friendship—of your bounty I crave again what you have already given!—and I will build it up as an artificer in rare woods or stained marbles, a carver of moon-stones, a builder of temples in honey-coloured Travertine, makes beautiful states in which the soul can dwell, out of beautiful perishable things.
"How often do two people meet as you and I have met? Most rarely. Men and women fall in love, sometimes too early, sometimes too late. There is a brief summer, and then a long winter of calm grey days which numb the soul into acquiescence, or stab the dull tranquillity with the lightnings of tragedy and woe.
"We have the better part! We are to be friends, Rita, you and I—that is the rivulet of repeated melody which runs through my first letter to you. Some sad dawn will rise for me, when you tell of something nearer and more poignant than anything I can offer you. It will be a dawn in which, for you the trumpets, the sackbuts and the psalteries of Heaven will sound. And your friend will bless you; and retire to the back of the scene with a most graceful bow!
"In the last act of the play, when all the players appear as Nymphs and Graces, and Seasons, your friend will be found wearing the rich yet sober liveries of Autumn, saluting Spring and her Partner with a courtly song, and a dance which expresses his sentiments according to the best choreographic traditions.
"But, as he retires among the last red leaves of the year, and walks jauntily down the forest rides as the setting sun shows the trees already bare, he will know one thing, even if Spring does not know it then—when she turns to her Partner.
"He will know that in her future life, his voice, his face, can never be quite forgotten. Sometimes, at the feast, 'surgit amari aliquid' that he is not present there with the wistful glance, the hands that were ever reverent, the old familiar keys!
"For a brief instant of recollection, he will have for you 'L'effet d'un clair-de-lune par une nuit d'été'. And you will say to yourself, 'Ami du temps passés, vos paroles me reviennent comme un écho lointain, comme le son d'un cloche apporté par le vent; et il me semble que vous êtes là quand je lis des passages d'amour dans vos livres'."
A click of glass against glass, the low sound of drinking, a black shadow parodied and repeated upon the ceiling in the candle-glow.
The letter is nearly finished now—the bottle is nearly empty.
"'Tiens!' I hear you say—by the way, Rita, where did you learn to speak such perfect French? They tell me in Paris and, Mon Dieu! in Tours even! that I speak well. Mais, toi!. . ."Well 'How stupid!' I hear you say. 'Why does Gilbert strike this note of the 'cello and the big sobbing flutes at the very beginning of things?'"Why, indeed? I hardly know myself. But it is very late now. The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning. Soon the jocund noises of dawn will begin."Let it be so for you and me. There are long and happy days coming in our friendship. The end is not yet! Soon, quite soon, I will return to London with a pocket-full of plans for pleasure, and the magician's wand polished like the poker in the best parlour of an evangelical household, and charged with the most superior magic!"Meanwhile I shall write you my thoughts as you must send me yours."I kiss your hand,"Gilbert Lothian."
"'Tiens!' I hear you say—by the way, Rita, where did you learn to speak such perfect French? They tell me in Paris and, Mon Dieu! in Tours even! that I speak well. Mais, toi!. . .
"Well 'How stupid!' I hear you say. 'Why does Gilbert strike this note of the 'cello and the big sobbing flutes at the very beginning of things?'
"Why, indeed? I hardly know myself. But it is very late now. The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning. Soon the jocund noises of dawn will begin.
"Let it be so for you and me. There are long and happy days coming in our friendship. The end is not yet! Soon, quite soon, I will return to London with a pocket-full of plans for pleasure, and the magician's wand polished like the poker in the best parlour of an evangelical household, and charged with the most superior magic!
"Meanwhile I shall write you my thoughts as you must send me yours.
"I kiss your hand,
"Gilbert Lothian."
The figure rose from the bed, gathering the papers together, putting them into a drawer of the dressing-table.
It staggered a little.
"I'm drunk," came in a tired voice, from lips that were parched and dry.
With trembling hands the empty bottle was hidden, the glass washed out and replaced, the door noiselessly unlocked.
Then Lothian lurched to the open window.
It was as he had said, dawn was at hand. But a thick grey mist hid everything. Phantoms seemed to sway in it, speaking to each other with tiny doll-like squeaks.
There were no jocund noises as he crept back into bed and fell into a stupor, snoring loudly.
No jocund noises of Dawn.
CHAPTER IV
DICKSON INGWORTH UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
"On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens."—Proverb of Provence.
"On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens."
—Proverb of Provence.
Lothian and Dickson Ingworth were driving into Wordingham.
It was just after lunch and there was a pleasant cold-snap in the air, a hint of Autumn which would soon be here.
The younger man was driving, sending the cob along at a good pace, quite obviously a skilful and accustomed whip.
His host sat by his side and looked up at him with some curiosity, a curiosity which had been growing upon him during the last few days.
Ingworth was certainly good-looking, in a boyish, rather rakish fashion. There were no indications of dissipation in his face. He was not a dissipated youth. But there was, nevertheless, in the cast of the features, something that suggested rather more than staidness. The hair was dark red and very crisp and curly, the mouth was well-shaped and rather thick in the lips. Upon it, more often than not, was the hint of a smile at some inward thought, "rather like some youthful apprentice pirate, not adventured far upon the high seas yet, but with sufficient experience to lick the chops of memory now and then". . .thus Gilbert's half amused, half wondering thought.
And the eyes?—yes, there was something a little queer about the eyes. They were dark, not very steady in expression, and the whites—by Jove! that was it—had a curious opalescence at times. Could it possibly be that his friend had a touch of the tar-brush somewhere? It was faint, elusive, born more of a chance thought than of reality perhaps, and yet as the dog-cart bowled along the straight white road Gilbert wondered more and more.
He had known the lad, who was some two and twenty years of age, for twelve months or more. Where had he met him?—Oh, yes, at an exhibition of caricatures in the Carfax Gallery. Cromartie had introduced them. Ingworth had made friends at once. In a graceful impulsive way he had taken Lothian into a corner, and, blushing a good deal, had told him how much he had wanted to know him. He had just come down from Oxford; he told the poet how eagerly he was being read by the younger men there.
That was how it had begun.
Friendship was an immediate result. Lothian, quite impervious to flattery and spurning coteries and the "tea-shops," had found this young man's devotion a pleasant thing. He was a gentleman and he didn't bore Gilbert by literary talk. He was, in short, like an extremely intelligent fag to a boy in the sixth form of a public school. He spoke the same language of Oxford and school that Gilbert did—the bond between them was just that, and the elder and well-known man had done all he could for his protégé.
From Gilbert's point of view, the friendship had occurred by chance, it had presented no jarring elements, and he had drifted into it with good-natured acquiescence.
It was a fortnight after Mary had sent the invitation to Ingworth, who could not come at the moment, being kept in London by "important work." He had now arrived, and this was the eighth day of his visit.
"I can't understand Tumpany letting this beast down," Ingworth said. "He's as sure footed as possible. Was Tumpany fluffed?"
"I suppose he was, a little."
"Then why didn't you drive, Gilbert?"
"I? Oh, well, I did myself rather well in the train coming down, and so I thought I'd leave it to William!"
Gilbert smiled as he said this, his absolutely frank and charming smile—it would have disarmed a coroner!
Ingworth smiled also, but here was something self-conscious and deprecating. He was apologising for his friend's rueful but open statement of fact. The big man had said, in effect, "I was drunk," the small man tried to excuse the plain statement with quite unnecessary sycophancy.
"But you couldn't have been very bad?"
"Oh, no, I wasn't, Dicker. But I was half asleep as we got into the village, and as you see this cart is rather high and with a low splashboard. My feet weren't braced against the foot-bar and I simply shot out!"
Ingworth looked quickly at Lothian, and chuckled. Then he clicked his tongue and the trap rolled on silently.
Lothian sat quietly in his place, smoking his cigar. He was conscious of a subtle change in this lad since he had come down. It interested him. He began to analyse as Ingworth drove onwards, quite oblivious of the keen, far-seeing brain beside him.
—That last little laugh of Ingworth's. There was a new note in it, a note that had sounded several times during the last few days. It almost seemed informed with a slight hint of patronage, and also of reservation. It wasn't the admiring response of the past. The young man had been absolutely loyal in the past, though no great strain had been put upon his friendship. It was not difficult to be friends with a benefactor—while the benefactions last. Certainly on one occasion—at the Amberleys' dinner-party—he had behaved with marked loyalty. Gilbert had heard all about it from Rita Wallace. But that, after all, was an isolated instance. Lothian decided to test it. . . .
"Of course I wasn't tight," he said suddenly and with some sharpness.
"My dear old chap," the lad replied hastily—too hastily—"don't I know?"
It wasn't sincere! How badly he did it! Lothian watched him out of the corner of his eye. There was certainlysomething. Dickson was changed.
Then the big mind brushed these thoughts away impatiently. It had enough to brood over! This small creature which was just now intruding in the great and gathering sweep of his daily thoughts might well be dissected some other time.
Lothian's head sank forward upon his chest. His eyes lost light and speculation, the mouth set firm. Instinctively he crossed his arms upon his breast, and the clean-shaved face with the growing heaviness of contour mingled with its youth, made an almost Napoleonic profile against the bright grey arc of sky over the marshes.
Ingworth saw it and wondered. "One can see he's a big man," he thought with a slight feeling of discomfort. "I wonder if Toftrees is right and his reputation is going down and people are beginning to find out about him?"
He surveyed the circumstances of the last fortnight—two very important weeks for him.
Until his arrival in Norfolk about a week ago he had not seen Lothian since the night of the party at the Amberleys', the poet having left town immediately afterwards. But he had met, and seen a good deal of Herbert Toftrees and his wife.
These worthy people liked an audience. Their somewhat dubious solar system was incomplete without a whole series of lesser lights. The rewards of their industry and popularity were worth little unless they were constantly able to display them.
Knowing their own disabilities, however, quite aware that they were in literature by false pretences so to speak, they preferred to be reigning luminaries in a minor constellation rather than become part of the star dust in the Milky Way. Courtier stars must be recruited, little eager parasitic stars who should twinkle pleasantly at their hospitable board.
Dickson Ingworth, much to his own surprise and delight, had been swept in. He thought himself in great good luck, and perhaps indeed he was.
Nephew of a retired civilian from the Malay Archipelago, he had been sent to Eton and Oxford by this gentleman, who had purchased a small estate in Wiltshire and settled down as a minor country squire. The lad was destined to succeed to this moderate establishment, but, at the University, he had fallen into one of those small and silly "literary" sets, which are the despair of tutors and simply serve as an excuse for general slackness. The boy had announced his intention of embracing a literary career when he had managed to scrape through his pass schools. He had a hundred a year of his own—always spent before he received it—and the Wiltshire squire, quite confident in the ultimate result, had cut off his allowance. "Try it," he had said. "No one will be more pleased than I if you make it a success. You won't, though! When you're tired, come back here and take up your place. It will be waiting for you. But meanwhile, my dear boy, not a penny do you get from me!"
So Dickson Ingworth had "embraced a literary career." The caresses had not as yet been returned with any ardour. Conceit and a desire to taste "ginger in the mouth while it was hot" had sent him to London. He had hardly ever read a notable book. He had not the slightest glimmerings of what literature meant. But he got a few short stories accepted now and then, did some odd journalism, and lived on his hundred a year, a fair amount of credit, and such friends as he was able to make.
In his heart of hearts the boy knew himself for what he was. But his good looks, his youth—most valuable asset of all!—and the fact that he would some day have some sort of settled position, enabled him to rub along pretty well for the time.
Without much real harm in him—he was too lacking in temperament to be really wicked—he was as cunning as an ape and justified his good opinions of his cleverness by the fact that his laborious little tricks constantly succeeded. He was always achieving infinitesimal successes.
He had marked out Gilbert Lothian, for instance, and had succeeded in making a friend of him easily enough.
Lothian rarely thought ill of any one and any one could take him in. To do Ingworth justice he liked Lothian very much, and really admired him. He did not understand him in the least. His poems were rather worse Greek to him than the Euripidean choruses he had learnt by heart at school. At the same time it was a great thing to be Fidus Achates to the poet of the moment, and it was extremely convenient—also—to have a delightful country house to retire to when one was hard up, and a patron who not only introduced one to editors, but would lend five pounds as a matter of course.
Perhaps there was really some Eastern taint in the young fellow's blood. At any rate he was sly by nature, had a good deal of undeveloped capability for treachery latent within him, and, encouraged by success, was becoming a marked parasite.
Lazy by nature, he soon discovered how easy it was—to take one example—to look up the magazines of three years back, steal a situation or a plot, adapt it to the day, and sell it for a guinea or two. His small literary career had hitherto been just that. If he had been put upon the rack he could not have confessed to an original thought. And it was the same in many other aspects of his life. He made himself useful. He was always sympathetic and charming to some wife in Bohemia who bewailed the inconstancy of her husband, and earned the title of a "nice, good-hearted boy." On the next evening he would gladly sup with the husband and the chorus girl who was the cause of the trouble, and flatter them both.
Master Dickson Ingworth, it will be seen, was by no means a person of fine nature. He was simply very young, without any sort of ideals save the gratification of the moment, and would, no doubt, become a decent member of society in time.
In a lower rank of life, and without the comfortable inheritance which awaited him, he would probably have become a sneak-thief or a blackmailer in a small way.
In the event, he was destined to live a happy and fairly popular life in the Wiltshire Grange, and to die a much better man than he was at two and twenty. He was not to repent of, but to forget, all the calculated meannesses of his youth, and at fifty he would have shown any one to the door with horror who suggested a single one of the tricks that he had himself been guilty of in his youth.
And, parasite always, he is displayed here because of the part he is destined to take in the drama of Gilbert Lothian's life.
"I've been seeing a good deal of Toftrees lately, Gilbert," Ingworth said with a side glance.
Lothian looked up from his reverie.
"What? Oh, yes!—the Toftrees. Nice chap, Toftrees, I thought, when I met him the other night. Awfully clever, don't you think, to get hold of such an enormous public? Mind you, Dicker, I wouldn't give one of his books to any one if I could help it. But that's because I want every one to care for real literature. That's my own personal standpoint. Apart from that, I do think that Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees deserve all they get in the way of money and popularity and so on. There must be such people under the modern conditions, and apart from their work they both seem most interesting."
This took the wind from the young man's sails. He was sensitive enough to perceive—though not to appreciate—the largeness of such an attitude as this. He felt baffled and rather small.
Then, something that had been instilled into him by his new and influential friends not only provided an antidote to his momentary discomfiture but became personal to himself.
A sense of envy, almost of hate, towards this man who had been so consistently kind to him, bloomed like some poisonous and swift-growing fungus in his unstable mind.
"I say," he said maliciously, though there was fear in his voice, too, "Herbert Toftrees has got his knife into you, Gilbert."
Lothian looked at the young man in surprise. "Got hisknife into me?" he said, genuinely perplexed.
"Well, yes. He's going about town saying all sorts of unpleasant things about you."
Lothian laughed. "Yes!" he said, "I remember! Miss Wallace told me so not long ago. How intensely amusing!"
Ingworth hated him at the moment. There was a disgusting sense of impotence and smallness, in that he could not sting Lothian.
"Toftrees is a very influential man in London," he said sententiously.
At that moment all the humour in Lothian awoke.
He leant back and laughed aloud.
"Oh, Dicker!" he said, "what a babe you are!"
Ingworth grew red. He was furious, but dared say nothing more. He felt as if he had been trying to bore a tunnel through the Alps with a boiled carrot and had wasted a franc in paying some one to hold his shadow while he made the attempt!
Lothian's laughter was perfectly genuine. He cared absolutely nothing what Toftrees said or thought about him. But he did care about the young man at his side.
. . .The other Self, the new Ego, suddenly became awake and dominant. Suspicion reared its head.
For days and days now he had drunk hardly anything. The anti-alcoholic medicines that Morton Sims had administered were gradually strengthening the enfeebled will and bringing back the real tenant of his soul. But now. . .
Here was one whom he had thought his friend. It was not so then! An enemy sat by his side?—he would soon discover.
And then, with a skill which made the lad a plaything in his hands, with a cunning a hundred times deeper than Ingworth's immature shiftiness, Lothian began his work.
But it was not the real Lothian. It was the adroit devil waked to life that set itself to the task as the dog-cart rattled into the little country town and drew up before the George Hotel in the Market Square.
"Thanks awfully, old chap," Lothian said cheerfully as they turned under the archway into the stable yard. "You're a topping whip, you know, Dicker. I can't drive a bit myself. But I like to see you."
For a moment Ingworth forgot his rancour at the praise. Unconscious of the dominant personality and the mental grin behind the words, he swallowed the compliment as a trout gulps a fly.
They descended from the trap and the stable-men began to unharness the cob. Lothian thrust his arm through the other's. "Come along, Jehu!" he said. "I want a drink badly, and I'm sure you do, after the drive. I don't care what you say, that cob isnotso easy to handle." . . .
His voice was lost in the long passage that led from the stable yard to the "saloon-lounge."
CHAPTER V
A QUARREL IN THE "MOST SELECT LOUNGE IN THE COUNTY"
"I strike quickly, being moved. . . .A dog of the house of Montague moves me."—Romeo and Juliet.
"I strike quickly, being moved. . . .A dog of the house of Montague moves me."
—Romeo and Juliet.
The George Hotel in Wordingham was a most important place in the life and economy of the little Norfolk town.
The town drank there.
In the handsome billiard room, any evening after dinner, one might find the solicitor, the lieutenant of the Coast-guards, in command of the district, a squire or two, Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger the estate agents and auctioneers, Mr. Reeves the maltster and local J.P.—town, not county—and in fact all the local notabilities up to a certain point, including Mr. Helzephron, the landlord and Worshipful Master of the Wordingham Lodge of Freemasons for that year.
The Doctor, the Bank Manager and, naturally, the Rector, were the only people of consequence who did not "use the house" and make it their club. They were definitely upon the plane of gentlefolk and could not well do so. Accordingly they formed a little bridge playing coterie of their own, occasionally assisted by the Lieutenant, who preferred the Hotel, but made fugitive excursions into the somewhat politer society which was hismilieuby birth.
Who does not know them, these comfortable, respectable hotels in the High Streets or Market Places of small country towns? Yet who has pointed the discovering finger at them or drawn attention to the smug andconvenablecurses that they are?
"There was a flaunting gin palace at the corner of the street,"—that is the sort of phrase you may read in half a hundred books. The holes and dens where working people get drunk, and issuing therefrom make night hideous at closing time, stink in the nostrils of every one. They form the texts and illustrations of many earnest lectures, much fervent sermonizing. But nothing is said of the suave and well-conducted establishments where the prosperous inebriates of stagnant county towns meet to take their poison. When the doors of the George closed in Wordingham and its little coterie of patrons issued forth, gravely, pompously, a little unsteadily perhaps, to seek their homes, the Police Inspector touched his cap—"The gentlemen from the George, going home!"
But the wives knew all about such places as the George.
It is upon the women that the burden falls, gentle or simple, nearly always the women.
Mrs. Gaunt, the naval officer's wife, knew very well why her husband had never got his ship, and why he "went into the Coast-guard." She was accustomed to hear unsteady steps upon the gravel sweep a little after eleven, to see the flushed face of the man she loved, to know that he had spent the evening tippling with his social inferiors, to lie sad and uncomplaining by his side while his snores filled the air and the bedroom was pervaded by the odour of spirits—an Admiral's daughter she, gently nurtured, gently born, well accustomed to these sordid horrors by now.
Mrs. Reeves, the Maltster's wife, was soured in temper and angular of face. She had been a pretty and trusting girl not so long ago as years measure. She "gave as good as she got," and the servants of the big bourgeois house with its rankly splendid furniture only turned in their sleep when, towards midnight and once or twice a month, loud recriminations reached them from the downstairs rooms.
The solicitor, a big genial brute with a sense of humour, only frightened to tears the elderly maiden sister who kept his house. He was never unkind, never used bad language, and was merely noisy, but at eight o'clock on the mornings following an audit dinner, a "Lodge Night," or the evening of Petty Sessions, a little shrivelled, trembling spinster would creep out of the house before breakfast and kneel in piteous supplication at the Altar rails for the big, blond and jovial brother who was "dissolving his soul" in wine—the well-remembered phrase from the poem of Longfellow which she had learned at school was always with her and gave a bitter urgency to her prayers.
All the company who met almost nightly at the George were prosperous, well-to-do citizens. The government of the little town was in their hands. They administered the laws for drunkards, fined them or sent them to prison at Norwich. Their prosperity did not suffer. Custom flowed to Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger, who were always ready to take or stand a drink. The malt of Mr. Reeves was bought by the great breweries of England and deteriorated nothing in quality, while more money than the pompous and heavy man could spend rolled into his coffers. The solicitor did his routine conveyancing and so on well enough.
No one did anything out of the ordinary. There were no scandals, "alarums and excursions." It was all decent and ordered.
The doctor could have given some astonishing evidence before a Medical Commission. But he was a wise and quiet general practitioner who did his work, held his tongue and sent his three boys to Cambridge.
The Rector might have had an illuminating word to say. He was a good but timid man, and saw how impossible it was to make any movement. They were all his own church-wardens, sidesmen, supporters! How could he throw the sleepy, stagnant, comfortable town into a turmoil and disorder in which souls might be definitely lost for ever?
He could only pray earnestly as he said the Mass each morning during the seasons of the year.
It is so all over England. Deny it who may.
In Whitechapel the Fiend Alcohol is a dishevelled fury shrieking obscenities. In the saloons and theatres of the West End he is a suave Mephistopheles in evening dress. In Wordingham and the other provincial towns and cities of England, he appears as a plump and prosperous person in broadcloth, the little difficulty about his feet being got over by well-made country shoes, and with a hat pressed down over ears that may be a trifle pointed or may not.
But the mothers, the wives, the sisters recognise him anywhere.
The number of martyrs is uncounted. Their names are unknown, their hidden miseries unsung.
Who hears the sobs or sees the tears shed by the secret army of Slaves to the Slaves of Alcohol?
It is they who must drink the cup to the last dregs of horror and of shame. The unbearable weight is upon them, that is to say, upon tenderness and beauty, on feebleness and Love. Women endure the blows, or cruel words more agonising. They are the meek victims of the Fiend's malice when he enters into those they love. It is womanhood that lies helpless upon the rack for ruthless hands to torture.
Cujus animam geminentem!
—She whose soul groaning, condoling and grieving the sword pierced through!
Saviours sometimes, sufferers always.
Into the "lounge" of the George Hotel came Gilbert Lothian and Dickson Ingworth.
They were well-dressed men of the upper classes. Their clothes proclaimed them—for there will be (unwritten) sumptuary laws for many years in England yet. Their voices and intonation stamped them as members of the upper classes. A railway porter, a duke, or the Wordingham solicitor would alike have placed them with absolute certainty.
They were laughing and talking together with bright, animated faces, and in this masked life that we all lead to-day no single person could have guessed at the forces and tragedies at work beneath.
They sat down in a long room with a good carpet upon the floor, dull green walls hung with elaborate pictures advertising whiskeys, in gold frames, and comfortable leather chairs grouped in threes round tables with tops of hammered copper.
Mr. Helzephron did everything in a most up-to-date fashion—as he could well afford. "The most select lounge in the county" was a minor heading upon the hotel note-paper.
At one end of the room was a semicircular counter, upon which were innumerable regiments of tumblers and wine-glasses and three or four huge crystal vessels of spirits, tulip-shaped, with gilded inscriptions and shining plated taps.
Behind the counter was Miss Molly Palmer, the barmaid of the hotel, and, behind her, the alcove was lined with mirrors and glass shelves on which were rows of liqueur flasks, bottles of brandy and dummy boxes of chocolates tied up with scarlet ribands.
"Now tell me, Dicker," Lothian said, lighting a cigarette, "how do you mean about Toftrees?"
The glamour of the past was on the unstable youth now, the same influence which had made him—at some possible risk to himself—defend Lothian so warmly in the drawing room at Bryanstone Square.
The splendour of Toftrees was far away, dim in Lancaster Gate.
"Oh, he's jealous of you because you really can write, Gilbert! That must be it. But he really has got his knife into you!"
Internally, Lothian winced. "Oh, but I assure you he has not," was all that he said.
Ingworth finished his whiskey and soda. "Well, you know what I mean, old chap," he replied. "He's going about saying that you aren't sincere, that you're really fluffed when you write your poems, don't you know. The other night, at a supper at the Savoy, where I was, he said you were making a trade of Christianity, that you didn't really believe in what you wrote, and couldn't possibly."
Lothian laughed. "Have another whiskey," he said. "And what did you say, Dicker?"
There was a sneer in Lothian's voice which the other was quite quick to hear and to resent. On that occasion he had not defended his friend, as it happened.
"Oh, I said you meant well," Ingworth answered with quick impertinence, and then, afraid of what he had done hurriedly drained the second glass which the barmaid had just brought him.
"Well, I do, really," Lothian replied, so calmly that the younger man was deceived, and once more angry that his shaft had glanced upon what seemed to be impenetrable armour.
Yet, below the unruffled surface, the poet's mind was sick with loathing and disgust. He was not angry with Ingworth, against Toftrees he felt no rancour. He was sick, deadly sick with himself, inasmuch as he had descended so low as to be touched by such paws as these.
"I'll get through his damned high-and-mighty attitude yet," Ingworth thought to himself.
"I say," he remarked, "did you enjoy your trip to Brighton with Rita Wallace? Toftrees saw you there, you know. He was dining at the Metropole the same night."
He had pierced—right through—though he did not know it.
"Rather dangerous, wasn't it?" he continued. "Suppose your wife got to know, Gilbert?"
Something, those letters, near his heart, began to throb like a pulse in Lothian's pocket. One of the letters had arrived that very morning.
"Look here, Ingworth," he said, and his face became menacing, "you rather forget yourself, I think, in speaking to me in this way. You're a good sort of boy—at least I've thought so—and I've taken you up rather. But I don't allow impudence from people like you. Remember!"
The ice-cold voice frightened the other, but he had to the full that ape-like semi-courage which gibbers on till the last moment of a greater animal's patience.
The whiskey had affected him also. His brain was becoming heated.
"Well, I don't know about impudence," he answered pertly and with a red face. "Anyhow, Rita dined withmelast week!"
He brought it out with a little note of triumph.
Lothian nodded.
"Yes, and you took her to that disgusting little café Maréchale in Soho. You ought not to take a lady to such a place as that. You've been long enough in London to know. Don't be such a babe. If you ever get a nice girl to go out with you again try and think things out a little more."
Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes.
"She's been writing to you!" he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else.
Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon?
"Ibegyour pardon?" Lothian said coolly.
"Yes, she has!" the young fellow hissed. "You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man. She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!—Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!"
Gilbert lifted his glass and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town.
Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair.
"You dirty little hanger-on," he said in a low voice, "how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!"
Without heat, without anger, but merely as a necessary measure of precaution or punishment, he smashed his left fist into Ingworth's jaw and laid him flat upon the carpet.
The girl behind the bar, who knew who Gilbert Lothian was very well, had been watching what was going on with experienced eyes.
She had seen, or known with the quick intuition of her training, that a row was imminent between the famous Mr. Lothian—whose occasional presences in the "lounge" were thought to confer a certain lustre upon that too hospitable rendezvous—and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair.
Molly Palmer had pressed the button of her private bell, which called Mr. Helzephron himself from his account books in the office.
Mr. Helzephron was a slim, bearded man, black of hair and saffron of visage. He was from Cornwall, in the beginning, and combined the inherent melancholy and pessimism of the Celt with the Celt's shrewd business instincts when he transplants himself.
He entered at that moment and caught hold of the wretched Ingworth just as the young man had risen, saw red, and was about to leap over the table at Lothian, whom, in all probability he would very soon have demolished.
Helzephron's arms and hands were like vices of steel. His voice droned like a wasp in a jam jar.
"Now, then," he said, "what's all this? What's all this, sir? I can't have this sort of thing going on. Has this gentleman been insulting you, Mr. Lothian?"
Ingworth was powerless in the Cornishman's grip. For a moment he would have given anything in the world to leap at the throat of the man at the other side of the table, who was still calmly smoking in his chair.
But quick prudence asserted itself. Lothian was known here, a celebrity. He was a celebrity anywhere, a public brawl with him would be dreadfully scandalous and distressing, while in the end it would assuredly not be the poet who would suffer most.
And Ingworth was a coward; not a physical coward, for he would have stood up to any one with nothing but glee in his heart, but a moral one. Lothian, he knew, wouldn't have minded the scandal a bit, here or anywhere else. But to Ingworth, cooled instantly by the lean grip of the landlord, the prospect was horrible.
And to be held by another man below one in social rank, landlord of an inn, policeman, or what not, while it rouses the blood of some men to frenzy, in others brings back an instant sanity.
Ingworth remained perfectly still.
For a second or two Lothian watched him with a calm, almost judicial air. Then he flushed suddenly, with a generous shame at the position.
"It's all right, Helzephron," he said. "It's a mistake, a damned silly mistake. As a matter of fact I lost my temper. Please let Mr. Ingworth go."
Mr. Helzephron possessed those baser sides of tact which pass for sincerity with many people.
"Very sorry, I'm sure," he droned, and stood waiting with melancholy interest to see what would happen next.
"I'm very sorry, Dicker," Lothian said impulsively; "you rather riled me, you know. But I behaved badly. It won't do either of us any good to have a rough and tumble here, but of course". . .he looked significantly at the door.
Ingworth took him, and admired him for his simplicity. The old public school feeling was uppermost now. He knew that Gilbert knew he was no coward. He knew also that he could have knocked the other into a cocked hat in about three minutes.
"I was abominably rude, Gilbert," he said frankly. "Don't let's talk rot. I'm sorry."
"It's good of you to take it in that way, Dicker. I'm awfully sorry, too."
Mr. Helzephron interposed. "All's well that ends well," he remarked sententiously. "That's the best of gentlemen, they do settle these matters as gentlemen should. Now if you'll come with me, sir, I'll take you to the lavatory and you can sponge that blood off your face. You're not marked, really."
With a grin and a wink to Lothian, both of which were returned, Ingworth marched away in the wake of the landlord.
The air was cleared.
Gilbert was deeply sorry for what he had done. He had quite forgotten the provocation that he had received. "Good old sportsman, Dicker!" he thought; "he's a fine chap. I was a bounder to hit him. It would have served me jolly well right if he'd given me a hiding."
And the younger man, as he went to remove the stain of combat, had kindly and generous thoughts of his distinguished friend.
But,che sara sara, these kindly thoughts were but to bloom for an hour and fade. Neither knew that one of them was so soon to be brought to the yawning gates of Hell itself, and, at the very last moment, the unconscious action of the other was to snatch him from them.
Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof God alone knows the pattern and directs the loom. Neither of them knew.
The barmaid, a tall, fresh-faced young girl, came down the room and took the empty glasses from the table.
"I say, Mr. Lothian," she remarked, "it's no business of mine, and no offence meant, but you didn't ought to have hit him."
"I know," Gilbert answered, "but why do you say so?"
"He's got such nice curly hair!" she replied with a provocative look from her bright eyes, and whisked away to the shelter of her counter.
Lothian sighed. During the years he had lived in Norfolk he had seen many fresh-faced girls come and go. Only a few days before, he had read a statement made by Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army that the number of immoral women in the West End of London who have been barmaids is one quarter of the whole. . . .
At that moment, this Miss Molly Palmer was thebelle des coulissesof Wordingham. The local bloods quarrelled about her, the elder men gave her gloves on the sly, her pert repartees kept the lounge in a roar from ten to eleven.
Once, with a sneer and as one man of the world to another, Helzephron had shown Lothian a trade paper in which these girls are advertised for—
"Barmaid wanted, must be attractive."
"Young lady wanted for select wine-room in the West End, gentlemen only, must be well educated and of good appearance, age not over twenty-five."
"Required at once, attractive young lady as barmaid—young. Photograph."
. . .A great depression fell upon the poet. Everywhere he turned just now ennui and darkness seemed to confront him. His youth was going. His fame brought no pleasure nor contentment. The easy financial circumstances of his life seemed to roll over him like a weed-clogged wave. His wife's love and care—was not that losing its savour also? The delightful labour of writing, the breathless and strenuous clutching at the waiting harps of poetry, was not he fainting and failing in this high effort, too?
His life was a grey, numbed thing. He was reminded of it whichever way he turned.
There was a time when the Holy Mysteries brought him a joy which was priceless and unutterable.
Yes! when he knelt at the Mass with Mary by his side, he had felt the breath of Paradise upon his brow. Emptied of all earthly things his soul had entered into the mystical Communion of Saints.
To husband and wife, in humble supplication side by side, the still small voice had spoken. The rushing wind of the Holy Ghost had risen around them and the Passion of Jesus been more near.
And now?—the man rose from his chair with a laugh so sad and hollow, a face so contorted with pain, that it startled the silly girl behind the bar.
She made a rapid calculation. "He was sober when 'e come," she thought in the vernacular, "and 'e can stand a lot, can Mr. Lothian. It's nothing. Them poets!"
"Something amusing you?" she said with her best smile.
Lothian nodded. "Oh, just my thoughts," he replied. "Give me another whiskey and soda—a fat one, yes, a little more, yes, that'll do."
For a moment, a moment of hesitation, he held it out at arm's length.
The sunlight of the afternoon blazed into the glass and turned the liquid to molten gold.
The light came from a window in the roof, just over the bar itself. The remainder of the room was in quiet shadow.
He looked down into the room and shuddered. It was typical of his life now.
He looked up at the half open window from which the glory came.
"Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!" he said, with a sad smile.
Molly Palmer watched him. "Juggins!" she thought, "them poets!"
But Lothian's words seemed to call for some rejoinder and the girl was at a loss.
"Wish you meant it!" she said at length, wondering if that would meet the occasion—as it often met others.
Lothian laughed, and drank down the whiskey.
The light from above faded almost instantly—perhaps a cloud was passing over the sun.
But,au contraire, the shadow of the room beyond had invitation now. It no longer seemed sombre.
He went into the shadows and sat down in the same chair where he had been before.
He smiled as he lit another cigarette. How strange moods were! how powerful for a moment, but how quickly over! The letters in his breast pocket seemed to glow out with material warmth, a warmth that went straight to his heart through the cloth and linen of his clothing. The new Ego was fed. Rita!
Yes! at least life had given him this and was it not the treasure of treasures? There was nothing coarse nor earthly in this at least!
The music of the Venusberg throbbed in all his pulses, calling, calling from the hollow hill. He did not realise from where it came—this magic music—and that there is more than one angelic choir.
Rita and Gilbert. Gilbert and Rita!
The words and music of one song!
So we observe that now the masked musicians in the unseen orchestra are in their places.
Any little trouble with the Management is over. Opposition players have sorrowfully departed. The Audience has willed it so, and the band only awaits its leader.
Monsieur L'Ame du Vin, that celebrated conductor, has just slid into his seat. He smirks at his players, gives an intelligent glance at the first violin, and taps upon the desk.
Three beats of the baton, a raised left hand, and once more the oft repeated overture to the Dance of Death commences, with the Fiend Alcohol beating time.