Thorne Guy
The Drunkard

Lothian looked round him. "Yes," he said a trifle bitterly, as his eye fell upon a party of Jews who had motored down from London, – "people who rule over three-quarters of the world – and an entire eclipse of the intellect! You can see it here, unimportant as it is, compared to the great places in London and Paris – 'the feasting and the folly and the fun, the lying and the lusting and the drink'!"

Rita looked at him wonderingly, following the direction of his eyes.

"Those people seem happy," she said, not understanding his sudden mood, "they are all laughing and they all seem amused."

"Yes, but people don't always laugh because they are amused. Slow-witted, obese brained people – like those Israelites there – laugh very often on the chance that there is something funny which eludes them. They don't want to betray themselves. When I see people like that I feel as if my mind ought to be sprinkled with some disinfecting fluid."

As a matter of fact, the party at the other table with their handsome Oriental faces and alert, vivacious manner did not seem in the least slow-witted, nor were they. One of them was a peer and great newspaper proprietor, another a musician of world celebrity. Lothian's cynicism jarred on the pleasure of the moment. For the first time the girl did not feel quite en rapport, and was a little uneasy. He struck too harsh a note.

But at that moment waiters bustled up with soup, champagne in an ice pail, and a decanter of some bright amber liquid for Lothian. He poured and drank quickly, with an involuntary sigh of satisfaction.

"How I wanted that!" he said with a frank smile. "I was talking nonsense, Miranda, but I was tired. And I'm afraid that when I get tired I'm cross. I've been working very hard lately and am a little run down," he added, anxious that she should not think that their talk had tired him, and feeling the necessity of some explanation.

It satisfied her immediately. His change of voice and face reassured her, the little shadow passed.

"Oh, I am enjoying myself!" she said with a sigh of pleasure, "but what's this? How strange! The soup is cold!"

"Yes, didn't you know? It's iced consommé, awfully good in hot weather."

She shook her head. "No, I didn't," she said. "I've never been anywhere or seen anything, you know. When Ethel and I feel frightfully rich, we have dinner at Lyons, but I've never been to a swagger restaurant before."

"And you like it?"

"It's heavenly! How good this soup is. But what a waste it seems to put all that ice round the champagne. Ice is so dreadfully expensive. You get hardly any for fourpence at our fishmongers."

But it was the mayonnaise with its elaborate decoration that intrigued her most.

Words failed at the luscious sight and it was a sheer joy to watch her.

"Oh, what a pig I am!" she said, after her second helping, with her flashing, radiant smile, "but it was too perfectly sweet for anything."

The champagne and excitement had tinted her cheeks exquisitely, it was as though a few drops of red wine had been poured into a glass of clear crystal water. With little appetite himself, Lothian watched her eat with intense pleasure in her youth and health. His depression had gone, he seemed to draw vitality from her, to be informed with something of her own pulsing youth. He became quite at his best, and how good that was, not very many people knew.

It was his hour, his moment, every sense was flattered and satisfied. He was dining with the prettiest girl in the room, people turned to look at her. She hung on his words and was instantly appreciative. A full flask of poison was by his side, he could help himself without let or hindrance. Her innocence of what he was doing – of what it was necessary for him to do to remain at concert-pitch – was supreme. No one else knew or would have cared twopence if they did.

He was witty, in a high courtly way. The hour of freakish fun was over, and his shrewd insight into life, his poetic and illuminating method of statement, the grace and kindliness of it all held the girl spellbound.

And well it might. His nerves, cleared and tempered, telegraphed each message to his brilliant, lambent brain with absolute precision.

There was an entire co-ordination of all the reflexes.

And Rita knew well that she was hearing what many people would have given much to hear, knew that Lothian was exerting himself to a manifestation of the highest power of his brain – for her.

For her! It was an incredible triumph, wonderfully sweet. The dominant sex-instinct awoke. Unconsciously she was now responding to him as woman to man. Her eyes, her lips showed it, everything was quite different from what it had been before.

In all that happened afterwards, neither of them ever forgot that night. For the girl it was Illumination.

.. She had mentioned a writer of beautiful prose whom she had recently discovered in the library and who had come as a revelation to her.

"Nothing else I have ever read produces the same impression," she said.

"There are very few writers in prose that can."

"It is magic."

"But to be understood. You see, some of his chapters – the passages on Leonardo da Vinci for instance, are intended to be musical compositions as it were, in which words have to take the place and perform the functions of notes. It has been pointed out that they are impassioned, not so much in the sense of expressing any very definite sentiment, but because, from the combination and structure of the sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion."

She understood. The whole mechanism and intention of the writer were revealed to her in those lucent words.

And then a statement of his philosophy.

"In telling me of your reading just now, you spoke of that progress of the soul that each new horizon in literature seems to stimulate and ensure for you. And you quoted some hackneyed and beautiful lines of Longfellow. Cling always to that idea of progress, but remember that we don't really rise to higher things upon the stepping stones of our dead selves so much as on the stepping stones of our dead opinions. That is Progress. Progress means the capability of seeing new forms of beauty."

"But there are places where one wants to linger."

"I know, but it's dangerous. You were splendidly right when you bade me move from that garden just now. The road was waiting. It is so with states of the soul. The limpet is the lowest of organisms. Movement is everything. One life may seem to be like sunlight moving over sombre ground and another like the shadow of a cloud traversing a sunlit space. But both have meaning and value. Never strike an average and imagine you have found content. The average life is nothing but a pudding in a fog!"

Lothian had been talking very earnestly, his eyes full of light, fixed on her eyes. And now, in a moment, he saw what had been there for many minutes, he saw what he had roused.

He was startled.

During this delightful evening that side of their intercourse had not been very present in his mind. She was a delightful flower, a flower with a mind. It is summed up very simply. He had never once wanted to touch her.

His face changed and grew troubled. A new presence was there, a problem rose where there had been none before. The realisation of her physical loveliness and desirability came to him in a flood of new sensation. The strong male impulse was alive and burning for the first time that night.

A waiter had brought a silver dish of big peaches, and as she ate the fruit there was that in her eyes which he recognised, though he knew her mind was unconscious of it.

In the sudden stir and tumult of his thoughts, one became dominant.

It was an evil thought, perhaps the most subtle and the most evil that can come to a man. The pride of intellect in its most gross and devilish manifestation awoke.

He was not a vain man. He did not usually think much about his personal appearance and charm. But he knew how changed in outward aspect he was becoming. His glass told him that every morning at shaving time. His vice was marking him. He was not what he was, not what he should and might be, in a physical regard. And girls, he knew, were generally attracted by physical good-looks in a man. Young Dickson Ingworth, for instance, seemed able to pick and choose. Lothian had often laughed at the boyish and conceited narratives of his prowess. And now, to the older man came the realisation that his age, his growing corpulence, need mean nothing at all – if he willed it so. A girl like this, a pearl among maidens, could be dominated by his intellect. He knew that he was not mistaken. Over a fool, however lovely and attractive by reason of her sex, he would have no power. But here ..

An allurement more dazzling than he had thought life held was suddenly shown him.

There was an honest horror, a shudder and recoil of all the good in him from this monstrous revelation, so sudden, so unexpected.

He shuddered and then found an instant compromise.

It could not concern himself, it never should. But it might be regarded – just for a few brief moments! – from a detached point of view, as if it had to do with some one else, some creation of a fiction or a poem.

And even that was unutterably sweet.

It should be so, only for this night. There would be no harm done. And it was for the sake of his Art, the psychological experience to be gathered..

There is no time in thought. The second hand of his watch had hardly moved when he leant towards her a little and spoke.

"Cupid!" he said. "I think I know why they used to call you Cupid at your school!"

Just as she had been a dear, clever and deferential school-girl in the Library, a girl-poet in the garden, a freakish companion-wit after that, so now she became a woman.

He had fallen. She knew and tasted consciousness of power.

Another side of the girl's complex personality appeared. She led him on and tried to draw back. She became provocative at moments when he did not respond at once. She flirted with a finished art.

As he lit a cigarette for her, she tested the "power of the hour" to its limit, showing without possibility of mistake how aware she was.

"What would Mrs. Lothian think of your bringing me here to dinner?" she said very suddenly.

For a moment he did not know what to answer, the attack was so direct, the little feline thrust revealing so surely where he stood.

"She would be delighted that I was having such a jolly evening," he answered, but neither his smile nor his voice was quite true.

She smiled at him in girlish mockery, rejoicing!

"You little devil!" he thought with an embarrassed mental grin. "How dare you." She should pay for that.

"Would you mind if my wife did care," he asked, looking her straight in the eyes.

"I ought to, but – I shouldn't!" she answered recklessly, and all his blood became fired.

Yet at that, he leant back in his chair and laughed a frank laugh of amusement. The tension was over, the dangerous moment passed, and soon afterwards they wandered out into the night, to go upon the pier "just for half an hour" before starting for London.

And neither of them saw that upon one of the lounges in the great hall, sipping coffee and talking to the newspaper-peer Herbert Toftrees was sitting.

He saw them at once and started, while an ugly look came into his eyes. "Look," he said. "There's Gilbert Lothian, the Christian Poet!"

"So that's the man!" said Lord Morston, "deuced pretty wife he's got. And very fine work he does too, by the way."

"Oh, that's not his wife," Toftrees answered with contempt. "I know who that is quite well. Lothian keeps his wife somewhere down in the country and no one ever sees her." And he proceeded to pour the history of the Amberleys' dinner-party into a quietly amused and cynical ear.

The swift rush back to London under the stars was quiet and dreamy. Repose fell over Gilbert and Rita as they sat side by side, repose "from the cool cisterns of the midnight air."

They felt much drawn to each other. Laughter and all feverish thoughts were swept away by the breezes of their passage through the night. They were old friends now! An affection had sprung up between them which was to be a real and enduring thing. They were to be dear friends always, and that would be "perfectly sweet."

Rita had been so lonely. She had wanted a friend so.

He was going home on the morrow. He had been too long away.

But he would be up in town again quite soon, and meanwhile they would correspond.

"Dear little Rita," he said, as he held her hand outside the door of the block of flats in Kensington. "Dear child, I'm so glad."

It was a clear night and the clocks were striking twelve.

"And I'm glad, too," she answered, – "Gilbert!"

He was soon at his club, had paid the chauffeur and dismissed him. There was no one he wanted to talk to in either of the smoking rooms, and so, after a final peg he went upstairs to bed. He was quite peaceful and calm in mind, very placidly happy and pleased.

To-morrow he would go home to Mary.

He said his prayers, begging God to make this strange and sweet friendship that had come into his life of value to him and to his little friend, might it always be fine and pure!

So he got into bed and a pleasant drowsiness stole over him; he had a sense of great virtue and peace. All was well with his soul.

"Dear little Rita," were the words he murmured as he fell asleep and lay tranquil in yet another phase of his poisoned life.

No dreams disturbed his sleep. No premonition came to tell him whither he had set his steps or whither they would lead him.

A mile or two away there was a nameless grave of shame, within a citadel where "pale Anguish keeps the gate and the Warder is Despair."

But no spectre rose from that grave to warn him.

END OF THE FIRST BOOK

BOOK TWO
LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK

 
"Not with fine gold for a payment,
But with coin of sighs,
But with rending of raiment
And with weeping of eyes,
But with shame of stricken faces
And with strewing of dust,
For the sin of stately places
And lordship of lust."
 

CHAPTER I
VIGNETTE OF EARLY MORNING. "GILBERT IS COMING HOME!"

 
"Elle se repand dans ma vie
Comme un air imprégné de sel,
Et dans mon âme inassouvie
Verse le goût de l'éternel."
 

– Baudelaire.

The white magic of morning was at work over the village of Mortland Royal. From a distant steading came the thin brazen cry of a cock, thin as a bugle, and round the Lothians' sleeping house the bubble of bird-song began.

In the orchard before the house, which ran down to the trout stream, Trust, the brown spaniel dog, came out of a barrel in his little fenced enclosure, sniffed the morning air, yawned, and went back again into his barrel. White mist was rising from the water-meadows, billowed into delicate eddies and spirals by the first breeze of day, and already touched by the rosy fingers of dawn.

In the wood beyond the meadows an old cock-pheasant made a sound like high hysteric laughter.

The house, with its gravel-sweep giving directly on to the unfenced orchard, was long and low. The stones were mellowed by time, and orange, olive, and ash-coloured lichens clung to them. The roof was of tiles, warm red and green with age, the windows mullioned, the chimney-stack, which cut deep into the roof, high and with the grace of Tudor times.

The place was called the "Old House" in the village and was a veritable sixteenth century cottage, rather spoilt by repairs and minor extensions, but still, in the silent summer morning, with something of the grace and fragrance of an Elizabethan song. It was quite small, really, a large cottage and nothing more, but it had a personality of its own and it was always very tranquil.

On such a summer dawn as this with the rabbits frisking in the pearl-hung grass, on autumn days of brown and purple, or keen spring mornings when the wind fifed a tune among the bare branches of the apple-trees; on dead winter days when sea-birds from the marshes flitted against the grey sky like sudden drifts of snow, a deep peace ever brooded over the house.

The air began to grow fresher and the mists to disperse as the breeze came over the great marshes a mile beyond the village. Out on the mud-flats with their sullen tidal creeks the sun was rising like a red Host from the far sea which tolled like a Mass bell. The curlews with their melancholy voices were beginning to fly inland from the marshes, high up in the still sky. The plovers were calling, the red-shanks piping in the marrum grass, and a sedge of herons shouted their hoarse "frank, frank" as they clanged away over the saltings.

Only the birds were awake in this remote Norfolk village, the cows in the meadows had but just turned in their sleep, and not even the bees were yet a-wing. Peace, profound and brooding, lay over the Poet's house.

Dawn blossomed into perfect morning, all gold and blue. It began, early as it was, to grow hot. Trust came out of his barrel and began to pad round his little yard with bright brown eyes.

There was a sound of some one stirring in the silent house, and presently the back door, in the recess near the entrance gates, was flung wide open and a housemaid with untidy hair and eyes still heavy with sleep, stood yawning upon the step. There was a rattle of cinders and the cracking of sticks as the fire was lit in the kitchen beyond. Trust, in the orchard, heard the sound. He could smell the wood-smoke from the chimney. Presently one of the Great Ones, the Beloved Ones, would let him out for a scamper in the dew. Then there would be biscuits for the dog Trust.

And now brisk footsteps were heard upon the road outside the entrance gates. In a moment more these were pushed open with a rattle, and Tumpany swung in humming a little tune.

Tumpany was a shortish thick-set man of fifty, with a red clean-shaven face. He walked with his body bent forward, his arms hanging at his sides, and always seemed about to break into a short run. It was five years since he had retired even from the coast-guard, but Royal Navy was written large all over him, and would be until he tossed off his last pint of beer and sailed away to Fidler's Green – "Nine miles to windward of Hell," as he loved to explain to the housemaid and the cook.

Tumpany's wife kept a small shop in the village, and he himself did the boots and knives, cleaned Gilbert's guns and went wild-fowling with him in the winter, was the more immediate Providence of the Dog Trust, and generally a most important and trusted person in the little household of the Poet.

There was an almost exaggerated briskness in Tumpany's walk and manner as he turned into the kitchen. Blanche, the housemaid, was now "doing" the dining-room, in the interior of the house, but Phoebe, the cook – a stalwart lass of three and twenty – had just got the fire to her liking and was giving a finishing touch of polish to the range.

"Morning, my girl!" said Tumpany in a bluff, cheery voice.

Phoebe did not answer, but went on polishing the handle of the oven door.

He repeated the salutation, a shade less confidently.

The girl gave a final leisurely twist of the leather, surveyed her work critically for a moment, and then rose to her feet.

"There are them knives," she said shortly, pointing to a basket upon the table, "and the boots is in the back kitchen."

"You needn't be so short with a man, Phoebe."

"You needn't have been so beastly drunk last night. Then them knives wouldn't want doing this morning. If it hadn't been for me the dog wouldn't have had no food. If the mistress knew she would have given you what for, as I expect your missis have already if the truth were known."

"Damn the mistress!" said Tumpany. He adored Mary Lothian, as Phoebe very well knew, but his head burned and he was in the uncertain temper of the "morning after." The need of self-assertion was paramount.

"Now, no beastly language in my kitchen," said the girl. "You go and do your damning – and them knives – in the outhouse. I wonder you've the face to come here at all, Master being away too. Get out, do!"

With a very red and sulky face, Tumpany gathered up the knives and shambled away to his own particular sanctum.

The ex-sailor was confused in his mind. There was a buzzing in his head like that of bees in a hive. He had a faint recollection of being turned out of the Mortland Arms just before ten o'clock the night before. His muddy memories showed him the stern judicial face of the rather grim old lady who kept the Inn. He seemed to feel her firm hands upon his shoulders yet.

But had he come back to the Old House? He was burning to ask the cook. One thing was satisfactory. His mistress had not seen him or else Phoebe's threat would have meant nothing. Yet what had happened in his own house? He had woke up in the little parlour behind the shop. Some one had covered him with an overcoat. He had not dared to go upstairs to his wife. He hoped – here he began to rub a knife up and down the board with great vigour – he did hope that he hadn't set about her. There was a sick fear in the man's heart as he polished his knives.

In many ways a better fellow never breathed. He was extremely popular in the village, Gilbert Lothian swore by him, Mary Lothian liked him very well. He was a person of some consequence in the village community where labourers worked early and late for a wage of thirteen shillings a week. His pension was a good one, the little shop kept by his wife was not unprosperous, Lothian was generous. He only got drunk now and then – generally at the time when he drew his pension – but when he did his wife suffered. He would strike her, not knowing what he did. The dreadful marks would be on her face in the morning and he would suffer an agony of dull and inarticulate remorse.

So, even in the pretty cottage of this prosperous and popular man – so envied by his poorer neighbours —surgit amari aliquid!

.. If only things had been all right last night!

Tumpany put down his knife with a bang. He slipped from his little outhouse, and slunk across the orchard. Then he opened the iron gate of the dog's kennel.

The dog Trust exploded over Tumpany like a shell of brown fur. He leapt at him in an ecstasy of love and greeting and then, unable to express his feelings in any other way, rolled over on his back with his long pink tongue hanging out, and his eyes blinking in the sun.

"Goodorg," said Tumpany, a little comforted, and then both he and Trust slunk back to the outhouse. There was a sympathetic furtiveness in the animal also. It was as though the Dog Trust quite understood.

Tumpany resumed his work. Two rabbits which he had shot the day before were hanging from the roof, and Trust looked up at them with eager eyes. A rabbit represented the unattainable to Trust. He was a hard-working and highly-trained sporting dog, a wild-fowling dog especially, and he was never allowed to retrieve a rabbit for fear of spoiling the tenderness of his mouth. When one of the delicious little creatures bolted under his very nose, he must take no notice of it at all. Trust held the (wholly erroneous) belief that if only he had the chance he could run down a rabbit in the open field. He did not realise that a dog who will swim over a creek with a snipe or tiny ring-plover in his mouth and drop it without a bone being broken must never touch fur. His own greatness forbade these baser joys, but like the Prince in the story who wanted to make mud pies with the beggar children, he was unconscious of his position, and for him too – on this sweet morning – surgit amari aliquid.

But life has many compensations. The open door of the brick shed was darkened suddenly. Phoebe, who in reality had a deep admiration for Mr. Tumpany, had relented, and in her hand was a mug of beer.

"There!" she said with a grin, "and take care it don't hiss as it goes down. Pipes red hot I expect! Lord what fools men are!"

Tumpany said nothing, but the deep "gluck gluck" of satisfaction as he drank was far more eloquent than words.

Phoebe watched him with a pitying and almost maternal wonder in her simple mind.

"A good thing you've come early, and Mistress ain't up yet," she said. "I went into the cellar as quiet as a cat, and I held a dish-cloth over the spigot when I knocked it in again so as to deaden the sound. You can hear the knock all over the house else!"

"Thank ye, Phoebe, my dear. That there beer's in lovely condition; and I don't mind saying I wanted it bad."

"Well, take care, as you don't want it another day so early. I see your wife last night!"

She paused, maliciously enjoying the anxiety which immediately clouded the man's round, red face.

"It's all right," she said at length. "She was out when you come home from the public, and she found you snoring in the parlour. There was no words passed. I must get to work."

She hurried back to her kitchen. Tumpany began to whistle.

The growing warmth of the morning had melted the congealed blood which hung from the noses of the rabbits. One or two drops fell upon the flags of the floor and the Dog Trust licked them up with immense relish.

Thus day began for the humbler members of the Poet's household.

At a few minutes before eight o'clock, the mistress of the house came down stairs, crossed the hall and went into the dining room.

Mary Lothian was a woman of thirty-eight. She was tall, of good figure, and carried herself well. She was erect, without producing any impression of stiffness. She walked firmly, but with grace.

Her abundant hair was pale gold in colour and worn in a simple Greek knot. The nose, slightly aquiline, was in exact proportion to the face. This was of an oval contour, though not markedly so, and was just a little thin. The eyes under finely drawn brows, were a clear and steadfast blue.

In almost every face the mouth is the most expressive feature. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, the mouth is its revelation. It is the true indication of what is within. The history of a man or woman's life lies there. For those who can read, its subtle changing curves at some time or another, betray all secrets of evil or of good. It is the first feature that sensual vices coarsen or self-control refines. The sin of pride moulds it into shapes that cannot be hidden. Envy, hatred and malice must needs write their superscription there, and the blood stirs about our hearts when we read of an angelic smile.

The Greeks knew this, and when their actors trod the marble stage of Dionysius at Athens, or the theatre of Olympian Zeus by the hill Kronian, their faces were masked. The lips of Hecuba were always frozen into horror. The mouths of the heralds of the Lysistrata were set in one curve of comedy throughout the play. Voices of gladness or sorrow came from lips of wax or clay, which never changed as the living lips beneath them needs must do. A certain sharpness and reality, as of life suddenly arrested at one moment of passion, was aimed at. Men's real mouths were too mobile and might betray things alien to the words they chanted.

The mouth of Mary Lothian was beautiful. It was rather large, well-shaped without possessing any purely æsthetic appeal, and only a very great painter could have realised it upon canvas. In a photograph it was nothing, unless a pure accident of the camera had once in a way caught its expression. The mouth of this woman was absolutely frank and kind. Its womanly dignity was overlaid with serene tenderness, a firm sweetness which never left it. In repose or in laughter – it was a mouth that could really laugh – this kindness and simplicity was always there. Always it seemed to say "here is a good woman and one without guile."

The whole face was capable without being clever. No freakish wit lurked in the calm, open eyes, there was nothing of the fantastic, little of the original in the quiet comely face. All kind and simple people loved Mary Lothian and her —

 
"Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign
The Summer calm of golden charity."
 

Men with feverish minds and hectic natures could see but little in her – a quiet woman moving about a tranquil house. There was nothing showy in her grave distinction. She never thought about attracting people, only of being kind to them. Not as a companion for their lighter hours nor as a sharer in their merriment, did people come to her. It was when trouble of mind, body or estate assailed them that they came and found a "most silver flow of subtle-paced counsel in distress."

Since the passing of Victoria and the high-noon of her reign, the purely English ideal of womanhood has disappeared curiously from contemporary art and has not the firm hold upon the general mind that it had thirty years ago.

The heroines of poems and fictions are complex people to-day, world-weary, tempestuous and without peace of heart or mind. The two great voices of the immediate past have lost much of their meaning for modern ears.

 
"So just
A type of womankind, that God sees fit to trust
Her with the holy task of giving life in turn."
 

– Not many pens nor brushes are busy with such ladies now.

 
"Crown'd Isabel, thro' all her placid life,
The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife."
 

– Who sings such Isabels to-day? It is Calypso of the magic island of whom the modern world loves to hear, and few poets sing Penelope faithful by the hearth any more.

But when deep peace broods over a dwelling, it is from the Mary Lothians of England that it comes.

Mary was very simply dressed, but there was an indescribable air of distinction about her. The skirt of white piqué hung perfectly, the cream-coloured blouse with drawn-thread work at the neck and wrists was fresh and dainty. On her head was a panama hat with a scarf of mauve silk tied loosely round it and hanging down her back in two long ends.

In one hand she held a silver-headed walking cane, in the other a small prayer-book, for she was going to matins before breakfast.

She spoke a word to the cook and went out of the back door, calling a good-morning to Tumpany as she passed his shed, and then went through the entrance-gate into the village street.

By this hour the labourers were all at work in the fields and farmyards – the hay harvest was over and the corn cutting about to begin – but the cottage doors were open and the children were gathering in little groups, ready to proceed to school.