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.
