THIRST
"_A little, passionately, not at all?_"
She casts the snowy petals on the air. . . .
--_Villanelle of Marguerites._
Lothian had taken chambers for a short time in St. James' and near his
club. Prince, the valet, had found the rooms for him and the house,
indeed, was kept by the man's brother.
Gilbert would not stay at the club. Rita could not come to him there.
He wanted a place where he could be really alone with her.
During the first few days, though they met each night and Gilbert
ransacked London to give her varied pleasure, Rita would not come and
dine in his chambers. "I couldn't possibly, Gilbert dear," she would
say, and the refusal threw him into a suppressed fever of anger and
irritation.
He dare show little or nothing of it, however. Always he had a haunting
fear that he might lose her. If she was silent or seemed cold he
trembled inwardly and redoubled his efforts to please, to gratify her
slightest whim, to bring her back to gaiety and a caressing, half
lover-like manner.
She knew it thoroughly and would play upon him like a piano, striking
what chords she wished.
He spent money like water, and in hardly any time at all, the girl
whose salary was thirty-five shillings a week found a delirious joy in
expensive wines and foods, in rare flowers, in what was to her an
astounding _vie de luxe_. If they went to a theatre--"Gilbert, we
simply must have the stage box. I'm not in the mood to sit _anywhere_
else to-night,"--and the stage box it was.
There is a shop in Bond Street where foolish people buy cigarettes
which cost three pence or four pence each and a box of a hundred is
bought for two guineas or so. Rita wouldn't smoke any others. Rita knew
no more about wine than she did about astronomy, but she would pucker
her pretty brows over the _carte des vins_ in this or that luxurious
restaurant, and invariably her choice would fall upon the most
expensive. Once, it was at the Ritz, she noticed the word Tokay--a
costly Johannesburger wine--and asked Gilbert what it was. He
explained, and then, to interest her, went on to tell of the Imperial
Tokay, the priceless wine which is almost unobtainable.
"But surely one could get it _here_?" she had said eagerly.
"It's not on the card, dear."
"_Do_ ask, Gilbert!"
He asked. A very special functionary was called, who hesitated, hummed
and hawed. "There _was_ some of the wine in the cellars, a half bin,
just as there _was_ some of the famous White Hermitage--but, but"--he
whispered in Gilbert's ear, "The King of Spain, um um um--The Grand
Duke Alexis--you'll understand, sir, 'm 'm."
They were favoured with a bottle at last. Rita was triumphant. Gilbert
didn't touch it. Rita drank two glasses and it cost five pounds.
Lothian did not care twopence. He had been poor after he left Oxford.
His father, the solicitor, who never seemed to understand him or to
care much about him, had made him an infinitesimal allowance during the
young man's journalistic days. Then, when the old man died he had left
his son a comfortable income. Mary had money also. The house at
Mortland Royal was their own, they lived in considerable comfort but
neither had really expensive tastes and they did not spend their mutual
income by a long way. Gilbert's poems had sold largely also. He was
that rare bird, a poet who actually made money--probably because he
could have done very well without it.
It did not, therefore, incommode him in the least to satisfy every whim
of Rita's. If it amused her to have wine at five pounds a bottle, what
on earth did it matter? Frugal in his tastes and likings himself--save
only in a quantity of cheap poison he procured--he was lavish for
others. Although, thinking it would amuse him, his wife had begged him
to buy a motor-car he had always been too lazy or indifferent to do so.
So he had plenty of money. If Rita Wallace had been one of the
devouring harpies of Paris, who--if pearls really would melt in
champagne--would drink nothing else, Gilbert could have paid the piper
for a few weeks at any rate.
But Rita was curious. He would have given her anything. Over and over
again he had pressed her to have things--bracelets, a ring, a necklace.
She had refused with absolute decision.
She had let him give her a box of gloves, flowers she could not have
enough of, the more costly the amusement of the night the better she
seemed to like it. But that was all.
In his madness, his poisoned madness, he would have sold his house to
give her diamonds had she asked for them--she would not even let him
make her a present of a trumpery silver case for cigarettes.
She was baffling, elusive, he could not understand her. For several
days she had refused to dine alone with him in his rooms.
One night, when he was driving her home after the dinner at the Ritz
and a box at the Comedy theatre, he had pressed her urgently. She had
once more refused.
And then, something unveiled and brutal had risen within him. The wave
of alcohol submerged all decency and propriety of speech. He was
furiously, coarsely angry.
"Damn you!" he said. "What are you afraid of?--of compromising
yourself? If there were half a dozen people in London who knew or cared
what you did, you've done that long ago. And for heaven's sake don't
play Tartuffe with me. Haven't I been kissing you as much as ever I
wanted to for the last three days? Haven't you kissed me? You'll dine
with me to-morrow night in St. James' Street or I'll get out of town at
once and chuck it all. I've been an ass to come at all. I'm beginning
to see that now. I've been leaving the substance for the shadow."
She answered nothing to this brutal tirade for a minute or two.
The facile anger died away from him. He cursed himself for his insane
folly in jeopardising everything and felt compunction for his violence.
He was just about to explain and apologise when he heard a chuckle from
the girl at his side.
He turned swiftly to her. Her face was alight with pleasure, mingled
with an almost tender mischief. She laughed aloud.
"Of course I'll come, Gilbert dear," she said softly--"since you
_command_ me!"
He realised at once that, like all women, she found joy in abdication
when it was forced upon her. The dominant male mind had won in this
little contest. He had bullied her roughly. It was a new sensation and
she liked it.
But when she dined in the rooms and he tried to accomplish artificially
what he had achieved spontaneously, she was on her guard and it was
quite ineffectual.
They sat at a little round table. The dinner was simple, but perfectly
served. During the meal, for once,--once again--he had talked like his
old self, brilliantly touching upon literary things and illuminating
much that had been dark to her before with that splendour of intellect
which came back to him to-night for a space; and brought a trace of
spirituality to his coarsening face.
And after dinner he had made her play to him on the little Bord piano
against the wall. She was not a good pianist but she was efficient, and
certain things that she knew well, and _felt_, she played well.
With some technical accomplishment she certainly rendered the "Bees'
Wedding" of Mendelssohn with astonishing vivacity that night. The elfin
humour of the thing harmonised so much with certain aspects of her own
temperament!
The swarming bees of Fairyland were in the room!
And then, with merry malice, and at Gilbert's suggestion, she
improvised a Podley Polonaise.
Then she gave a little melody of Dvôrak that she knew--"A mad scarlet
thing by Dvôrak," he quoted to her, and finally, at Gilbert's urgent
request, she attempted the Troisième Ballade of Chopin.
It reminded him of the first night on which he had met her, at the
Amberleys' house. She did not play it well but his imagination filled
the lacunae; his heated mind rose to a wild ecstasy of longing.
He put his arm round her and embraced her with tears in his eyes.
"Sweetheart," he said, "you are wonderful! See! We are alone here
together, perfectly alone, perfectly happy. Let us always be for each
other. Dear, I will sacrifice everything for you. You complete me. You
were made for me. Come away with me, come with me for ever and ever. My
wife will divorce me and we can be married; always to be together."
He had declared himself, and his wicked wish at last. He made an open
proffer of his shameful love.
There was not a single thought in his mind of Mary, her deep devotion,
her love and trust. He brushed aside the supreme gift that God had
allowed him as a man brushes away an insect from his face.
All that the girl had said in answer was that he must not talk in such
a way. Of course it could never be. They must be content as they were,
hard as it was. "I am very sorry, Gilbert dear, you can never know how
sorry I am. But you know I care for you. That must be all."
He had sent her home by herself that night, paying the cabman and
giving him the address in Kensington.
Then for an hour before going to bed he had walked up and down his
sitting room in a welter of hope, fear, regret, desire, wonder and deep
perplexity.
He had now lost all sense of honour, all measure of proportion. His
desire filled him and racked his very bones. Sometimes he almost hated
Rita; always he longed for her to be his, his very own.
Freed from all possible restraint, lord of himself--"that heritage of
woe!"--he was now drinking more deeply, more madly than ever before in
his life.
He was abnormal in an abnormal world which his insanity created. The
savage torture he inflicted on himself shall be only indicated here.
There are deeper hells yet, blacknesses more profound in which we shall
see this unhappy soul!
Suffice it to say that for three red weeks he drove the chariot of his
ruin more recklessly and furiously than ever towards hell.
And the result, as far as his blistering hunger was concerned, was
always the same.
The girl led him on and repulsed him alternately. He never advanced a
step towards his desire. Yet the longing grew in intensity and never
left him for a moment.
He tried hard to fathom Rita's character, to get at the springs of her
thoughts. He failed utterly, and for two reasons.
Firstly, he was in no state to see anything steadily. The powers of
insight and analysis were alike deserting him. His _mind_ had been
affected before. Now his _brain_ was becoming affected.
One morning, with shaking hand, bloodshot eyes and a bottle of whiskey
before him on the table, he sat down to write out what he thought of
Rita. The accustomed pen and paper, the material implements of his
power, might bring him back what he seemed to be losing.
This is what he wrote, in large unsteady characters, entirely changed
from the neat beautiful caligraphy of the past.
"Passionate and yet calculating at the same time; eager to rule and
capable of ruling, though occasionally responsive to the right
control; generous in confidence and trust, though with suspicion
never very far away.
"Merrily false and frankly furtive in many of the actions of life.
A dear egoist! yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm, a
brilliant embryo really wanting the guiding hand and master brain
but reluctant to accept them until the last moment."
There was more of it, all compact of his hopes and fears, an entirely
false conception of her, an emanation of poison which, nevertheless,
affords some indication of his mental state.
The sheet concluded:--
"A white and graceful yacht seriously setting out into dangerous
waters with no more certainty than hangs upon the result of a toss
up or the tinkle of a tambourine. Deeply desiring a pilot, but
unwilling that he should come aboard too soon and spoil the fun of
beating up into the wind to see what happens. Weak, but not with
the charm of dependence and that trusting weakness which stiffens a
man's arm."
A futile, miserable dissection with only a half-grain of truth in it.
Gilbert knew it for what it was directly it had been written. He
crumpled it up with a curse and flung it into the fireplace.
Yet the truth about the girl was simple enough. She was only an
exceptionally clever and attractive example of a perfectly well-defined
and numerous type.
Lothian was ignorant of the type, had never suspected its existence in
his limited experience of young women, that was all.
Rita Wallace was just this. Heredity had given her a quick, good brain
and an infinite capacity for enjoyment. It was an accident also that
she was a very lovely girl. All beautiful people are spoiled. Rita was
spoiled at school. Girls and mistresses alike adored her. With hardly
any interregnum she had been plumped into Podley's Pure Literature
Library and begun to earn her own living.
She lived with a good, commonplace girl who worshipped her.
Except that she could attract them and that on the whole they were
silly moths she knew nothing of men. Her heart, unawakened as yet save
by school-girl affections, was a kind and tender little organ. But,
with all her beauty and charm she was essentially shallow, from want of
experience rather than from lack of temperament.
Gilbert Lothian had come to her as the most wonderful personality she
had ever known. His letters were things that any girl in the world
might be proud of receiving. He was giving her, now, a time which, upon
each separate evening, was to her like a page out of the "Arabian
Nights." Every day he gave her a tablet upon which "Sesame" was
written.
Had he been free to ask her honourably, she would have married Gilbert
within twenty-four hours, had it been possible. He was delightful to be
with. She liked him to kiss her and say adoring things to her. Even his
aberrations--of which of course she had become aware--only excited her
interest. The bad boy drank far too many whiskies and sodas. Of course!
She would cure him of that. If any one had told her that her nightly
and delightful companion was an inebriate approaching the last stages
of lingering sanity, Rita would have laughed in her informant's face.
She knew what a drunkard was! It was a horrid wretch who couldn't walk
straight and who said, "My dearsh"--like the amusing pictures in
"Punch."
Poor dear Gilbert's wife would be in a fury if she knew. But
fortunately she didn't know, and she wasn't in England. Meanwhile, for
a short time, life was entrancing, and why worry about the day after
to-morrow?
It was ridiculous of Gilbert to want her to run away with him. That
would be really wicked. He might kiss her as much as he liked, and when
Mrs. Lothian came back they could still go on much as before. Certainly
they would continue being friends and he would write her beautiful
letters again.
"I'm a wicked little devil," she said to herself once or twice with a
naughty inward chuckle, "but dear old Gilbert is so perfectly sweet,
and I can do just what I like with him!"
Nearly three weeks had gone by. Gilbert and Rita had been together
every evening, on the Saturday afternoons when she was free of Podley's
Library, and for the whole of Sunday.
Gilbert had almost exhausted his invention in thinking out surprises
for her night after night.
There had been many dull moments and hours when pleasure trembled in
the balance. But no night had been quite a failure. The position was
this.
Lothian, almost convinced that Rita was unassailable, assailed her
still. She was sweet to him, gave her caresses but not herself. They
had arrived at a curious sort of understanding. He bewailed with bitter
and burning regret that he could not marry her. Lightly, only half
sincerely, but to please him, she joined in his sorrow.
She had been seen about with him, constantly, in all sorts of places,
and that London that knew him was beginning to talk. Of this Rita was
perfectly unconscious.
He had written to his wife at Nice, letters so falsely sympathetic that
he felt she must suspect something. He followed up every letter with a
long, costly telegram. A telegram is not autograph and the very lesions
of the prose conceal the lesions of the sender's dull intention. His
physical state was beginning to be so alarming that he was putting
himself constantly under the influence of bromide and such-like drugs.
He went regularly to the Turkish Bath in Jermyn Street, had his face
greased and hammered in the Haymarket each morning, and fought with a
constantly growing terror against an advancing horror which he trembled
to think might not be far off now.
Delirium Tremens.
But when Rita met him at night, drugs, massage and alcohol had had
their influence and kept him still upon the brink.
In his well-cut evening clothes, with his face a little fatter, a
little redder perhaps, he was still her clever, debonnair Gilbert.
A necessity to her now.