The Drunkard

Rita Wallace had early taken entire charge and command of her nominal superior – the whiskered and despondent Mr. Hands. The girl frightened and dazzled him. As he might have done at the foot of Etna or Stromboli, he admired, kept at a distance, and accepted the fact that she was there.

The girl was absolute mistress of the solitary building full of beautiful books. Sometimes Hands, whose wife was dying of cancer, and who had no stated times of attendance, stayed away for several days. Snell and his wife – the care-takers – adored her, and she lunched every day with them in the basement.

Mrs. Snell often spoke to her husband about "Miss Rita." "If that there Hands could be got rid of," she would say, "then it would be ever so much better. Poor silly thing that he is, with his face like the underside of a Dover sole! And two hundred a year for doing nothing more than what Miss Rita tells him! He calls her 'Miss' – as I'm sure he should, her being a Commander's daughter and him just a dirty Birmingham clerk! Miss Rita ought to have his two hundred a year, and him her thirty-five shillings a week. Thirty-five shillings! what is it for an officer's daughter, that was born at Malta too! I'd like to give that old Podley a piece of my mind, I would!"

"In the first place he never comes here. In the second place he's not a gentleman himself, so that don't mean nothing to him," Snell would say on such occasion of talk.

He had been at the Bombardment of Alexandria and could not quite forget it… "Now if it was Lord Charles what had started this – ' – Magneta – ' library, then 'e could 'a' been spoke to – Podley!"

It was four o'clock on the afternoon of the day after the Amberleys' dinner-party. Hands was away, staying beside his sick wife, and Rita Wallace proposed to close the library.

She had just got rid of the curate from a neighbouring church, who had discovered the deserted place – and her. Snubbed with skill the boy had departed, and as no one else would come – or if they did what would it matter? – Rita was about to press the button of the electric bell upon her table and summon Snell.

The afternoon sunlight poured in upon the books from the window in the dome.

The place was cool and absolutely silent, save for the note a straying drone-bee made as his diapason swept this way and that.

Even here, as the sunlight fell upon the dusty gold and crimson of the books, summer was calling. The bee came close to Rita and settled for a moment upon the sulphur-coloured rose that stood in a specimen-glass upon her writing-table.

He was a big fellow, and like an Alderman in a robe of black fur, bearing a gold chain.

"Oh, you darling!" Rita said, thinking of summer and the outside world. She would go to Kensington Palace Gardens where there were trees, green grass and flowers. "Oh, you darling! You're a little jewel with a voice, a bit of the real country! I believe you've actually been droning over the hop-fields of Kent!"

She looked up suddenly, her eyes startled, the perfect mouth parted in vexation. Some one was coming, she might be kept any length of time – for the rare visitors to the Podley Library were generally bores.

.. That silly curate might have returned!

The outer swing doors thudded in the hall, there was the click of a latch as the inner door was pushed open and Gilbert Lothian entered.

The girl recognised him at once, as he made his way under the dome towards her, and her eyes grew wide with wonder. Lothian was wearing a suit of grey flannel, his hair as he took off his straw hat was a little tumbled, his face fresh and clear.

"How do you do," he said, with the half-shy deference that came into his voice when he spoke to women. "It was such a lovely afternoon that I thought I might venture to bring back your copy of 'Surgit Amari' myself."

Rita Wallace flashed her quick, humorous smile at him – the connection between the weather and his wish was not too obvious. But her smile had pleasure of another kind in it also – he had wanted to see her again.

Lothian laughed boyishly. "I wanted to see you again," he said, in the very words of her thought.

The girl was flattered and delighted. There was not the slightest hint of self-consciousness in her manner, and the flush that came into her cheeks was one of pure friendliness.

"It is very kind of you to take so much trouble," she said in a voice as sweet as singing. "I was so disappointed when you had to go away so early from the Amberleys' last night."

She did not say the conventional thing about how much his poems had meant to her. Girls that he met – and they were not many – nearly always did, and he always disliked it. Such things meant nothing when they came as part of ordinary greetings. They jarred upon the poet's sensitive taste and he was pleased and interested to find that this girl said nothing of the sort.

"Well, here's the book," he said, putting it down upon Rita's table. "And I've written in it as you asked. Do you collect autographs then?"

She shook her head. "Oh, dear me no," she answered. "I think it's silly to collect anything that isn't beautiful. But, in a book one values, and with which one has been happy, the author's autograph seems to add to the book's personality. But I hate crazes. There are lots of girls that wait outside stage doors to make popular actors write in their books. Did you know that, Mr. Lothian?"

"No, I didn't! Little donkeys! Hard lines on the actors. Even I get a few albums now and then, and it's a fearful nuisance. I put off writing in them and they lie about my study until they get quite a battered and dissipated look."

"And then?"

"Oh, I write in them. It would be impolite not to, you know. I have an invaluable formula. I write, 'Dear Madam, I am very sorry to say that I cannot accede to your kind request for an autograph. The practice is one with which I am not in sympathy. Yours very truly, Gilbert Lothian!'"

"That's splendid, Mr. Lothian, better than sending a telegram, as some one did the other day to an importunate girl. They were talking about it last night at the Amberleys' after you left. I suppose that's really what gave me courage to send 'Surgit Amari' by Mr. Dickson Ingworth. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees said that they always write passages from their novels when they are asked."

"Perhaps that's a good plan," Lothian answered, listening to the "viols in her voice" and not much interested in the minor advertising arts of the Toftrees. What rare maiden was this with whom he was chatting? What had made him come to see her after all? – a mere whim doubtless – but was he not about to reap a very delightful harvest?

For he was conscious of immense pleasure as he stood there talking to her, and there was excitement mingled with the pleasure. It was as though he was advancing upon a landscape, and at every step something fresh and interesting came into view.

"I did so dislike Mr. Toftrees and his wife," Rita said with a mischievous little gleam in her eyes.

"Did you?" he asked in surprise. "They seemed very pleasant people I thought."

"I expect that was because you thought nothing whatever about them, Mr. Lothian," she replied.

He realised the absolute truth of the remark in a flash. The novelists had in no way interested him. He had not thought about these people at all – this maiden was a psychologist then! There was something subtly flattering in what she had said. His point of view had interested the girl, she had discovered it, small and unimportant though it was.

"But why did you dislike poor Mr. Toftrees?" he said, with an eminently friendly smile – already an unconscious note of intimacy had been sounded, he was interested to hear why she disliked the man, not the woman.

"He is pompous and insincere," she replied. "He tries to draw attention to his great success, or rather his notoriety, by pretending to despise it. Surely, it would be far more manly to accept the fact frankly, and not to hint that he could be a great artist if he could bring himself to do without a lot of money!"

Lothian wondered what had provoked this little outburst. It was quiveringly sincere, that he saw. His eyes questioned hers.

"It's such dreadful appalling treacle they write! I saw a little flapper in the Tube two days ago, with the Toftrees' latest book – 'Milly Mine.' Her expression was ecstatic!"

"For my part I think that's something to have done, do you know, to have taken that flapper out of the daily tube of her life into Romance. Heaven with electric lights and plush fittings is better than none at all. I couldn't grudge the flapper her ecstasy, nor Mr. Toftrees his big cheques. I should very much like to see the people in Tubes reading my books – it would be good for them – and to pouch enormous cheques myself – would be good for me! But there must be Toftrees sort of persons now that every one knows how to read!"

"Well, I'll let his work alone," she answered, "but I certainly do dislike him. He was trying to run your work down last night – though we wouldn't let him."

So the secret was out now! Lothian smiled and the quick, enthusiastic girl understood. A little ripple of laughter came from her.

"Yes, that's it," she cried. "He did all he could."

"Did he? Confound him! I wonder why?"

Lothian asked the question with entire simplicity. Subtle-minded and complex as he was, he was incapable of mean thoughts and muddy envy when he was not under the influence of drink.

Poisoned, alas, he was entirely different. All the evil in him rose to the surface. As yet it by no means obscured or overpowered the good, but it became manifest and active.

In the case of this fine intellect and splendid artist, no less than in the worker in the slum or the labourer in the field, drink seemed an actual key to unlock the dark and secret doors of wickedness which are in every heart. Some coiled and sleeping serpent within him, no less than in them, raised its head into baleful life and sudden enmity of good.

A few nights ago, half intoxicated in a club – intoxicated in mind that is, for he was holding forth with a caustic bitterness and sharp brilliancy that had drawn a crowd around him – he had abused the work of Herbert Toftrees and his wife with contemptuous and venomous words.

He was quite unconscious that he had ever done so. He knew nothing about the couple and had never read a line of their works. The subject had just cropped up somehow, like a bird from a stubble, and he had let fly. It was pure coincidence that he had met the novelists at the Amberleys' and Lothian had entirely forgotten that he had ever mentioned their work at the club.

But the husband and wife had heard of it the next day, as people concerned always do hear these things, and neither of them were likely to forget that their books had been called "as flat as champagne in decanters," their heroines "stuffy" and that compared to even " – " and " – " they had been stigmatised as being as pawn-brokers are to bankers.

Lothian had made two bitter enemies and he had not the slightest suspicion of it.

"I wonder why?" he said again. "I don't know the man. I've never done him any harm that I know of. But of course he has a right to his own opinions, and no doubt he really thinks – "

"He knows nothing whatever about it," Rita answered. "If a man like that reads poetry at all he has to do it in a prose translation! But I can tell you why – Addison puts it far better than I can. I found the passage the other day. I'll show you."

She was all innocent eagerness and fire, astonishingly sweet and enthusiastic as she hurried to a bookshelf and came back with a volume.

Following her slim finger, he read: —

"There are many passions and tempers of mankind, which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind.

All those who made their entrance into the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those, who were once his equals, envy and defame him, because they now see him their superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal."

The girl was gazing at him in breathless attention, wondering whether she had done the right thing, hoping, indeed, that Lothian would be pleased.

He was both pleased and touched by this lovely eager little champion, so unexpectedly raised up to defend him.

"Thank you very much," he said. "How kind of you! My bruised vanity is now at rest. I am healed of my grievous wound! But this seems quite a good library. Are you here all alone, does nobody ever come here? I always heard that the Podley Library was where the bad books went when they died. Tell me all about it."

His hand had mechanically slipped into his waistcoat and half withdrawn his cigarette case. He could never be long without smoking and he wanted a cigarette now more than ever. During a whole hour he had not had a drink. A slight suspicion of headache floated at the back of his head, he was conscious of something heavy at his right side.

"Do smoke," she said. "No one minds – there never is any one to mind, and I smoke here myself. Mr. Hands, the head librarian, didn't like it at first but he does what I tell him now. I'm the assistant librarian."

She announced her status with genuine pride and pleasure, being obviously certain that she occupied a far from unimportant position in public affairs.

Lothian was touched at her simplicity. What a child she was really, with all her cleverness and quickness.

He smoked and made her smoke also – "Delicious!" she exclaimed with pretty greediness. "How perfectly sweet to be a man and able to afford Ben Ezra's Number 5."

"How perfectly sweet!" – it was a favourite expression of Rita's. He soon got to know it very well.

He soon got to know all about the library and about her also, as she showed him round.

She was twenty-one, only twenty-one. Her father, a captain in the Navy, had left her just sufficient money for her education, which had been at a first-class school. Then she had had to be dependent entirely upon her own exertions. She seemed to have no relations and not many friends of importance, and she lived in a tiny three-roomed flat with another girl who was a typist in the city.

She chattered away to him just as if he were a girl friend as they moved among the books, and it was nearly an hour before they left the Library together.

"And now what are you going to do?"

"I must go home, Mr. Lothian," she said with a little sigh. "It has been so kind of you to come and see me. I was going to sit in Kensington Palace Gardens for a little while, but I think I shall go back to the flat now. How hot it is! Oh, for the sea, now, just think of it!"

There was a flat sound in her voice. It lost its animation and timbre. He knew she was sorry to say good-bye to him, rather forlorn now that the stimulus and excitement of their talk was over.

She was lonely, of course. Her pleasures could be but few and far between, and at twenty-one, when the currents of the blood run fast and free, even books cannot provide everything. Thirty-five shillings a week! He had been poor himself in his early journalistic days. It was harder for a girl. He thought of her sitting in Kensington Gardens – the pathetic and solitary pleasure the child had mapped out for herself! He could see the little three-roomed flat in imagination, with its girlish decorations and lack of any real comfort, and some appalling meal presently to be eaten, bread and jam, a lettuce!

The idea came into his mind in a flash, but he hesitated before speaking. Wouldn't she be angry if he asked her? He'd only met her twice, she was a lady. Then he decided to risk it.

"I wonder," he said slowly.

"What are you wondering, Mr. Lothian?"

– "If you realise how easy it is to be by the sea. I know it's cheek to ask you – or at least I suppose it is, but let's go!"

"How do you mean, Mr. Lothian?"

"Let's motor down to Brighton now, at once. Let's dine at the Metropole, and go and sit on the pier afterwards, and then rush home under the stars whenever we feel inclined. Will you!"

"How splendid!" she cried, "now! at once? get out of everything?"

"Yes, now. I am to be the fairy godmother. You have only to say the magic word, and I will wave my wand. The blue heat mists of evening will be over the ripe Sussex cornfields, and we shall see the poppies drinking in the blood of the sinking sun with their burnt red mouths. And then, when we have dined, the moon will wash the sea with silver, the stars will come out like golden rain and the Queen Moon will be upon her throne! We shall see the long, lit front of Brighton like a horned crescent of topaz against the black velvet of the downs. And while we watch it under the moon, the breeze shall bring us faint echoes of the fairy flutes from Prospero's enchanted Island – 'But doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange – ' And then the sea will take up the burthen 'Ding-dong, ding-dong bell.' Now say the magic word!"

"There is magic in the Magician's voice already, and I needs must answer. Yes! and oh, yes, YES a thousand times!"

"The commandments of convention mean nothing to you?"

"They are the Upper Ten Commandments, not mine."

"Then I will go and command my dragon. I know where you live. Be ready in an hour!"

"How perfectly, perfectly sweet! And may we, oh, may we have a lobster mayonnaise for dinner?"