The Drunkard

Some girls would have affected indifference immediately. Not so the simple Wog.

"Of course I am, Cupid," she said.

"I'm going to dine with Gilbert."

"Gilbert?"

"Gilbert Lothian I mean, of course. We are absolute friends, Wog dear – he and I. I haven't told you before, but I will now. You remember that night I was home so late, nearly a month ago? Yes? – well I had been motoring to Brighton with Gilbert. I met him for the first time at the Amberleys' – but that you know. Since then we have become friends – such a strange and wonderful friendship it is, Ethel! It's made things so different for me."

"But how friends? Have you seen him often, then? But you can't have?"

Rita shook her head, impatiently for a moment, and then she smiled gently. How could poor old Wog know or understand!

"No!" she cried, with a little tap of her shoe upon the carpet. "But there are such things as letters aren't there?"

"Has he been writing to you, then?"

"Writing! I have had four of the most beautiful letters that a poet ever wrote. It took him days to write each one. He chose every word, over and over again. Every sentence is music, every word a note in a chord!"

Ethel went up to her friend and kissed her. "Dear old Cupid," she said, "I'm so glad, so very glad. I don't understand his poems myself, but Father simply loves them. I am sure you will be very happy. Only I do hope he is a good man – really worthy of my dear! And so" – she continued, with a struggle to get down to commonplace brightness of manner – "And so he's coming for you to-night! Now I know why you look so beautiful and are so happy."

Two tears gathered in the kind green eyes, tears of joy at her dear girl's happiness, but with a tincture of sadness too. With a somewhat unaccustomed flash of imagination, she looked into the future and saw herself lonely in the flat, or with another girl who could never be to her what Rita was.

She looked up at Rita again, trying to smile through her tears.

What she saw astounded her.

Rita's face was flushed. A knot of wrinkles had sprung between her eyebrows. Her mouth was mutinous, her brown eyes lit with an angry and puzzled light.

"I don't understand you, Ethel," she said in a voice which was so cold and unusual that the other girl was dumb. – "What on earth do you mean?"

"Mean, dear," Ethel faltered. "I don't quite understand. I thought you meant – I thought .."

"What did you think?"

"I thought you meant that you were engaged to him, Cupid darling!"

"Engaged! —Why Gilbert is married."

Ethel glanced quickly at the flowers, at the photograph upon the piano. Things seemed going round and round her – the heat, that was it – "But the letters!" she managed to say at length, "and, and – oh, Cupid, what are you doing? He can't be a good man. I'm certain of it, dear! I'm older than you are. I know more about things. You don't realise, – but how should you poor darling! He can't be a good man! Rita, does his wife know?"

The girl frowned impatiently. "How limited and narrow you are, Ethel," she said. "Have you such low ideals that you think friendship between a man and a woman impossible? Are you entirely fettered by convention and silly old puritanical nonsense? Wouldn't you be glad and proud to have a man with a wonderful mind for your friend – a man who is all chivalry and kindness, who pours out the treasures of his intellect for one?"

Ethel did not answer. She did not, in truth, know what to say. There was no reason she could adduce why Rita should not have a man friend. She knew that many singular and fine natures despised conventionality or ordinary rules and seemed to have the right to do so. And then —honi soit! Yet, inarticulate as she was, she felt by some instinct that there was something wrong. Mr. Gilbert Lothian was married. That meant everything. A married man, and a poet too! oughtn't to have any secret and very intimate friendships with beautiful, wilful and unprotected girls.

.. "You have nothing to say! Of course! There is nothing that any wide-minded person could say. Ethel, you're a dear old stupe!" – she crossed the room and kissed her friend.

And Ethel was so glad to hear the customary affection return to Rita's voice, the soft lips upon her cheek set her gentle and loving heart in so warm a glow, that her fears and objections dissolved and she said no more.

The electric bell at the front door whirred.

Rita tore herself from Ethel's embrace. There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. She gazed into it for a few seconds and then hurried away into the little hall.

There was the click of the latch as it was drawn back, a moment of silence, and then Ethel heard a voice with a peculiar vibration and timbre – an altogether unforgettable voice – say two words.

"At last!"

Then there was a murmur of conversation, the words of which she could not catch, interrupted once by Rita's happy laughter.

Finally she heard Rita hurry into the bedroom, no doubt for her cloak, and return with an excited word. Then the door closed and there was an instant of footsteps upon the stone stairs outside.

Ethel was left alone.

She went to her bookshelf – she did not seem to want to think just now – and after a moment's hesitation took down "Sesame and Lilies." Then she sat at the table with a sigh and looked without much interest at the bananas, the sardines and the brown bread.

Ethel was left alone.

CHAPTER II

OVER THE RUBICON

"Inside the Horsel here the air is hot;
Right little peace one hath for it, God wot;
The scented dusty daylight burns the air,
And my heart chokes me till I hear it not."

    – Swinburne.
Gilbert and Rita said hardly anything to each other as the motor-cab drove them to the restaurant where they were to dine.

There was a sort of constraint between them. It was not awkwardness, it was not shyness. Nevertheless, they had little to say to each other – yet.

They had become extraordinarily intimate during the last weeks by means of the letters that had passed between them. In all his life Lothian had never written anything like these letters. Those already written, and those that were to be written before the end, would catch the imagination of Europe and America could they ever be published. In prose of a subtle beauty, which was at the same time virile and with the organ-note of a big, revealing mind, he had poured his thoughts upon the girl.

She was the inspiration, the raison d'être, of these letters. That "friendship" which his heated brain had created and imposed upon hers, he had set up before him like a picture and had woven fervent and critical rhapsodies about it. The joy that he had experienced in the making of these letters was more real and utterly satisfying than any he had ever known. He was filled and exalted by a sense of high power as he wrote the lovely words. He knew how she would read, understand and be thrilled by them. Paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, were designed to play upon some part of the girl's mind and temperament – to flatter her own opinion at a definite point, and to flatter it with a flattery so subtle and delicate, so instinct with knowledge, that it came to her as a discovery of herself. He would please her – since she was steeped in books and their appeal, utterly ignorant of Life itself – with a pleasure that he alone could give. He would wrap her round with the force and power of his mind, make her his utterly in the bonds of a high intellectual friendship, dominate her, achieve her – through the mind.

He had set himself to do this thing and he had done it.

Her letters to him, in their innocent, unskilful, but real and vivid response had shown him everything. From each one he gathered new material for his reply.

He had lived of late in a new world, where, neglecting everything else, he sat Jove-like upon the Olympus of his own erection and drew a young and supremely beautiful girl nearer and nearer to him by his pen.

He had fallen into many mortal sins during his life. Until now he had not known the one by which the angels fell, the last sin of Pride which burns with a fierce, white consuming flame.

All these wonderful letters had been wrought under the influence of alcohol. He would go to his study tired in body and so wearied in brain that he felt as if his skull were literally packed with grey wool.

"I must write to Rita," he would think, and sit down with the blank sheet before him. There would not be an idea. The books upon the walls called to him to lose himself in noble company. The Dog Trust gambolling with Tumpany in the garden invited him to play. The sight of Mary with her basket on her arm setting out upon some errand of mercy in the village, spoke of the pleasant, gracious hours he might spend with her, watching how sweet and wise she was with the poor people and how she was beloved.

But no, he must write to Rita. He felt chained by the necessity. And then the fat cut-glass bottle from the tantalus would make an appearance, the syphon of soda-water in its holder of silver filigree. The first drink would have little or no effect – a faint stirring of the pulses, a sort of dull opening of tired mental eyes, perhaps. Yet even that was enough to create the desire for the moment when the brain should leap up to full power. Another drink – the letter begun. Another, and images, sentences which rang and chimed, gossamer points of view, mosaics and vignettes glowing with color, merry sunlight laughter, compliments and devoirs of exquisite grace and refinement, all flowed from him with steady, uninterrupted progress.