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.
. . . But now, as he sat beside Rita, touching her, with the fragrance
of her hair athwart his face, all ideas and thoughts had to be
readjusted.
The dream was over. The dream personality, created and worshipped by
his Art in those long, drugged reveries, was a thing of the past.
He had never realised Rita to himself as being quite a human girl. No
grossness had ever entered into his thoughts about her. He was not
gross. The temper of his mind was refined and high. The steady progress
of the Fiend Alcohol had not progressed thus far as yet. Sex was a live
fact in this strangely-coloured "friendship" which he had created, but,
as yet, in his wildest imaginings it had always been chivalrous,
abstract and pure. Passion had never soiled it even in thought. It had
all been mystical, not Swinburnian.
And the fact had been as a salve to his Conscience. His Conscience told
him from the first--when, after the excursion to Brighton he had taken
up his pen to continue the association--that he was doing wrong. He
knew it with all the more poignancy because he had never done sweet
Mary a treachery in allegiance before. She had always been the perfect
and utterly satisfying woman to him. His "fountain was blessed; and he
rejoiced with the wife of his youth."
But the inhabiting Devil had found a speedy answer. It had told him
that such a man as he was might well have a pure and intellectual
friendship with such a girl as Rita was. It harmed none, it was of
mutual and uplifting benefit.
Who of the world could point an accusing finger, utter a word of
censure upon this delightful meeting of minds and temperaments through
the medium of paper and pen?
"No one at all," came the satisfactory answer.
Lothian at the prompting of Alcohol was content to entertain and
welcome a low material standard of conduct, a debased ideal, which he
would have scorned in any other department of life.
And as for Rita, she hadn't thought about such things at all. She had
been content with the music which irradiated everything.
It was only now, with a flesh and blood man by her side in the little
box of the taxi-cab, that she glanced curiously at the Musician and
felt--also--that revision and re-statement were at hand.
So they said very little until they were seated at the table which had
been reserved for them at a celebrated restaurant in the Strand.
Rita looked round her and gave a deep sigh of pleasure. They sat in a
long high hall with a painted ceiling. At the side opposite to them and
at the end were galleries with gilded latticework. At the other end, in
the gilded cage which hid the performers from view, was an orchestra
which discoursed sweet music--a little orchestra of artists. The walls
of the white and gold hall were covered with brilliantly painted
frescoes of scenes in that Italy from where the first proprietor had
come. The blue seas, the little white towns clustering round the base
of some volcanic mountain, the sunlight and gaiety of Italy were there,
in these paintings so cunningly drawn and coloured by a great scenic
artist. A soft, white and bright light pervaded everything. There was
not a sound of service as the waiters moved over the thick carpets.
The innumerable tables, for two or four, set with finest crystal and
silver and fair linen had little electric lamps of silver with red
shades upon them. Beautiful, radiant women with white arms and shining
jewels sat with perfectly dressed men at the tables covered with
flowers. It was a succession of little dinner parties; it seemed as if
no one could come here without election or choice. The ordinary world
did not exist in this kingdom of luxury, ease and wealth.
She leant over the little table against the wall. "It's marvellous,"
she said. "The whole atmosphere is new. I did not think such a place as
this existed."
"And the Metropole at Brighton?"
"It was like a bathing machine is to Buckingham Palace, compared to
this. How exquisite the band is! Oh, I am so happy!"
"That makes me happy, Cupid. This is the night of your initiation. Our
wonderful weeks have begun. I have thought out a whole series of
delights and contrasts. Every night shall be a surprise. You will never
know what we are going to do. London is a magic city and you have known
nothing of it."
"How could the 'Girl from Podley's' know?--That's what I am, the Girl
from Podley's. I feel like Cinderella must have felt when she went to
the ball. Oh, I am so happy!"
He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night.
Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come
back. "Lalage!" he murmured, more to himself than to her--"dulce
ridentem, dulce loquentem!"
"What--Gilbert?"
"I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear."
"And it was all Greek to me!" she said in a flash. "Oh! who _ever_
saw so many hors d'oeuvres all at one time! I love hors d'oeuvres,
advise me, don't let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I
shan't be able to eat anything afterwards."
How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in
perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong
a side of his own temperament.
She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight
into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the
gay and stately minuet.
For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and
splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have
made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair.
Yes, she was marvellously fresh! He had never met any one like her. And
it _was_ innocence, it _must_ be. Yet she was very conscious of the
power of her beauty and her sex--over him at any rate. She obviously
knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where
so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the naïve and
innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness.
She was amazed and half frightened at herself--he could see that.
Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a space, to join hands and
tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance.
It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half
the elaborate dinner was over.
She had called him "Gilbert" at once, as if he were her brother, her
lover even. He could have found or forged no words to describe the
extraordinary intimacy that had sprung up between them. It almost
seemed unreal, he had to wonder if this were not a dream.
She became girlishly imperious. When they brought the golden
plovers--king and skipper, as good epicures know, of all birds that
fly--she leant over the table till her perfect face was close to his.
"Oh, Gilbert dear! what is it now!"
He told her how these little birds, with their "trail" upon the toast
and their accompaniment of tiny mushrooms stewed in Sillery, were said
to be the rarest flower in the gourmet's garden, one of the supreme
pleasures that the cycle of the seasons bring to those who love and
live to eat.
"How _perfectly_ sweet! Like the little roast pigling was to Elia!
Gilbert, I'm so happy."
She chattered away to him, as he sat and watched her, with an entire
freedom. She told him all about her life in the flat with Ethel
Harrison. Her brown eyes shone with happiness, he heard the silver
ripple of her voice in a mist of pleasure.
Once he caught a man whom he knew watching them furtively. It was a
very well-known actor, who at the moment was rehearsing his autumn
play.
This celebrated person was, as Gilbert well knew, a monster. He lived
his life with a dreadful callousness which made him capable of every
bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without
horror, and without pity.
The poet shuddered as he caught that evil glance, and then, listening
anew to Rita's joyous confidences, he became painfully aware of the
brute that is in every man, in himself too, though as yet he had never
allowed it to be clamant.
The happy girl went on talking. Suddenly Gilbert realised that she was
telling him something, innocent enough in her mouth, but something that
a woman should tell to a woman and not to a man.
The decent gentleman in him became wide awake, the sense of comeliness
and propriety. He wasn't in the least shocked--indeed there was nothing
whatever to be shocked about--but he wanted to save her, in time, from
an after-realisation of a frankness that might give her moments of
confusion.
He did it, as he did everything when he was really sober, really
himself, with a supreme grace and delicacy. "Cupid dear," he said with
his open and boyish smile, "you really oughtn't to tell me that, you
know. I mean--well, think!"
She looked at him with puzzled eyes for a moment and then she took his
meaning. A slight flush came into her cheeks.
"Oh, I see," she replied thoughtfully, and then, with a radiant smile
and the provocative, challenging look--"Gilbert dear, you seem just
like a girl to me. I quite forgot you were a man. So it doesn't matter,
does it?"
Who was to attempt to preserve _les convenances_ with such a delightful
child as this?
"Here is the dessert," he said gaily, as waiters brought ices,
nectarines, and pear-shaped Paris bon-bons filled with Benedictine and
Chartreuse.
A single bottle of champagne had served them for the meal. Gilbert lit
a cigarette and said two words to a waiter. In a minute he was brought
a carafe of whiskey and a big bottle of Perrier in a silver stand. It
was a dreadful thing to do, from a gastronomic or from a health point
of view. Whiskey, now! He saw the look of wonder on the waiter's face,
a pained wonder, as who should say, "Well, I shouldn't have thought
_this_ gentleman would have done such a thing."
But Lothian didn't care. It was only upon the morning after a debauch,
when with moles' eyes he watched every one with suspicion and with
fear, that he cared twopence what people thought about anything he did.
He was roused to a high pitch of excitement by his beautiful companion.
Recklessness, an entire abandon to the Dance of the Hours was mounting
up within him. But where there's a conscience, there's a Rubicon. The
little brook stretched before him still, but now he meant to leap over
it into the forbidden, enchanted country beyond. He ordered "jumping
powder."
He drank deeply, dropped his cigarette into the copper bowl of rose
water at his side and lit another.
"Cupid!" he said suddenly, in a voice that was quite changed, "Rita
dear, I'm going to show you something!"
She heard the change in his voice, recognised it instantly, must have
known by instinct, if not by knowledge, what it meant. But there was no
confusion, nor consciousness in her face. She only leant over the
narrow table and blew a spiral of cigarette smoke from her parted lips.
"What, Gilbert?" she said, and he seemed to hear a caress in her voice
that fired him.
"You shall hear," he said in a low and unsteady voice. He drew a
calling card from the little curved case of thin gold he carried in his
waistcoat pocket, and wrote a sentence or two upon the back in French.
A waiter took the card and hurried away.
"Oh, Gilbert dear, what is the surprise?"
"Music, sweetheart. I've sent up to the band to play something.
Something special, Cupid, just for you and me alone on the first of our
Arabian Nights!"
She waited for a minute, following his eyes to the gilded gallery of
the musicians which bulged out into the end of the room.
There was a white card with a great black "7" upon it, hanging to the
rail. And then a sallow man with a moustache of ink came to the balcony
and removed the card, substituting another for it on which was printed
in staring sable letters--"BY DESIRE."
It was all quite new to Rita. She was awed at Gilbert's almost magical
control of everything! She understood what was imminent, though.
"What's it going to be, Gilbert?" she whispered.
Her hand was stretched over the table. He took its cool virginal ivory
into his for a moment. "The 'Salut d'Amour' of Elgar," he answered her
in a low voice, "just for you and me."
The haunting music began.
To the end of her life Rita Wallace never heard the melody without a
stab of pain and a dreadful catch of horror at her heart.
Perhaps the thing had not been played lately, perhaps the hour was ripe
for it in the great restaurant. But as the violins and 'cello sobbed
out the first movement, a hush fell over the place.
It was the after-dinner hour. The smoke from a hundred cigarettes
curled upwards in delicate spirals like a drawing of Flaxman's. Bright
eyes were languorous and spoke, voices sank to silence. The very
waiters were congregated in little groups round the walls and service
tables.
Salut d'Amour!
The melody wailed out into the great room with all the exquisite appeal
of its rose-leaf sadness, its strange autumnal charm. It was perfectly
rendered. And many brazen-beautiful faces softened for a moment, many
pleasure-sodden hearts had a diastole of unaccustomed tenderness as the
music pulsed to its close.
Gilbert's acquaintance, the well-known actor, who was personified
animal passion clothed in flesh if ever a man was, felt the jews-harp
which he called his heart vibrate within him.
He was a luxurious pariah-dog in his emotions as in everything else.
The last sob of the violins trembled into silence. There was a loud
spontaneous burst of applause, and a slim foreign man, grasping his
fiddle by the neck, came from behind the gilded screen and looked down
into the hall below with patient eyes.
Lothian rose from his chair and bowed to the distant gallery. The
musician's face lighted up and he bowed twice to Lothian. Monsieur
Toché had recognised the name upon the card. And the request, written
in perfect, idiomatic French, had commenced, "_Cher Maitre et
Confrère_." The lasting hunger of the obscure artist for recognition by
another and greater one was satisfied. Poor Toché went to his bed that
night in Soho feeling as if he had been decorated with the Order of
Merit. And though, during the supper hours from eleven to half past
twelve he had to play "selections" from the Musical Comedy of the
moment, he never lost the sense of _bien être_ conferred upon him
by Gilbert Lothian at dinner.
Gilbert was trembling a little as the music ended. Rita sat back in her
chair with downcast eyes and lips slightly parted. Neither of them
spoke.
Gilbert suddenly experienced a sense of immense sorrow, of infinite
regret too deep for speech or tears. "This is the moment of
realisation," he thought, "the first real moment in my life, perhaps.
_I know what I have missed._ Of all women this was the one for me,
as I for her. We were made for each other. Too late! too late!"
He struggled for mastery over his emotion. "How well they play," he
said.
She made a slight motion with her hand. "Don't let's talk for a
minute," she answered.
He was thrilled through and through. Did she also, then, feel and know
. . . ? Surely that could not be. His youth was so nearly over, the
keen æsthetic vision of the poet showed him so remorselessly how
changed he was physically from what he had been in years gone by, for
ever.
Mechanically, without thinking, obeying the order given by the new
half-self, that spawn of poison which was his master and which he
mistook for himself, he filled his glass once more and drank.
In forty seconds after, triumph and pride flared up within him like a
sheet of thin paper lit suddenly with a match. Yes! She was his, part
of him--it was true! He, the great poet, had woven his winged words
around her. He had bent the power of his Mind upon her--utterly
desirable, unsoiled and perfect--and she was his.
The blaze passed through him and upwards, a thing from below. Then it
ended and only a curl of grey ash floated in the air.
The most poignant and almost physical sorrow returned to him. His heart
seemed to ache like a tooth. Yet it wasn't dull, hopeless depression.
It was, he thought, a high tragic sorrow ennobling in its strength; a
sorrow such as only the supreme soul-wounded artists of the world could
know--had known.
"She was for me!" his heart cried out. "Ah, if only I had met her
first!" Yes! he was fain of all the tragic sorrows of the Great Ones to
whom he was brother, of whose blood he was.
In a single flash of time--as the drowning man is said to experience
all the events of his life at the penultimate moment of dissolution--he
felt that he knew the secrets of all sorrow, the pangs of all tragedy.
The inevitable thought of his wife passed like a blur across the
fire-lit heights of his false agony.
"I cannot love her," he said in his mind. "I have never loved her. I
have been blind until this moment." A tear of sentiment welled into his
eye at the thought of poor Mary, bereft of his love. "How sad life
was!"
Nearly every man, at some time or other, has found a faint reflection
of this black thought assail him and has put it from him with a prayer
and the "vade retro Sathanas."
Few men would have chosen their present wives if they had met--let us
assume--fifty other women before they married. And when the ordinary,
normal, decent man meets a woman better, clever, more desirable than
the one he has, it is perfectly natural that he should admire her. He
would be insensible if he did not. But with the normal man it stops
there. He is obliged to be satisfied with his own wife. The chaos that
riotous and unbalanced minds desire has not come yet. And if a man says
that he _cannot_ love a wife who is virtuous and good, then Satan is in
him.
"I cannot love her," Lothian thought of his wife, and in the surveyal
of this fine brain and noble mind poisoned by alcohol it is proper to
remember that two hours before he could not have thought this thing. It
would have been utterly impossible.
Was it then the few recent administrations of poison that had changed
him so terribly, brought him to this?
The Fiend Alcohol has a myriad dominations. A lad from the University
gets drunk in honour on boat-race night--for the first time in his
life--and tries to fight with a policeman. But he is only temporarily
insane, becomes ashamed and wiser in the morning, and never does such a
thing again.
Lothian had been poisoning himself, slowly, gradually, certainly for
years. The disease which was latent in his blood, and for which he was
in no way personally responsible, had been steadily undermining the
forces of his nature.
He had injured his health and was coming near to gravely endangering
his reputation. His work, rendered more brilliant and appealing at
first by the unfair and unnatural stimulus of Alcohol, was trembling
upon the brink of a débâcle. He had inflicted hundreds of hours of
misery and despair upon the woman he had married.
This, all this, was grave and disastrous enough.
But the awful thing that he was feeding and breeding within him--the
"false Ego," to use the cold, scientific, and appallingly accurate
definition of the doctors--had not achieved supreme power. Even during
the last year of the three or four years of the poisoning process it
had not become all-powerful. It had kept him from Church; it had kept
him from the Eucharist; it had drawn one thick grey blanket after
another between the eye of his soul and the vision of God. But kindly
human instinct had remained unimpaired, and he had done many things
_sub specie Crucis_--under the influence of, and for the sake of
that Cross which was so surely and steadily receding from his days and
passing away to a dim and far horizon.
But there arrives a time when the pitcher that is filled drop by drop
becomes full. The liquid trembles for a moment upon the brim and
trickles over.
And there comes a sure moment in the life of the alcoholic when the
fiend within waxes strong enough finally to strangle the old self,
fills all the house and reigns supreme.
It is always something of relatively small importance that hastens the
end--ensures the final plunge.
It was the last few whiskeys that sent honour and conscience flying
away with scared faces from this man's soul. But they acted upon the
poison of years, now risen to the very brim of the cup.
One more drop . . .
People were getting up from the tables and leaving the restaurant. The
band was resting, there was no more music at the moment, and the
remaining diners were leaning over the tables and talking to each other
in low, confidential tones.
Rita looked up suddenly. "What are we going to do now?" she said with
her quick bright smile.
"When we went to Brighton together," Gilbert answered, "you told me
that you had never been to a Music Hall. A box at the Empire is waiting
for us. Let us go and see how you like it. If you don't, we can come
away and go for a drive round London in a taxi. The air will be cooler
now, and in the suburbs we may see the moon. But come and try. The
night is yours, and I am yours, also. You are the Queen of the Dance of
the Hours and I your Court Chamberlain."
"Oh, how perfectly sweet! Take me to the Empire."
As they stood upon the steps of the restaurant and the commissionaire
whistled up a cab, Gilbert spoke to Rita in a low, husky voice.
"We ought to get there in time for the ballet," he said, "because it is
the most perfect thing to be seen in Europe, outside Milan or St.
Petersburg. But we've ten minutes yet, at least. Shall I tell him to
drive round?"
"Yes, Gilbert."
The taxi-meter glided away through the garish lights of the Strand, and
then, unexpectedly, swerved into Craven Street towards the Embankment.
Almost immediately the interior of the cab grew dark.
Gilbert put his arm round Rita's waist and caught her hand with his. He
drew her closer to him.
"Oh, my love!" he said with a sob in his voice. "My dear little Love;
at last, at last!"
She did not resist. He caught her closer and closer and kissed her upon
the cheeks, the eyes, the low-falling masses of nut-brown, fragrant
hair.
"Turn your face to me, darling."
His lips met hers for one long moment.
. . . He hardly heard her faint-voiced, "Gilbert, you mustn't." He sank
back upon the cushions with a strange blankness and emptiness in his
mind.
He had kissed her, her lovely lips had been pressed to his.
And, behold, it was nothing after all. It was just a little girl
kissing him.
"Kiss met Kiss me again!" he said savagely. "You must, you must! Rita,
my darling, _my darling_!"
She pressed her cool lips to his once more--how cool they were!--almost
dutifully, with no revolt from his embrace, but as she might have
kissed some girl friend at parting after a day together.
All evil, dominant passions of his nature, hidden and sleeping within
him for so long, were awake at last.
He had held Rita in his arms. Yet, whatever she might say or do in her
reckless school-girl fashion, she was really absolutely innocent and
virgin, untouched by passion, incredibly ignorant of the red flame
which burned within him now and which he would fain communicate to her.
"Are you unhappy, dearest?" he asked suddenly.
"Unhappy, Gilbert? With you? How could I be?"
And so daring innocence and wicked desire drove on through the streets
of London--innocence a little tarnished, ignorance no longer, but
pulsing with youth and the sense of adventure; absolutely unaware that
it was playing with a man's soul.
The girl had read widely, but ever with the hunger for beauty, colour,
music, the sterile, delicate emotions of others. One of the huge facts
of life, the central, underlying fact of all the Romance, all the
Poetry on which she was fed, had come to her at last and she did not
recognise it.
Gilbert had held her in his arms and had kissed her. It was pleasant to
be kissed and adored. It wasn't right--that she knew very well. Ethel
would be horrified, if she knew. All sorts of proper, steady, ordinary
people would be horrified, if _they_ knew. But they didn't and never
would! And Gilbert wanted to kiss her so badly. She had known it all
the time. Why shouldn't he, poor boy, if it made him happy? He was so
kind and so charming. He was a magician with the key of fairyland.
He made love beautifully! This was the Dance of the Hours!
The cab stopped in front of the Empire. Led by a little page-boy who
sprung up from somewhere, they passed through the slowly-moving tide of
men and women in the promenade to their box.
For a little space Rita said nothing.
She settled herself in her chair and leaned upon the cushioned ledge of
the box, gazing at the huge crowded theatre and at the shifting maze of
colour upon the stage. She had removed the long glove from her right
hand and her chin was supported by one white rounded arm. A very fair
young Sybil she seemed, lost in the vague, empty spaces of maiden
thought.
Gilbert began to tell her about the dancers and to explain the ballet.
She had never seen anything like it before, and he pointed out its
beauty, what a marvellous poem it really was; music, movement, and
colour built up by almost incredible labour into one stupendous whole.
A dozen minor geniuses, each one a poet in his or her way, had been at
work upon this triumphant shifting beauty, evanescent and lovely as a
dream painted upon the sable curtains of sleep.
She listened and seemed to understand but made little comment.
Once she flashed a curious speculative look at him.
And, on his part, though he saw her lovelier than ever, he was chilled
nevertheless. Grey veils seemed to be falling between him and the glow
of his desire, falling one by one.
"Surgit amari aliquid?"--was it that?--but he could not let the moment
escape him. It must and should be captured.
He made an excuse about cigarettes, and chocolates for her, and left
the box, hurrying to the little bar in the promenade, drinking there
almost furiously, tasting nothing, waiting, a strange silent figure
with a white face, until he felt the old glow re-commencing.
It came. The drugged mind answered to the call, and he went back to the
box with light footsteps, full of riotous, evil thoughts.
Rita had withdrawn her chair into the box a little.
She looked up with a smile of welcome as he entered and sat down by her
side. She began to eat the chocolates he had brought, and he watched
her with greedy eyes.
Suddenly--maid of moods as she was--she pushed the satin-covered box
away.
He felt a little white arm pushed through his.
"Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening," she
said, looking at him with dancing eyes.
"What do you mean, Rita?" he said in a hoarse whisper.
The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black
sleeve of his coat.
"It's so nice to be together," she whispered. "I am so happy with you.
London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could
go on always."
He caught her wrist with his hot hand. "It can, always, if you wish,"
he said.
She started at the fierce note in his voice. "Hush," she said. "You
mustn't talk like that." Her face became severe and reproving. She
turned it towards the stage.
The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and
rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp,
delightful friendship of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was
established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any
definition at all.
She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his,
really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another
she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain
within him, as the fires of his passion burned and crackled, was
intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity.
All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friendship of which he
had sung so sweetly vanished utterly.
A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered
her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not
place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of
his dreams.
Yet with all this, his longing, his subjection to her every whim and
mood, grew and grew each moment. He was absolutely pervaded by her.
Honour, prudence, his keen insight were all thrust away in the
gathering storm of desire.
They had supper at a glittering palace in the Haymarket. In her simple
girlish frock, without much adornment of any sort, she was the
prettiest girl in the room. She enjoyed everything with wild avidity,
and not the least of the exhilarations of the night was the
knowledge--ripe and unmistakable now--of her complete power over him.
Gilbert ate nothing at the Carlton, but drank again. Distinguished
still, an arresting personality in any room, his face had become deeply
flushed and rather satyr-like as he watched Rita with longing, wonder,
and an uneasy suspicion that only added fuel to the flame.
It was after midnight when he drove her home and they parted upon the
steps of Queens Mansions.
He staggered a little in the fresh air as he stood there, though Rita
in her excitement did not notice it. He had drunk enough during that
day and night to have literally _killed_ two ordinary men.
"To-morrow!" he said, trying to put something that he knew was not
there into his dull voice. "To-morrow night."
"To-morrow!" she replied. "At the same time," and evading his clumsy
attempt at an embrace, she swirled into the hall of the flat with a
last kiss of her hand.
And even Prince, at the club, had never seen "Mr. Gilbert" so brutishly
intoxicated as he was that night.