Thorne Guy
The Drunkard

EPILOGUE
A Year Later

"A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise."

WHAT OCCURRED AT THE EDWARD HALL IN KINGSWAY

 
"Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?"
 

– The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

A great deal of interest in high quarters, both in London and New York was being taken in the meeting of Leading Workers in the cause of Temperance that was to be held in Kingsway this afternoon.

The new Edward Hall, that severe building of white stone which was beginning to be the theatre of so many activities and which was so frequently quoted as a monument of good taste and inspiration on the part of Frank Flemming, the new architect, had been engaged for the occasion.

The meeting was to be at three.

It was unique in this way – The heads of every party were to be represented and were about to make common cause together. The scientific and the non-scientific workers for the suppression and cure of Inebriety had been coming very much together during the last years.

Never hostile to each other, they had suffered from a mutual lack of understanding in the past.

Now there was to be an entente cordiale that promised great things.

One important fact had contributed to this rapprochement. The earnest Christian workers and ardent sociologists were now all coming to realise that Inebriety is a disease and not, specifically, a vice. The doctors had known this, had been preaching this for years. But the time had arrived when religious workers in the same cause were beginning to find that they could with safety join hands with those who (as they had come to see) knew and could define the springs of action which made people intemperate.

The will of the intemperate individual was weakened by a disease. The doctors had shown and proved this beyond possibility of doubt.

It was a disease. Its various causes were discovered and put upon record. Its pathology was as clearly stated as a proposition in Euclid. Its psychology was, at last, beginning to be understood.

And it was on the basis of psychology that the two parties were meeting.

Science could take a drunkard – though really only with the drunkard's personal connivance and earnest wish to reform – and in a surprisingly short time, varying with individual cases, restore him to the world sane, and in health.

But as far as individual cases went, science professed itself able to do little more than this. It could give a man back his health of mind and body, it could – thus – enable him to recall his soul from the red hells where it had strayed. But it could not enable the man to retain the gifts.

Religion stepped in here. Christianity and those who professed it said that faith in Christ, and that only, could preserve the will; that, to put it shortly, a personal love of Jesus, a heart that opened itself to the mysterious operations of the Holy Spirit would be immune from the disease for ever more.

Christian workers proved their contention by statistics as clear and unmistakable as any other.

There was still one great question to be agreed upon. Religion and Science, working together, could, and did, cure the individual drunkard. Sometimes Science had done this without the aid of Religion, more often Religion had done it without the aid of Science – that is to say that while Science had really been at work all the time Religion had not been aware of it and had not professedly called Science in to help.

To eradicate the disease from individuals was being done every day by the allied forces.

To eradicate the disease from nations, to stamp it out as cholera, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague was being stamped out – that was the question at issue.

That was, after all, the supreme question.

Now, every one was beginning – only beginning – to understand that recent scientific discovery had made this wonderful thing possible.

Yellow fever had been destroyed upon the Isthmus of Panama. Small-pox which ravaged countries in the past, was no more than a very occasional and restricted epidemic now. Soon – in all human probability – tuberculosis and cancer would be conquered.

The remedy for the disease of Inebriety was at hand.

Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers had enormous power in regard to other diseases. People who disregarded their orders and so spread disease were fined and imprisoned.

It was penal to do so.

In order that this beneficent state of things should come about, the scientists had fought valiantly against many fetishes. They had fought for years, and with the spread of knowledge they had conquered.

Now the biggest Fetish of all was tottering on its foolish throne. The last idol in the temples of Dagon, the houses of Rimmon and the sacred groves was attacked.

The great "Procreation Fetish" remained.

Were drunkards to be allowed to have children without State restriction, or were they not?

That was the question which some of the acutest and most altruistic minds of the English speaking races were about to meet and discuss this afternoon.

Dr. Morton Sims drove down to the Edward Hall a little after two o'clock.

The important conference was to begin at three, but the doctor had various matters to arrange first and he was in a slightly nervous and depressed state.

It was a grey day and a sharp East wind was blowing. People in the streets wore furs and heavy coats; London seemed excessively cheerless.

It was but rarely that Morton Sims felt as he did as this moment. But the day, or probably (as he thought) a recent spell of over-work, took the pith out of him.

"It is difficult to avoid doing too much – for a man in my position," he thought. "Life is so short and there is such an infinity of work. Oh, that I could see England in a fair way to become sober before I die! Still I must go on hard. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.'"

He went at once to a large and comfortable room adjoining the platform of the big hall and communicating with it by a few steps and two doors, one of red baize. It was used as the artists' room when concerts were given, as a committee room now.

A bright fire burned upon the hearth, round which were several padded armchairs, and over the mantel-shelf was an excellent portrait in oils of King Edward the Seventh.

The Doctor took up a printed agenda of the meeting from a table. Bishop Moultrie was to be in the chair and the list of names beneath his was in the highest degree influential and representative. There were two or three peers – not figure heads but men who had done and were doing great work in the world. Mr. Justice Harley – Sir Edward Harley on the programme – would be there. Lady Harold Buckingham, than whose name none was more honoured throughout the Empire for her work in the cause of Temperance, several leading medical men, and – Mrs. Julia Daly, who had once more crossed the Atlantic and had arrived the night before at the Savoy. Edith Morton Sims, who was lecturing in the North of England, could not be present to-day, but she was returning to town at the end of the week, when Mrs. Daly was to leave the hotel and once more take up her residence with Morton Sims and his sister.

In a few minutes there was a knock at the door. The doctor answered, it was opened by a commissionaire, and Julia Daly came in.

Morton Sims took her two hands and held them, his face alight with pleasure and greeting.

"This is good," he said fervently. "I have waited for this hour. I cannot say how glad I am to see you, Julia. You have heard from Edith?"

"The dear girl! Yes. There was a letter waiting for me at the Savoy when I arrived last night. I am to come to you both on Saturday."

"Yes. It will be so jolly, just like old times. Now let me congratulate you a thousand times on your great work in America. Every one over here has been reading of your interview with the President. It was a great stroke. And he really is interested?"

"Immensely. It is genuine. He was most kind and there is no doubt but that he will be heart and soul with us in the future. The campaign is spreading everywhere. And, most significant of all, we are capturing the prohibitionists."

"Ah! that will mean everything."

"Everything, because they are the most earnest workers of all. But they have seen that Prohibition has proved itself an impossibility. They have failed despite their whole-hearted and worthy endeavours. Naturally they have become disheartened. But they are beginning to see the truth of our proposal. The scientific method is gaining ground as they realise it more and more. In a year or two those states which legislated Prohibition, will legislate in another way and penalise the begetting of children by known drunkards. That seems to me certain. After that the whole land may, I pray God, follow suit."

She had taken off her heavy sable coat and was sitting in a chair by the fireside. Informed with deep feeling and that continuous spring of hope and confidence which gave her so much of her power, the deep contralto rang like a bell in the room.

Morton Sims leant against the mantel-shelf and looked down on his friend. The face was beautiful and inspired. It represented the very flower of intellect and patriotism, breadth, purity, strength. "Ah!" he thought, "the figure of Britannia upon our coins and in our symbolic pictures, or the Latin Dame of Liberty with the Phrygian cap, is not so much England or France as this woman is America, the soul of the West in all its power and beauty.."

His reverie was broken in upon by her voice, not ringing with enthusiasm now, but sad and purely womanly.

"Tell me," she was saying, "have you heard or found out anything of Gilbert Lothian, the poet?"

Morton Sims shook his head.

"It remains an impenetrable mystery," he said. "No one knows anything."

Tears came into Mrs. Daly's eyes. "I loved that woman," she said. "I loved Mary Lothian. A clearer, more transparent soul never joined the saints in Paradise. Among the many, many things for which I have to thank you, there is nothing I have valued more than the letter from you which sent me to her at Nice. Mary Lothian was the sweetest woman I have ever met, or ever shall meet. Sometimes God puts such women into the world for examples. Her death grieved me more than I can say."

"It was very sudden."

"Terribly. We travelled home together. She was leaving her dying sister in the deepest sadness. But she was going home full of holy determination to save her husband. I never met any woman who loved a man more than Mary Lothian loved Gilbert Lothian. What a wonderful man he must have been, might have been, if the Disease had not ruined him. I think his wife would have saved him had she lived. He is alive, I suppose?"

"It is impossible to say. I should say not. All that is known is as follows. A fortnight or so after his wife's funeral, Lothian, then in a very dangerous state, travelled to London. He was paying a call at some house in the West End when Delirium Tremens overtook him at last. He was taken to the Kensington Hospital. Most cases of delirium tremens recover but it was thought that this was beyond hope. However, as soon as it was known who he was, some of the best men in town were called. I understand it was touch and go. The case presented unusual symptoms. There was something behind it which baffled treatment for a time."

"But he was cured?"

"Yes, they pulled him through somehow. Then he disappeared. The house in Norfolk and its contents were sold through a solicitor. A man that Lothian had, a decent enough servant and very much attached to his master, has been pensioned for life – an annuity, I think. He may know something. The general opinion in the village is that he does know something – I have kept on my house in Mortland Royal, you must know. But this Tumpany is as tight as wax. And that's all."

"He has published nothing?"

"Not a line of any sort whatever. I was dining with Amberley, the celebrated publisher, the other day. He published the two or three books of poems that made Lothian famous. But he has heard nothing. He even told me that there is a considerable sum due to Lothian which remains unclaimed. Of course Lothian is well off in other ways. But stay, though, I did hear a rumour!"

"And what was that?"

"Well, I dined at Amberley's house – they have a famous dining-room you must know, where every one has been, and it's an experience. There was a party after dinner, and I was introduced to a man called Toftrees – he's a popular novelist and a great person in his own way I believe."

Julia Daly nodded. She was intensely interested.

"I know the name," she said. "Go on."

"Well, this fellow Toftrees, who seems a decent sort of man, told me that he believed that Gilbert Lothian was killing himself with absinthe and brandy in Paris. Some one had seen him in Maxim's or some such place, a dreadful sight. This was three or four months ago, so, if it's true, the poor fellow must be dead by now."

"Requiescat," Julia Daly said reverently. "But I should have liked to have known that his dear wife's prayers in Heaven had saved him here."

Morton Sims did not answer and there was a silence between them for a minute or two.

The doctor was remembering a dreadful scene in the North London Prison.

.. "If Gilbert Lothian still lived he must look like that awful figure in the condemned cell had looked – like his insane half-brother, the cunning murderer – " Morton Sims shuddered and his eyes became fixed in thought.

He had told no living soul of what he had learned that night. He never would tell any one. But it all came back to him with extreme vividness as he gazed into the fire.

Some memory-cell in his brain, long dormant and inactive, was now secreting thought with great rapidity, and, with these dark memories – it was as though some curtain had suddenly been withdrawn from a window unveiling the sombre picture of a storm – something new and more horrible still started into his mind. It passed through and vanished in a flash. His will-power beat it down and strangled it almost ere it was born.

But it left his face pale and his throat rather dry.

It was now twenty minutes to three, as the square marble clock upon the mantel showed, and immediately, before Julia Daly and Morton Sims spoke again, two people came into the room.

Both were clergymen.

First came Bishop Moultrie. He was a large corpulent man with a big red face. Heavy eyebrows of black shaded eyes of a much lighter tint, a kind of blue green. The eyes generally twinkled with good-humour and happiness, the wide, genial mouth was vivid with life and pleasant tolerance, as a rule.

A fine strong, forthright man with a kindly personality.

Morton Sims stepped up to him. "My dear William," he said, shaking him warmly by the hand. "So here you are. Let me introduce you to Mrs. Daly. Julia, let me introduce the Bishop to you. You both know of each other very well. You have both wanted to meet for a long time."

The Bishop bowed to Mrs. Daly and both she and the doctor saw at once that something was disturbing him. The face only held the promise and possibility of geniality. It was anxious, and stern with some inward thought; very distressed and anxious.

And when a large, fleshy, kindly face wears this expression, it is most marked.

"Please excuse me," the Bishop said to Julia Daly. "I have indeed looked forward to the moment of meeting you. But something has occurred, Mrs. Daly, which occupies my thoughts, something very unusual.."

Both Morton Sims – who knew his old friend so well – and Julia Daly – who knew so much of the Bishop by repute – looked at him with surprise upon their faces and waited to hear more.

The Bishop turned round to where the second Priest was standing by the door.

"This is Father Joseph Edward," he said, "Abbot of the Monastery upon the Lizard Promontory in Cornwall. He has come with me this afternoon upon a special mission."

The newcomer was a slight, dark-visaged man who wore a black cape over his cassock, and a soft clerical hat. He seemed absolutely undistinguished, but the announcement of his name thrilled the man and woman by the fire.

The Priest bowed slightly. There was little or no expression to be discerned upon his face.

But the others in the room knew who he was at once.

Father Joseph Edward was a hidden force in the Church or England. He was a peer's son who had flashed out at Oxford, fifteen years before, as one of the cleverest, wildest, most brilliant and devil-may-care undergraduates who had ever been at "The House." Both by reason of wealth and position, but also by considered action, he had escaped authoritative condemnation and had been allowed to take his first in Lit. Hum.

But, as every one knew at his time Adrian Rathlone had been one of the wildest, wealthiest and wickedest young men of his generation.

And then, as all the world heard, Adrian Rathlone had taken Holy Orders. He had worked in the East End of London for a time, and had then founded his Cornish Monastery by permission of the Chapter and Bishop of Truro.

From the far west of England, where She stretches out her granite foot to spurn the onslaught of the Atlantic, it had become known that broken and contrite hearts might leave London and life, to seek, and find Peace upon the purple moors of the West.

"But now, John," the Bishop said to Morton Sims, "I want to tell you something. I want to explain a very important alteration in the agenda.."

There was no doubt about it whatever, the Bishop's usually calm and suave voice was definitely disturbed.

He and Morton Sims bent over the table together looking at the printed paper.

The Bishop had a fat gold pencil case in his hand and was pointing to names upon the programme.

Mrs. Daly, from her seat by the fire, watched her friend, Morton Sims, with his friend, William Denisthorpe Moultrie, Father in God, with immense interest. She was interested extremely in the Bishop's obvious perturbation, but even more so to see these two celebrated men standing together and calling each other by their Christian names like boys. She knew that they had been at Harrow and Oxford together, she knew that despite their disagreements upon many points they had always been fast friends.

"What boys nice men are after all," she thought with a slight sympathetic contraction of her throat. "'William'! 'John'! – Our men in America are not very often like that – but what, what is the Bishop saying?"

Her face became almost rigid with attention as she caught a certain name. Even as she did so the Bishop spoke in an undertone to Morton Sims, and then glanced slightly in her direction with a hint of a question in his eyes.

"Mrs. Daly, William," Morton Sims said, "is on the Committee. She is one of my greatest friends and, perhaps, the greatest friend Edith has in the world. She was also a great friend of Mrs. Lothian and knew her well. You need not have the slightest hesitation in saying anything you wish before her."

Julia Daly rose from her seat, her heart was beating strangely.

"What is this?" she said in her gentle, but almost regal way. "Why, my lord, the doctor and I were only talking of Gilbert Lothian and his saintly wife a moment or two ago. Have you news of the poet?"

The Bishop, still with his troubled, anxious face, turned to her with a faint smile. "I did not know, Mrs. Daly," he said, "that you took any interest in Lothian, but yes, I have news."

"Then you can solve the mystery?" Julia Daly said.

The Bishop sighed. "If you mean," he said, "why Mr. Lothian has disappeared from the world for a year, I can at least tell you what he has been doing. John here tells me that you have known all about him, so that I am violating no confidences. After his wife's death, poor Lothian became very seriously ill in consequence of his excesses. He was cured eventually, but one night – it was late at night in Norfolk – some one, quite unlike the Gilbert Lothian I had known, came to my house. It was like a ghost coming. He told me many strange and terrible things, and hinted that he could have told me more, though I forbade him. With every appearance of contrition, with his face streaming with tears – ah, if ever during my career as a Priest I have seen a broken and a contrite heart I saw it then – he wished, he told me, to work out his soul's release, to go away from the world utterly and to fight the Fiend Alcohol. He would go into no home, would submit to no legal restraint. He wished to fight the devil that possessed him with no other aids than spiritual ones. I sent him to Father Joseph Edward."

"And he has cured himself?" the American lady said in a tone which so rang and vibrated through the Committee room, with eyes in which such gladness was dawning, that the three men there looked at her as if they had seen a vision.

The monkish-looking clergyman replied.

"Quite cured," he said gravely. "He is saved in body and saved in soul. You say his wife, Madam, was a Saint: I think, Madam, that our friend is not very far from it now."

He stopped suddenly, almost jerkily, and his dark, somewhat saturnine face became watchful and with a certain fear in it.

What all this might mean John Morton Sims was at a loss to understand. That it meant something, something very out of the ordinary, he was very well aware. William Moultrie was not himself – that was very evident. And he had brought this odd, mediæval parson with him for some special reason. Morton Sims was not very sympathetic toward the Middle Age. Spoken to-day the word "Abbot" or "Father" – used ecclesiastically – always affected him with slight disgust.

Nevertheless, he nodded to the Bishop and turned to Mrs. Daly.

"Gilbert Lothian is coming here during this afternoon," he said. "The Bishop has specially asked me to arrange that he shall speak during the Conference. It seems he has come specially from Mullion in Cornwall to be present this afternoon. Father Joseph Edward has brought him. It seems that he has something important to say."

For some reason or other, what it was the doctor could not have said, Julia Daly seemed strangely excited at the news.

"Such testimony as his," she said, "coming from such a man as that, will be a wonderful experience. In fact I do not know that there will ever have been anything like it."

Morton Sims had not quite realised this aspect of the question. He had wondered, when Moultrie had insisted upon putting Lothian's name down as the third speaker during the afternoon. Moultrie was perfectly within his rights, of course, as Chairman, but it seemed rather a drastic thing to do. It was a disturbance of settled order, and the scientific mind unconsciously resented it. Now, however, the scientific mind realised the truth of what Julia Daly had said. Of course, if Gilbert Lothian was really going to make a confession, and obviously that was what he was coming here for under the charge of this dark-visaged "Abbot" – then indeed it would be extremely valuable. Thousands of people who had been "converted" and cured from drunkenness had "given their experiences" upon temperance platforms, but they had invariably been people of the lower classes. While their evidence as to the reality of their conversion – their change – was valuable and real, they were incapable one and all of giving any details of value to the student and psychologist.

"Yes!" Morton Sims said suddenly, "if Mr. Lothian is going to speak, then we shall gain very much from what he says."

But he noticed that the Bishop's face did not become less troubled and anxious than before. He saw also that the silent clergyman sitting by the opposite wall showed no sympathetic interest in his point of view.

He himself began to experience again that sense of uneasiness and depression which he had experienced all day, and especially during his drive to the Edward Hall, but which had been temporarily dispelled by the arrival of Mrs. Daly.

In a minute or two, however, great people began to arrive in large numbers. The Bishop, Morton Sims and Mrs. Daly were shaking hands and talking continuously. As for Morton Sims, he had no time to think any more about the somewhat untoward incidents in the Committee room.

The Meeting began.

The Edward Hall is a very large building with galleries and boxes. The galleries now, by a clever device, were all hung round with dark curtains. This made the hall appear much smaller and prevented the sparseness of the audience having a depressing effect upon those who addressed it.

Only some three hundred and fifty people attended this Conference. The general public were not asked. Admission was by invitation. The three hundred and fifty people who had come were, however, the very pick and élite of those interested in the Temperance cause and instrumental in forwarding it from their various standpoints.

Bishop Moultrie made a few introductory remarks. Then he introduced Sir Edward Harley, the Judge. The Judge was a small keen-faced man. Without his frame of horse hair and robe of scarlet he at first appeared insignificant and without personality. But that impression was dispelled directly he began to speak.

The quiet, keen, incisive voice, so precise and scholarly of phrase, so absolutely germane to the thought, and so illuminating of it, held some of the keenest minds in England as with a spell for twenty minutes.

Mr. Justice Harley advocated penal restriction upon the multiplication of drunkards in the most whole-hearted way. He did not go into the arguments for and against the proposed measure, but he gave illustrations from his own experience as to its absolute necessity and value.

He mentioned one case in which he had been personally concerned which intensely interested his audience.

It was that of a murderer. The man had murdered his wife under circumstances of callous cunning. In all other respects the murderer had lived a hard-working and blameless life. He had become infatuated with another woman, but the crime, which had taken nearly a month in execution, had been committed entirely under the influence of alcohol.

"Under the influence of that terrible amnesic dream-phase which our medical friends tell us of," the Judge said. "As was my duty as an officer of the law I sent that man to his death. Under existing conditions of society I think that what I was compelled to do was the best thing that could have been done. But I may say to you, my lord, my lords, ladies and gentlemen that it was not without a bitter personal shrinking that I sent that poor man to pay the penalty of his crime. The mournful bell which Dr. Archdall Reed has tolled is his 'Study in Heredity' was sounding in my ears as I did so. That is one of the reasons why I am here this afternoon to support the only movement which seems to have within it the germ of public freedom from the devastating disease of alcoholism."

The Judge concluded and sat down in his seat.

Bishop Moultrie rose and introduced the next speaker with a few prefatory remarks. Morton Sims who was sitting next Sir Edward whispered in his ear.

"May I ask, Sir Edward," he said, "if you were referring just now to Hancock, the Hackney murderer?"

The little Judge nodded.

"Yes," he whispered, "but how did you know, Sims?"

"Oh, I knew all about him before his condemnation," the doctor replied. "In fact I took a special interest in him. I was with him the night before his execution and I assisted at the autopsy the next day."

The Judge gave a keen glance at his friend and nodded.

The Bishop in the Chair now read a few brief statements as to the progress of the work that was being done. Lady Harold Buckingham was down to speak next. She sat on the Bishop's left hand, and it was obvious to the audience that she understood his next remark.

"You all have the printed programme in your hands," said the Bishop, "and from it you will see that Lady Harold is set down to address you next. But I have – " his voice changed a little and became uncertain and had a curious note of apprehension in it – "I have to ask you to give your attention to another speaker, whose wish to address the Meeting has only recently been conveyed to me, but whose right to do so is, in my judgment, indubitable. He has, I understand from Father Joseph who has brought him here, something to say to us of great importance."

There was a low murmur and rustle among the audience, as well as among the semicircle of people on the dais.

The name of Father Joseph Edward attracted instant attention. Every one knew all about him; the slight uneasiness on the Bishop's face had not been unremarked. They all felt that something unusual and stimulating was imminent.

"It is Mr. Gilbert Lothian," the Bishop went on, "who wishes to address you. His name will be familiar to every one here. I do not know, and have not the least idea, as to what Mr. Lothian is about to say. All I know is that he is most anxious to speak this afternoon, and, even at this late hour pressure has been put upon me to alter the programme in this regard, which it is impossible for me to resist."

Now every one in the hall knew that some sensation was impending.

People nodded and whispered; people whispered and nodded. There was almost an apprehension in the air.

Why had this poet risen from the tomb as it were – this poet whose utter disappearance from social and literary life had been a three weeks' wonder – this poet whom everybody thought was dead, who, in his own personality, had become but a faint name to those who still read and were comforted by his poems.

Very many of that distinguished company had met Gilbert Lothian.

Nobody had known him well. His appearances in London society had been fugitive and he had shown no desire to enter into the great world. But still the best people had nearly all met him once or twice, and in the minds of most of them, especially the women, there was a not ungrateful memory of a man who talked well, had quite obviously no axe to grind, no personal effort to further, who was only himself and pleased to be where he was.