Thorne Guy
The Drunkard
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 can not, 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.
CHAPTER IX
A STARTLING EXPERIENCE FOR "WOG"
"The die rang sideways as it fell,
Rang cracked and thin,
Like a man's laughter heard in hell.."
– Swinburne.
It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening; a dry, acrid, coughing cold lay over London.
In the little Kensington flat of Rita Wallace and Ethel Harrison, the fire was low and almost out. The "Lulu bird" drooped on its perch and Wog was crying quietly by the fire.
How desolate the flat seemed to the faithful Wog as she looked round with brimming eyes.
The state and arrangement of a familiar room often seem organically related to the human mind. Certainly we ourselves give personality to rooms which we have long inhabited; and that personality re-acts upon us at times when event disturbs it.
It was so now with the good and tender-hearted clergyman's daughter.
The floor of the sitting-room was littered with little pieces of paper and odds and ends of string. Upon the piano – it was Wog's piano now, a present from Rita – was a massive photograph frame of silver. There was no photograph in it, but some charred remains of a photograph which had been burned still lay in the grate.
Wog had burnt the photograph herself, that morning, early.
"You do it, darling," Rita had said to her. "I can't do it myself. And take this box. It's locked and sealed. It has the letters in it. I cannot burn them, but I don't want to read them again. I must not, now. But keep it carefully, always. If ever I should ask for it, deliver it to me wherever I am."
"You must never ask for it, my darling girl," Wog had said quickly. "Let me burn the box and its contents."
"No, no! You must not, dearest Wog, my dear old friend! It would be wrong. Rossetti had to open the coffin of his wife to get back the poems which he had buried with her. Keep it as I say."
Wog knew nothing about Rossetti, and the inherent value of works of art in manuscript didn't appeal to her. But she had been able to refuse her friend nothing on this morning of mornings.
Wog was wearing her best frock, a new one, a present also. She had never had so smart a frock before. She held her little handkerchief very carefully that none of the drops that streamed from her eyes should fall upon the dress and stain it.
"My bridesmaid dress," she said aloud with a choke of melancholy laughter. "We mustn't spoil it, must we, Lulu bird?"
But the canary remained motionless upon its perch like a tiny stuffed thing.
In one corner of the room was a large corded packing-case. It contained a big and costly epergne of silver, in execrable taste and savouring strongly of the mid-Victorian, a period when a choir of great voices sang upon Parnassus but the greatest were content to live in surroundings that would drive a minor poet of our era to insanity. This was to be forwarded to Wiltshire in a fortnight or so.
It was Mr. Podley's present.
Wog's eyes fell upon it now. "What a kind good man Mr. Podley is," she thought. "How anxious he has been to forward everything. And to give dear Rita away also!"
Then this good girl remembered what a happy change in her own life and prospects was imminent.
She was to be the head librarian of the Podley Pure Literature Institute, vice Mr. Hands, retired. She was to have two hundred a year and choose her own assistant.
Mr. and Mrs. Podley – at whose house Ethel had spent some hours – were not exactly what one would call "cultured" people. They were homely; but they were sincere and good.
"Now you, my dear," Mrs. Podley had said to her, "are just the lady we want. You are a clergyman's daughter. You have had a business training. The Library will be safe in your hands. And we like you! We feel friends to you, Miss Harrison. 'Give it to Miss Harrison,' I said to my husband, directly I had had a talk with you."
"But I know so little about literature," Wog had answered. "Of course I read, and I have my own little collection of books. But to take charge of a public library – oh, Mrs. Podley, do you think I shall be able to do it to Mr. Podley's satisfaction?"
Mrs. Podley had patted the girl upon her arm. "You're a good girl, my dear," she said, "and that is enough for us. We mayn't be literary, my husband and me, but we know a good woman when we meet her. Now you just take charge of that library and do exactly as you like. Come and have dinner with us every week, dearie. When all's said we're a lonely old couple and a good girl like you, what is clever too, and born a lady, is just what I want. Podley shall do something for your dear Father. I'll see to that. And your brothers too, just coming from school as they are. Leave it to me, my dear!"
About Rita the good dame had been less enthusiastic.
"The evening after Podley had to talk to her" (thus Mrs. Podley) "I asked you both up here. I fell in love with you at once, my dear. Her, I didn't like. Pretty as a picture; yes! But different somehow! Yet sensible enough – really – as P. has told me. When he gave her a talking to, as being an elderly and successful man who employed her he had well a right to do, she saw at once the scandal and wrong of going about with a married man – be he poet or whatnot. It was only her girlish foolishness, of course. Poor silly lamb, she didn't know. But what a blessing that all the time she was being courted by that young country squire. I tell you, Miss H., that I felt like a mother to them in the Church this morning."
These kindly memories of this great day passed in reverie through the tear-charged heart of Wog.
But she was alone now, very much alone. She had adored Rita. Rita had flown away into another sphere. The Lulu Bird was a poor consoler! Still, Wog's sister Beatrice was sixteen now. She would have her to live with her and pay her fees for learning secretarial duties at Kensington College and Mr. Munford would find Bee a post..
Wog pulled herself together. She had lost her darling, brilliant, flashing Rita. That was that! She must reconstruct her life and press forward without regrets. Life had opened out for her, after all.
But now, at this immediate moment, there was a necessity for calling all her forces together.
She did not know, she had refused to know, how Rita had dealt with Mr. Lothian during the past three weeks. The poet had not written for a fortnight; that she believed she knew, and she had hoped it meant that his passion for her friend was over. Rita, in her new-found love, her legitimate love, had never mentioned the poet to Wog. Ethel knew nothing of love, as far as it could have affected her. Yet the girl had discerned – or thought she had – an almost frightened relinquishment and regret on the part of Rita. Rita had expanded with joyous maiden surrender to the advances and love-making of Dickson Ingworth. That was her youth, her body. But there had been moments of revolt, moments when the "wizards peeped and muttered," when the intellect of the girl seemed held and captured, as the man who wooed her, and was this day her husband, had never captured it – perhaps never would or could.
Rita Wallace had once said to Gilbert Lothian that she and Ethel did not take a daily paper because of the expense.
Neither of these girls, therefore, was in the habit of glancing down the births, marriages and deaths column. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees had run over to Nice for a month, Ingworth was far too anxious and busy with his appeal to Rita – none of the people chiefly concerned had read that the Hon. Mary Lothian, third daughter of the Viscount Boultone and wife of Gilbert Lothian, Esquire, of the Old House, Mortland Royal, was dead.
For a fortnight – this was all Ethel Harrison knew – Rita had received no communication from the Poet.
Ethel imagined that Rita had finally sent him about his business, had told him of her quick engagement and imminent marriage. She knew that something had happened with Mr. Podley – nearly three weeks ago. Details she had none.
Yet, on the mantel-shelf, was a letter in Rita's handwriting. It was addressed to Gilbert Lothian. Wog was to forward this to him.
The letter was unnerving. It was a letter of farewell, of course, but Ethel did not like to handle any message from her dear young bride to a man who was of the past and ought never, never! to have been in it.
And there was more than this.
When Ethel had returned from Charing Cross Station, after the early wedding in St. Martin's Church and the departure of the happy couple for Mentone, she had found a telegram pushed through the letter-box of the flat, addressed "Miss Wallace."
She had opened it and read these words:
"Arriving to you at 7:30 to-night, carissima, to explain all my recent silence if you do not know already. We are coming into our own.
GILBERT."
Wog didn't know what this might mean. She regarded it as one more attempt, on the part of the married man who ought never to have had any connection with Rita. She realised that Lothian must be absolutely ignorant of Rita's marriage. And, knowing nothing of Mary Lothian's death, she regarded the telegram with disgust and fear.
"How dreadful," she thought, in her virgin mind, untroubled always by the lusts of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, "that this great man should run after Cupid. He's got his own wife. How angry Father would be if he knew. And yet, Mr. Lothian couldn't help loving Cupid, I suppose. Every one loves her."
"I must be as kind as I can to him when he comes," she said to herself. "He ought to be here almost at once. Of course, Cupid knows nothing about the telegram saying that he's coming. I can give her letter into his own hands."
.. The bell whirred – ring, ring, ring – was there not something exultant in the shrill purring of the bell?
Wog looked round the littered room, saw the letter on the mantel, the spread telegram upon the table, breathed heavily and went out into the little hall-passage of the flat.
"Click," and she opened the door.
Standing there, wearing a fur coat and a felt hat, was some one she had never met, but whom she knew in an instant.
It was Gilbert Lothian. Yet it was not the Gilbert Lothian she had imagined from his photograph. Still less the poet of Rita's confidences and the verses of "Surgit Amari."
He looked like a well-dressed doll, just come there, like a quite convenable but rather unreal figure from Madame Tussaud's!
He looked at her for a quick moment and then held out his hand.
"I know," he said; "you're Wog! I've heard such a lot about you. Where's Rita? May I come in? – she got my wire?"
.. He was in the little hall before she had time to answer him.
Mechanically she led the way into the sitting-room.
In the full electric light she saw him clearly for the first time. Ethel Harrison shuddered.
She saw a large, white face, with pinkish blotches on it here and there – more particularly at the corners of the mouth and about the nostrils. The face had an impression of immense power– of concentration. Beneath the wavy hair and the straight eyebrows, the eyes gleamed and shot out fire – shifting this way and that.
With an extraordinary quickness and comprehension these eyes glanced round the flat and took in its disorder.
.. "She got my wire?" the man said – finding the spread-out pink paper upon the table in an instant.
"No, Mr. Lothian," Ethel Harrison said gravely. "Rita never got your wire. It came too late."
The glaring light faded out of the man's eyes. His voice, which had been suave and oily, changed utterly. Ethel had wondered at his voice immediately she heard it. It was like that of some shopman selling silks – a fat voice. It had been difficult for her to believe that this was Gilbert Lothian. Rita's great friend, the famous man, her father's favourite modern poet.
But she heard a voice now, a real, vibrant voice.
"Too late?" he questioned. "Too late for what?"
Ethel nodded sadly. "I see, Mr. Lothian," she said, "that you are already beginning to understand that you have to hear things that will distress you."
Lothian bowed. As he did so, something flashed out upon the great bloated mask his face had become. It was for a second only, but it was sweet and chivalrous.
"And will you tell me then, Miss Harrison?" he said in a voice that was beginning to tremble violently. His whole body was beginning to shake, she saw.
With one hand he was opening the button of his fur coat. He looked up at her with a perfectly white, perfectly composed, but dreadfully questioning face.
Certainly his body was shaking all over – it was as though little ripples were running up and down the flesh of it – but his face was a white mask of attention.
"Oh, Mr. Lothian!" the girl cried, "I am so sorry. I am so very sorry for you. You couldn't help loving her perhaps, I am only a girl, I don't pretend to know. But you must be brave. Rita is married!"
Puffed and crinkled lids fell over the staring eyes for a moment – as if automatic pressure had suddenly pushed them down.
"Married? Rita?"
"Oh, she ought to have told you! It was cruel of her! She ought to have told you. But you have not written to her for two or three weeks – as far as I know.."
"Married? Rita?"
"Yes, this morning, and Mr. Podley gave her away. But I have a letter for you, Mr. Lothian. Rita asked me to post it. She gave it me in bed this morning, before I dressed her for her marriage. Of course she didn't know that you were going to be in town. I will give it to you now."
She gave him the letter.
His hands took it with a mechanical gesture, though he made a little bow of thanks.
Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling up and down – it was horrible.
The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost.
.. "But I have come to marry Rita!"
Wog became indignant. "Mr. Lothian," she said, "you ought not to speak like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You are married. Please don't even hint at such things."
"How stupid you are, Wog," he said, as if he had known her for years; in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. "My wife's dead, dead and buried… I thought you would both have known.."
His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left for him.
He drew the page out of the envelope and then he looked up at Ethel Harrison again. There was a dreadful yearning in his voice now.
"Yes, yes, but whom has my little Rita married?"
Real fear fell upon Ethel now. She became aware that this man had not realised what had happened in any way. But the whole thing was too painful. It must be got over at once.
"Mr. Ingworth Dickson, of course," she answered, with some sharpness in her tones.
For a minute Lothian looked at her as if she were the horizon. Then he nodded. "Oh, Dicker," he said in a perfectly uninterested voice – "Yes, Dicker – just her man, of course.."
He was reading the letter now.
This was Rita's farewell letter.
"Gilbert dear:
"I shall always read your books and poems, and I shall always think of you. We have been tremendous friends, and though we shall never meet again, we shall always think of each other, shan't we? I am going to marry Dicker to-morrow morning, and by the time you see this – Wog will send it – I shall be married. Of course we mustn't meet or write to each other any more. You are married and I'm going to be to-morrow. But do think of your little friend sometimes, Gilbert. She will often think of you and read all you write."
Lothian folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope with great precision. Then he thrust it in the inner breast pocket of his coat.
Wog watched him, in deadly fear.
She knew now that elemental forces had been at work, that her lovely Rita had evoked soul-shaking, sundering strengths..
But Gilbert Lothian came towards her with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, I thank you, I thank you a thousand times," he said, "for all your goodness to Rita – How happy you must have been together – you two girls – "
He had taken both her hands in his. Now he dropped them suddenly. Something, something quite beautiful, which had been upon his face, snapped away.
The kindness and welcome in his eyes changed to a horror-struck stare.
He began to murmur and burble at the back of his throat.
His arms shot stiffly this way and that, like the arms of railway signals.
He ran to one wall and slapped a flat palm upon it.
"Tumpany!" he said with a giggle. "My wild-fowling man! Mary used to like him, so I suppose he's all right. But, damn him, looking out of the wall like that with his ugly red face! – "
He began to sing. His lips were dark-red and cracked, his eyes fixed and staring.
"Tiddle-iddle, iddle-tiddle, so the green frog said in the garden!"
Saliva dropped from the corners of his mouth.
His body was jerking like a puppet of a marionette display, actuated by unseen strings.
He began to dance.
Blazing eyes, dropping sweat and saliva, twitching, awful body..
She left him dancing clumsily like a performing bear. She fled hurriedly down to the office of the commissionaire.
When the man, his assistant and Miss Harrison returned to the flat, Lothian was writhing on the floor in the last stages of delirium tremens.
As they carried him, tied and bound, to the nearest hospital, they had to listen to a cryptic, and to them, meaningless mutter that never ceased.
".. Dingworth Ickson, Rary, Mita. Sorten Mims. Ha, ha! ha! Tubes of poison – damn them all, blast them all – Jesus of the Cross! my wife's face as she lay there dead, forgiving me!
" – Rita you pup of a girl, going off with a boy like Dicker. Rita! Rita! You're mine – don't make such a howling noise, my girl, you'll create a scandal – Rita! Rita! – damn you, can't you keep quiet?
"All right, Mary darling. But why have you got on a sheet instead of a nightdress? Mary! Why have they tied your face up under the chin with that handkerchief? And what's that you're holding out to me on your pale hand? Is that the membrane? Is that really the diphtheria membrane which choked you? – Come closer, let me see, old chalk-faced girl.."
At the hospital the house-surgeon on duty who admitted him said that death must supervene within twelve or fourteen hours.
He had not seen a worse case.
But when he realised who the fighting, tied, gibbering and obscene object really was, bells rang in the private rooms of celebrated doctors.
The pulsing form was isolated.
Young doctors came to look with curiosity upon the cursing mass of flesh that quivered beneath the broad bands of webbing which held it down.
Older doctors stood by the bed with eyes full of anxiety and pain as they regarded what was once Gilbert Lothian; bared the twitching arms and pressed the hypodermic needles into the loose bunches of skin that skilled, pitiful fingers were pinching and gathering.
When they had calmed the twitching figure somewhat, the famous physicians who had been hastily called, stood in a little group some distance from the bed, consulting together.
Two younger men who sat on each side of the cot looked over the body and grinned.
"The Christian Poet, oh, my eye!" said one.
"Surgit amari aliquid," the other replied with a disgusted sneer.
