Читать книгу The Drunkard - Thorne Guy - Страница 6

When the door of the house had closed after him, and with Mr. Amberley's courteous but grave good-night ringing in his ears, Gilbert Lothian walked briskly away across the Square.

It was very hot. The July sun, that tempest of fire which had passed over the town during the day, had sucked up all the sweetness from the air and it was sickly, like air under a blanket which has been breathed many times. As it often is in July, London had been delightfully fresh at dawn, when the country waggons were bringing the sweet-peas and the roses to market, and although his mind had not been fresh as the sun rose over St. James' where he was staying, Lothian had enjoyed the early morning from the window of his bedroom. It had been clear and scentless, like a field with the dew upon it, in the country from which he had come five days ago.

Now his mind was like a field in the full sun of noon, parched and full of hot odours.

He was perfectly aware that he had made a faux pas. How far it went, whether he was not exaggerating it, he did not know. The semi-intoxicated person – more especially when speech and gait are more or less normal, as in his case – is quite incapable of gauging the impression he makes on others. In lax and tolerant circles where no outward indication is given him of his state, he goes on his way pleased and confident that he has made an excellent impression, sure that no one has found him out.

But his cunning and self-congratulation quite desert him when he is openly snubbed or reproved. "Was I very far gone?" he afterwards asks some confidential friend who may have been present at his discomfiture. And whatever form the answer may take, the drunkard is abnormally interested in all the details of the event. Born of the toxic influences in his blood, there is a gaunt and greedy vanity which insists upon the whole scene being re-enacted and commented upon.

Lothian had no one to tell him how far he had gone, precisely what impression he had made upon his hosts and their guests. He felt with a sense of injury that Dickson Ingworth ought to have come away with him. The young man owed so much to him in the literary life! It was a treachery not to have come away with him.

As he got into a cab and told the man to drive him as far as Piccadilly Circus, he was still pursuing this train of thought. He had taken Ingworth to the Amberleys', and now the cub was sitting in the drawing room there, with those charming girls! quite happy and at ease. He, Gilbert Lothian himself! was out of it all, shut out from that gracious house and those cultured people whom he had been so glad to meet.

.. Again he heard the soft closing of the big front door behind him, and his skin grew hot at the thought. The remembrance of Amberley's quiet courtesy, but entire change of manner in the hall, was horrible. He felt as if he had been whipped. The dread of a slight, the fear of a quarrel, which is a marked symptom of the alcoholic – is indeed his torment and curse through life – was heavy upon Lothian now.

The sense of impotence was sickening. What a weak fool he had been to break down and fly like that. To run away! What faltering and trembling incapacity for self-assertion he had shown. He had felt uneasy with the very servant who gave him his opera hat!

And what had he done after all? Very little, surely.

That prelude of Chopin always appealed to him strongly. He had written about it; Crouchmann had played it privately for him and pointed out new beauties. Certainly he had only met Miss Amberley for the first time that night and he may have been a little over-excited and effusive. His thoughts – a poet's thoughts after all – had come too quickly for ordered expression. He was too Celtic in manner, too artistic for these staid cold folk.

He tried to depreciate the Amberleys in his thoughts. Amberley was only a glorified trades-man after all! Lothian tried to call up within him that bitter joy which comes from despising that which we really respect or desire. "Yes! damn the fellow! He lived on poets and men of letters – privileged people, the salt of the earth, the real forces of life!"

And yet he ought to have stayed on and corrected his mistake. He had made himself ridiculous in front of four women – he didn't care about the men so much – and that was horribly galling.

As the cab swung down Regent Street, Lothian was sure that if his nerves had not weakened for a moment he would never have given himself away. It was, he felt, very unfortunate. He knew, as he could not help knowing, that not only had he a mind and power of a rare, high quality, but that he possessed great personal charm. What he did not realise was how utterly all these things fled from him when he was not quite sober. Certainly at this moment he was unable to comprehend it in the slightest. Realisation would come later, at the inevitable punishment hour.

He over-paid his cabman absurdly. The man's quick and eager deference pleased him. He was incapable of any sense of proportion, and he felt somehow or other reinstated in his own opinion by this trivial and bought servility.

He looked at his watch. It was not very much after ten, and he became conscious of how ridiculously early he had fled from the Amberleys'. But as he stood on the pavement – in the very centre of the pleasure-web of London with its roar and glare – he pushed such thoughts resolutely from him and turned into a luxurious "lounge," celebrated among fast youths and pleasure-seekers, known by an affectionate nick-name at the Universities, in every regimental mess or naval ward-room in Great Britain.

As he went down a carpeted passage he saw himself in the long mirror that lined it. He looked quite himself, well-dressed, prosperous, his face under full control and just like any other smart man about town.

At this hour, there were not many people in the place. It would become crowded and noisy later on.

The white and green tiles of the walls gleamed softly in the shaded lights, electric fans and a huge block of ice upon a pedestal kept the air cool. There were palms which refreshed the eye and upon the porphyry counter at which he was served there was a mass of mauve hydrangea in a copper bowl.

He drank a whiskey and soda very quickly – that was to remove the marked physical exhaustion which had begun to creep over him – ordered another and lit a cigarette.

His nerves responded with magical quickness to the spirit. All day long he had been feeding them with the accustomed poison. The strain of the last half hour had used up more vitality than he had been aware.

For the second time that night – a night so infinitely more eventful than he knew – he became master of himself, calm, happy, even, in the sense of power returned, and complete correspondence with his environment.

The barmaid who served him was – like most of these Slaves of the Still in this part of London – an extremely handsome girl. Her face was painted – all these girls paint their faces – but it was done merely to conceal the pallor and ravages wrought upon it by a hard and feverish life. Lothian felt an immense pity for her, symbolic as she was of all the others, and the few remarks he made were uttered with an instinctive deference and courtesy.

He had been married seven years before this time, and had at once retired into the country with his wife where, by slow degrees, he had felt his way to the work which had at last made him celebrated. But in the past he had known the under side of London well and had chosen it deliberately as his milieu.

It had in no way been forced upon him. Struggling journalist and author as he was, good houses had been open to him, for he was a member of a well-known family and had made many friends at Oxford.

But the other life was so much easier! If its pleasures were coarse, they were hot and strong! For years, as many a poet has done before him, he lived a bad life, tolerant of vice in himself and others, kind, generous often, but tossed and worn by his passions – rivetting the chains link by link upon his soul – until he had met and married Mary.

And no one knew better than he the horrors of life behind the counters of a bar.

He turned away, as two fresh-faced lads came noisily up to the counter, turned away with a sigh of pity. He was quite unconscious – though he would have been interested at the psychological fact – that the girl had wondered at his manner and thought him affected and dull.

She would much rather have been complimented and chaffed. She understood that. Life is full of anodynes. Mercifully enough the rank and file of the oppressed are not too frequently conscious of their miseries. There is a half-truth in the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss, and if fettered limbs go lame, the chains are not always clanking.

The poor barmaid went to bed that night in an excellent humour, for the two lads Lothian had seen brought her some pairs of gloves. And if she had known of Lothian's pity she would have resented it bitterly.

"Like the fellow's cheek," she would have said.

Lothian, as he believed, had absolutely recovered his own normal personality. He admitted now, as he left the "lounge," that he had not been his true self at the Amberleys'.

"At this moment, as I stand here," he said to himself, "'I am the Captain of my Soul,'" not in the least understanding that when he spoke of his own "soul" he meant nothing more than his five senses.

The man thought he was normal. He was not. On the morrow, when partially recovering from the excesses of to-day, there was a possibility that he might become normal – for a brief period, and until he began to drink again.

For him to become really himself, perfectly clean from the stigmata of the inebriate mind, would have taken him at least six months of total abstinence from alcohol.

Lothian's health, though impaired, had by no means broken down.

A strong constitution, immense vitality, had preserved it, up to this point. At this period, though a poisoned man, an alcoholised body, there were frequent times of absolute normality – when he was, for certain definite spaces of time by the clock, exactly as he would have been had he never become a slave to alcohol at all.

As he stood upon the pavement of Piccadilly Circus, he felt and believed that such a time had come now.

He was mistaken. All that was happening was that there was a temporary lull in the ebb and flow of alcohol in his veins. The brain cells were charged up to a certain point with poison. At this point they gave a false impression of security.

It must be remembered, and it cannot be too strongly insisted on, that the mental processes of the inebriate are definite, and are induced.

The ordinary person says of an inebriate simply that "he is a drunkard" or "he drinks." Whether he or she says it with sympathetic sorrow, or abhorrence, the bald statement rarely leads to any further train of thought.

It is very difficult for the ordinary person to realise that the mental processes are sui generis a Kingdom – though with a debased coinage – which requires considerable experience before it can always be recognised from the ring of true metal.

Alcoholism so changes the mental life of any one that it results in an ego which has special external and internal characteristics.

And so, in order to appreciate fully this history of Gilbert Lothian – to note the difference between the man as he was known and as he really was – it must always be kept in mind under what influence he moves through life, and that his steps have strayed into a dreadful kingdom unknown and unrealised by happier men.

He had passed out of one great Palace of Drink.

Had he been as he supposed himself to be, he would have sought rest at once. He would have hurried joyously from temptation in this freedom from his chains.

Instead of that, the question he asked himself was, "What shall I do now?"

The glutton crams himself at certain stated periods. But when repletion comes he stops eating. The habit is rhythmic and periodically certain.

But the Drunkard – his far more sorrowful and lamentable brother – has not even this half-saving grace. In common with the inordinate smoker – whose harm is physical and not mental – the inebriate drinks as long as he is able to, until he is incapacitated. "Where shall I go now?"

If God does indeed give human souls to His good angels, as gardens to weed and tend, that thought must have brought tears of pity to the eyes of the august beings who were battling for Gilbert Lothian.

Their hour was not yet.

They were to see the temple of the Paraclete fall into greater ruin and disaster than ever before. The splendid spires and pinnacles, the whole serene beauty of soul and body which had made this Temple a high landmark when God first built it, were crumbling to decay.

Deep down among the strong foundations the enemy was at work. The spire – the "Central-one" – which sprang up towards Heaven was deeply undermined. Still – save to the eyes of experts – its glory rose unimpaired. But it was but a lovely shell with no longer any grip upon its base of weakened Will. And the bells in the wind-swept height of the Tower no longer rang truly. On red dawns or on pearl-grey evenings the message they sent over the country-side was beginning to be false. There was no peace when they tolled the Angelus.

In oriel or great rose-window the colour of the painted glass was growing dim. The clear colour was fading, though here and there it was shot with baleful fire which the Artist had never painted there, – like the blood-shot eyes of the man who drinks.

A miasmic mist had crept into the noble spaces of the aisles. The vast supporting pillars grew insubstantial and seemed to tremble as the vapour eddied round them. A black veil was quickly falling before the Figure above the Altar, and the seven dim lamps of the Sanctuary burned with green and flickering light.

The bells of a Great Mind's Message, which had been cast with so much silver in them, rang an increasing dissonance. The trumpets of the organ echoed with a harsh note in the far clerestory; the flutes were false, the dolce stop no longer sweet. The great pipes of the pedal organ muttered and stammered in their massive voices, as if dark advisers whispered in the ear of the musician who controlled them.

Lothian had passed from one great Palace of Drink. "Where shall I go?" he asked himself again, and immediately his eye fell upon another, the brilliant illumination upon the façade of a well-known "Theatre of Varieties."

His hot eye-balls drank in the flaring signs, and telegraphed both an impulse and a memory to his brain.

"Yes!" he said. "I will revisit the 'Kingdom.' There is still two thirds of an hour before the performance will be over. How well I used to know it! What a nightly haunt it used to be. Surely, even now, there will be some people I know there? .. I'll go in and see!"

As Lothian turned in at the principal doors of the most celebrated Music Hall in the world, his pulses began to quicken.

– The huge foyer, the purple carpets, with their wreaths of laurel in a purple which was darker yet, the gleaming marble stairway, with its wide and noble sweep, how familiar all this dignified splendour was, he thought as he entered the second Palace of Drink which flung wide its doors to him this night.

A palace of drink and lust, vast and beautiful! for those who brought poisoned blood and vicious desires within its portals! Here, banished from the pagan groves and the sunlit temples of their ancient glory – banished also from the German pine-woods where Heine saw them in pallid life under the full moon – Venus, Bacchus and Silenus held their unholy court.

For all the world – save only for a few wise men to whom they were but symbols – Venus and Bacchus were deities once.

When the Acropolis cut into the blue sky of Hellas with its white splendour these were the chiefest to whom men prayed, and they ruled the lives of all.

And, day by day, new temples rise in their honour. Once they were worshipped with blythe body and blinded soul. Now the tired body and the besotted brain alone pay them reverence. But great are their temples still.

Such were the thoughts of Lothian – Lothian the Christian poet – and he was pleased that they should come to him.

It showed how detached he was, what real command he had of himself. In the old wild days, before his marriage and celebrity, he had come to this place, and other places like it, to seize greedily upon pleasure, as a monkey seizes upon a nut. He came to survey it all now, to revisit the feverish theatre of his young follies with a bland Olympian attitude.

The poison was flattering him now, placing him upon a swaying pedestal for a moment. He was sucking in the best honey that worthless withering flowers could exude, and it was hot and sweet upon his tongue.

– Were any of the old set there after all? He hoped so. Not conscious of himself as a rule, without a trace of "side" and detesting ostentation or any display of his fame, he wanted to show off now. He wanted to console himself for his rebuff at the house in Bryanstone Square. Vulgar and envious adulation, interested praise from those who were still in the pit of obscurity from which his finer brain had helped him to escape, would be perfectly adequate to-night.

After the episode at the Amberleys', coarse flattery heaped on with a spade would be as ice in the desert.

And he found what he desired.

He passed slowly through the promenade, towards the door which led to the stalls, and the great lounge where, if anywhere, he would find people who knew him and whom he knew.

In a slowly-moving tide, like a weed-clogged wave, the women of the town ebbed and flowed from horn to horn of the moon-shaped crescent where they walk. Against the background of sea-purple and white, their dresses and the nodding plumes in their great hats moved languorously. Sickly perfumes, as from the fan of an odalisque, swept over them.

Many beautiful painted masks floated through the scented aisle of the theatre, as they had floated up and down the bronze corridors of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus in the far off days of St. Paul. A mourning thrill shivered up from the violins of the orchestra below; the 'cellos made their plaint, the cymbals rattled, the kettledrums spoke with deep vibrating voices.

.. So had the sistra clanked and droned in the old temple of bronze and silver before the altars of Artemis, – the old music, the eternal faces, ever the same!

A chill came to Lothian as he passed among these "estranged sad spectres of the night." He thought suddenly of his pure and gracious wife, alone in their little house in the country, he thought of the Canaanitish harlot whose soul was the first that Christ redeemed. For a moment or two his mind was like a darkened room in which a magic lantern is being operated and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. And then he was in the big lounge.

Yes, some of them were there! – a little older, perhaps, to his now much more critical eye, somewhat more bloated and coarsened, but the same still.

"Good heavens!" said a huge man with a blood red face, startling in its menace, like a bully looking into an empty room, "Why, here's old Lothian! Where in the world have you sprung from, my dear boy?"

Lothian's face lit up with pleasure and recognition. The big evil-faced man was Paradil, the painter of pastels, a wayward drunken creature who never had money in his pocket, but that he gave it away to every one. He was a man spoken of as a genius by those who knew. His rare pictures fetched large prices, but he hardly ever worked. He was soaked, dissolved and pickled in brandy.

A little elderly man like a diseased doll, came up and began to twitter. He was the husband of a famous dancer who performed at the theatre, a wit in his way, an adroit manager of his wife's affairs with other men, a man with a mind as hollow and bitter as a dried lemon.

He was a well-known figure in upper Bohemia. His name was constantly mentioned in the newspapers as an entrepreneur of all sorts of things, a popular, evil little man.

"Ah, Lothian," he said, as one or two other people came up and some one gave a copious order for drinks, "still alternating between the prayer book and the decanter? I must congratulate you on 'Surgit Amari.' I read it, and it made me green with envy to think how many thousand copies you had sold of it."

"You've kept the colour, Edgar," he said, looking into the little creature's face, but the words stabbed through him, nevertheless. How true they were – superficially – how they expressed – and must express – the view of his old disreputable companions. They envied him his cunning – as they thought it – they would have given their ears to have possessed the same power of profitable hypocrisy – as they thought it. Meanwhile they spoke virtuously to each other about him. "Gilbert Lothian the author of 'Surgit Amari'! – it would make a cat laugh!"

One can't throw off one's past like a dirty shirt – Gilbert began to wish he had not come here.

"I ought never to be seen in these places," he thought, forgetting that it was only the sting of the little man's malice that provoked the truth.

But Paradil, kindly Paradil with the bully's face and a heart bursting with dropsical good nature, speedily intervened.

Other men joined the circle; "rounds of drinks" were paid for by each person according to the ritual of such an occasion as this.

In half an hour, when the theatre began to empty, Lothian was really, definitely drunk.

Hot circles expanded and contracted within his head. His face became pale and very grave in expression, as he walked out into Leicester Square upon Paradil's supporting arm. There was a portentous dignity in his voice as he gave the address of his club to the cabman. As he shook hands with Paradil out of the window, tears came into his eyes, as he thought of the other's drunken, wasted life. "If I can only help you in any way, old chap – " he tried to say, and then sank back in oblivion upon the cushions.

He was quite unconscious of anything during the short drive to St. James's Street, and when the experienced cabman pulled down the flag of the taximeter and opened the door, he sat there like a log.

The X Club was not fashionable, but it was reputable and of old establishment. It was fairly easy to get into – for the people whom the election committee wanted there – exceedingly difficult for the wrong set of people. Very many country gentlemen – county people, but of moderate means – belonged to it; the Major-General and the Admiral were not infrequent visitors; several Judges were on the members' list and looked in now and again.

As far as the Arts went, they were but poorly represented. There was no sparkle, no night-life about the place. The painters, actors and writers preferred a club that began to brighten up about eleven o'clock at night – just when the X became dreary. Not more than a dozen suppers were served at the staid building in St. James' on any night of the week.

Nevertheless, it was not an "old fogies'" club. There was a younger leaven working there. A good many younger men who also belonged to much more lively establishments found refreshment, quiet, and just the proper kind of atmosphere at the X.

For young men of good families who were starting life in London, there was a certain sense of being at home there. The building had, in the past, been the house of a celebrated duke and something of comely and decent order clung to every room now. And, more than anything, the servants suggested a country or London house of name.

Mullion, the grey-haired head-porter who sat in his glass box in the hall was a kind and assiduous friend to every one. He was reported to be worth ten thousand pounds and his manners were perfection. He was one of the most celebrated servants in London. His deference was never tinged by servility. His interest in your affairs and wants was delicately intimate and quite genuine. Great people had tried to lure this good and shrewd person from the X Club, but without success. For seventeen years he had sat there in the hall, and, if fate was kind, he meant to sit there for seventeen years more.

All the servants of the X were like that. The youngest waiter in the smoking-rooms, library or dining room wore the face of a considerate friend, and Prince, the head bed-room valet was beloved by every one. Members of other clubs talked about him and Mullion, the head-porter, with sighs of regret.

When Gilbert Lothian's taxi-cab stopped at the doors of the X Club, he was expected. Dickson Ingworth, who was a member also, had been there for a few moments, expectant of his friend.

Old Mullion had gone for the night, and an under-porter sat in the quiet hall, but Prince, the valet, stood talking to Ingworth at the bottom of the stair-case.

"It will be perfectly all right," said Prince. "I haven't done for Mr. Lothian for all these years without understanding his ways. Drunk or sober, sir, Mr. Gilbert is always a gentleman. He's the most pleasant country member in the club, sir! I understand his habits thoroughly, and he would bear me out in that at any time. I'm sure of that! His bowl of soup is being kept hot in the kitchens now. The small flask of cognac and the bottle of Worcester sauce are waiting on his dressing table. And there's a half bottle of champagne, which he takes to put him right when I call him in the morning, already on the ice!"

"I know he appreciates it, Prince. He can't say enough about how you look after him when he's in London."

"I thoroughly believe it, sir," said the valet, "but it gives me great pleasure to hear it from you, who are such a friend of Mr. Gilbert's. I may say, sir – if I may tell you without offence – that I'm not really on duty to-night. But when I see how Mr. Gilbert was when he was dressing for dinner, I made up my mind to stay. James begged me to go, but I would not. James is a good lad, but he's no memory for detail. He'd have forgot the bi-carbonate of soda for Mr. Gilbert's heart-burn, or something like that – I think that's him, sir!"

Ingworth and the valet hurried over the hall as the inner doors swung open and Lothian entered. His shirt-front was crumpled. His face was white and set, his eyes fixed and sombre.

It was as though the master of the house had returned, when the poet entered. The under-porter hurried out of his box, Prince had the coat and opera hat whisked away in a moment. In a moment more, like some trick of the theatre and surrounded by satellites, Lothian was mounting the stairs towards his bedroom.

They put him in an arm-chair – these eager servitors! The electric lights in the comfortable bed-room were all switched on. The servant who loved him, not for his generosity, but for himself, vied with the young gentleman who loved him for somewhat different reasons.

Both of them had been dominated by this personality for so long, that there was no sorrow nor pity in their minds. The faithful man of the people who had served gentlemen so long that any other life would have been impossible to him, the boy of position, united in their efforts of resuscitation.

The Master's mind must be called back! The Master's body must be succoured and provided for.

The two were there to do it, and it seemed quite an ordinary and natural thing.

"You take off his boots, Prince, and I'll manage his collar."

"Yes, sir."

"Managed it?"

"A little difficulty with the left boot, sir. The instep is a trifle swelled."

"Good heavens! I do hope he's not going to have another attack of gout!"

"I hope not, sir. But you can't ever tell. It comes very sudden. Like a thief in the night, as you may say."

"There! I've broken the stud, but that doesn't matter. His neck's free."

"And his boots are off. There's some one knocking. It's his soup. Would you mind putting his bed-room slippers on, sir? I don't like the cold for his feet."

Prince hurried to the door, whispered a word or two to whoever stood outside, and returned with a tray.

"Another few minutes," said Prince, as he poured the brandy and measured the Worcester sauce into the silver-plated tureen; "another few minutes and he'll be beautiful! Mr. Gilbert responds to anything wonderful quick. I've had him worse than this at half past twelve, and at quarter to one he's been talking like an archdeacon. You persuade him, sir."

"Here's your soup, Gilbert!"

"It's all nothing, there's nobody, all nothing – dark —," the voice was clogged and drowsy – if a blanket could speak, the voice might have been so.

The boy looked hopelessly at the valet.

Prince, an alert little man with a yellow vivacious countenance and heavy, black eye-brows, smiled superior. "When Mr. Gilbert really have copped the brewer – excuse the expression, sir – he generally says a few words without much meaning. Leave him to me if you please."

He wheeled a little table up to the arm-chair, and caught hold of Lothian's shoulder, shaking him.

"What? What? My soup?"

"Yessir, your soup."

The man's recuperative power was marvellous. His eyes were bleared, his face white, the wavy hair fell in disorder over his forehead. But he was awake and conscious.

"Thank you, Prince," he said, in his clear and sweet voice, "just what I wanted. Hullo, Dicker! You here? – I'll just have my soup.."

He grasped the large ladle-spoon with curious eagerness. It was as though he found salvation in the hot liquid – pungent as it was with cognac and burning spices.

He lapped it eagerly, coughing now and again, "gluck-gluck" and then a groan of satisfaction.

The other two watched him with quiet eagerness. There was nothing horrible to them in this. Neither the valet nor the boy understood that they were "lacqueys in the house of shame." As they saw their muddy magic beginning to succeed, satisfaction swelled within them.

Gilbert Lothian's mind was coming back. They were blind to the hideous necessity of their summons, untouched by disgust at the physical processes involved.

"Will you require me any more, sir?"

"No, thank you, Prince."

"Very good, sir. I have made the morning arrangements."

"Good-night, Prince."

The bedroom door closed.

Lothian heaved himself out of his chair. He seemed fifteen years older. His head was sunk forward upon his shoulders, his stomach seemed to protrude, his face was pale, blotchy, debauched, and appeared to be much larger than it ordinarily did.

With a slow movement, as if every joint in his body creaked and gave him pain, he began to pace slowly up and down the room. Dickson Ingworth sat on the bed and watched him.

Yet as the man moved slowly up and down the room, collecting the threads of his poisoned consciousness, slowly recapturing his mind, there was something big about him.

Each heavy, semi-drunken movement had force and personality. The lowering, considering face spelt power, even now.

He stopped in front of the bed.

"Well, Dicker?" he said – and suddenly his whole face was transformed. Ten years fell away. The smile was sweet and simple, there was a freakish humour in the eyes, – "Well, Dicker?"

The boy gave a great gasp of pleasure and relief. The "gude-man" had come home, the powerful mind-machine had started once more, the house was itself again!

"How are you, Gilbert?"

"Very tired. Horrible indigestion and heartburn, legs like lumps of brass and a nasty feeling as if an imprisoned black-bird were fluttering at the base of my spine! But quite sober, Dicker, now!"

"Nor were you ever anything else, in Bryanstone Square," the young man said hotly. "It was such a mistake for you to go away, Gilbert. So unnecessary!"

"I had my reasons. Was there much comment? Now tell me honestly, was it very noticeable? – what did they say?"

"No one said anything at all," Ingworth answered, lying bravely. "The evening didn't last long after you went. Every one left together – I say you ought to have seen the Toftrees' motor! – and I drove Miss Wallace home, and then came on here."

"A beautiful girl," Lothian said sleepily. "I only talked to her for a minute or two and she seemed clever and sympathetic. Certainly she is lovely."

Ingworth rose from the bed. He pointed to the table in the centre of the room. "Well, I'm off, old chap," he said. "As far as Miss Wallace goes, she's absolutely gone on you! She was quoting your verses all the way in the cab. She lives in a tiny flat with another girl, and I had to wait outside while she did up that parcel there! It's 'Surgit Amari,' she wants you to sign it for her, and there's a note as well, I believe. Good-night."

"Good-night, Dicker. I can't talk now. I'm beautifully drunk to-night.. Look me up in the morning. Then we'll talk."

The door had hardly closed upon the departing youth, when Lothian sank into a heap upon his chair. His body felt like a quivering jelly, a leaden depression, as if Hell itself weighed him down.

Mechanically, and with cold, trembling hands, he opened the brown paper parcel. His book, in its cover of sage-green and gold, fell out upon the table. He began to read the note – the hand-writing was firm, clear and full of youth – so he thought. The heading of the note paper was embossed —

"The Podley Pure Literature Institute.

Dear Mr. Lothian:

I am so proud and happy to have met you to-night. I am so sorry that I had not the chance of telling you what your poems have been to me – though of course you must always be hearing that sort of thing. So I will say nothing more, but ask you, only, to put your name in my copy of "Surgit Amari" and thus make it more precious – if that is possible – than before.

Mr. Ingworth has kindly promised to give you this note and the book.

Yours sincerely,

RITA WALLACE."

The letter dropped unheeded upon the carpet. Thick tears began to roll down Lothian's swollen face.

"Mary! Mary!" he said aloud, "I want you, I want you!" ..

"Darling! there is no one else in the world but you."

He was calling for his wife, always so good and kind to him, his dear and loving wife. At the end of his long foul day, lived without a thought of her, he was calling for her help and comfort like a sick child.

Poisoned, abject, he whined for her in the empty room.

– She was sleeping now, in the quiet house by the sea. The horn of a motor-car tooted in St. James' Street below – She was sleeping now in her quiet chamber. Tired lids covered the frank, blue eyes, the thick masses of yellow hair were straying over the linen pillow. She was dreaming of him as the night wind moaned about the house.

He threw himself upon his knees by the bedside, in dreadful drunken surrender and appeal.

– "Father help me! Jesus help me! – forgive me!" – he dare not invoke the Holy Ghost. He shrank from that. The Father had made everything and had made him. He was a beneficent, all-pervading Force – He would understand. The Lord Jesus was a familiar Figure. He was human; Man as well as God. One could visualise Him. He had cared for harlots and drunkards! ..

Far down in his sub-conscious brain Lothian was aware of what he was doing. He was whining not to be hurt. His prayers were no more than superstitious garrulity and fear. Something – a small despairing part of himself, had climbed upon the roof of the dishonoured Temple and was stretching trembling hands out into the overwhelming darkness of the Night.

"Father, help me! Help me now. Let me go to bed without phantoms and torturing ghosts round me! Do not look into the Temple to-night. I will cleanse it to-morrow. I swear it! Father! Help me!"

He began to gabble the Lord's Prayer – that would adjust things in a sort of way – wouldn't it? There was a promise – yes – one said it, and it charmed away disaster.

Half-way through the prayer he stopped. The words would not come to him. He had forgotten.

But that no longer distressed him. The black curtain of stupor was descending once more.

"'Thy will be done' – what did come after? Well! never mind!" God was good. He'd understand. After all, intention was everything!

He scrambled into bed and instantly fell asleep, while the lovely face of Rita Wallace was the first thing that swam into his disordered brain.

In a remote village of Norfolk, not a quarter of a mile from Gilbert Lothian's own house, a keen-faced man with a pointed beard, a slim, alert figure like an osier wand and steely brown eyes was reading a thin green-covered book of poems.

Now and then he made a pencil note in the margin. His face was alive with interest, almost with excitement. It was as though he were tracing something, hunting for some secret hidden in the pages.

More than once he gave a subdued exclamation of excitement.

"It's there!" he said at last to himself. "Yes, it is there! I'm sure of it, quite apart from what I've heard in the village since I came."

He rose, put the book carefully away in a drawer, locked it, blew out the lamp and went to bed.

Three hundred miles away in Cornwall, a crippled spinster was lying on her bed of pain in a cottage by the sea.

The windows of her room were open and the moon-rays touched a white Crucifix upon the wall to glory.

The Atlantic groundswell upon the distant beaches made a sound as of fairy drums.

The light of a shaded candle fell upon the white coverlet of her bed, and upon a book bound in sage-green and gold which lay there.

The woman's face shone. She had just read for the fifth time, the poem in "Surgit Amari" which closes the first book.

The lovely lines had fused with the holy rapture of the night, and her patient soul was caught up into commune with Jesus.

"Soon! Oh, soon! Dear Lord," she gasped, "I shall be with Thee for ever. If it seemeth good to Thee, let me be taken up on some such tranquil night as this. And I thank Thee, Dear Saviour, that Thou hast poured Thy Grace into the soul of Gilbert Lothian, the Poet. Through the white soul of this poet, which Thou hast chosen to be a conduit of comfort to me, my night pain has gone. I am drawn nearer to Thee, Jesus who hast died for me!

"Lord, bless the poet. Pour down Thy Grace upon him. Guard him, shield him and his for ever more. And, Sweet Lord, if it be Thy will, let me meet him in Heaven and tell him of this night – this fair night of summer when I lay dying and happy and thinking kindly and with gratitude of him.

"Jesus!"