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.
