The driver sat on a bench before the inn and drank his beer, but Gilbert and Rita passed through it into a garden that there was. The flowers were just beginning to cense the still air and the faint sound of a water-wheel down the river came to them —tic, tac, lorelei!
She would have milk, "Milk that one cannot get in London," and even he asked for no poison in this tranquil garden.
Clematis hung the gables like tapestry of Tyrian purple. There were beds of red crocketed hollyhock and a hedge of honeysuckle with a hundred yellow trumpet mouths. At their feet were the flowers of belamour.
"Men have died, trying to find this place which we have found," he said.
A red-admiral floated by upon its fans of vermilion and black as Gilbert quoted, and a faint echo from the water-mill answered him. Tic – tac – lorelei!
"Magician! half an hour ago we were in London!"
"You are happy?"
"I can't find anything to say – yet. It is perfect."
She leant back with a deep sigh and closed her eyes, and he was well content to say nothing, for in all the garden she seemed to him the most perfect thing, rosa-amorosa, the queen of all the roses!
It was as a flower he looked at her, no more. It was all a dream, of course. It had come in dream-fashion, it would go in the fashion of a dream. At that moment she was not a warm human girl with a lovely face. She was not the clever, lonely, subtle-simple maiden in the house of books. She was a flower he had met.
His mind began to weave words, the shuttle to glide in the loom of the poet, but words came to him that were not his own.
"Come hither, Child! and rest;This is the end of day,Behold the weary West!"Now are the flowers confestOf slumber; sleep as they!Come hither, Child! and rest."And then he sighed, for he thought of the other poet who had written those lines and of what had brought him to his dreadful death.
Why did thoughts like these come into the flower garden?
How true – even here – were the words he had put upon the title-page of the book which had made him famous —
"Say, brother, have you not full oftFound, even as the Roman did,That in Life's most delicious cupSurgit Amari Aliquid!"The girl heard him sigh and turned quickly. She saw that her friend's face was overcast.
It was so much to her, this moment, she was so happy since she had stepped from the hot streets of the city into fairyland with the Magician, that there must be no single shadow.
"Come!" she said gaily, "this is perfect but there are other perfect things waiting. Wave your wand again, Prospero, and change the magic scene."
Lothian jumped up from his seat.
"Yes! on into the sunset. You are right. We must go before we are satisfied. That's the whole art of living – Miranda!"
Her eyes twinkled with mischief.
"How old you have grown all of a sudden," she said, but as they passed through the inn once more he thought with wonder that if six years were added to his age he might have been her father in very fact. Many a man of forty-one or two had girls as old as she.
He sent her to the motor, on pretence of stopping to pay for the milk, but in the little bar-parlour he hurriedly ordered whiskey – "a large one, yes, only half the soda."
The landlord poured it out with great speed, understanding immediately. He must have been used to this furtive taking in of the fuel, here was another accustomed acolyte of alcohol.
"Next stop Brighton, sir," he said with a genial wink.
Lothian's melancholy passed away like a stone falling through water as the car started once more. He said something wildly foolish and discovered, with a throb of amazement and recognition, that she could play! He had never met a girl before who could play, as he liked to play.
There was a strain of impish, freakish humour in Lothian which few people understood, which few sensible people ever can understand. It is hardly to be defined, it seems incredibly childish and mad to the majority of folk, but it sweetens life to those who have it. And such people are very rare, so that when one meets another there is a surprised and delighted welcome, a freemason's greeting, a shout of joy in Laughter Land!
"Good heavens!" he said, "and you can play then!"
There was no need to mention the name of the game – it has none indeed – but Rita understood. Her sweet face wrinkled into impish mischief and she nodded.
"Didn't you know?"
"How could I possibly?"
"No, you couldn't of course, but I never thought it of you."
"Nor I of you," he answered. "I'll test you. 'The cow is in the garden.'"
"'The cat is in the lake,'" she answered instantly.
"'The pig is in the hammock?'"
"'What difference does it make?'" she shouted triumphantly.
For the rest of the drive to Brighton their laughter never stopped. Nothing draws a man and a woman together as laughter does – when it is intimate to themselves, a mutual language not to be understood of others. They became extraordinary friends, as if they had known each other from childhood, and the sunset fires in all their glory passed unheeded.
Although he could hear nothing of what they said, there was a sympathetic grin upon the chauffeur's face at the ringing mirth behind him.
"It's your turn to suppose now, Mr. Lothian."
"Well – wait a minute – oh, let's suppose that Mr. Podley once wrote a moral poem – you to play!"
Rita thought for a minute or two, her lips rippling with merriment, her young eyes shining.
A little chuckle escaped her, her shoulders began to shake and then she shrieked with joy.
"I've got it, splendid! Listen! It's to inculcate kindness to animals.
"I am only a whelk, Sir,Though if you but knew,Although I'm a whelk, Sir,The Lord made me too!""Magnificent! – your turn."
"Well, what will the title of the Toftrees' next novel be?"
"'Cats' meat!' – I say, do you know that I have invented the one quite perfect opening for a short story. You'll realise when you hear it that it stands alone. It's perfect, like Giotto's Campanile or 'The Hound of Heaven.'"
"Tell me quickly!"
"Mr. Florimond awoke from a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust."
"You are wonderful. I see it, of course. It's style itself! And how would you end the story? Have you studied the end yet?"
"Yes. I worked at it all the time I was in Italy last year. You shall hear that too. Mr. Florimond sank into a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust."
.. He told her of his younger days in London when he shared a flat with a brother journalist named Passhe.
"We lived the most delightful freakish lives you can imagine," he said. "When we came into breakfast from our respective bedrooms we had a ritual which never varied. We neither looked at each other nor spoke, but sat down opposite at the table. We each had our newspaper put in our place by the man who looked after us. We opened the papers and pretended to read for a moment. Then Basil looked over the top of his at me, very gravely. 'We live in stirring times, Mr. Lothian!' he would say, and I used to answer, 'Indeed, Mr. Passhe, we do!' Then we became as usual."
"How perfectly sweet! I must do that with Ethel – that's the girl I live with, you know – only we don't have the papers. It runs up so!" she concluded, with a wise little air that sent a momentary throb of pain through a man who had never understood (even in his poorest days) what money meant; and probably never would understand.
Poor, dear little girl! Why couldn't he give her —
"We're here, Mr. Lothian! Look at the lights! Brighton at last!"
Rita had been whisked away by a chambermaid and he was waiting for her in the great hall of the Metropole. He had washed, reserved a table, and swallowed a gin and bitters. He felt rather tired physically, and a little depressed also. His limbs had suddenly felt cramped as he left the motor car, the wild exhilaration of their fun had made him tired and nervous now. His bad state of health asserted itself unpleasantly, his forehead was clammy and the palms of his hands wet.
No champagne for him! Rita should have champagne if she liked, but whiskey, whiskey! that was the only thing. "I can soon pull myself together," he thought. "She won't know. I'll tell the fellow to bring it in a decanter."
Presently she came to him among the people who moved or sat about under the lights of the big, luxurious vestibule. She was a little shy and nervous, slightly flushed and anxious, for she had never been in such a splendid public place before.
He gathered that from her whispered remarks, as with a curious and pleasant air of proprietorship he took her to the dining rooms.
There was a bunch of amber-coloured roses upon her plate as she sat down at their table, which he had sent there a few minutes before. She pressed them to her face with a shy look of pleasure as he conferred with the head waiter, who himself came hurrying up to them.
Lothian was not known at the hotel, but it was always the same wherever he went. His wife often chaffed him about it. She said that he had a "tipping face." Whether that was so or not, the result was the same, he received immediate and marked attention. Rita noticed it with pride.
He had been, from the first moment he entered the Library in his simple flannel suit, just a charming and deferential companion. There had been no preliminaries. The thing had just happened, that was all. In all her life she had never met any one so delightful, and in her excitement and pleasure she had quite forgotten that he was Gilbert Lothian.
But it came back to her very vividly now.
How calmly he ordered the dinner and conferred with the wine-man, who had a great silver chain hanging on his shirt front! What an accustomed man-of-the-world air there was about him, how they all ran to serve him. She blushed mentally as she thought of her simple confidences and girlish chatter – and yet he hadn't seemed to mind.
She looked round her. "It is difficult to realise," she said, as much to herself as to her host, "that there are people who dine in places like this every day."
Lothian looked round him. "Yes," he said a trifle bitterly, as his eye fell upon a party of Jews who had motored down from London, – "people who rule over three-quarters of the world – and an entire eclipse of the intellect! You can see it here, unimportant as it is, compared to the great places in London and Paris – 'the feasting and the folly and the fun, the lying and the lusting and the drink'!"
Rita looked at him wonderingly, following the direction of his eyes.
"Those people seem happy," she said, not understanding his sudden mood, "they are all laughing and they all seem amused."
"Yes, but people don't always laugh because they are amused. Slow-witted, obese brained people – like those Israelites there – laugh very often on the chance that there is something funny which eludes them. They don't want to betray themselves. When I see people like that I feel as if my mind ought to be sprinkled with some disinfecting fluid."
As a matter of fact, the party at the other table with their handsome Oriental faces and alert, vivacious manner did not seem in the least slow-witted, nor were they. One of them was a peer and great newspaper proprietor, another a musician of world celebrity. Lothian's cynicism jarred on the pleasure of the moment. For the first time the girl did not feel quite en rapport, and was a little uneasy. He struck too harsh a note.
But at that moment waiters bustled up with soup, champagne in an ice pail, and a decanter of some bright amber liquid for Lothian. He poured and drank quickly, with an involuntary sigh of satisfaction.
"How I wanted that!" he said with a frank smile. "I was talking nonsense, Miranda, but I was tired. And I'm afraid that when I get tired I'm cross. I've been working very hard lately and am a little run down," he added, anxious that she should not think that their talk had tired him, and feeling the necessity of some explanation.
It satisfied her immediately. His change of voice and face reassured her, the little shadow passed.
"Oh, I am enjoying myself!" she said with a sigh of pleasure, "but what's this? How strange! The soup is cold!"
"Yes, didn't you know? It's iced consommé, awfully good in hot weather."
She shook her head. "No, I didn't," she said. "I've never been anywhere or seen anything, you know. When Ethel and I feel frightfully rich, we have dinner at Lyons, but I've never been to a swagger restaurant before."
"And you like it?"
"It's heavenly! How good this soup is. But what a waste it seems to put all that ice round the champagne. Ice is so dreadfully expensive. You get hardly any for fourpence at our fishmongers."
But it was the mayonnaise with its elaborate decoration that intrigued her most.
Words failed at the luscious sight and it was a sheer joy to watch her.
"Oh, what a pig I am!" she said, after her second helping, with her flashing, radiant smile, "but it was too perfectly sweet for anything."
The champagne and excitement had tinted her cheeks exquisitely, it was as though a few drops of red wine had been poured into a glass of clear crystal water. With little appetite himself, Lothian watched her eat with intense pleasure in her youth and health. His depression had gone, he seemed to draw vitality from her, to be informed with something of her own pulsing youth. He became quite at his best, and how good that was, not very many people knew.
It was his hour, his moment, every sense was flattered and satisfied. He was dining with the prettiest girl in the room, people turned to look at her. She hung on his words and was instantly appreciative. A full flask of poison was by his side, he could help himself without let or hindrance. Her innocence of what he was doing – of what it was necessary for him to do to remain at concert-pitch – was supreme. No one else knew or would have cared twopence if they did.
He was witty, in a high courtly way. The hour of freakish fun was over, and his shrewd insight into life, his poetic and illuminating method of statement, the grace and kindliness of it all held the girl spellbound.
And well it might. His nerves, cleared and tempered, telegraphed each message to his brilliant, lambent brain with absolute precision.
There was an entire co-ordination of all the reflexes.
And Rita knew well that she was hearing what many people would have given much to hear, knew that Lothian was exerting himself to a manifestation of the highest power of his brain – for her.
For her! It was an incredible triumph, wonderfully sweet. The dominant sex-instinct awoke. Unconsciously she was now responding to him as woman to man. Her eyes, her lips showed it, everything was quite different from what it had been before.
In all that happened afterwards, neither of them ever forgot that night. For the girl it was Illumination.
.. She had mentioned a writer of beautiful prose whom she had recently discovered in the library and who had come as a revelation to her.
"Nothing else I have ever read produces the same impression," she said.
"There are very few writers in prose that can."
"It is magic."
"But to be understood. You see, some of his chapters – the passages on Leonardo da Vinci for instance, are intended to be musical compositions as it were, in which words have to take the place and perform the functions of notes. It has been pointed out that they are impassioned, not so much in the sense of expressing any very definite sentiment, but because, from the combination and structure of the sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion."
She understood. The whole mechanism and intention of the writer were revealed to her in those lucent words.
And then a statement of his philosophy.
"In telling me of your reading just now, you spoke of that progress of the soul that each new horizon in literature seems to stimulate and ensure for you. And you quoted some hackneyed and beautiful lines of Longfellow. Cling always to that idea of progress, but remember that we don't really rise to higher things upon the stepping stones of our dead selves so much as on the stepping stones of our dead opinions. That is Progress. Progress means the capability of seeing new forms of beauty."
"But there are places where one wants to linger."
"I know, but it's dangerous. You were splendidly right when you bade me move from that garden just now. The road was waiting. It is so with states of the soul. The limpet is the lowest of organisms. Movement is everything. One life may seem to be like sunlight moving over sombre ground and another like the shadow of a cloud traversing a sunlit space. But both have meaning and value. Never strike an average and imagine you have found content. The average life is nothing but a pudding in a fog!"
Lothian had been talking very earnestly, his eyes full of light, fixed on her eyes. And now, in a moment, he saw what had been there for many minutes, he saw what he had roused.
He was startled.
During this delightful evening that side of their intercourse had not been very present in his mind. She was a delightful flower, a flower with a mind. It is summed up very simply. He had never once wanted to touch her.
His face changed and grew troubled. A new presence was there, a problem rose where there had been none before. The realisation of her physical loveliness and desirability came to him in a flood of new sensation. The strong male impulse was alive and burning for the first time that night.
A waiter had brought a silver dish of big peaches, and as she ate the fruit there was that in her eyes which he recognised, though he knew her mind was unconscious of it.
In the sudden stir and tumult of his thoughts, one became dominant.
It was an evil thought, perhaps the most subtle and the most evil that can come to a man. The pride of intellect in its most gross and devilish manifestation awoke.
He was not a vain man. He did not usually think much about his personal appearance and charm. But he knew how changed in outward aspect he was becoming. His glass told him that every morning at shaving time. His vice was marking him. He was not what he was, not what he should and might be, in a physical regard. And girls, he knew, were generally attracted by physical good-looks in a man. Young Dickson Ingworth, for instance, seemed able to pick and choose. Lothian had often laughed at the boyish and conceited narratives of his prowess. And now, to the older man came the realisation that his age, his growing corpulence, need mean nothing at all – if he willed it so. A girl like this, a pearl among maidens, could be dominated by his intellect. He knew that he was not mistaken. Over a fool, however lovely and attractive by reason of her sex, he would have no power. But here ..
An allurement more dazzling than he had thought life held was suddenly shown him.
There was an honest horror, a shudder and recoil of all the good in him from this monstrous revelation, so sudden, so unexpected.
He shuddered and then found an instant compromise.
It could not concern himself, it never should. But it might be regarded – just for a few brief moments! – from a detached point of view, as if it had to do with some one else, some creation of a fiction or a poem.
And even that was unutterably sweet.
It should be so, only for this night. There would be no harm done. And it was for the sake of his Art, the psychological experience to be gathered..
There is no time in thought. The second hand of his watch had hardly moved when he leant towards her a little and spoke.
"Cupid!" he said. "I think I know why they used to call you Cupid at your school!"
Just as she had been a dear, clever and deferential school-girl in the Library, a girl-poet in the garden, a freakish companion-wit after that, so now she became a woman.
He had fallen. She knew and tasted consciousness of power.
Another side of the girl's complex personality appeared. She led him on and tried to draw back. She became provocative at moments when he did not respond at once. She flirted with a finished art.
As he lit a cigarette for her, she tested the "power of the hour" to its limit, showing without possibility of mistake how aware she was.
"What would Mrs. Lothian think of your bringing me here to dinner?" she said very suddenly.
For a moment he did not know what to answer, the attack was so direct, the little feline thrust revealing so surely where he stood.
"She would be delighted that I was having such a jolly evening," he answered, but neither his smile nor his voice was quite true.
She smiled at him in girlish mockery, rejoicing!
"You little devil!" he thought with an embarrassed mental grin. "How dare you." She should pay for that.
"Would you mind if my wife did care," he asked, looking her straight in the eyes.
"I ought to, but – I shouldn't!" she answered recklessly, and all his blood became fired.
Yet at that, he leant back in his chair and laughed a frank laugh of amusement. The tension was over, the dangerous moment passed, and soon afterwards they wandered out into the night, to go upon the pier "just for half an hour" before starting for London.
And neither of them saw that upon one of the lounges in the great hall, sipping coffee and talking to the newspaper-peer Herbert Toftrees was sitting.
He saw them at once and started, while an ugly look came into his eyes. "Look," he said. "There's Gilbert Lothian, the Christian Poet!"
"So that's the man!" said Lord Morston, "deuced pretty wife he's got. And very fine work he does too, by the way."
"Oh, that's not his wife," Toftrees answered with contempt. "I know who that is quite well. Lothian keeps his wife somewhere down in the country and no one ever sees her." And he proceeded to pour the history of the Amberleys' dinner-party into a quietly amused and cynical ear.
The swift rush back to London under the stars was quiet and dreamy. Repose fell over Gilbert and Rita as they sat side by side, repose "from the cool cisterns of the midnight air."
They felt much drawn to each other. Laughter and all feverish thoughts were swept away by the breezes of their passage through the night. They were old friends now! An affection had sprung up between them which was to be a real and enduring thing. They were to be dear friends always, and that would be "perfectly sweet."
Rita had been so lonely. She had wanted a friend so.
He was going home on the morrow. He had been too long away.
But he would be up in town again quite soon, and meanwhile they would correspond.
"Dear little Rita," he said, as he held her hand outside the door of the block of flats in Kensington. "Dear child, I'm so glad."
It was a clear night and the clocks were striking twelve.
"And I'm glad, too," she answered, – "Gilbert!"
He was soon at his club, had paid the chauffeur and dismissed him. There was no one he wanted to talk to in either of the smoking rooms, and so, after a final peg he went upstairs to bed. He was quite peaceful and calm in mind, very placidly happy and pleased.
To-morrow he would go home to Mary.
He said his prayers, begging God to make this strange and sweet friendship that had come into his life of value to him and to his little friend, might it always be fine and pure!
So he got into bed and a pleasant drowsiness stole over him; he had a sense of great virtue and peace. All was well with his soul.
"Dear little Rita," were the words he murmured as he fell asleep and lay tranquil in yet another phase of his poisoned life.
No dreams disturbed his sleep. No premonition came to tell him whither he had set his steps or whither they would lead him.
A mile or two away there was a nameless grave of shame, within a citadel where "pale Anguish keeps the gate and the Warder is Despair."
But no spectre rose from that grave to warn him.
END OF THE FIRST BOOKBOOK TWO
LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK
