Front matter (continued 7)

But I am a slave to the good but stern fairy 7 and the hell-hag 13.

I attempt lightness and the picturesque. There is really nothing of the sort about my unreasoning and mad servitude. It's bitter, naked, grinning truth.

In my bath I sponge myself seven times—first. Then I begin again, but I stop at six in the second series and cross myself upon the breast with the bath sponge. Seven and six make thirteen. If I did not cancel out that thirteen by the sign of the Cross I should walk in fear of some dreadful thing all day.

Every time I drink I sip seven times first and then again seven times. When six times comes in the second seven, I make the Cross with my head. My right hand is holding the glass so that the thumb and finger joint method won't work. It would be disastrous to make the sign with the left hand.

That is another thing. . . . I use my left hand as little as I can. It frightens me. I always raise a glass to my lips with the right hand. If I use the left hand owing to momentary thoughtlessness, I have to go through a lengthy purification of wood-touching, crossing, and counting numbers.

All my habits re-act one upon the other and the rules are added to daily until they have become appallingly intricate. A failure in one piece of ritual entails all sorts of protracted mental and physical gestures in order to put it right.

I wonder if other men who drink know this heavy, unceasing slavery which makes the commonest actions of life a burden?

I suppose so. It must be so. All drugs have specific actions. Men don't tell, of course. Neither do I! Sometimes, though, when I have gone to some place like the Café Royal, or perhaps one of the clubs which are used by fast men, I have had a disgusting glee when I met men whom I knew drank heavily to think that they had their secrets—must have them—as well as I.

On reading through these notes that I have been making now and then, I am, of course, horrified at what they really seem to mean. Put down in black and white they convey—or at least they would convey to anyone who saw them—nothing but an assurance of the fact that I am mad. Yet I am not really mad. I have two lives. . . . I see that I have referred constantly to "It." I have promised myself to define exactly what I mean by "IT."

I am writing this immediately after lunch. I didn't get up till eleven o'clock. I am under the influence of twenty-five grains of ammonium bromide. I had a few oysters for lunch and nothing else. I am just about as normal as any man in my state can hope to be.

Nevertheless when I come to try and define "It" for myself I am conscious of a deep horror and distrust. My head is above water, I am sane, but so powerful is the influence of the continual FEAR under which I live my days and nights, that even now I am afraid.

"It" is a protean thing. More often than not it is a horrible dread of that Delirium Tremens which I have never had, but ought to have had long ago. I have read up the symptoms until I know each one of them. When I am in a very nervous and excited condition—when, for example, I could not face anybody at all and must be alone in my room with my bottle of whiskey—I stare at the wall to see if rats or serpents are running up it. I peer into the corners of the library to detect sheeted corpses standing there. I do not see anything of the sort. Even the imaginings of my fear cannot create them. I am, possibly, personally immune from Delirium Tremens, some people are. All the same, the fear of it racks me and tears me a hundred times a day. If it really seized me it surely would be almost enjoyable! Nothing, at any rate, can be more utterly dreadful than the continual apprehension.

Then I have another and always constant fear—these fears, I want to insist, are fantastically intermingled with all the crossings, wood-touchings and frantic calculations I have to do each minute of my life. The other fear is that of Prison.

Now I know perfectly well that I have done nothing in my life that could ever bring me near prison. All the same I cannot now hear a strange voice without a start of dread. A knock at the front door of my house unnerves me horribly. I open the door of whatever room I am in and listen with strained, furtive attention, slinking back and closing the door with a sob of relief when I realise that it is nothing more than the postman or the butcher's boy. I can hardly bear to read a novel now, because I so constantly meet with the word "arrest."

"He was arrested in the middle of his conversation,"—"She placed an arresting hand upon his arm." . . . These phrases which constantly occur in every book I read fill me with horror. A wild phantasmagoria of pictures passes through my mind. I see myself being led out of my house with gyves upon my wrists like the beastly poem Hood made upon "Eugene Aram." Then there is the drive into Wordingham in a cab. All the officials at the station who know me so well cluster round. I am put into a third class carriage and the blinds are pulled down. At St. Pancras, where I am also known, it is worse. The next day there is the Magistrate's Court and all the papers full of my affair. I know it is all fantastic nonsense—moonshine, wild dream. But it is so appallingly real to me that I sometimes long to have got the trial over and to be sitting with shaven head, wearing coarse prison clothes, in a lonely cell.

Then, I think to myself, I should really have peace. The worst would have happened and there would be an end of it all. There would be an end of deadly Fear.

I remember "——" telling me at Bruges, where so many mauvais sujets go to kill themselves with alcohol, that wherever he went, night and day, he was always afraid of a tiger that would suddenly appear. He had never experienced Delirium Tremens either. He knew how mad and fantastic this apprehension was but he was quite unable to get rid of it.

At other times I have the Folie de Grandeur.

My reading has told me that this is the sure sign of approaching General Paralysis. General paralysis means that one's brain goes, that one loses control of one's limbs and all acts of volition go. One is simply alive, that is all. One is alive and yet one is fed and pushed about, and put into this place or that as the entomologist would use a snail. So, in all my wild imaginings the grisly fear is never far away.

The imaginings are, in themselves, not without interest to a student of the dreadful thing I have become.

I always start from one point. That is that I have become suddenly enormously rich. I have invented all sorts of ways in which this might happen, but lately, in order to save trouble, and to have a base to start from I have arranged that Rockefeller, the American oil person, has been so intrigued by something that I have written that he presents me with two million pounds.

I start in the possession of two million pounds. I buy myself a baronetcy at once and I also purchase some historic estate. I live the life of the most sporting and beneficent country gentleman that ever was! I see myself correcting the bucolic errors of my colleagues on the Bench at Quarter Sessions. I am a Providence to all the labourers and small farmers. My name is acclaimed throughout the county of which I am almost immediately made Lord Lieutenant.

After about five minutes of this prospect I get heartily sick of it.

I buy a yacht then. It is as big as an Atlantic liner. I fit it up and make it the most perfect travelling palace the world has ever seen. I go off in it to sail round the globe—to see all the most beautiful things in the world, to suck the last drop of honey that the beauty of unknown seas, fairy continents, fortunate islands can yield. During this progress I am accompanied by charming and beautiful women. Some are intellectual, some are artistic—all are beautiful and charming. I, I myself, am the central star around which all this assiduous charm and loveliness revolve.

Another, and very favourite set of pictures, is the one in which I receive the two millions from Mr. Rockefeller—or whoever he is—and immediately make a public renunciation of it. With wise fore-thought I found great pensions for underpaid clergy. I inaugurate societies by means of which authors who could do really artistic work, but are forced to pot-boil in order to live, may take a cheque and work out their great thoughts without any worldly embarrassments. I myself reserve one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds a year and go and work among the poor in an East-end slum. At the same time I am most anxious that this great renunciation should be widely spoken of. I must be interviewed in all the papers. The disdainful nobility of my sacrifice for Christ's sake must be well advertised.

Indeed all my Folies de Grandeur are nothing else but exaggerated megalomania. I must be in the centre of the picture always. Spartan or Sybarite I must be glorified.

Another symptom which is very marked is that of spasmodic and superstitious prayer. When my heated brain falls away from its kaleidoscopic pictures of grandeur owing to sheer weariness; when my wire-tight nerves are strained to breaking point by the despotism of "touchings," the tyranny of "Thirteen" and "Seven," the nervous misery of the Sign of the Cross, I try to sum up all the ritual and to escape the whole welter of false obligation by spasmodic prayer. I suppose that I say "God-the-Father-help-me" about two or three hundred times a day. I shut my eyes and throw the failing consciousness of myself into the back of my head, and then I say it—in a sort of hot feverish horror, "God-the-Father-help-me." I vary this, too. When my thoughts or my actions have been more despicable than usual, I jerk up an appeal to God the Father. When fluid sentiment is round me it is generally Jesus on whom I call.

. . . I cannot write any more of this, it is too horrible even to write. But God knows how true it is!

This morning I went out for a walk. I was feeling wretchedly ill. I had to go to the Post Office and there I met little O'Donnell, the Rector, and dear old Medley his curate. It was torture to talk to them, to preserve an ordinary appearance. I felt that old Medley's eyes were on me the whole time. I like him very much. I know every corner of his good simple mind as if I had lived in it. He is a good man, and I can't help liking him. He dislikes and distrusts me intensely, however. He doesn't know enough—like Morton Sims for instance—to understand that I want to be good, that I am of his company really. The Rector himself was rather too charming. He fussed away about my poems, asked after Dorothy Davidson at Nice, purred out something that the Duke of Perth had said to him about the verses I had in the "Spectator" a month ago. Yet O'Donnell must know that I drink badly. Neither he nor Medley know, of course, how absolutely submerged I really am. No one ever realises that about a "man who drinks" until they read of his death in the paper. Only doctors, wives, experienced eyes know.

I funked Medley's keen old eyes in the Post Office and I couldn't help disgust at O'Donnell's humbug, as I thought it, though it may have been meant kindly. Curious! to fear one good man because he detects and reprobates one's wickedness, to feel contempt for another because he is civil.

I hurried away from them and went into the Mortland Royal Arms. Two strong whiskies gave myself back to me. I felt a stupid desire to meet the two clergymen again, with my nerves under proper control—to show them that I was myself.

Going back home, however, another nerve wave came over me. I knew how automatic and jerky my movements were really. I knew that each movement of my legs was dictated by a conscious exercise of command from the brain. I imagined that everyone I met—a few labourers—must know it and observe it also. I realise, now that I am safe in my study again, that this was nonsense. They couldn't have seen—or could they?

—I am sure of nothing now!

. . . It is half an hour ago since I wrote the last words. I began to feel quite drunk and giddy for a moment. I concentrated my intelligence upon the "Telegraph" until the lines became clear and I was appreciating what I read. Now I am fairly "possible" I think. Reading a passage in the leading article aloud seems to tell me that my voice is under control. My face twitched a little when I looked in the mirror over the mantel-shelf, but if I have a biscuit, and go to my room and sponge my face, I think that I shall be able to preserve sufficient grip on myself to see Mary for ten minutes now. Directly my eyes go wrong—I can feel when they are beginning to betray me—I will make an excuse and slip away. Then I'll lunch, and sleep till tea-time. After two cups of strong tea and the sleep, I shall be outwardly right for an hour at least. I might have tea taken up to her room and sit by the bed—if she doesn't want candles brought in. I can be quite all right in the dusk.

The next entry of these notes dates, from obvious evidence, three or four days afterwards. They are all written on the loose sheets of thick and highly glazed white paper, which Lothian, always sumptuous in the tools of his work, invariably used. It will be seen that the last paragraphs have, for a moment, strayed into a reminiscence of the hour. That is to say they have recorded not only continuous sensations, but those which were proper to an actual experience. The Notes do so no more. The closing paragraphs that are exhibited here once more fall back into the key of almost terrified interest with which this keen, incisive mind surveys its own ruin.

There are no more records of actual happenings.

Yet, nevertheless, while Gilbert Lothian was making this accurate diagnosis of his state, it is as well to remember that there is no prognosis.

He refuses to look into the future. He really refuses to give any indication of what is going on in the present. He puts down upon the page the symptoms of his disease. He catalogues the tortures he endures. But in regard to where his state is leading him in his life, what it is all going to result in, he says nothing whatever.

Psychologically this is absolutely corroborative and true.

He studies himself as a diseased subject and obviously takes a horrible pleasure in writing down all that he endures. But there are things and thoughts so terrible that even the most callous and most poisoned mind dare not chronicle them.

While the very last of what was Gilbert Lothian is finding an abnormal pleasure, and perhaps a terrible relief, in the surveyal of his extinguishing personality, the other self, the False Ego—the Fiend Alcohol—was busy with a far more dreadful business.

We may regard the excerpts already given, and the concluding ones to come, as really the last of Lothian—until his resurrection.

Sometimes a lamp upon the point of expiration flares up for a final second.

Then, with a splutter, it goes out. And in the circle of confining glass a dull red glow fades, disappears, and only an ugly, lifeless black circle of exhausted wick is left.

I didn't mean in making these notes—confound Morton Sims that he should have suggested such a thing to me!—Well, I didn't mean to bring in any daily happenings. My only idea was, for a sort of pitiful satisfaction to myself, to make a record of what I am going through. It has been a relief to me—that is quite certain. While I have been writing these notes I have had some of the placidity and quiet that I used to know when I was engaged upon purely literary pursuits. I can't write now—that is to say, I can't create. My poetic faculty seems quite to have left me. I write certain letters, to a certain person, but they are no longer the artistic and literary productions that they were in the first stages of my acquaintance with this person.

All the music that God gave me is gone out of me now.

Well, even this relief is passing, I have more in my mind and heart than will allow me to continue this fugitive journal.

Here, obviously, Lothian makes a slight reference to the ghastly obsession which, at this time, must have had him well within its grip.

Well, I will round it up with a few final words.

One thing that strikes me with horror and astonishment is that I have become quite unable to understand how what I am doing, the fact of what I have become, hurts, wounds and makes other people unhappy. I try to put myself—sympathetically—in the place of those who are around me and who must necessarily suffer by my behaviour. I can't do it. When I try to do it my mind seems full of grey wool. The other people seem a hundred miles away. Their sentiments, emotions, wishes—their love for me . . .

It is significant that here Lothian uses the plural pronoun as if he was afraid of the singular.

—dwindle to vanishing point. I used to be able to be sympathetic to the sorrows and troubles of almost everyone I met. I remember once after helping a man in this village to die comfortably, after sitting with him for hours and hours and hours during the progress of a most loathsome disease after closing his eyes, paying for his poor burial and doing all I could to console his widow and his daughters, that the widow and the daughters spoke bitterly about me and my wife—who had been so good to them—because one of our servants had returned the cream they sent to the kitchen because it was of inferior quality. These poor women actually made themselves unpleasant. For a day at least I was quite angry. It seemed so absolutely ungrateful when my wife and I had done everything for them for so long. But, I remember quite well, how I thought out the whole petty little incident one night when I was out with Tumpany after the wild geese. We were waiting in a cold midnight when scurrying clouds passed beneath the moon. It was bitter cold and my gun barrels burnt like fire. I thought it out with great care, and on the icy marshes a sort of understanding of narrow brains and unimaginative natures came to me. The next day I told my servants to still continue taking cream from the widow, and I have been friendly and kind to her ever since.

But now, I can't possibly get into the mind of anyone else with sympathy.

I think only of myself, of my own desires, of my own state. . . .

Although I doubt it in my heart of hearts, I must put it upon record that I still have a curious and ineradicable belief that I can, by a mere effort of volition, get rid of all the horrors that surround me and become good and normal once more. When I descend into the deepest depths of all I am yet conscious of a little jerky, comfortable, confidential nudge from something inside me. "You'll be all right," it says. "When you want to stop you will be able to all right!" This false confidence, though I know it to be utterly false, never deserts me in moments of exhilarated drunkenness.

And finally, I add, that when my brain is becoming exhausted the last moment before stupor creeps over it, I constantly make the most supreme and picturesque pronunciations of my wickedness.

I could not pray the words aloud—or at least if I did they would be somewhat tumbled and incoherent—but I mentally pray them. I wring my hands, I abase my soul and mind, I say the Pater Noster and the Credo, I stretch out my hot hands, and I give it all up for ever and ever and ever.

I tumble into bed with a sigh of unutterable relief.

The Fiend that stands beside my bed on all ordinary nights assumes the fantastic aspect of an angel. I fall into my drunken sleep, murmuring that "there is joy in Heaven when one sinner repenteth."

I wake up in the morning full of evil thoughts, blear-eyed, and trembling. I am a mockery of humanity, longing, crying for poison.

There is only a dull and almost contemptuous memory of the religious ecstasies of the night before. My dreams, my confession, have not the slightest influence upon me. I don't fall again into ruining habits—I continue them, without restraint, without sorrow.

I will write no more. I am adding another Fear to all the other Fears. I have been making a true picture of what I am, and it is so awful that even my blinded eyes cannot bear to look upon it.

Thus these notes, in varying handwriting, indicating the ebb and flow of poison within the brain, cease and say no more.

At the bottom of the last page—which was but half filled by the concluding words of the Confession—there is something most terribly significant, most horrible to look at in the light of after events.

There is a greenish splash upon the glossy paper, obviously whiskey was spilt there.

Beginning in the area of the splashed circle, the ink running, a word of four letters is written.

Two letters are cloudy, the others sharp and clear.

The word is "Rita."

A little lower down, and now right at the bottom of the page, the word is repeated again in large tremulous handwriting, three times. "Rita, Rita, Rita!"

The last "Rita" sprawls and tumbles towards the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Two exclamation marks follow it, and it is heavily underscored three times.

CHAPTER VII

INGWORTH REDUX: TOFTREES COMPLACENS

"Les absents ont toujours tort."

—Proverb.

Mr. Herbert Toftrees was at work in the splendidly furnished library of his luxuriously appointed flat at Lancaster Gate—or at least that is how he would have put it in one of his stories, while, before her Remington in the breakfast room Mrs. Herbert Toftrees would have rapped out a detailed description of the furniture.

The morning was dark and foggy. The London pavements had that disgustingly cold-greasy feeling beneath the feet that pedestrians in town know well at this time of year.

Within the library, with its double windows that shut out all noise, a bright fire of logs burned in the wide tiled hearth. One electric pendant lit the room and another burned in a silver lamp upon the huge writing table covered with crimson leather at which the author sat.

The library was a luxurious place. The walls were covered with books—mostly in series. The Complete Scott, the Complete Dickens, the Complete Thackeray reposed in gilded fatness upon the shelves. Between the door and one of the windows one saw every known encyclopedia, upon another wall-space were the shelves containing those classical French novels with which "culture" is supposed to have a nodding acquaintance—in translations.

Toftrees threw away his cigarette and sank into his padded chair. The outside world was raw and cold. Here, the fire of logs was red, the lamps threw a soft radiance throughout the room, and the keyboard of the writing-machine had a dapper invitation.

"Confound it, I must work," Toftrees said aloud, and at once proceeded to do so.

To his left, upon the table, in something like an exaggerated menu holder was a large piece of white cardboard. At the moment Toftrees and his wife were engaged in tossing off "Claire" which went into its fifth hundred thousand, at six-pence, within the year.

The sheet of cardboard bore the names of the principal characters in the story, and what they looked like, in case the prolific author should forget. There was also marked upon the card, in red ink, exactly how far Toftrees had got with the plot—which was copied out in large round hand, for instant reference, by his secretary upon another card.

Clipped on to the typewriter was a note which ran as follows:

Chapter VII. Book V. Love scene between Claire and Lord Quinton. To run, say, 2,000 words. Find Biblical chapter caption. Mrs. T. at work on Chapter 145 in epilogue—discovery by Addie that Lord Q is really John Boone.

With experienced eyes, Toftrees surveyed the morning's work-menu as arranged by Miss Jones from painstaking scrutiny and dovetailing of the husband and wife's work on the preceding day.

"Biblical chapter caption"—that should be done at once.

Toftrees stretched out his hand and took down a "Cruden's Concordance." It was nearly two years ago now that he had discovered the Bible as an almost unworked mine for chapter headings.

"Love! hm, hm, hm,—why not 'Love one another'—? Yes, that would do. It was simple, direct, and expressed the sentiment of chapter VII. If there were any reason against it Miss Jones would spot it at once. She would find another quotation and so make it right."

Now then, to work!

"Claire, I am leaving here the day after to-morrow."

"Yes?"

"Have you no idea, cannot you guess what it is that I have come to say to you?" He moved nearer to her and for a moment rested his hand on her arm.

"I have no idea," she told him with great gravity of manner.

"I have come to ask you to be my wife. Ah, wait before you bid me be silent. I love you—you surely cannot have failed to see that?—I love you, Claire!"

"Do not," she interrupted, putting up a warning hand. "I cannot hear you."

"But you must. Forgive me, you shall. I love you as I never loved any woman in my life, and I am asking you to be my wife."

"You do me much honour, Lord Quinton," she returned—and was it his fancy that made it seem to him that her lips curled a little?—"but the offer you make me I must refuse."

"Refuse!" There was almost amusing wonder and a good deal of anger in his tone and look.

"You force me to repeat the word—refuse."

"And why?"

"I do not want to marry you."

"You do not love me?"—incredulously.

"I do not love you,"—colouring slightly.

"But I would teach you, Claire"—catching her arm firmly in his hold now and drawing her to him,—"I would teach you. I can give you all and more of wealth and luxury than——"

"Hush! And please let go my arm. If you could give me the world it would make no difference."

"Claire, reconsider it! During the whole of my life I have never really wanted to marry any other woman. I will own that I have flirted and played at love."

"No passport to my favour, I assure you, Lord Quinton."

"Pshaw! I tell you women were all alike to me, all to be amusing and amused with, all so many butterflies till I met you. I won't mind admitting"—making his most fatal step—"that even when I first saw you—and it was not easy to do considering Warwick Howard kept you well in the background—I only thought of your sweet eyes and lovely face. But after—after—Oh, Claire, I learned to love you!"

"Enough!" cried the girl—

And enough also said the Remington, for the page was at an end. Toftrees withdrew it with a satisfied smile and glanced down it.

"Yes!" he thought to himself, "the short paragraph, the quick conversation, that's what they really want. A paragraph of ten consecutive lines would frighten them out of their lives. Their minds wouldn't carry from the beginning to the end. We know!"

At that moment there was a knock at the door and the butler entered. Smithers was a good servant and he enjoyed an excellent place, but it was the effort of his life to conceal from his master and mistress that he read Shakespeare in secret, and, in that household, his sense of guilt induced an almost furtive manner which Toftrees could never quite understand.

"Mr. Dickson Ingworth has called, sir," said Smithers.

"Ask him to come in," Toftrees said in his deep voice, and with a glint of interest in his eye.

Young Dickson Ingworth had been back from his journalistic mission to Italy for two or three weeks. His articles in the "Daily Wire" had attracted a good deal of attention. They were exceedingly well done, and Herbert Toftrees was proud of his protégé. He did not know—no one knew—that the Denstone master on the committee was a young man with a vivid and picturesque style who had early realised Ingworth's incompetence as mouthpiece of the expedition and representative of the Press. The young gentleman in question, anxious only for the success of the mission, had written nearly all Ingworth's stuff for him, and that complacent parasite was now reaping the reward.

But there was another, and greater, reason for Toftrees' welcome. Old Mr. Ingworth had died while his nephew was in Rome. The young man was now a squire in Wiltshire, owner of a pleasant country house, a personage.

"Ask Mr. Dickson Ingworth in here," Toftrees said again.

Ingworth came into the library.

He wore a morning coat and carried a silk hat—the tweeds and bowler of bohemia discarded now. An unobtrusive watch chain of gold had taken the place of the old silver-buckled lip-strap, and a largish black pearl nestled in the folds of his dark tie.

He seemed, in some subtle way, to have expanded and become less boyish. A certain gravity and dignity sat well upon his fresh good looks and the slight hint of alien blood in his features was less noticeable than ever.

Toftrees shook his young friend warmly by the hand. The worthy author was genuinely pleased to see the youth. He had done him a good service recently, pleased to exercise patronage of course, but out of pure kindness. Ingworth would not require any more help now, and Toftrees was glad to welcome him in a new relation.

Toftrees murmured a word or two of sorrow at Ingworth's recent bereavement and the bereaved one replied with suitable gravity. His uncle's sudden death had been a great grief to him. He would have given much to have been in England at the time.

"And the end?" asked Toftrees in a low voice of sympathy.

"Quite peaceful, I am glad to say, quite peaceful."

"That must be a great consolation!"

This polite humbug disposed of, both men fell immediately into bright, cheerful talk.

The new young squire was bubbling over with exhilaration, plans for the future, the sense of power, the unaccustomed and delightful feeling of solidity and security.

He told his host, over their cigars, that the estate would bring him in about fifteen or sixteen hundred a year; that the house was a fine old Caroline building—who his neighbours were, and so on.

"Then I suppose you'll give up literature?" Toftrees asked.

Dickson Ingworth was about to assent in the most positive fashion to this question, when he remembered in whose presence he was, and his native cunning—"diplomacy" is the better word for a man with a Caroline mansion and sixteen hundred a year—came to his aid.

"Oh, no," he said, "not entirely. I couldn't, you know. But I shall be in a position now only to do my best work!"

Toftrees assented with pleasure. The trait interested him.

"I'm glad of that," he said. "To the artist, life without expression is impossible." Toftrees spoke quite sincerely. Although his own production was not of a high order he was quite capable of genuine appreciation of greater and more serious writers. It does not follow—as shallow thinkers tell us—that because a man does not follow his ideal that he is without one at all.

They smoked cigars and talked. As a matter of form the host offered Ingworth a drink, which was refused; they were neither of them men who took alcohol between meals from choice.

They chatted upon general matters for a time.

"And what of our friend the Poet?" Toftrees asked at length, with a slight sneer in his voice.

Ingworth flushed up suddenly and a look of hate came into his curious eyes. The acute man of the world noticed it in a second. Before Ingworth had left for his mission in Italy, he had been obviously changing his views about Gilbert Lothian. He had talked him over with Toftrees in a depreciating way. Even while he had been staying at Mortland Royal he had made confidences about Lothian's habits and the life of his house in letters to the popular author—while he was eating the Poet's salt.

But Toftrees saw now that there was something deeper at work. Was it, he wondered, the old story of benefits forgot, the natural instinct of the baser type of humanity to bite the hand that feeds?

Toftrees knew how lavish with help and kindness Lothian had been to Dickson Ingworth. For himself, he detested Lothian. The bitter epigrams Lothian had made upon him in a moment of drunken unconsciousness were by no means forgotten. The fact that Lothian had probably never meant them was nothing. They had some truth in them. They were uttered by a superior mind, they stung still.

"Oh, he's no friend of mine," Ingworth said in a bitter voice.

"Really? I know, of course, that you have disapproved of much that Mr. Lothian seems to be doing just now, but I thought you were still friends. It is a pity. Whatever he may do, there are elements of greatness in the man."

"He is a blackguard, Toftrees, a thorough blackguard."

"I am sorry to hear that. Well, you needn't have any more to do with him, need you? He isn't necessary to your literary career any more. And even if you had not come into your inheritance, your Italian work has put you in quite a different position."

Ingworth nodded. He puffed quickly at his cigar. He was bursting with something, as the elder and shrewder man saw, and if he was not questioned he would come out with it in no time.

There was silence for a space, and, as Toftrees expected, it was broken by Ingworth.

"Look here, Toftrees," he said, "you are discreet and I can trust you."

The other made a grave inclination of his head—it was coming now!

"Very well. I don't want to say anything about a man whom I have liked, and who has been kind to me. But there are times when one really must speak, whatever the past may have been—aren't there?"

Toftrees saw the last hesitation and removed it.

"Oh, he'll get over that drinking habit," he said, though he knew well that Ingworth was not bursting with that alone. "It's bad, of course, that such a man should drink. I was horribly upset—and so was my wife—at that dinner at the Amberleys'. But he'll get over it. And after all you know—poets!"

"It isn't that, Toftrees. It's a good deal worse than that. In fact I really do want your advice."

"My dear fellow you shall have it. We are friends, I hope, though not of long standing. Fire away."

"Well, then, it's just this. Lothian's wife is one of the most perfect women I have ever met. She adores him. She does everything for him, she's clever and good looking, sympathetic and kind."

Toftrees made a slight, very slight, movement of repugnance. He was a man who was temperamentally well-bred, born into a certain class of life. He might make a huge income by writing for housemaids at sixpence, but old training and habit became alive. One did not listen to intimate talk about other men's wives.

But the impulse was only momentary, a result of heredity. His interest was too keen for it to last.

"Yes?"

"Lothian doesn't care a bit for his wife—he can't. I know all about it, and I've seen it. He's doing a most blackguardly thing. He's running after a girl. Not any sort of girl, but a lady."—

Toftrees grinned mentally, he saw how it was at once with the lad.

"No?" he said.

"Indeed, yes. She's a sweet and innocent girl whom he's getting round somehow or other by his infernal poetry and that. He's compromising her horribly and she can't see it. I've, I've seen something of her lately and I've tried to tell her as well as I could. But she doesn't take me seriously enough. She's not really in love with Lothian—I don't see how any young and pretty girl could really be in love with a man who looks like he's beginning to look. But they write—they've been about together in the most dreadfully compromising way. One never knows how far it may go. For the sake of the nicest girl I have ever known it ought to be put a stop to."

Toftrees smiled grimly. He knew who the girl was now, and he saw how the land lay. Young Ingworth was in love and frightened to death of his erstwhile friend's influence over the girl. That was natural enough.

"Suppose any harm were to come to her," Ingworth continued with something very like a break in his voice. "She's quite alone and unprotected. She is the daughter of a man who was in the Navy, and now she has to earn her own living as an assistant librarian in Kensington. A man like Lothian who can talk, and write beautiful letters—damned scoundrel and blackguard!"

Toftrees was not much interested in his young friend's stormy love-affairs. But he was interested in the putting of a spoke into Gilbert Lothian's wheel. And he had a genuine dislike and disgust of intrigue. A faithful husband to a faithful wife whose interests were identical with his, the fact of a married man of his acquaintance running after some little typewriting girl whose people were not alive to look after her, seemed abominable. Nice girls should not be used so. He thought of dodges and furtive meetings, sly telephone calls, and anxious country expeditions with a shudder. And if he thanked God that he was above these things, it was perhaps not a pharisaical gratitude that animated him.

"Look here," he said suddenly. "You needn't go on, Ingworth. I know who it is. It's Miss Wallace, of the Podley Library. She was at the Amberleys' that night when Lothian made such a beast of himself. She writes a little, too. Very pretty and charming girl!"

Ingworth assented eagerly. "Yes!" he cried, "that's just it! She's clever. She's intrigued by Lothian. She doesn't love him, she told me so yesterday——"

He stopped, suddenly, realising what he had said.

Toftrees covered his confusion in a moment. Toftrees wanted to see this to the end.

"No, no," he said with assumed impatience. "Of course, she knows that Lothian is married, and, being a decent girl, she would never let her feelings—whatever they may be—run away with her. She's dazzled. That's what it is, and very natural, too! But it ought to be stopped. As a matter of fact, Ingworth, I saw them together at the Metropole at Brighton one night. They had motored down together. And I've heard that they've been seen about a lot in London at night. Most people know Lothian by sight, and such a lovely girl as Miss Wallace everyone looks at. From what I saw, and from what I've heard, they are very much in love with each other."

"It's a lie," Ingworth answered. "She's not in love with him. I know it! She's been led away to compromise herself, poor dear girl, that's all."

Now, Toftrees arose in his glory, so to speak.

"I'll put a stop to it," he said. The emperor of the sixpenny market was once more upon his virtuous throne.

His deep voice was rich with promise and power.

"I know Mr. Podley," he said. "I have met him a good many times lately. We are on the committee of the 'Pure Penny Literature Movement.' He is a thoroughly good and fatherly man. He's quite without culture, but his instincts are all fine. I will take him aside to-night and tell him of the danger—you are right, Ingworth, it is a real and subtle danger for that charming girl—that his young friend is in. Podley is her patron. She has no friends, no people, I understand. She is dependent for her livelihood upon her place at the Kensington Library. He will tell her, and I am sure in the kindest way, that she must not have anything more to do with our Christian poet, or she will lose her situation."

Ingworth thought for a moment. "Thanks awfully," he said, almost throwing off all disguise now. Then he hesitated—"But that might simply throw her into Lothian's arms," he said.

Toftrees shook his head. "I shall put it to Mr. Podley," he said, "and he, being receptive of other people's ideas and having few of his own, will repeat me, to point out the horrors of a divorce case, the utter ruin if Mrs. Lothian were to take action."

Ingworth rose from his seat.

"To-night?" he said. "You're to see this Podley to-night?"

"Yes."

"Then when do you think he will talk to Rit—to Miss Wallace?"

"I think I can ensure that he will do so before lunch to-morrow morning."

"You will be doing a kind and charitable thing, Toftrees," Ingworth answered, making a calculation which brought him to the doors of the Podley Institute at about four o'clock on the afternoon of the morrow.

Then he took his leave, congratulating himself that he had moved Toftrees to his purpose. It was an achievement! Rita would be frightened now, frightened from Gilbert for ever. The thing was already half done.

"Mine!" said Mr. Dickson Ingworth to himself as he got into a taxi-cab outside Lancaster Gate.

"I think I shall cook master Lothian's goose very well to-night," Herbert Toftrees thought to himself.

Mixed motives on both sides.

Half bad, perhaps, half good. Who shall weigh out the measures but God?

Ingworth was madly in love with Rita Wallace, who had become very fond of him. He was young, handsome, was about to offer her advantageous and honourable marriage.

Ingworth's passion was quite good and pure. Here he rose above himself. "All's fair"—treacheries grow small when they assist one's own desire and can be justified upon the score of morality as well.

Toftrees was outside the fierce burning of flames beyond his comprehension.

He was a cog-wheel in the machinery of this so swiftly-weaving loom.

But he also paid himself both ways—as he felt instinctively.

He and his wife owed this upstart and privately disreputable poet a rap upon the knuckles. He would administer it to-night.

And it was a duty, no less than a fortunate opportunity, to save a good and charming girl from a scamp.

When Toftrees told his wife all about it at lunch that morning she quite agreed, and, moreover, gave him valuable feminine advice as to the conduct of the private conversation with Podley.

CHAPTER VIII

THE AMNESIC DREAM-PHASE

"In the drunkenness of the chronic alcoholic the higher brain centres are affected more readily and more profoundly than the rest of the nervous system, with the result that the drinker, despite the derangement of his consciousness, is capable of apparently deliberate and purposeful acts. It is in this dream-state, which may last a considerable time, that the morbid impulses of the alcoholic are most often carried into effect."

The Criminology of Alcoholism by William C. Sullivan, M.D., Medical Officer H.M. Prison Service.

"The confirmed toper, who is as much the victim of drug-habit as the opium eater, may have amnesic dream phases, during which he may commit automatically offensive acts while he is mentally irresponsible."

Medico-Legal Relations of Alcoholism by Stanley B. Atkinson, M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Barrister at Law.

At nine o'clock one evening Lothian went into his wife's room. It was a bitterly cold night and a knife-like wind was coming through the village from the far saltings. There was a high-riding moon but its light was fitful and constantly obscured by hurrying clouds.

Mary was lying in bed, patiently and still. She was not yet better. Dr. Heywood was a little puzzled at her continued listlessness and depression.

A bright fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections upon the bedroom ceiling. A shaded candle stood upon the bedside table, and there were also a glass of milk, some grapes in a silver dish, and the "Imitatio Christi" there.

Lothian was very calm and quiet in demeanour. His wife had noticed that whenever he came to see her during the last two or three days, there had been an unusual and almost drowsy tranquillity in his manner. His hands shook no more. His movements were no longer jerky. They were deliberate, like those of an ordinary and rather ponderous man.

And now, too, Gilbert's voice had become smooth and level. The quick and pleasant vibration of it at its best, the uneasy rise and fall of it at its worst, had alike given place to a suave, creamy monotone which didn't seem natural.

The face, also, enlarged and puffed by recent excesses, had further changed. The redness had gone from the skin. Even the eyes were bloodshot no longer. They looked fish-like, though. They had a steady introspective glare about them. The lips were red and moist, in this new and rather horrible face. The clear contour and moulding were preserved, but a quiet dreamy smile lurked about and never left them.

. . ."Gilbert, have you come to say goodnight?"

"Yes, dear,"—it was an odd purring sort of voice—"How do you feel?"

"Not very well, dear. I am going to try very hard to sleep to-night. You're rather early in coming, are you not?"

"Yes, dear, I am. But the moon and the tides are right to-night and the wild duck are flighting. I am going out after widgeon to-night. I ought to do well."

"Oh, I see. I hope you'll have good luck, dear."

"I hope so. Oh, and I forgot, Mary, I thought of going off for three days to-morrow, down towards the Essex coast. I should take Tumpany. I've had a letter from the Wild Fowlers' Association man there to say that the geese are already beginning to come over. Would you mind?"

Mary saw that he had already made up his mind to go—for some reason or other.

"Yes, go by all means, dear," she said, "the change and the sport will do you good."

"You will be all right?"—how soapy and mechanical that voice was. . . .

"Oh, of course I shall. Don't think a bit about me. Perhaps—" she hesitated for a moment and then continued with the most winning sweetness—"perhaps, Gillie darling, it will buck you up so that you won't want to . . ."

The strange voice that was coming from him dried the longing, loving words in her throat.

"Well, then, dear, I shall say good-bye, now. You see I shall be out most of this night, and if Tumpany and I are to catch the early train from Wordingham and have all the guns ready, we must leave here before you will be awake. I mean, you sleep into the morning a little now, don't you?"

He seemed anxious as he asked.

"Generally, Gillie. Then if it is to be good-bye for two days, good-bye my dear, dear husband. Come——"

She held out her arms, lying there, and he had to bend into her embrace.

"I shall pray for you all the time you are away," she whispered. "I shall think of my boy every minute. God bless you and preserve you, my dear husband."

She was doubtless about to say more, to murmur other words of sacred wifely love, when her arms slid slowly away from him and lay motionless upon the counterpane.

Immediately they did so, the man's figure straightened itself and stood upright by the side of the bed.

"Well, I'll go now," he said. "Good-night, dear."

He turned his full, palish face upon her, the yellow point of flame, coming through the top of the candle shade, showed it in every detail.

Fixed, introspective eyes, dreamy painted smile, a suave, uninterested farewell.

The door closed gently behind him. It was closed as a bland doctor closes a door.

Mary lay still as death.

The room was perfectly silent, save for the fall of a red coal in the fire or the tiny hiss and spurt of escaping gas in thin pencils of old gold and amethyst.

Then there came a loud sound into the room.

It was a steady rhythmic sound, muffled but alarming. It seemed to fill the room.

In a second or two more Mary knew that it was only her heart beating.

"But I am frightened," she said to herself. "I am really frightened. This is FEAR!"

And Fear it was, such as this clear soul had not known. This daughter of good descent, with serene, temperate mind and body, had ever been high poised above gross and elemental fear.

To her, as to the royal nature of her friend Julia Daly, God had early given a soul-guard of angels.

Now, for the first time in her life, Mary knew Fear. And she knew an unnameable disgust also. Her heart drummed. The back of her throat grew hot—hotter than her fever made it. And, worse, a thousand times more chilling and dreadful, she felt as if she had just been holding something cold and evil in her arms.

. . . The voice was unreal and almost incredible. The waxen mask with its set eyes and the small, fine mouth caught into a fixed smile—oh! this was not her husband!

She had been speaking with some Thing. Some Thing, dressed in Gilbert's flesh had come smirking into her quiet room. She had held it in her arms and prayed for it.

Drum, drum!—She put her left hand, the hand with the wedding ring upon it, over the madly throbbing heart.

And then, in her mind, she asked for relief, comfort, help.

The response was instant.

Her life had always been so fragrant and pure, her aims so single-hearted, her delight in goodness and her love of Jesus so transparently immanent, that she was far nearer the Veil than most of us can ever get.

She asked, and the amorphous elemental things of darkness dissolved and fled before heavenly radiance. The Couriers of the Wind of the Holy-Ghost came to her with the ozone of Paradise beating from their wings.

Doubtless it was now that some Priest-Angel gave Mary Lothian that last Viaticum which was to be denied to her from the hands of any earthly Priest.

It was a week ago that Mr. Medley had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Mary. It was seven days since she had thus met her Lord.

But He was with her now. Already of the Saints, although she knew it not, a Cloud of Witnesses surrounded her.

Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven were loving her, waiting for her.

Lothian went along the corridor to the library, which was on the first floor of the house. His footsteps made no noise upon the thick carpet. He walked softly, resolutely, as a man that had much to do.

The library was not a large room but it was a very charming one. A bright fire burned upon the hearth. Two comfortable saddle-back chairs of olive-coloured leather stood on either side of it, and there was a real old "gate-table" of dark oak set by one of the chairs with a silver spirit-stand upon it.

Along all one side, books rose to the ceiling, his beloved friends of the past, in court-dress of gold and damson colour, in bravery of delicate greens; in leather which had been stained bright orange, some of them; while others showed like crimson aldermen and red Lord Mayors.

Let into the wall at the end of the room—opposite to the big Tudor window—was the glass-fronted cupboard in which the guns were kept. The black-blue barrels gleamed in rows, the polished stocks caught the light from the candles upon the mantel-shelf. The huge double eight-bore like a shoulder-cannon ranked next to the pair of ten-bores by Greener. Then came the two powerful twelve-gauge guns by Tolley, chambered for three inch shells and to which many geese had fallen upon the marshes. . . .

Lothian opened the glass door and took down one of the heavy ten-bores from the rack.

He placed it upon a table, opened a cupboard, took out a leather cartridge bag and put about twenty "perfect" cases of brass, loaded with "smokeless diamond" and "number four" shot, into the bag.

Then he rang the bell.

"Tell Tumpany to come up," he said to Blanche who answered the summons.

Presently there was a somewhat heavy lurching noise as the ex-sailor came up the stairs and entered the library with his usual scrape and half-salute.

Tumpany was not drunk, but he was not quite sober. He was excited by the prospect of the three days' sport in Essex and he had been celebrating the coming treat in the Mortland Royal Arms. He had enjoyed beer in the kitchen of the old house—by Lothian's orders.

"Now be here by seven sharp to-morrow, Tumpany," Lothian said, still in his quiet level voice. "We must catch the nine o'clock from Wordingham without fail. I'm going out for an hour or two on the marshes. The widgeon are working over the West Meils with this moon and I may get a shot or two."

"Cert'nly, sir. Am I to come, sir?"

"No, I think you had better go home and get to bed. You've a long day before you to-morrow. I shan't be out late."

"Very good, sir. You'll take Trust? Shall I go and let him out?"

Lothian seemed to hesitate, while he cast a shrewd glance under his eyelids at the man.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "I ought to be able to pick up any birds I get myself in this light, and on the West Meils. I shan't stay out long either. You see, Trust has to go with us to-morrow and he's always miserable in the guard's van. He'll have to work within a few hours of our arrival and I thought it best to give him as much rest as possible beforehand. He isn't really necessary to me to-night. But what do you think?"

Tumpany was flattered—as it was intended that he should be flattered—at his advice being asked in this way. He agreed entirely with his master.

"Very well then. You'd better go down again to the kitchen. I'll be with you in ten minutes. Then you can walk with me to the marsh head and carry the bag."

Tumpany scrambled away to kitchen regions for more beer.

Lothian walked slowly up and down the library. His head was falling forward upon his chest. He was thinking, planning.

Every detail must be gone into. It was always owing to neglect of detail that things fell through, that things were found out. Nemesis waited on the failure of fools!

A week ago the word "Nemesis" would have terrified him and sent him into the labyrinth of self-torture—crossings, touchings, and the like.

Now it meant nothing.

Yes: that was all right. Tumpany would accompany him to the end of the village—the farthest end of the village from the "Haven"—there could be no possible idea. . . .

Lothian nodded his head and then opened a drawer in the wall below the gun cupboard. He searched in it for a moment and withdrew a small square object wrapped in tissue paper.

It was a spare oil-bottle for a gun-case.

The usual oil-receptacle in a gun-case is exactly like a small, square ink-bottle, though with this difference; when the metal top is unscrewed, it brings with it an inch long metal rod, about the thickness of a knitting needle but flattened at the end.

This is used to take up beads of oil and apply them to the locks, lever, and ejector mechanisms of a gun.

Lothian slipped the thing into a side pocket of his coat.

In a few minutes, dressed in warm wildfowling clothes of grey wool and carrying his gun, he was tramping out of the long village street with Tumpany.

The wind sang like flying arrows, the dark road was hard beneath their feet.

They came to Tumpany's cottage and little shop, which were on the outskirts of the village.

Then Lothian stopped.

"Look here," he said, "you can give me the bag now. There really isn't any need for you to come to the marsh head with me, Tumpany.—Much better get to bed and be fresh for to-morrow."

The man was nothing loth. The lit window of his house invited him.

"Thank you, sir," he said, sobered now by the keen night wind, "then I'll say good-night."

—"Night Tumpany."

"G'night, sir."

Lothian tramped away into the dark.

The sailor stood for a moment with his hand upon the latch of his house door, listening to the receding footsteps.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked himself. "He speaks different like. Yesterday morning old Trust seemed positive afraid of him! Never saw such a thing before! And to-night he seems like a stranger somehow. I felt queer, in a manner of speaking, as I walked alongside of him. But what a bloody fool I am!" Tumpany concluded, using the richest adjective he knew, as his master's footsteps died away and were lost.

In less than ten minutes Lothian stood upon the edge of the vast marshes.

It was a ghostly place and hour. The wind wailed over the desolate miles like a soul sick for the love it had failed to win in life. The wide creeks with their cliff-like sides of black mud were brimming with sullen tidal water, touched here and there by faint moonbeams—lemon colour on lead.

Night birds passed high over head with a whistle of wings, heard, but not seen in the gloom. From distant Wordingham to far Blackney beyond which were the cliffs of Sherringham and Cromer, for twelve miles or more, perhaps not a dozen human beings were out upon the marshes.

A few bold wildfowlers in their frail punts with the long tapering guns in the bows, might be "setting to birds"; enduring the bitter cold, risking grave danger, and pursuing the wildest and most wary of living things with supreme endurance throughout the night.

Once the wind brought two deep booms to Lothian. His trained ear knew and located the sound at once. One of the Wordingham fowlers was out upon the flats three miles away, and had fired his double eight-bore, the largest shoulder gun that even a strong man can use.

But the saltings were given over to the night and the things of the night.

The plovers called, "'Tis dark and late." "'Tis late and dark."

The wind sobbed coldly; wan clouds sped to hood the moon with darkness. Brown hares crouched among the coarse marrum grasses, the dun owls were afloat upon the air, sounding their oboe notes, and always the high unseen flight of whistling ducks went on all over the desolate majesty of the marshes.

And beyond it all, through it all, could be heard the hollow organs of the sea.

Lothian was walking rapidly. His breathing was heavy and muffled. He skirted the marsh and did not go upon it, passing along the grass slope of foreshore which even a full marsh tide never conquered; going back upon his own trail, parallel to the village.

There were sharp pricking pains in his knees and ankles. Hot sweat clotted his clothes to his body and rained down his face. But he was unaware of this. His alarming physical condition was as nothing.

He went on through the dark, hurriedly, like a man in ambush.

Now and then he stumbled at inequalities of the ground or caught his foot in furze roots. Obscene words escaped him when this happened. They burst from between the hot cracked lips, mechanical and thin. The weak complaints of some poor filthy-minded ghost!

He knew nothing of what he said.

But with knife-winds upon his face, thin needles in his joints; sodden flesh quivering with nervous tremors and wet with warm brine, he went onwards with purpose.

He was in the Amnesic Dream-phase.

Every foul and bestial impulse which is hidden in the nature of man was riotous and awake.

The troglodytes showed themselves at last.

All the unnameable, unthinkable things that lie deep below the soul, far below the conscience, in the lowest and sealed cellars of personality, had burst from their hidden prisons.

The Temple of the Holy Ghost was full of the squeaking, gibbering Powers of utmost, nethermost Hell.

—These are similes which endeavour to hint at the frightful Truth.

Science sums it up in a simple statement. Lothian was now in "The Amnesic dream-phase."

He came to where a grass road bounded by high hedges led down to the foreshore.

Crouching under the sentinel hedge of the road's end, he lit a match and looked at his watch.

It was fifteen minutes past ten o'clock.

Old Phœbe Hannett and her daughter, the servants of Morton Sims at the "Haven," would now be fast in slumber. Christopher, the doctor's personal servant, was in Paris with his master.

The Person who walked in a Dream turned up the unused grass-grown road.

He was now at the East end of the village.

The path brought him out upon the highroad a hundred yards above the rectory, Church, and the schools. From there it was a gentle descent to the very centre of the village, where the "Haven" was.

There were no lights nor lamp-posts in the village. By now every one would be gone to bed. . . .

There came a sudden sharp chuckle into the night. Something was congratulating itself with glee that it had put water-boots with india-rubber soles upon its feet; noiseless soles that would make no sound upon the gravelled ways about the familiar house that had belonged to Admiral Custance.

. . . Lothian lifted the latch of the gate which led to the short gravel-drive of the "Haven" with delicate fingers. An expert handles a blown bird's-egg so.

It rose. It fell. Not a crack came from the slowly-pushed gate which fell back into its place with no noise, leaving the night-comer inside.

The gables of the house rose black and stark against the sky. The attic-windows where old dame Hannett and her daughter slept were black. They were fast in sleep now.

The night-intruder set his gun carefully against the stone pillar of the gate. Then he tripped over the pneumatic lawns before the house with almost a dance in his step.

He frisked over the lawns, avoiding the chocolate patches that meant flower-beds, with complacent skill.

Just then no clouds obscured the moon, which rode high before the advancing figure.

A fantastic shadow followed Lothian, coquetting with the flower beds, popping this way and that, but ever at his heels.

It threw itself about in swimming areas of grey vagueness and then concentrated itself into a black patch with moving outlines.

There was an ecstasy about this dancing shadow.

And now, the big building which had been a barn and which Admiral Custance had re-built and put to various uses, cut wedge-like into the lit sky.

The Shadow crept close to the Dream Figure and crouched at its heels.

It seemed to be spurring that figure on, to be whispering in its ear. . . .

We know all about the Dream Figure. Through the long pages of this chronicle we have learned how, and of what, It has been born.

And were it not that experts of the Middle Age—when Demonology was a properly recognised science—have stated that a devil has never a shadow, we should doubtless have been sure that it was our old friend, the Fiend Alcohol, that contracted and expanded with such fantastic measures over the moon-lit grass.

Lothian knew his way well about this domain.

Admiral Custance had been his good friend. Often in the old sailor's house, or in Lothian's, the two had tippled together and drank toasts to the supremacy which Queen Britannia has over the salt seas.

The lower floor of the barn had been used as a box-room for trunks and a general store-house, though the central floor-space was made into a court for Badminton; when nephews and nieces, small spars of Main and Mizzen and the co-lateral Yardarms, came to play upon a retired quarter-deck.

The upper floor had ever been sacred to the Admiral and his hobbies.

From below, the upper region was reached by a private stairway of wood outside the building. Of this entrance the sailor had always kept the key. A little wooden balcony ran round the angle of the building to where, at one end, a large window had been built in the wall.

Lothian went up the outside stairs noiselessly as a cat, and round the little gallery to the long window. Here he was in deep shadow.

The two leaves of the window did not quite meet. The wood had shrunk, the whole affair was rickety and old.

As he had anticipated, the night-comer had no difficulty in pushing the blade of his shooting knife through the crevice and raising the simple catch.

He stepped into the room, long empty and ghostly.

First, he closed the window again, and then let down the blue blind over it. A skylight in the sloped roof provided all the other light. Through this, now, faint and fleeting moonlights fell.

By the gallery door there was a mat. Lothian stepped gingerly to it and wiped the india-rubber boots he wore.

Then he took half a wax candle from a side-pocket and lit it. It was quite impossible that the light could be seen from outside, even if spectators there were, in the remote slumbering village.

In the corners of the long room, black-velvet shadows lurked as the yellow candle flame moved.

A huge spider with a body as big as sixpence ran up one canvas-covered wall. Despite the cold, the air was lifeless and there was a very faint aroma of chemical things in it.

On all sides were long deal tables covered with a multiplicity of unusual objects.

Under a big bell of glass, popped over it to keep the dust away, was a large microscope of intricate mechanism. Close by was a section-cutter that could almost make a paring of a soul for scrutiny. Leather cases stood here and there full of minute hypodermic syringes, and there was a box of thin glass tubes containing agents for staining the low protoplasmic forms of life which must be observed by those who wish to arm the world against the Fiend Alcohol.

At the far end of the room, on each side of the fireplace were two glass-fronted cupboards, lined with red baize. In one of them Admiral Custance had kept his guns.

These cupboards had been constructed by the village carpenter—who had also made the gun cupboard in Lothian's library. They were excellent cupboards and with ordinary locks and keys—the Mortland Royal carpenter, indeed, buying these accessories of his business of one pattern, and by the gross, from Messrs. Pashwhip and Moger's iron-mongery establishment in Wordingham.

Lothian took the key of his own gun cupboard from his waistcoat pocket. It fitted the hole of the cupboard here—on the right side of the fireplace, exactly as he had expected.

The glass doors swung open with a loud crack, and the contents on the shelves were clearly exposed to view.

Lothian set his candle down upon the edge of an adjacent table and thought for a moment.

During their intimate conversations—before Lothian's three weeks in London with Rita Wallace, while his wife was at Nice, Dr. Morton Sims had explained many things to him. The great man had been pleased to find in a patient, in an artist also, the capability of appreciating scientific truth and being interested in the methods by which it was sought.

Lothian knew therefore, that Morton Sims was patiently following and extending the experiments of Professor Fraenkel at his laboratory in Halle, varying the investigation of Deléarde and carrying it much farther.

Morton Sims was introducing alcohol into rabbits and guinea pigs, sub-cutaneously or into the stomach direct, exhibiting the alcohol in well-diluted forms and over long periods. He was then inoculating these alcoholised subjects, and subjects which had not been alcoholised, with the bacilli of consumption—tubercle bacilli—and diphtheria toxin—the poison produced by the diphtheria bacillus.

He was endeavouring to obtain indisputable evidence of increased susceptibility to infection in the animal body under alcoholic influences.

Of all this, Lothian was thoroughly aware. He stood now—if indeed it was Gilbert Lothian the poet who stood there—in front of an open cupboard; the cupboard he had opened by secrecy and fraud.

Upon those shelves, as he well knew, organic poisons of immeasurable potency were resting.

In those half-dozen squat phials of glass, surrounded with felt and with curious stoppers, an immense Death was lurking.

All the quick-firing guns of the navies of the world were not so powerful as one of these little glass receptacles.

The breath came thick and fast from the intruder. It went up in clouds from his heated body; vapourised into steam which looked yellow in the candlelight.

After a minute he drew near to the cupboard.

A trembling, exploring finger pushed among the phials. It isolated one.

Upon a label pasted on the glass, were two words in Greek characters, "διφθ. ποξιν."

Here, in this vessel of gelatinous liquid, lurked the destroying army of diphtheria bacilli, millions strong.

The man held up the candle and its light fell full upon the neat cursive Greek, so plain for him to read.

He stared at it with focussed eyes. His head was pushed forward a little and oscillated slowly from side to side. The sweat ran down it and fell with little splashes upon the floor.

Then his hand began to tremble and the light flickered and danced in the recesses of the cupboard.

He turned away, shaking, and set the candle end upon the table. It swayed, toppled over, flared for a moment and went out.

But he could not wait to light it again. His attendant devil was straying, he must be called back . . . to help.

Lothian plunged his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a flat flask of silver. It was full of undiluted whiskey.

He took a long steady pull, and the fire went through him instantly.

With firm fingers now, he screwed on the top of the flask and re-lit the candle stump. Then he took the marked phial from the cupboard shelf and set it on the table.

From a side pocket he took the little oil-bottle belonging to a travelling gun-case and unscrewed the top of that.

And now, with cunning knowledge, he takes the thick, grey woollen scarf from his neck and drenches a certain portion of its folds with raw whiskey from his flask. He binds the muffler round the throat and nose in such fashion that the saturated portion confines all the outlets of his breathing.

One must risk nothing one's self when one plays and conjures with the spawn and corruptions of death!

. . . It is done, done with infinite nicety and care—no trembling fingers now.

The vial is unstopped, the tube within has poured a drop or two of its contents into the oil-bottle, the projecting needle of which is damp with death.

The cupboard is closed and locked again. Ah! there is candle grease upon the table! It is scraped up, to the minutest portion, with the blade of the shooting knife.

Then he is out upon the balcony again. One last task remains. It is to close the long windows so that the catch will fall into its rusty holder and no trace be left of its ever having been opened.

This is not easy. It requires preparation, dexterity and thought. Cunning fingers must use the thin end of the knife to bend the little brass bracket which is to receive the falling catch. It must be bent outwards, and in the bending a warning creak suggests that the screws are parting from the rotten wood.

But it is done at last, surely dexterously. No gentlemanly burglar of the magazines could have done it better.

. . . There is no moon now. It is necessary to feel one's way in silence over the lawn and reach the outer gate.

This is done successfully, the Fiend is a good quick valet-fiend to-night and aids at every point.

The gate is closed with a gentle "click," there is only the "pad, pad" of the night-comer's footsteps passing along the dark village street towards the Old House with poison in his pocket and murder in his heart.

Outside his own gate, Lothian's feet assume a brisk and confidential measure. He rattles the latch of the drive gate and tries to whistle in a blithe undertone.

Bedroom windows may be open, it will be as well that his low, contented whistle—as of one returning from healthy night-sport—may be heard.

His lips are too cracked and salt to whistle, however. He tries to hum the burden of a song, but only a faint "croak, croak," sounds in the cold, quiet night—for the wind has fallen now.

Not far away, behind the palings of his little yard, The Dog Trust whines mournfully.

Once he whines, and then with a full-throat and opened muzzle Dog Trust bays the moon behind its cloud-pall.

When he hears the footfall of one he knows and loves, Dog Trust greets it with low, anxious whines.

He is no watch-dog. His simple duties are unvaried from the marsh and field. Growl of hostility to night-comers he knows not. His faithful mind has been attuned to no reveillé note.

But he howls mournfully now.

The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and hostile approaching the house.

So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into the warm straw of his kennel.

Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house.

The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one.

The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud anchored to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings. It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a bugle in the mind.

Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived fresh and happy at the Old House.

He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In Essex the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon anticipation and the morning.

In the kitchen Phœbe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of the hour.

The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready for the four-wheel dogcart.

"Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress will have a chance to get right. . . . Master said good-bye to Mistress last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche.

"Yes, but he may want to go in again and disturb her."

"I don't believe he will. She's asleep now. Those things Dr. Heywood give her keep her quiet. But still you'd better go quietly into her room with her morning milk, Blanche. If she's asleep, just leave it there, so she'll find it when she wakes up."

"Very well, cook, I will," the housemaid said—"Oh, there's that Tumpany!"

Tumpany came into the kitchen. He wore his best suit. He was quite dictatorial and sober. He spoke in brisk tones.

"What are you going to do, my girl?" he said to Blanche in an authoritative voice.

"Hush, you silly. Keep quiet, can't you?" Phœbe said angrily. "Blanche is taking up Mistress' milk in case she wakes."

"Where's master, then?"

"Master is in the library. He'll be down in a minute."

"Can I go up to him, cook? . . . There's something about the guns——"

"No. You can not, Tumpany. But Blanche will take any message.—Blanche, knock at the library door and say Tumpany wants to see Master. But do it quietly. Remember Missis is sleeping at the other end of the passage."

As Blanche went up the stairs with her tray, the library door was open, and she saw her master strapping a suit case. She stopped at the open door.

—"Please, sir, Tumpany wants to speak to you."

Lothian looked up. It was almost as if he had expected the housemaid.

"All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got there—oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table, and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress."

The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the room, closing the door after her.

It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer in the table.

Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver plated top.

In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to the glass of milk.

Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top.

The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head, hung from the slanting point.

Lothian plunged the needle into the glass of milk, moving it this way and that.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer.

He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed by Tumpany.

"What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray and left the room with it.

"I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and locked now, sir. You've got the keys."

"By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had made at Tolley's—where are they?"

"Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard.

"Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the key of the ten-bore case."

"Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me."

"Yes. I'll be down in a minute."

Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom.

He met Blanche in the corridor.

"Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I just put her milk on the table and came out quietly."

"Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute."

In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the water, which immediately became a purplish pink.

He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now tightly stoppered again, in one of them.

For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the bottle, drying them on a towel.

. . . There was no possible danger of infection now. As for the bottle, he would throw it out of the window of the train when he was a hundred miles from Mortland Royal.

He came out into the corridor once more. His face was florid and too red. Close inspection would have disclosed the curiously bruised look of the habitual inebriate. But, in his smart travelling suit of Harris tweed, with well-brushed hair, white collar and the "bird's eye" tie that many country gentlemen affect, he was passable enough.

A dreamy smile played over his lips. His eyes—not quite so bloodshot this morning—were drowsed with quiet thought.

As he was about to descend the stairs he turned and glanced towards a closed door at the end of the passage.

It was the door of Mary's room and this was his farewell to the wife whose only thought was of him, with whom, in "The blessed bond of board and bed" he had spent the happy years of his first manhood and success.

A glance at the closed door; an almost complacent smile; after all those years of holy intimacy this was his farewell.

As he descended the stairs, the Murderer was humming a little tune.

The two maid servants were in the hall to see him go. They were fond of him. He was a kind and generous master.

"You're looking much better this morning, sir," said Phœbe. She was pretty and privileged. . . .

"I'm feeling very well, Phœbe. This little trip will do me a lot of good, and I shall bring home lots of birds for you to cook. Now mind both you girls look after your Mistress well. I shall expect to see her greatly improved when I return. Give her my love when she wakes up. Don't forward any letters because I am not certain where I shall be. It will be in the Blackwater neighbourhood, Brightlingsea, or I may make my headquarters at Colchester for the three days. But I can't be quite sure. I shall be back in three days."

"Good morning, sir. I hope you'll have good sport."

"Thank you, Phœbe—that's right, Tumpany, put Trust on the seat first and then get up yourself—what's the matter with the dog?—never saw him so shy. No, James, you drive—all right?—Let her go then."

The impatient mare in the shafts of the cart pawed the gravel and was off. The trap rolled out of the drive as Lothian lit a cigar.

It really was a most perfect early morning, and there was a bloom upon the stubble and Mortland Royal wood like the bloom upon a plum.

The air was keen, the sun bright. The pheasants chuckled in the wood, the mare's feet pounded the hard road merrily.

"What a thoroughly delightful morning!" Lothian said to the groom at his side and his eyes were still dreamy with subtle content.

CHAPTER IX

A STARTLING EXPERIENCE FOR "WOG"

It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening; a dry, acrid, coughing cold lay over London.

In the little Kensington flat of Rita Wallace and Ethel Harrison, the fire was low and almost out. The "Lulu bird" drooped on its perch and Wog was crying quietly by the fire.

How desolate the flat seemed to the faithful Wog as she looked round with brimming eyes.

The state and arrangement of a familiar room often seem organically related to the human mind. Certainly we ourselves give personality to rooms which we have long inhabited; and that personality re-acts upon us at times when event disturbs it.

It was so now with the good and tender-hearted clergyman's daughter.

The floor of the sitting-room was littered with little pieces of paper and odds and ends of string. Upon the piano—it was Wog's piano now, a present from Rita—was a massive photograph frame of silver. There was no photograph in it, but some charred remains of a photograph which had been burned still lay in the grate.

Wog had burnt the photograph herself, that morning, early.

"You do it, darling," Rita had said to her. "I can't do it myself. And take this box. It's locked and sealed. It has the letters in it. I cannot burn them, but I don't want to read them again. I must not, now. But keep it carefully, always. If ever I should ask for it, deliver it to me wherever I am."

"You must never ask for it, my darling girl," Wog had said quickly. "Let me burn the box and its contents."

"No, no! You must not, dearest Wog, my dear old friend! It would be wrong. Rossetti had to open the coffin of his wife to get back the poems which he had buried with her. Keep it as I say."

Wog knew nothing about Rossetti, and the inherent value of works of art in manuscript didn't appeal to her. But she had been able to refuse her friend nothing on this morning of mornings.

Wog was wearing her best frock, a new one, a present also. She had never had so smart a frock before. She held her little handkerchief very carefully that none of the drops that streamed from her eyes should fall upon the dress and stain it.

"My bridesmaid dress," she said aloud with a choke of melancholy laughter. "We mustn't spoil it, must we, Lulu bird?"

But the canary remained motionless upon its perch like a tiny stuffed thing.

In one corner of the room was a large corded packing-case. It contained a big and costly epergne of silver, in execrable taste and savouring strongly of the mid-Victorian, a period when a choir of great voices sang upon Parnassus but the greatest were content to live in surroundings that would drive a minor poet of our era to insanity. This was to be forwarded to Wiltshire in a fortnight or so.

It was Mr. Podley's present.

Wog's eyes fell upon it now. "What a kind good man Mr. Podley is," she thought. "How anxious he has been to forward everything. And to give dear Rita away also!"

Then this good girl remembered what a happy change in her own life and prospects was imminent.

She was to be the head librarian of the Podley Pure Literature Institute, vice Mr. Hands, retired. She was to have two hundred a year and choose her own assistant.

Mr. and Mrs. Podley—at whose house Ethel had spent some hours—were not exactly what one would call "cultured" people. They were homely; but they were sincere and good.

"Now you, my dear," Mrs. Podley had said to her, "are just the lady we want. You are a clergyman's daughter. You have had a business training. The Library will be safe in your hands. And we like you! We feel friends to you, Miss Harrison. 'Give it to Miss Harrison,' I said to my husband, directly I had had a talk with you."

"But I know so little about literature," Wog had answered. "Of course I read, and I have my own little collection of books. But to take charge of a public library—oh, Mrs. Podley, do you think I shall be able to do it to Mr. Podley's satisfaction?"

Mrs. Podley had patted the girl upon her arm. "You're a good girl, my dear," she said, "and that is enough for us. We mayn't be literary, my husband and me, but we know a good woman when we meet her. Now you just take charge of that library and do exactly as you like. Come and have dinner with us every week, dearie. When all's said we're a lonely old couple and a good girl like you, what is clever too, and born a lady, is just what I want. Podley shall do something for your dear Father. I'll see to that. And your brothers too, just coming from school as they are. Leave it to me, my dear!"

About Rita the good dame had been less enthusiastic.

"The evening after Podley had to talk to her" (thus Mrs. Podley) "I asked you both up here. I fell in love with you at once, my dear. Her, I didn't like. Pretty as a picture; yes! But different somehow! Yet sensible enough—really—as P. has told me. When he gave her a talking to, as being an elderly and successful man who employed her he had well a right to do, she saw at once the scandal and wrong of going about with a married man—be he poet or whatnot. It was only her girlish foolishness, of course. Poor silly lamb, she didn't know. But what a blessing that all the time she was being courted by that young country squire. I tell you, Miss H., that I felt like a mother to them in the Church this morning."

These kindly memories of this great day passed in reverie through the tear-charged heart of Wog.

But she was alone now, very much alone. She had adored Rita. Rita had flown away into another sphere. The Lulu Bird was a poor consoler! Still, Wog's sister Beatrice was sixteen now. She would have her to live with her and pay her fees for learning secretarial duties at Kensington College and Mr. Munford would find Bee a post. . . .

Wog pulled herself together. She had lost her darling, brilliant, flashing Rita. That was that! She must reconstruct her life and press forward without regrets. Life had opened out for her, after all.

But now, at this immediate moment, there was a necessity for calling all her forces together.

She did not know, she had refused to know, how Rita had dealt with Mr. Lothian during the past three weeks. The poet had not written for a fortnight; that she believed she knew, and she had hoped it meant that his passion for her friend was over. Rita, in her new-found love, her legitimate love, had never mentioned the poet to Wog. Ethel knew nothing of love, as far as it could have affected her. Yet the girl had discerned—or thought she had—an almost frightened relinquishment and regret on the part of Rita. Rita had expanded with joyous maiden surrender to the advances and love-making of Dickson Ingworth. That was her youth, her body. But there had been moments of revolt, moments when the "wizards peeped and muttered," when the intellect of the girl seemed held and captured, as the man who wooed her, and was this day her husband, had never captured it—perhaps never would or could.

Rita Wallace had once said to Gilbert Lothian that she and Ethel did not take a daily paper because of the expense.

Neither of these girls, therefore, was in the habit of glancing down the births, marriages and deaths column. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees had run over to Nice for a month, Ingworth was far too anxious and busy with his appeal to Rita—none of the people chiefly concerned had read that the Hon. Mary Lothian, third daughter of the Viscount Boultone and wife of Gilbert Lothian, Esquire, of the Old House, Mortland Royal, was dead.

For a fortnight—this was all Ethel Harrison knew—Rita had received no communication from the Poet.

Ethel imagined that Rita had finally sent him about his business, had told him of her quick engagement and imminent marriage. She knew that something had happened with Mr. Podley—nearly three weeks ago. Details she had none.

Yet, on the mantel-shelf, was a letter in Rita's handwriting. It was addressed to Gilbert Lothian. Wog was to forward this to him.

The letter was unnerving. It was a letter of farewell, of course, but Ethel did not like to handle any message from her dear young bride to a man who was of the past and ought never, never! to have been in it.

And there was more than this.

When Ethel had returned from Charing Cross Station, after the early wedding in St. Martin's Church and the departure of the happy couple for Mentone, she had found a telegram pushed through the letter-box of the flat, addressed "Miss Wallace."

She had opened it and read these words:

"Arriving to you at 7:30 to-night, carissima, to explain all my recent silence if you do not know already. We are coming into our own.

Gilbert."

Wog didn't know what this might mean. She regarded it as one more attempt, on the part of the married man who ought never to have had any connection with Rita. She realised that Lothian must be absolutely ignorant of Rita's marriage. And, knowing nothing of Mary Lothian's death, she regarded the telegram with disgust and fear.

"How dreadful," she thought, in her virgin mind, untroubled always by the lusts of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, "that this great man should run after Cupid. He's got his own wife. How angry Father would be if he knew. And yet, Mr. Lothian couldn't help loving Cupid, I suppose. Every one loves her."

"I must be as kind as I can to him when he comes," she said to herself. "He ought to be here almost at once. Of course, Cupid knows nothing about the telegram saying that he's coming. I can give her letter into his own hands."

. . . The bell whirred—ring, ring, ring—was there not something exultant in the shrill purring of the bell?

Wog looked round the littered room, saw the letter on the mantel, the spread telegram upon the table, breathed heavily and went out into the little hall-passage of the flat.