Front matter (continued 3)

For the rest of the drive to Brighton their laughter never stopped. Nothing draws a man and a woman together as laughter does—when it is intimate to themselves, a mutual language not to be understood of others. They became extraordinary friends, as if they had known each other from childhood, and the sunset fires in all their glory passed unheeded.

Although he could hear nothing of what they said, there was a sympathetic grin upon the chauffeur's face at the ringing mirth behind him.

"It's your turn to suppose now, Mr. Lothian."

"Well—wait a minute—oh, let's suppose that Mr. Podley once wrote a moral poem—you to play!"

Rita thought for a minute or two, her lips rippling with merriment, her young eyes shining.

A little chuckle escaped her, her shoulders began to shake and then she shrieked with joy.

"I've got it, splendid! Listen! It's to inculcate kindness to animals.

"Magnificent!—your turn."

"Well, what will the title of the Toftrees' next novel be?"

"'Cats' meat!'—I say, do you know that I have invented the one quite perfect opening for a short story. You'll realise when you hear it that it stands alone. It's perfect, like Giotto's Campanile or 'The Hound of Heaven.'"

"Tell me quickly!"

"Mr. Florimond awoke from a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust."

"You are wonderful. I see it, of course. It's style itself! And how would you end the story? Have you studied the end yet?"

"Yes. I worked at it all the time I was in Italy last year. You shall hear that too. Mr. Florimond sank into a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust."

. . . He told her of his younger days in London when he shared a flat with a brother journalist named Passhe.

"We lived the most delightful freakish lives you can imagine," he said. "When we came into breakfast from our respective bedrooms we had a ritual which never varied. We neither looked at each other nor spoke, but sat down opposite at the table. We each had our newspaper put in our place by the man who looked after us. We opened the papers and pretended to read for a moment. Then Basil looked over the top of his at me, very gravely. 'We live in stirring times, Mr. Lothian!' he would say, and I used to answer, 'Indeed, Mr. Passhe, we do!' Then we became as usual."

"How perfectly sweet! I must do that with Ethel—that's the girl I live with, you know—only we don't have the papers. It runs up so!" she concluded, with a wise little air that sent a momentary throb of pain through a man who had never understood (even in his poorest days) what money meant; and probably never would understand.

Poor, dear little girl! Why couldn't he give her—

"We're here, Mr. Lothian! Look at the lights! Brighton at last!"

Rita had been whisked away by a chambermaid and he was waiting for her in the great hall of the Metropole. He had washed, reserved a table, and swallowed a gin and bitters. He felt rather tired physically, and a little depressed also. His limbs had suddenly felt cramped as he left the motor car, the wild exhilaration of their fun had made him tired and nervous now. His bad state of health asserted itself unpleasantly, his forehead was clammy and the palms of his hands wet.

No champagne for him! Rita should have champagne if she liked, but whiskey, whiskey! that was the only thing. "I can soon pull myself together," he thought. "She won't know. I'll tell the fellow to bring it in a decanter."

Presently she came to him among the people who moved or sat about under the lights of the big, luxurious vestibule. She was a little shy and nervous, slightly flushed and anxious, for she had never been in such a splendid public place before.

He gathered that from her whispered remarks, as with a curious and pleasant air of proprietorship he took her to the dining rooms.

There was a bunch of amber-coloured roses upon her plate as she sat down at their table, which he had sent there a few minutes before. She pressed them to her face with a shy look of pleasure as he conferred with the head waiter, who himself came hurrying up to them.

Lothian was not known at the hotel, but it was always the same wherever he went. His wife often chaffed him about it. She said that he had a "tipping face." Whether that was so or not, the result was the same, he received immediate and marked attention. Rita noticed it with pride.

He had been, from the first moment he entered the Library in his simple flannel suit, just a charming and deferential companion. There had been no preliminaries. The thing had just happened, that was all. In all her life she had never met any one so delightful, and in her excitement and pleasure she had quite forgotten that he was Gilbert Lothian.

But it came back to her very vividly now.

How calmly he ordered the dinner and conferred with the wine-man, who had a great silver chain hanging on his shirt front! What an accustomed man-of-the-world air there was about him, how they all ran to serve him. She blushed mentally as she thought of her simple confidences and girlish chatter—and yet he hadn't seemed to mind.

She looked round her. "It is difficult to realise," she said, as much to herself as to her host, "that there are people who dine in places like this every day."

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

CHAPTER I

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

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—

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.

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

—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.

There was a fresh smell of wood-smoke in the air and the gardens of the cottages were brilliant with flowers.

Mary Lothian, however, was thinking very little about the village—to which she was Lady Bountiful. She hardly noticed the sweet day springing over the country side.

She was thinking of Gilbert.

He had been away for a week now and she had heard no news of him except for a couple of brief telegrams.

For several days before he went to London, she had seen the signs of restlessness and ennui approaching. She knew them well. He had been irritable and moody by fits and starts. After lunch he had slept away the afternoons, and at dinner he had been feverishly gay. Once or twice he had driven into Wordingham—the local town—during the afternoon, and had returned late at night, very angry on one of these occasions to find her sitting up for him.

"I wish to goodness you would go to bed, Mary," he had said with a sullen look in his eyes. "I do hate being fussed over as if I were a child. I hate my comings and goings spied upon in this ridiculous way. I must have freedom! Kindly try and remember that you have married a poet—an artist!—and not some beef-brained ordinary fool!"

The servants had gone to bed, but she had lit candles in old silver holders, and spread a dainty supper for him in case he should be hungry, taking especial care over the egg sandwiches and the salad which he said she made so perfectly.

She had gone to bed without a word, for she knew well what made him speak to her like that. She lay awake listening, her room was over the dining room, and heard the clink of a glass and the gurgle of a syphon. He was having more drink then. When he came upstairs he went into the dressing room where he sometimes slept, and before long she heard him breathing heavily in sleep. He always came to her room when he was himself.

Then she had gone downstairs noiselessly to find her little supper untouched, a smear of cigarette ash upon the tablecloth, and that he had forgotten to extinguish the candles.

There came a day when he was especially kind and sweet. His recent irritation and restlessness seemed to have quite gone. He smoked pipes instead of cigarettes, always a good sign in him, and in the afternoon they had gone for a long tramp together over the marshes. She was very happy. For the last year, particularly since his name had become well-known and he was seriously counted among the celebrities of the hour, he had not cared to be with her so much as in the past. He only wanted to be with her when he was depressed and despondent about the future. Then he came for comfort and clung to her like a boy with his mother. "It's for the sake of my Art," he would say often enough, though she never reproached him with neglect. "I must be a great deal alone now. Things come to me when I am alone. I love being with you, sweetheart, but we must both make a sacrifice for my work. It means the future. It means everything for both of us!"

He used not to be like this, she sometimes reflected. In the earlier days, when he was actually doing the work which had brought him fame, he had never wanted to be away from her. He used to read her everything, ask her opinion about all his work. Life had been more simple. She had known every detail of his. He had not drunk much in those days. In those days there had been no question of that at all. After the success it was different.

She had gone to his study in the morning, after nights when he had been working late, and had been struck with fear when she had looked at the tantalus. But, then, he had been spruce and cheerful at breakfast and had made a hearty meal. Her remonstrances had been easily swept away. He had laughed.

"Darling, don't be an old goose! You don't understand a bit. What?—Oh, yes, I suppose I did have rather a lot of whiskey last night. But I did splendid work. And it is only once in a way. I'm as fit this morning as I ever was in my life. But I'm working double tides now. You know what an immense strain it is. Just let me consolidate my reputation, become absolutely secure, and—well, then you'll see!"

But for months now things had not improved, and on this particular day, a week ago now, the sudden change in Gilbert, when the placidity of the old time seemed to have returned, was like cool water to a wound.

They had been such friends again! In the evening they had got out all her music and while he played, she had sung the dear old songs of their courtship and early married life. They had the "Keys Of Heaven," "The Rain Is on the River," "My Dear Soul" and the "Be My Dear and Dearest!" of Cotsford Dick.

On the next morning the post had brought letters calling Gilbert to London. He had to arrange with Messrs. Ince and Amberley about his new book. Mr. Amberley had asked him to dine—"You don't perhaps quite understand, dear, but when Amberley asks one, one must go"—there were other important things to see after.

Gilbert had not asked her to come with him. She would have liked to have gone to London very much. It was a long time since she had been to a theatre, ages since she had heard a good concert. And shopping too! It seemed such a good opportunity, while the sales were on.

She had hinted as much, but he had shaken his head with decision: "No, dear, not now. I am going strictly on business. I couldn't give you the time I should want to, and I should hate that. It wouldn't be fair to you. We'll go up in the Autumn, just you and I together and have a really good time. That will be far jollier. For heaven's sake, don't let's try to mix up business with pleasure. It's fatal to both."

Had he known that he was to be called to London? Had he arranged it beforehand, itching to be free of her gentle yoke, her wise, restraining hand? Was that the reason that he had been so affectionate the day before he went away? His conscience was uneasy perhaps . . . ?

And why had he not written—was there a sordid, horrible reason for his silence; when was he coming back . . . ?

These were the sad, disturbing thoughts stirring in Mary's mind as the near tolling of the bell smote upon her ears and she entered the Churchyard.

The church at Mortland Royal was large and noble. It would have held the total population of the village three times over. Relic of Tudor times when Norfolk was the rich and prosperous centre of the wool industry of England, it was only one of the many pious monuments of a vanished past which still keep watch and ward over the remote, forgotten villages of the North East Coast.

Stately still the fane, in its noble masses, its fairness, majesty and strength, the slender intricacy and rich meshes of its tracery in which no single cusp or finial is in vain, no stroke of the chisel useless. Stately the grey towers also, foursquare for centuries to the winds of the Wash. Dust the man who made it, but uncrumbled stone the body of his dream. He had thought in light and shadow. He had seen these immemorial stones when the sun of July mornings was hot upon them, or the early dusks of December left them to the dark. Out of the spaces of light and darkness in the vision of his mind this strong tower had been built.

Inviolate, it was standing now.

But as Mary passed through the great porch with its worn and weathered saints into the Church itself, the breath of the morning was damp and there was a chill within.

The gallant chirrup of the swallows flying round the tower, sank to a faint "cheep, cheep," the voice of the tolling bell became muffled and funereal, and mildew lay upon the air. "Non sum qualis eram," the lorn interior seemed to echo to her steps, "bonae sub regno Ecclesiæ."

There was a little American organ in the Chancel. No more would the rich plainsong of Gregory echo under these ancient roofs like a flowing tide in some cavern of the sea.

The stone Altar was covered with a decaying web of crimson upon which was embroidered a symbol of sickly, faded yellow. Perhaps never again would a Priest raise the Monstrance there, while the ceremonial candle-flames were pallid in the morning light and hushed voices hymned the Lamb of God.

These, all these, were in the olden time and long ago.

But the Presence of God, the Peace of God, were in the Church still, soul-saving, and as real as when the gracious ceremonies of the past symbolised them for those who were there to worship.

Mr. Medley, the old Priest who was curate to a Rector who was generally away, walked in from the vestry with the patient footsteps of age and began the office.

. . . Almighty and most merciful Father; we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.

The old and worthy man with his tremulous voice, the sweet matron with her grave beauty just matured to that St. Martin's Summer of Youth which is the youth of perfect wifehood, said the sacred words together. His cultured and appealing voice, her warm contralto echoed under the high roof in ebb and flow and antiphon of sound.

It was the twenty-sixth day of the month. . . .

The morning was lighter than ever when Mary came out of Church, and its smile was reflected on her face.

In the village street an old labourer leading a team of horses, touched his cap and grinned a welcome while his wistful eyes plainly said, "God bless you, Ma'am," as Mary went by.

A merry "ting-tang clank" came from the blacksmith's shop, ringing out brightly in the bright air, and as she drew near the gate of the Old House, whom should she see but the postman!

"No. There ain't no letter for you," said the Postman—a sly old crab-apple of a man who always knew far too much—"but what should you say," he dangled it before her as a sweetmeat before a child, "what should you say if as how I had a telegram for 'ee?"

—"That you were talking nonsense, William. There can't be a telegram. It's far too early!"

"Well, then, there is!" said William triumphantly, "'anded in at the St. James' Street office, London, at eight-two! Either Mr. Lothian's up early or he ain't been to bed. It come over the telephone from Wordingham while I was a sorting the letters. Mrs. Casley took'n down. So there! Mr. Lothian's a coming home by the nine-ten to-night."

Mary tore open the orange envelope:—

"Arrive nine-ten to-night all my love Gilbert"

was what she read.

Then, with quick footsteps, she hurried through the gates. Her eyes sparkled, her lips had grown red, and as she smiled her beautiful, white teeth flashed in the sunlight.

She looked like a girl.

Tumpany was propped against the lintel of the back door. Phoebe was talking to him, the Dog Trust basked at his feet, and he had a short briar pipe in his mouth.

"Master is coming home this evening, Tumpany!" Mary said.

Tumpany snatched the pipe from his mouth and stood to attention. The cook vanished into the kitchen.

"Can I see you then, Mum?" Tumpany asked, anxiously.

"After breakfast. I've not had breakfast yet. Then we'll go into everything."

She vanished.

"Them peas," said Tumpany to himself, "he'll want to know about them peas—Goodorg!"—accompanied by Trust, Tumpany disappeared in the direction of the kitchen garden.

But Mary sat long over breakfast that morning. The sunlight painted oblongs of gold upon the jade-green carpet. A bee visited the copper bowl of honeysuckle upon the sideboard, a wasp became hopelessly captured by the marmalade, and from the bedrooms the voice of Blanche, the housemaid, floated down—tunefully convinced that every nice girl loves a sailor.

And of all these homely sounds Mary Lothian's ear had little heed.

Sound, light, colour, the scent of the flowers in the garden—a thing almost musical in itself—were as nothing.

One happy fact had closed each avenue of sense. Gilbert was coming home!

Gilbert was coming home!

CHAPTER II

AN EXHIBITION OF DOCTOR MORTON SIMS AND MR. MEDLEY, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HOW LOTHIAN RETURNED TO MORTLAND ROYAL

About eleven-thirty in the morning, Mr. Medley, the curate, came out of the rectory where he lived, and went into the village.

Mortland Royal was a rich living, worth, with the great and lesser tythe, some eight or nine hundred a year. The rector, the Hon. Leonard O'Donnell, was the son of an Irish peer who owned considerable property in Norfolk and in whose gift the living was. Mr. O'Donnell was a man of many activities, a bachelor, much in request in London, and very little inclined to waste his energies in a small country village. He was a courtly, polished little man who found his true milieu among people of his own class, and neither understood, nor particularly cared to understand, a peasant community.

His work, as he said, lay elsewhere, and he did a great deal of good in his own way with considerable satisfaction to himself.

Possessed of some private means, Mortland Royal supplemented his income and provided him with a convenient pied à terre where he could retire in odd moments to a fashionable county in which a number of great people came to shoot in the season. The rectory itself was a large old-fashioned house with some pretensions to be called a country mansion, and for convenience sake, Mr. Medley was housed there, and became de facto, if not de jure, the rector of the village. Mr. O'Donnell gave his colleague two hundred a year, house room, and an absolutely free hand. The two men liked one another, if they had not much in common, and the arrangement was mutually convenient.

Medley was a pious priest of the old-fashioned type. His flock claimed all the interest of his life. He had certain fixed and comely habits belonging to his type and generation. He read his Horace still and took a glass of port at dinner. Something of a scholar, he occasionally reviewed some new edition of a Latin classic for the Spectator, though he was without literary ambitions. He had a little money of his own, and three times a year he dined at the high table in Merton College Hall, where every one was very pleased to see him.

A vanishing type to-day, but admirably suited to his environment. The right man in the right place.

The real rector was regarded with awe and some pride in the village. His name was often in the newspapers. He was an eloquent speaker upon Temperance questions at important congresses. He went to garden parties at Windsor and theatricals at Sandringham. When he was in residence and preached in his own church, it was fuller than at other times. He was a draw. His distinguished face and high, well-bred voice were a pleasant variation of monotony. And the theology which had made him so welcome in Mayfair was not without a pleasing titillation for even the rustic mind. Mr. O'Donnel was convinced, and preached melodiously, the theory that the Divine Mercy extends to all human beings. He asserted that, in the event, all people would enter Paradise—unless, indeed, there was no Paradise, which in his heart of hearts he thought exceedingly likely.

But he did good work in the world, though probably less than he imagined. It was as an advocate of Temperance that Leonard O'Donnell was particularly known, and it was as that he was welcomed by Society.

He was a sort of spiritual Karlsbad and was nicknamed the Dean of Vichy.

The fact was one that had a direct bearing on Gilbert Lothian's life.

The Rector of Mortland Royal was a "managing" man. His forte was to be a sort of earthly Providence to all sorts of people within his sphere, and his motive was one of genuine good nature and a wish to help. As a woman he would have been an inveterate matchmaker.

Did old Marchioness, who liked to keep an eye upon her household affairs, bewail the quality of London milk—then she must have it from Mr. Samuel, the tenant of the Glebe Farm at Mortland Royal!

Did a brother clergyman ask to be recommended a school for his son, the Rector knew the very place and was quite prepared to take the boy down himself and commend him specially to the Headmaster. With equal eagerness, Mr. O'Donnell would urge a confessor or a pill, and the odd thing about it was, that he was nearly always right, and all sorts of people made use of the restless, kindly little man.

One day, Dr. Morton Sims, the bacteriologist and famous expert upon Inebriety, had walked from a meeting of the Royal Commissioners upon Alcoholism to the Junior Carlton with Mr. O'Donnell.

Both were members and they had dined there together.

"I am run down," said Morton Sims, during the meal. "I have been too much in London lately. I've got a lot of important research work to do. I'm going to take a house in the country for a few months, only I don't know where."

The mind of the man occupied with big things was impatient of detail; the mind of the man occupied with small ones responded instantly.

"I know of the very place, Sims. In my own village. How fortunate! The 'Haven.' Old Admiral Custance used to have it, but he's dead recently. There are six months of the lease still to run. Mrs. Custance has gone to live at Lugano. She wants to let the place furnished until the lease is up."

"It sounds as if it might do."

"But, my dear fellow, it's the very place you want! Exactly the thing! I can manage it for you in no time. Pashwhip and Moger—the house agents in our nearest town—have the letting. Do let me be of use!"

"It's very kind of you, O'Donnell."

"Delighted. It will be so jolly to have you in the village. I'm not there as much as I could wish, of course. My other work keeps me so much in London. But Medley, my colleague, is an excellent fellow. He'll look after you in every way."

"Who lives round about?"

"Well, as far as Society is concerned, we are a little distance from anywhere. Lord Fakenham's is the nearest house——"

"Not in that way, O'Donnell. I mean interesting people. Lord Fakenham is a bore—a twelve-bore one might say. I hate the big shooting houses in East England."

The Rector was rather at a loss. "Well," he said, reluctantly, "I don't know about what you'd probably call interesting people. Sir Ambrose McKee, the big Scotch distiller—Ambrosia whiskey, you know—has the shooting and comes down to the Manor House in September. Oh, and Gilbert Lothian, the poet, has a cottage in the place. I've met him twice, but I can't say that I know much about him. Medley swears by his wife, though. She does everything in the village I'm told. She was a Fielding, the younger branch."

The doctor's face became strangely interested. It was alert and watchful in a moment.

"Gilbert Lothian! He lives there does he! Now you tempt me. I've heard a good deal about Gilbert Lothian."

The Rector was genuinely surprised. "Well, most people have," he answered. "But I should hardly have thought that a modern poet was much in your line."

Morton Sims smiled, rather oddly. "Perhaps not," he said, "but I'm interested all the same. I have my own reasons. Put me into communication with the house agents, will you, O'Donnell?"

The affair had been quickly arranged. The house proved satisfactory, and Dr. Morton Sims had taken it.

On the morning when Mary Lothian had heard from Gilbert that he was returning that evening, Mr. Medley, reminded of his duty by a postcard from the Rector at Cowes, set out to pay a call and offer his services to the distinguished newcomer.

The "Haven" was a pleasant gabled house standing in grounds of about three acres, not far from the Church and Rectory. The late Admiral Custance had kept it in beautiful order. The green, pneumatic lawns suggested those of a college quadrangle, the privet hedges were clipped with care, the whole place was taut and trim.

Mr. Medley found Dr. Morton Sims smoking a morning pipe in the library, dressed in a suit of grey flannel and with a holiday air about him.

The two men liked each other at once. There was no doubt about that in the minds of either of them.

There was a certain dryness and mellow humour in Mr. Medley—a ripe flavour about him, as of an old English fruit crushed upon the palate. "Here is a rare bird," the doctor thought.

And Morton Sims interested the clerygman no less. The doctor's great achievements and the fact that he was a definite feature in English life were quite familiar. When, on fugitive occasions any one of this sort strayed into the placid domains of his interest Medley was capable of welcoming him with eagerness. He did so now, and warmed himself in the steady glow from the celebrated man with whom he was sitting.

That they were both Oxford men, more or less of the same period, was an additional link between them.

. . . "Two or three times a year I go up," Medley said, "and dine in Hall at Merton. I'm a little out of it, of course. The old, remembered faces become fewer and fewer each year. But there are friends left still, and though I can't quite get at their point of view, the younger fellows are very kind to me. Directly I turn into Oriel Street; I breathe the old atmosphere, and I confess that my heart beats a little quicker, as Merton tower comes into view."

"I know," the doctor said. "I was at Balliol you know—a little different, even in our day. But when I go up I'm always dreadfully busy, at the Museum or in the Medical School. It's the younger folk, the scientific dons and undergraduates who are reading science that I have to do with. I have not much time for the sentiments and caresses of the past. Life is so short and I have so much yet that I hope to do in it, that I simply refuse my mind the pleasures of retrospection. You'll call me a Philistine, but when I go to lecture at Cambridge—as I sometimes do—it stimulates me far more than Oxford."

"Detestable place!" said Mr. Medley, with a smile. "A nephew of mine is a tutor there, Peterhouse. He has quite a name in his way, they tell me. He writes little leprous books in which he conducts the Christian Faith to the frontier of modern thought with a consolatory cheque for its professional services in the past. And, besides, the river at Cambridge is a ditch."

The doctor's eyes leapt up at this.

"Yes, isn't it marvellous that they can row as they do!" he said with the eagerness of a boy.

"You rowed then?"

"Oh, yes. I was in the crew of—74—our year it was."

"Really! really!—I had no idea, Dr. Morton Sims! I was in the Trials of—71, when Merton was head of the river, but we were the losing boat and I never got into the Eight. How different it all was then!"

Both men were silent for a minute. The priest's words had struck an unaccustomed chord of memory in the doctor's mind.

"Those times will never come again," Morton Sims said, and puffed rather more quickly than usual at his pipe. He had spoken truly enough when he had said that he had not time in his strenuous life for memories of his youth, that he shut his eyes to the immemorial appeal of Oxford when he went there. But he responded now, instinctively, for there is a Freemasonry, greater than all the ritual of King Solomon, among those who have rowed upon the Isis, in the happy, thrice-happy days of Youth!

To weary clergymen absorbed in the va and vient of sordid parishes, to grave Justices upon the Bench, the strenuous cynics of the Bar, plodding masters of schools, the suave solicitor, the banker, the painter, or the poet, these vivid memories of the Loving Mother, must always come now and again in life.

The Bells of Youth ring once more. The faint echo of the shouts from river or from playing field, make themselves heard with ghostly voices. In the Chapels of Wayneflete, or of Laud, some soprano choir is singing yet. In the tower of the Cardinal, Big Tom tolls out of the past, bidding the College porters close their doors.

White and fretted spires shoot upwards into skies that will never be so blue again. Again the snap-dragon blooms over the grey walls of Trinity, the crimson creeper stains the porch of Cranmer, and Autumn leaves of bronze, purple and yellow carpet all the Magdalen Walks.

These things can never be quite forgotten by those who have loved them and been of them.

The duration of a reverie is purely accidental. There is no time in thought. The pictures of a lifetime may glow in the brain, while a second passes by the clock, a single episode may inform the retrospection of an hour.

These two grey-headed men, upon this delightful summer morning, were not long lost in thought.

"And now," said the clergyman, "have you seen anything of the village yet?"

"Not yet. For the three days that I have been here I have been arranging my books and instruments, and turning that big room over the barn into a laboratory."

"Oh, yes. Where the Admiral used to keep his Trafalgar models. An excellent room! Now what do you say, Dr. Morton Sims, to a little progress through the village with me? I'm quite certain that every one is agog to see you, and to sum you up. Natural village curiosity! You might as well make your appearance under my wing."

"Teucro auspice, auspice Teucro?"

"Precisely," said Medley, with a smile of pleasure at the quotation from his beloved poet, and the two men left the house together in high glee, laughing like boys.

They visited the Church, in which Morton Sims took a polite interest, and then the clergyman took his guest over the Rectory.

It was a fine house, standing in the midst of fair lawns upon which great beech trees grew here and there, giving the extensive grounds something of the aspect of a park. The rooms were large and lofty, with fine ceilings of the Adams' school, florid braveries of stucco that were quite at home in a house like this. There were portraits everywhere, chiefly members of the O'Donnell family, and the faces in their fresh Irish comeliness were gay and ingenuous, as of privileged young people who could never grow old.

"Really, this is a delightful house," the Doctor said as he stood in the library. "I wonder O'Donnell doesn't spend more time in Mortland Royal. Few parsons are housed like this."

"It's not his metier, Doctor. He hasn't the faculty of really understanding peasants, and I think he is quite right in what he is doing. And, of course, from a selfish point of view, I am glad. I have refused two college livings to stay on here. In all probability I shall stay here till I die. O'Donnell does a great work for Temperance all over England—though doubtless you know more about that than I do."

"Er, yes," Morton Sims replied, though without any marked enthusiasm. "O'Donnell is very eloquent, and no doubt does good. My dear old friend, Bishop Moultrie, in Norfolk here is most enthusiastic about his work. I like O'Donnell, he's sincere. But I belong to the scientific party, and while I welcome anything that really tends to stem inebriety, I believe that O'Donnell and Moultrie and all of them are on the wrong tack entirely."

"I know very little about the modern temperance movement in any direction," said Mr. Medley with a certain dryness. "Blue Ribbons and Bands of Hope are all very well, I suppose, but there is such a tendency nowadays among Non-conformists and the extreme evangelical party to exalt abstinence from alcohol into the one thing necessary to salvation, that I keep out of it all as much as I can. I like my glass of port, and I don't mean to give it up!"

Morton Sims laughed. "It doesn't do you the least good really," he said, laughing. "I could prove to you in five minutes, and with entire certainty, that your single glass of port is bad, even for you! But I quite agree with your attitude towards all the religious emotionalism that is worked up. The drunkard who turns to religion simply manifests the class of ideas, which is one of the features of the epileptic temperament. It is a confession of ineptitude, and a recourse to a means of salvation from a condition which is too hard for him to bear. That is to say, Fear is at the bottom of his new convictions!"

Certainly Medley was not particularly sympathetic to the modern Temperance movement among religious people. Perhaps Mr. O'Donnell's somewhat vociferous enthusiasm had something to do with it. But on the other hand, he was very far from accepting such a cold scientific doctrine as this. He knew that the Holy Spirit does not always work through fear. But like the wise and quiet-minded man that he was, he forbore argument and listened with intellectual pleasure to the views of his new friend.

"I know," he said, with a courtly hint of deference in his voice, that became him very well, "of your position in the ranks of those who are fighting Intemperance. But, and you must pardon the ignorance of a country priest who is quite out of all 'movements,' I don't know anything of your standpoint. What is your remedy, Dr. Morton Sims?"

The great man smiled inwardly.

It did really seem extraordinary to him that a cultured professional man of this day should actually know nothing of his hopes, aims and propaganda. And then, ever on the watch for traces of egoism and vain-glory in himself, he accepted the fact with humility.

Who was he, who was any one in life, to imagine that his views were known to all the world?

"Well," he said, "what we believe is just this: It is quite impossible to abolish or to prohibit alcohol. It is necessary in a thousand industries. Prohibition is futile. It has been tried, and has failed, in the United States. While alcohol exists, the man predisposed to abuse it will get it. You, as a clergyman, know as well as I do, as a doctor, that it is impossible to make people moral by Act of Parliament."

This was entirely in accordance with Medley's own view. "Of course," he said, "the only thing that can make people moral is an act of God, cooperating with an act of their own."

"Possibly. I am not concerned to affirm or deny the power of an Act of the Supreme Being. Nor am I able to say anything about its operation. Science tells me nothing upon this point. About the act of the individual I have a good deal to say."

—"I am most interested" . . .

"Well then, what we want to do is to root out drunkenness by eliminating inebriates from society by a process of Artificial Selection. It is within the power of science to evolve a sober race. We must forbid inebriates to have children and make it penal for them to do so."

Medley started. "Forbid them to marry?" he asked.

"It would be futile. Drunkenness often develops after marriage. There is only one way—by preventing Drunkards from reproducing their like—by forbidding the procreation of children by them. If drunkards were taken before magistrates sitting in secret session, and, on conviction, were warned that the procreation of children would subject them to this or that penalty, then the birthrate of drunkards would certainly fall immensely."

"But innumerable drunkards would inevitably escape the meshes of the law."

"Yes. But that is an argument against all laws. And this law would be more perfect in its operation than any other, for if the drunken father evaded it in one generation, the drunken son would be taken in the next."

The Priest said nothing for a moment. The latent distrust and dislike of science which is an inherent part of the life and training of so many Priests, was blazing up in him with a fury of antagonism. What impious interference with the laws of God was this? It seemed a profanation, horrible!

Like all good Christians of his temper of mind, he was quite unable to realise that God might be choosing to work in this way, and by the human hands of men. He had not the slightest conception of the great truth that every new discovery of Science and each fresh extension of its operations is not in the least antagonistic to Christianity when surveyed by the clear, unbiassed mind.

Mr. Medley was a dog-lover. He was a member of the Kennel-Club, and sent dogs to shows. He knew that, in order to breed a long-tailed variety of dogs, it would be ridiculous to preserve carefully all the short-tailed individuals and pull vigorously at their tails. He exercised the privilege of Artificial Selection carefully enough in his own kennels, but the mere proposal that such a thing should be done in the case of human beings seemed impious to him.

Dr. Morton Sims was also incapable of realising that his scheme for the betterment of the race was perfectly in accordance with the Christian Philosophy.

But Morton Sims was not a professing Christian and was not concerned with the Christian aspect. Mr. Medley was, and although one of his favourite hymns began, "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," he was really chilled to the bone for a minute at the words of the Scientist. He remained silent for a moment or so.

"But that seems to me quite horrible," he said, at length. "It is opposed to the best instincts of human nature—as horrible as Malthusianism, as horrible and as impracticable."

His expression as he looked at his guest was wistful. "I don't want to be discourteous," it seemed to say, "but this is really my thought."

"Perhaps," the other answered with a half-sigh. He was well used to encounter just such a voice, just such a shocked countenance as that of his host—"But by 'best instincts' people often mean strong prejudices. Our scheme is undoubtedly Malthusian. I am no believer in Malthusianism as a check to what is called 'over-population.' That does seem to me immoral. Nature requires no help in that regard. But Inebriety is an evil the extent of which no one but an expert can possibly measure. The ordinary man simply doesn't know! But supposing I admit what you say. Let us agree that my scheme is horrible, that in a sense it is immoral—or a-moral—that it is possibly impracticable.

"The alternative is more horrible and more immoral still. There is absolutely no choice between Temperance Reform, by the abolition of drink, and Temperance Reform by the abolition of the drunkard. An ill thing is not rendered worse by being bravely confronted. An unavoidable evil is not made more evil by being turned to good account. It rests with us to extract what good we can from the evil. Horrible? Immoral? Perhaps; but we are confronted by two horrors and two immoralities, and we are compelled to make a choice. Which is best; to live safe because strong, or to tremble behind fortifications; to be temperate by Nature or sober by Law?"

. . . They stood in the quiet sunlit library, with its placid books and pictures irradiated by the light of approaching noon.

The slim, bearded man in his grey suit, faced the dry, elderly clergyman. His voice rang with challenge, his whole personality was redolent of ardour, conviction, an aroma of the War he spent his life in waging far away from this quiet room of books.

For years, this had been Medley's home. Each night, with his Horace and his pipe, he spent the happy, sober hours between dinner and bedtime here. His sermons were written on the old oak table. Over the high carved marble of the mantel the engraving of Our Lord knocking at the weed-grown door of a human heart, had looked down upon all his familiar, quiet evenings. In summer the long windows were open and the moonlight washed the lawns with silver, and the shadows of the trees seemed like pieces of black velvet nailed to the grass.

In winter the piled logs glowed upon the hearth and the bitter winds from the Marshes, sang like a flight of arrows round the house.

What was this that had come into the library, what new disturbing, insistent element? The Rector brought no such atmosphere into the house when he arrived. He would sip his coffee and smoke his pipe and linger for a gracious moment with the Singer of Mantua, or dispute about the true birthplace of him who sent Odysseus sailing over wine-coloured and enchanted seas.

An insistent voice seemed to be calling to the clergyman—"Awake from your slumber—your long slumber! Hear the words of Truth!"

He said nothing. His whole face showed reluctance, bewilderment, misease.

The far keener intelligence of the other noted it at once. The mind of the Medico-Psychologist appreciated the episode at its exact value. He had troubled a still pool, and to no good purpose. Words of his—even if they carried an uneasy conviction—would never rouse this man to action. Let it be so! Why waste time? The clergyman was a delightful survival, a "rare Bird" still!

"Well, that is my theory, at any rate, since you asked for it," Morton Sims said, the urgency and excitement quite gone from his voice. "And now, some more of the village, please!"

Mr. Medley smiled cheerfully. He became suddenly conscious of the light and comfortable morning again. He felt his feet upon the carpet, he was in a place that he knew.

"We'll go through the wicket-gate in the south wall," he said, with alacrity. "It's our nearest way, and there is a good view of the Manor House to be got from there. It's a fine old place, empty for most of the year, but always full for the shooting. Sir Ambrose McKee has it."

"The whiskey man?"

"Yes. The great distiller," Medley answered nervously—most anxious to sheer off from any further controversial subjects.

They went out into the village.

The old red-brick manor house was surveyed from a distance, and Morton Sims remarked absently upon its picturesqueness. His mind was occupied with other and far alien thoughts.

Then they went down the white dusty road—the bordering hedges were all pilm-powdered for there had been no rain for many days—to the centre of the village.

Four roads met there, East, South, West and North, and it was known to the village as "The Cross." On one side of the little central green was the Post office and general shop. On the other was the Mortland Royal Arms, and on the South, to the right of the old stone bridge, which ran over the narrow river, were the roof and chimneys of Gilbert Lothian's house nestling among the trees and with a vista of the orchard which stretched down to the stream.

"That's a nice little place," the doctor said. "Whose is that?"

"It's the house of our village celebrity," Mr. Medley replied—with a rather hostile crackle in his voice, or at least the other thought so.

"Our local celebrity," Medley continued, "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the poet."

Neither the face nor the voice of the doctor changed at all. But his mind came to attention. This was a moment he had been waiting for.

"Oh, I know," he said, with an assumed indifference which he was well aware would have its effect of provocation upon the simple mind of the Priest. "The name is quite familiar to me. Bishop Moultrie sent me a book of Lothian's poems last winter. And now that I come to think of it, O'Donnell told me that Mr. Lothian lived here. What sort of a man is he?"

Medley hesitated. "Well," he said at length, "the truth is that I don't like him much personally, and I don't understand him in any way. I speak with prejudice I'm afraid, and I do not wish that any words of mine should make you share it."

"Oh, we all have our likes and dislikes. Every one has his private Dr. Fell and it can't be helped. But tell me about Lothian. I will remember your very honest warning! Don't you like his work?"

"I confess I see very little in it, Doctor. But then, my taste is old-fashioned and not in accord with modern literary movements. My 'Christian Year' supplies all the religious verse I need."

"Keble wrote some fine verse," said the doctor tentatively.

"Exactly. Sound prosody and restrained style! There is fervour and feeling in Lothian's work. It is impossible to deny it. But it's too passionate and feverish. There is a savage, almost despairing, clutching at spiritual emotion which strikes me as thoroughly unhealthy. The Love of Jesus, the mysterious operations of the Holy Ghost—these seem to me no proper vehicles for words which are tortured into a wild and sensuous music. As I read the poems of Gilbert Lothian I am reminded of the wicked and yet beautiful verses of Swinburne, and of others who have turned their lyre to the praise of lust. The sentiment is different, but the method is the same. And I confess that it revolts me to see the verbal tricks and polished brilliance of modern Pagan writers adapted to a fugitive and delirious ecstasy of Christian Faith."

Morton Sims understood thoroughly. This was the obstinate and prejudiced voice of an older literary generation, suddenly become vindictively vocal.

"I know all that you mean," he said. "I don't agree with you in the least, but I appreciate your point of view. But let me keep myself out of the discussion for a moment. I am not what you would probably be prepared to call a professing Christian. But how about Moultrie? He sent me Lothian's poems first of all. I remember the actual evening last winter when they arrived. A contemporaneous circumstance has etched it into my memory with certainty. Moultrie is a deeply convinced Christian. He is a man of the widest culture also. Yet he savours his palate with every nuance, every elusive and delicate melody that the genius of Lothian gives us. How about Moultrie's attitude?—it is a very general one."

Mr. Medley laughed, half with apology, half with the grim humour which was personal to him.

"I quite admit all you say," he replied, "but, as I told you, I belong to another generation and I don't in the least mean to change or listen to the voice of the charmer! I am a prejudiced old fogey, in short! I am still so antiquated and foolish as to have a temperamental dislike for a French-man, for instance. I like a picture to tell a story, and I flatly refused to get into Moultrie's abominable automobile when he brought it to the Rectory the other day!"

Morton Sims was not in the least deceived by this half real, half mocking apologia. It was not merely a question of style that had roused this heat in the dry elderly man when he spoke of the things which he so greatly disliked in the poet's work. There was something behind this, and the doctor meant to find out what it was. He was in Mortland Royal, in the first instance, in order to follow up the problem of Gilbert Lothian. His choice of a country residence had been determined by the Poet's locality. Every instinct of the scientist and hunter was awake in him. He had dreadful reasons, reasons which he could never quite think of without a mental shudder, for finding out everything about the unknown and elusive genius who had given "Surgit Amari," to the world.

He looked his companion full in the face, and spoke in a compelling, searching voice that the other had not heard before.

"What's the real antagonism, Mr. Medley?" he said.

Then the clergyman spoke out.

"You press me," he said, "very well, I will tell you. I don't believe Lothian is a good man. It is a stern and terrible thing to say,—God grant I am mistaken!—but he appears to me to write of supreme things with insincerity. Not vulgarly, you'll understand. Not with his tongue in his cheek, but without the conviction that imposes conduct, and perhaps even with his heart in his mouth!"

"Conduct?"

". . . I fear I am saying too much."

"Hardly to me! Then Mr. Lothian—?"

"He drinks," the Priest said bluntly, "you're sure to hear of it in some indirect way since you are going to stay in the village for six months. But that's the truth of it!"

The face of Dr. Morton Sims suddenly became quite pale. His brown eyes glittered as if with an almost uncontrollable excitement.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, and there was something so curious in his voice that the clergyman was alarmed at what he had said. He knew, and could know, nothing of what was passing in the other's mind. A scrupulously fair and honest man within his lights, he feared that he had made too harsh a statement—particularly to a man who thought that even an after-dinner glass of port was an error in hygiene!

"I don't mean to say that he gets drunk," Medley continued hastily, "but he really does excite himself and whip himself up to work by means of spirits."

The clergyman hesitated. The doctor spurred him on.

"Most interesting to the scientific man—please go on."

"Well, I don't know that there is much to say—I do hope I am not doing the man an injustice, because I am getting on for twice his age and envy the modern brilliance of his brain! But about a fortnight ago I went to see Crutwell—a poor fellow who is dying of phthisis—and found Lothian there. He was holding Crutwell's hand and talking to him about Paradise in a monotonous musical voice. He had been drinking. I saw it at once. His eyes were quite wild."

"But the patient was made happier?"

"Yes. He was. Happier, I freely confess it, than my long ministrations have ever been able to make him. But that is certainly not the point. It is very distressing to a parish Priest to meet with these things in his visitations. Do you know," here Mr. Medley gave a rueful chuckle, "I followed this alcoholic missioner the other day into the house of an old bed-ridden woman whom he helps to support. Lothian is extremely generous by the way. He would literally take off his coat and give it away—which really means, of course, that he has no conception of what money means.

"At any rate, I went into old Sarah's cottage about half an hour after Lothian had been there. The old lady in question lived a jolly, wicked life until senile paralysis intervened. She is now quite a connoisseur in religion. I found her, on the occasion of which I speak, lying back upon her pillows with a perfectly rapturous expression on her wicked and wrinkled old face. 'Oh, Mr. Lothian's been, sir!' she said, 'Oh, 'twas beautiful! He gave me five shillings and then he knelt down and prayed. I never heard such praying—meaning no disrespect, sir, of course. But it was beautiful. The tears were rolling down Mr. Lothian's cheeks!' 'Mr. Lothian is very kind,' I said. 'He's wonnerful,' she replied, 'for he was really as drunk as a Lord the whole time, though he didn't see as I saw it. Fancy praying so beautiful and him like that. What a brain!'"

Morton Sims burst out laughing, he could not help it. "All the same," he said at length, "it's certainly rather scandalous."

Medley made a hurried deprecating movement of his hands. "No, no!" he said, "don't think that. I am over-emphasising things. Those two instances are quite isolated. In a general way Lothian is just like any one else. To speak quite frankly, Doctor, I'm not a safe guide when Gilbert Lothian is discussed."

"Yes?"

"For this reason. I admire and reverence Mrs. Lothian as I have never reverenced any other woman. Now and then I have met saint-like people, and the more saint-like they were—I hope I am not cynical—the less of comely humanity they seemed to have. Only once have I met a saint quietly walking this world with sane and happy footsteps. And that is Mary Lothian."

There was a catch and tremble in the voice of the elderly clergyman. Morton Sims, who had liked him from the first, now felt more drawn to him than at any other time during their morning talk and walk.

"Now you see why I am a little bitter about Gilbert Lothian! I don't think that he is worthy of such a perfect wife as he has got! I'll take you to tea with her this afternoon and you will see!"

"I should like to meet her very much. Lothian is not here then?"

"He has been away for a week or so, but he is returning to-night. Our old postman, who knows everything, told me so at least."

The two men continued their walk through the village until lunch time, when they separated.

At three o'clock a maid brought a note from the Rectory to the "Haven." In the letter Medley said that he had been summoned to Wordingham by telegram and could not take the doctor to call on Mrs. Lothian.

The doctor spent the afternoon reading in the garden. He took tea among the flowers there, and after dinner, as it was extremely hot, he once more sought his deck chair under the mulberry tree in front of the house. Not a breath of air stirred. Now and then a cockchafer boomed through the heavy dark, and at his feet some glowworms had lit their elfin lamps.

There was thunder in the air too, it was murmuring ten miles away over the Wash, and now and again the sky above the marshes was lit with flickering green and violet fires.

A definite depression settled down upon the doctor's spirits and something seemed to be like a load upon lungs and brain.

He always kept himself physically fit. In London, during his busy life, walking, which was the exercise he loved best, was not possible. So he fenced, and swam a good deal at the Bath Club, of which he was a member.

For three days now, he had taken no exercise whatever. He had been arranging his new household.

"Liver!" he thought to himself. "That is why I am melancholy and depressed to-night. And then the storm that is hanging about has its effect too. But hardly any one realises that the liver is the seat of the emotions! It should be said—more truly—that such a one died of a broken liver, not a broken heart!" . . .

He sighed. His imaginings did not amuse him to-night. His vitality was lowered. That sick ennui which lies behind the thunder was upon him. As the storm grew nearer through the vast spaces of the night, so his psychic organism responded to its approach. Some uneasy imp had got into the barracks of his brain and was beating furiously upon the cerebral drum.

The vast and level landscape, the wide night, were alike to be dramatised by the storm.

And so, also, in the sphere of his thought, upon that secret stage where, after all, everything really happens, there was drama and disturbance. The level-minded scientist in Dr. Morton Sims drooped its head and bowed to the imperious onslaught. The man of letters in him awoke. Strange and fantastic influences were abroad this night and would have their way even with this cool sane person.

He knew what was happening to him as the night grew hotter, the lightning more frequent. He, the Ego of him, was slipping away from the material plane and entering that psychic country which he knew of and dreaded for its strange allurements.

Imaginative by nature and temperament, with a something of the artist in him, it was his habit to starve and repress that side of him as much as he was able.

He knew the unfathomable gulf that separated the psychical from the physiological. It was in the sphere of physiology that his work lay, here he was great, there must be no divided allegiance.

There was a menacing stammer of thunder. A certain line of verse came into his mind, a line of Lothian's.

"I will take a ten mile walk to-morrow," he said to himself, and resolutely wrenched his thoughts towards material things. There was, he remembered with a slight shudder, that appalling passage in a recent letter from Mrs. Daly—

. . . "Six weeks ago a tippler was put into an alms-house in this State. Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum, but had failed. At length he hit on one that was successful. He went into the wood yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon the block, and with an axe in the other struck it off at a single blow. With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and cried, 'Get some rum. Get some rum. My hand is off.' In the confusion and bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his mouth, drank freely and exultantly exclaimed, 'Now I am satisfied!'"

Horrible! Why was it possible that men might poison themselves so? Would all the efforts of himself and his friends ever make such monstrous happenings cease? Oh, that it might be so!

They were breaking up stubborn land. The churches were against them, but the Home Secretary of the day was their friend—in the future the disease might be eradicated from society.

Oh, that it might be so! for the good of the human race!

How absolutely horrible it was that transparent, coloured liquids in bottles of glass—liquids that could be bought everywhere for a few pence—should have the devilish power to transform men, not to beasts, but to monsters.

The man of whom Mrs. Daly had written—hideously alcoholised and insane! Hancock, the Hackney murderer, poisoned, insane!

The doctor had been present at the post-mortem, after the execution. It had all been so pitiably clear to the trained eye! The liver, the heart, told him their tale very plainly. Any General Practitioner would have known. Ordinary cirrhosis, the scar tissue perfectly plain; the lime-salts deposited in the wasting muscles of the heart. But Morton Sims had found far more than this in that poisoned shell which had held, also, a poisoned soul. He had marked the little swellings upon the long nerve processes that run from the normal cell of the healthy brain. Something that looked like a little string of beads under the microscope had told him all he wanted to know.

And that little string of beads, the lesions which interfered with the proper passage of nerve impulses, the scraps of tissue which the section-cutter had thinned and given to the lens, had meant torture and death to a good woman.