Thorne Guy
The Drunkard

There are no more records of actual happenings.

Yet, nevertheless, while Gilbert Lothian was making this accurate diagnosis of his state, it is as well to remember that there is no prognosis.

He refuses to look into the future. He really refuses to give any indication of what is going on in the present. He puts down upon the page the symptoms of his disease. He catalogues the tortures he endures. But in regard to where his state is leading him in his life, what it is all going to result in, he says nothing whatever.

Psychologically this is absolutely corroborative and true.

He studies himself as a diseased subject and obviously takes a horrible pleasure in writing down all that he endures. But there are things and thoughts so terrible that even the most callous and most poisoned mind dare not chronicle them.

While the very last of what was Gilbert Lothian is finding an abnormal pleasure, and perhaps a terrible relief, in the surveyal of his extinguishing personality, the other self, the False Ego – the Fiend Alcohol – was busy with a far more dreadful business.

We may regard the excerpts already given, and the concluding ones to come, as really the last of Lothian – until his resurrection.

Sometimes a lamp upon the point of expiration flares up for a final second.

Then, with a splutter, it goes out. And in the circle of confining glass a dull red glow fades, disappears, and only an ugly, lifeless black circle of exhausted wick is left.

I didn't mean in making these notes – confound Morton Sims that he should have suggested such a thing to me! – Well, I didn't mean to bring in any daily happenings. My only idea was, for a sort of pitiful satisfaction to myself, to make a record of what I am going through. It has been a relief to me – that is quite certain. While I have been writing these notes I have had some of the placidity and quiet that I used to know when I was engaged upon purely literary pursuits. I can't write now – that is to say, I can't create. My poetic faculty seems quite to have left me. I write certain letters, to a certain person, but they are no longer the artistic and literary productions that they were in the first stages of my acquaintance with this person.

All the music that God gave me is gone out of me now.

Well, even this relief is passing, I have more in my mind and heart than will allow me to continue this fugitive journal.

Here, obviously, Lothian makes a slight reference to the ghastly obsession which, at this time, must have had him well within its grip.

Well, I will round it up with a few final words.

One thing that strikes me with horror and astonishment is that I have become quite unable to understand how what I am doing, the fact of what I have become, hurts, wounds and makes other people unhappy. I try to put myself – sympathetically – in the place of those who are around me and who must necessarily suffer by my behaviour. I can't do it. When I try to do it my mind seems full of grey wool. The other people seem a hundred miles away. Their sentiments, emotions, wishes – their love for me ..

It is significant that here Lothian uses the plural pronoun as if he was afraid of the singular.

– dwindle to vanishing point. I used to be able to be sympathetic to the sorrows and troubles of almost everyone I met. I remember once after helping a man in this village to die comfortably, after sitting with him for hours and hours and hours during the progress of a most loathsome disease after closing his eyes, paying for his poor burial and doing all I could to console his widow and his daughters, that the widow and the daughters spoke bitterly about me and my wife – who had been so good to them – because one of our servants had returned the cream they sent to the kitchen because it was of inferior quality. These poor women actually made themselves unpleasant. For a day at least I was quite angry. It seemed so absolutely ungrateful when my wife and I had done everything for them for so long. But, I remember quite well, how I thought out the whole petty little incident one night when I was out with Tumpany after the wild geese. We were waiting in a cold midnight when scurrying clouds passed beneath the moon. It was bitter cold and my gun barrels burnt like fire. I thought it out with great care, and on the icy marshes a sort of understanding of narrow brains and unimaginative natures came to me. The next day I told my servants to still continue taking cream from the widow, and I have been friendly and kind to her ever since.

But now, I can't possibly get into the mind of anyone else with sympathy.

I think only of myself, of my own desires, of my own state..

Although I doubt it in my heart of hearts, I must put it upon record that I still have a curious and ineradicable belief that I can, by a mere effort of volition, get rid of all the horrors that surround me and become good and normal once more. When I descend into the deepest depths of all I am yet conscious of a little jerky, comfortable, confidential nudge from something inside me. "You'll be all right," it says. "When you want to stop you will be able to all right!" This false confidence, though I know it to be utterly false, never deserts me in moments of exhilarated drunkenness.

And finally, I add, that when my brain is becoming exhausted the last moment before stupor creeps over it, I constantly make the most supreme and picturesque pronunciations of my wickedness.

I could not pray the words aloud – or at least if I did they would be somewhat tumbled and incoherent – but I mentally pray them. I wring my hands, I abase my soul and mind, I say the Pater Noster and the Credo, I stretch out my hot hands, and I give it all up for ever and ever and ever.

I tumble into bed with a sigh of unutterable relief.

The Fiend that stands beside my bed on all ordinary nights assumes the fantastic aspect of an angel. I fall into my drunken sleep, murmuring that "there is joy in Heaven when one sinner repenteth."

I wake up in the morning full of evil thoughts, blear-eyed, and trembling. I am a mockery of humanity, longing, crying for poison.

There is only a dull and almost contemptuous memory of the religious ecstasies of the night before. My dreams, my confession, have not the slightest influence upon me. I don't fall again into ruining habits – I continue them, without restraint, without sorrow.

I will write no more. I am adding another Fear to all the other Fears. I have been making a true picture of what I am, and it is so awful that even my blinded eyes cannot bear to look upon it.

Thus these notes, in varying handwriting, indicating the ebb and flow of poison within the brain, cease and say no more.

At the bottom of the last page – which was but half filled by the concluding words of the Confession – there is something most terribly significant, most horrible to look at in the light of after events.

There is a greenish splash upon the glossy paper, obviously whiskey was spilt there.

Beginning in the area of the splashed circle, the ink running, a word of four letters is written.

Two letters are cloudy, the others sharp and clear.

The word is "Rita."

A little lower down, and now right at the bottom of the page, the word is repeated again in large tremulous handwriting, three times. "Rita, Rita, Rita!"

The last "Rita" sprawls and tumbles towards the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Two exclamation marks follow it, and it is heavily underscored three times.

CHAPTER VII
INGWORTH REDUX: TOFTREES COMPLACENS

"Les absents ont toujours tort."

– Proverb.

Mr. Herbert Toftrees was at work in the splendidly furnished library of his luxuriously appointed flat at Lancaster Gate – or at least that is how he would have put it in one of his stories, while, before her Remington in the breakfast room Mrs. Herbert Toftrees would have rapped out a detailed description of the furniture.

The morning was dark and foggy. The London pavements had that disgustingly cold-greasy feeling beneath the feet that pedestrians in town know well at this time of year.

Within the library, with its double windows that shut out all noise, a bright fire of logs burned in the wide tiled hearth. One electric pendant lit the room and another burned in a silver lamp upon the huge writing table covered with crimson leather at which the author sat.

The library was a luxurious place. The walls were covered with books – mostly in series. The Complete Scott, the Complete Dickens, the Complete Thackeray reposed in gilded fatness upon the shelves. Between the door and one of the windows one saw every known encyclopedia, upon another wall-space were the shelves containing those classical French novels with which "culture" is supposed to have a nodding acquaintance – in translations.

Toftrees threw away his cigarette and sank into his padded chair. The outside world was raw and cold. Here, the fire of logs was red, the lamps threw a soft radiance throughout the room, and the keyboard of the writing-machine had a dapper invitation.

"Confound it, I must work," Toftrees said aloud, and at once proceeded to do so.

To his left, upon the table, in something like an exaggerated menu holder was a large piece of white cardboard. At the moment Toftrees and his wife were engaged in tossing off "Claire" which went into its fifth hundred thousand, at six-pence, within the year.

The sheet of cardboard bore the names of the principal characters in the story, and what they looked like, in case the prolific author should forget. There was also marked upon the card, in red ink, exactly how far Toftrees had got with the plot – which was copied out in large round hand, for instant reference, by his secretary upon another card.

Clipped on to the typewriter was a note which ran as follows:

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 —

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 and security.

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."

"I am sorry 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 who has been 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 a lady." —

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 he was interested 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't love him, 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 a duty, 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.