The Drunkard

Puffed and crinkled lids fell over the staring eyes for a moment – as if automatic pressure had suddenly pushed them down.

"Married? Rita?"

"Oh, she ought to have told you! It was cruel of her! She ought to have told you. But you have not written to her for two or three weeks – as far as I know.."

"Married? Rita?"

"Yes, this morning, and Mr. Podley gave her away. But I have a letter for you, Mr. Lothian. Rita asked me to post it. She gave it me in bed this morning, before I dressed her for her marriage. Of course she didn't know that you were going to be in town. I will give it to you now."

She gave him the letter.

His hands took it with a mechanical gesture, though he made a little bow of thanks.

Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling up and down – it was horrible.

The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost.

.. "But I have come to marry Rita!"

Wog became indignant. "Mr. Lothian," she said, "you ought not to speak like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You are married. Please don't even hint at such things."

"How stupid you are, Wog," he said, as if he had known her for years; in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. "My wife's dead, dead and buried… I thought you would both have known.."

His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left for him.

He drew the page out of the envelope and then he looked up at Ethel Harrison again. There was a dreadful yearning in his voice now.

"Yes, yes, but whom has my little Rita married?"

Real fear fell upon Ethel now. She became aware that this man had not realised what had happened in any way. But the whole thing was too painful. It must be got over at once.

"Mr. Ingworth Dickson, of course," she answered, with some sharpness in her tones.

For a minute Lothian looked at her as if she were the horizon. Then he nodded. "Oh, Dicker," he said in a perfectly uninterested voice – "Yes, Dicker – just her man, of course.."

He was reading the letter now.

This was Rita's farewell letter.

"Gilbert dear:

"I shall always read your books and poems, and I shall always think of you. We have been tremendous friends, and though we shall never meet again, we shall always think of each other, shan't we? I am going to marry Dicker to-morrow morning, and by the time you see this – Wog will send it – I shall be married. Of course we mustn't meet or write to each other any more. You are married and I'm going to be to-morrow. But do think of your little friend sometimes, Gilbert. She will often think of you and read all you write."

Lothian folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope with great precision. Then he thrust it in the inner breast pocket of his coat.

Wog watched him, in deadly fear.

She knew now that elemental forces had been at work, that her lovely Rita had evoked soul-shaking, sundering strengths..

But Gilbert Lothian came towards her with both hands outstretched.

"Oh, I thank you, I thank you a thousand times," he said, "for all your goodness to Rita – How happy you must have been together – you two girls – "

He had taken both her hands in his. Now he dropped them suddenly. Something, something quite beautiful, which had been upon his face, snapped away.

The kindness and welcome in his eyes changed to a horror-struck stare.

He began to murmur and burble at the back of his throat.

His arms shot stiffly this way and that, like the arms of railway signals.

He ran to one wall and slapped a flat palm upon it.

"Tumpany!" he said with a giggle. "My wild-fowling man! Mary used to like him, so I suppose he's all right. But, damn him, looking out of the wall like that with his ugly red face! – "

He began to sing. His lips were dark-red and cracked, his eyes fixed and staring.

"Tiddle-iddle, iddle-tiddle, so the green frog said in the garden!"

Saliva dropped from the corners of his mouth.

His body was jerking like a puppet of a marionette display, actuated by unseen strings.

He began to dance.

Blazing eyes, dropping sweat and saliva, twitching, awful body..

She left him dancing clumsily like a performing bear. She fled hurriedly down to the office of the commissionaire.

When the man, his assistant and Miss Harrison returned to the flat, Lothian was writhing on the floor in the last stages of delirium tremens.

As they carried him, tied and bound, to the nearest hospital, they had to listen to a cryptic, and to them, meaningless mutter that never ceased.

".. Dingworth Ickson, Rary, Mita. Sorten Mims. Ha, ha! ha! Tubes of poison – damn them all, blast them all – Jesus of the Cross! my wife's face as she lay there dead, forgiving me!

" – Rita you pup of a girl, going off with a boy like Dicker. Rita! Rita! You're mine – don't make such a howling noise, my girl, you'll create a scandal – Rita! Rita! – damn you, can't you keep quiet?

"All right, Mary darling. But why have you got on a sheet instead of a nightdress? Mary! Why have they tied your face up under the chin with that handkerchief? And what's that you're holding out to me on your pale hand? Is that the membrane? Is that really the diphtheria membrane which choked you? – Come closer, let me see, old chalk-faced girl.."

At the hospital the house-surgeon on duty who admitted him said that death must supervene within twelve or fourteen hours.

He had not seen a worse case.

But when he realised who the fighting, tied, gibbering and obscene object really was, bells rang in the private rooms of celebrated doctors.

The pulsing form was isolated.

Young doctors came to look with curiosity upon the cursing mass of flesh that quivered beneath the broad bands of webbing which held it down.