THE AMNESIC DREAM-PHASE
"In the drunkenness of the chronic alcoholic the higher brain
centres are affected more readily and more profoundly than the rest
of the nervous system, with the result that the drinker, despite
the derangement of his consciousness, is capable of apparently
deliberate and purposeful acts. It is in this dream-state, which
may last a considerable time, that the morbid impulses of the
alcoholic are most often carried into effect."
_The Criminology of Alcoholism_ by William C. Sullivan, M.D.,
Medical Officer H.M. Prison Service.
"The confirmed toper, who is as much the victim of drug-habit as
the opium eater, may have amnesic dream phases, during which he may
commit automatically offensive acts while he is mentally
irresponsible."
_Medico-Legal Relations of Alcoholism_ by Stanley B. Atkinson,
M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Barrister at Law.
At nine o'clock one evening Lothian went into his wife's room. It was a
bitterly cold night and a knife-like wind was coming through the
village from the far saltings. There was a high-riding moon but its
light was fitful and constantly obscured by hurrying clouds.
Mary was lying in bed, patiently and still. She was not yet better. Dr.
Heywood was a little puzzled at her continued listlessness and
depression.
A bright fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections upon the
bedroom ceiling. A shaded candle stood upon the bedside table, and
there were also a glass of milk, some grapes in a silver dish, and the
"Imitatio Christi" there.
Lothian was very calm and quiet in demeanour. His wife had noticed that
whenever he came to see her during the last two or three days, there
had been an unusual and almost drowsy tranquillity in his manner. His
hands shook no more. His movements were no longer jerky. They were
deliberate, like those of an ordinary and rather ponderous man.
And now, too, Gilbert's voice had become smooth and level. The quick
and pleasant vibration of it at its best, the uneasy rise and fall of
it at its worst, had alike given place to a suave, creamy monotone
which didn't seem natural.
The face, also, enlarged and puffed by recent excesses, had further
changed. The redness had gone from the skin. Even the eyes were
bloodshot no longer. They looked fish-like, though. They had a steady
introspective glare about them. The lips were red and moist, in this
new and rather horrible face. The clear contour and moulding were
preserved, but a quiet dreamy smile lurked about and never left them.
. . ."Gilbert, have you come to say goodnight?"
"Yes, dear,"--it _was_ an odd purring sort of voice--"How do you feel?"
"Not very well, dear. I am going to try very hard to sleep to-night.
You're rather early in coming, are you not?"
"Yes, dear, I am. But the moon and the tides are right to-night and the
wild duck are flighting. I am going out after widgeon to-night. I ought
to do well."
"Oh, I see. I hope you'll have good luck, dear."
"I hope so. Oh, and I forgot, Mary, I thought of going off for three
days to-morrow, down towards the Essex coast. I should take Tumpany.
I've had a letter from the Wild Fowlers' Association man there to say
that the geese are already beginning to come over. Would you mind?"
Mary saw that he had already made up his mind to go--for some reason or
other.
"Yes, go by all means, dear," she said, "the change and the sport will
do you good."
"You will be all right?"--how soapy and mechanical that voice was. . . .
"Oh, of course I shall. Don't think a _bit_ about me. Perhaps--" she
hesitated for a moment and then continued with the most winning
sweetness--"perhaps, Gillie darling, it will buck you up so that you
won't want to . . ."
The strange voice that was coming from him dried the longing, loving
words in her throat.
"Well, then, dear, I shall say good-bye, now. You see I shall be out
most of this night, and if Tumpany and I are to catch the early train
from Wordingham and have all the guns ready, we must leave here before
you will be awake. I mean, you sleep into the morning a little now,
don't you?"
He seemed anxious as he asked.
"Generally, Gillie. Then if it is to be good-bye for two days, good-bye
my dear, dear husband. Come----"
She held out her arms, lying there, and he had to bend into her
embrace.
"I shall pray for you all the time you are away," she whispered. "I
shall think of my boy every minute. God bless you and preserve you, my
dear husband."
She was doubtless about to say more, to murmur other words of sacred
wifely love, when her arms slid slowly away from him and lay motionless
upon the counterpane.
Immediately they did so, the man's figure straightened itself and stood
upright by the side of the bed.
"Well, I'll go now," he said. "Good-night, dear."
He turned his full, palish face upon her, the yellow point of flame,
coming through the top of the candle shade, showed it in every detail.
Fixed, introspective eyes, dreamy painted smile, a suave, uninterested
farewell.
The door closed gently behind him. It was closed as a bland doctor
closes a door.
Mary lay still as death.
The room was perfectly silent, save for the fall of a red coal in the
fire or the tiny hiss and spurt of escaping gas in thin pencils of old
gold and amethyst.
Then there came a loud sound into the room.
It was a steady rhythmic sound, muffled but alarming. It seemed to fill
the room.
In a second or two more Mary knew that it was only her heart beating.
"But I am frightened," she said to herself. "I am really frightened.
This is FEAR!"
And Fear it was, such as this clear soul had not known. This daughter
of good descent, with serene, temperate mind and body, had ever been
high poised above gross and elemental fear.
To her, as to the royal nature of her friend Julia Daly, God had early
given a soul-guard of angels.
Now, for the first time in her life, Mary knew Fear. And she knew an
unnameable disgust also. Her heart drummed. The back of her throat grew
hot--hotter than her fever made it. And, worse, a thousand times more
chilling and dreadful, she felt as if she had just been holding
something cold and evil in her arms.
. . . The voice was unreal and almost incredible. The waxen mask with
its set eyes and the small, fine mouth caught into a fixed smile--oh!
this was not her husband!
She had been speaking with some _Thing_. Some _Thing_, dressed in
Gilbert's flesh had come smirking into her quiet room. She had held it
in her arms and prayed for it.
Drum, drum!--She put her left hand, the hand with the wedding ring upon
it, over the madly throbbing heart.
And then, in her mind, she asked for relief, comfort, help.
The response was instant.
Her life had always been so fragrant and pure, her aims so
single-hearted, her delight in goodness and her love of Jesus so
transparently immanent, that she was far nearer the Veil than most of
us can ever get.
She asked, and the amorphous elemental things of darkness dissolved and
fled before heavenly radiance. The Couriers of the Wind of the
Holy-Ghost came to her with the ozone of Paradise beating from their
wings.
Doubtless it was now that some Priest-Angel gave Mary Lothian that last
Viaticum which was to be denied to her from the hands of any earthly
Priest.
It was a week ago that Mr. Medley had brought the Blessed Sacrament to
Mary. It was seven days since she had thus met her Lord.
But He was with her now. Already of the Saints, although she knew it
not, a Cloud of Witnesses surrounded her.
Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven were loving her,
waiting for her.
* * * * *
Lothian went along the corridor to the library, which was on the first
floor of the house. His footsteps made no noise upon the thick carpet.
He walked softly, resolutely, as a man that had much to do.
The library was not a large room but it was a very charming one. A
bright fire burned upon the hearth. Two comfortable saddle-back chairs
of olive-coloured leather stood on either side of it, and there was a
real old "gate-table" of dark oak set by one of the chairs with a
silver spirit-stand upon it.
Along all one side, books rose to the ceiling, his beloved friends of
the past, in court-dress of gold and damson colour, in bravery of
delicate greens; in leather which had been stained bright orange, some
of them; while others showed like crimson aldermen and red Lord Mayors.
Let into the wall at the end of the room--opposite to the big Tudor
window--was the glass-fronted cupboard in which the guns were kept. The
black-blue barrels gleamed in rows, the polished stocks caught the
light from the candles upon the mantel-shelf. The huge double
eight-bore like a shoulder-cannon ranked next to the pair of ten-bores
by Greener. Then came the two powerful twelve-gauge guns by Tolley,
chambered for three inch shells and to which many geese had fallen upon
the marshes. . . .
Lothian opened the glass door and took down one of the heavy ten-bores
from the rack.
He placed it upon a table, opened a cupboard, took out a leather
cartridge bag and put about twenty "perfect" cases of brass, loaded
with "smokeless diamond" and "number four" shot, into the bag.
Then he rang the bell.
"Tell Tumpany to come up," he said to Blanche who answered the summons.
Presently there was a somewhat heavy lurching noise as the ex-sailor
came up the stairs and entered the library with his usual scrape and
half-salute.
Tumpany was not drunk, but he was not quite sober. He was excited by
the prospect of the three days' sport in Essex and he had been
celebrating the coming treat in the Mortland Royal Arms. He had enjoyed
beer in the kitchen of the old house--by Lothian's orders.
"Now be here by seven sharp to-morrow, Tumpany," Lothian said, still in
his quiet level voice. "We must catch the nine o'clock from Wordingham
without fail. I'm going out for an hour or two on the marshes. The
widgeon are working over the West Meils with this moon and I may get a
shot or two."
"Cert'nly, sir. Am I to come, sir?"
"No, I think you had better go home and get to bed. You've a long day
before you to-morrow. I shan't be out late."
"Very good, sir. You'll take Trust? Shall I go and let him out?"
Lothian seemed to hesitate, while he cast a shrewd glance under his
eyelids at the man.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "I ought to be able to pick up any
birds I get myself in this light, and on the West Meils. I shan't stay
out long either. You see, Trust has to go with us to-morrow and he's
always miserable in the guard's van. He'll have to work within a few
hours of our arrival and I thought it best to give him as much rest as
possible beforehand. He isn't really necessary to me to-night. But what
do you think?"
Tumpany was flattered--as it was intended that he should be
flattered--at his advice being asked in this way. He agreed entirely
with his master.
"Very well then. You'd better go down again to the kitchen. I'll be
with you in ten minutes. Then you can walk with me to the marsh head
and carry the bag."
Tumpany scrambled away to kitchen regions for more beer.
Lothian walked slowly up and down the library. His head was falling
forward upon his chest. He was thinking, planning.
Every detail must be gone into. It was always owing to neglect of
detail that things fell through, that _things_ were found out.
Nemesis waited on the failure of fools!
A week ago the word "Nemesis" would have terrified him and sent him
into the labyrinth of self-torture--crossings, touchings, and the like.
Now it meant nothing.
Yes: that was all right. Tumpany would accompany him to the end of the
village--the farthest end of the village from the "Haven"--there could
be no possible idea. . . .
Lothian nodded his head and then opened a drawer in the wall below the
gun cupboard. He searched in it for a moment and withdrew a small
square object wrapped in tissue paper.
It was a spare oil-bottle for a gun-case.
The usual oil-receptacle in a gun-case is exactly like a small, square
ink-bottle, though with this difference; when the metal top is
unscrewed, it brings with it an inch long metal rod, about the
thickness of a knitting needle but flattened at the end.
This is used to take up beads of oil and apply them to the locks,
lever, and ejector mechanisms of a gun.
Lothian slipped the thing into a side pocket of his coat.
In a few minutes, dressed in warm wildfowling clothes of grey wool and
carrying his gun, he was tramping out of the long village street with
Tumpany.
The wind sang like flying arrows, the dark road was hard beneath their
feet.
They came to Tumpany's cottage and little shop, which were on the
outskirts of the village.
Then Lothian stopped.
"Look here," he said, "you can give me the bag now. There really isn't
any need for you to come to the marsh head with me, Tumpany.--Much
better get to bed and be fresh for to-morrow."
The man was nothing loth. The lit window of his house invited him.
"Thank you, sir," he said, sobered now by the keen night wind, "then
I'll say good-night."
--"Night Tumpany."
"G'night, sir."
Lothian tramped away into the dark.
The sailor stood for a moment with his hand upon the latch of his house
door, listening to the receding footsteps.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked himself. "He speaks different like.
Yesterday morning old Trust seemed positive afraid of him! Never saw
such a thing before! And to-night he seems like a stranger somehow. I
felt queer, in a manner of speaking, as I walked alongside of him. But
what a bloody fool I am!" Tumpany concluded, using the richest
adjective he knew, as his master's footsteps died away and were lost.
In less than ten minutes Lothian stood upon the edge of the vast
marshes.
It was a ghostly place and hour. The wind wailed over the desolate
miles like a soul sick for the love it had failed to win in life. The
wide creeks with their cliff-like sides of black mud were brimming with
sullen tidal water, touched here and there by faint moonbeams--lemon
colour on lead.
Night birds passed high over head with a whistle of wings, heard, but
not seen in the gloom. From distant Wordingham to far Blackney beyond
which were the cliffs of Sherringham and Cromer, for twelve miles or
more, perhaps not a dozen human beings were out upon the marshes.
A few bold wildfowlers in their frail punts with the long tapering guns
in the bows, might be "setting to birds"; enduring the bitter cold,
risking grave danger, and pursuing the wildest and most wary of living
things with supreme endurance throughout the night.
Once the wind brought two deep booms to Lothian. His trained ear knew
and located the sound at once. One of the Wordingham fowlers was out
upon the flats three miles away, and had fired his double eight-bore,
the largest shoulder gun that even a strong man can use.
But the saltings were given over to the night and the things of the
night.
The plovers called, "'Tis dark and late." "'Tis late and dark."
The wind sobbed coldly; wan clouds sped to hood the moon with darkness.
Brown hares crouched among the coarse marrum grasses, the dun owls were
afloat upon the air, sounding their oboe notes, and always the high
unseen flight of whistling ducks went on all over the desolate majesty
of the marshes.
And beyond it all, through it all, could be heard the hollow organs of
the sea.
Lothian was walking rapidly. His breathing was heavy and muffled. He
skirted the marsh and did not go upon it, passing along the grass slope
of foreshore which even a full marsh tide never conquered; going back
upon his own trail, parallel to the village.
There were sharp pricking pains in his knees and ankles. Hot sweat
clotted his clothes to his body and rained down his face. But he was
unaware of this. His alarming physical condition was as nothing.
He went on through the dark, hurriedly, like a man in ambush.
Now and then he stumbled at inequalities of the ground or caught his
foot in furze roots. Obscene words escaped him when this happened. They
burst from between the hot cracked lips, mechanical and thin. The weak
complaints of some poor filthy-minded ghost!
He knew nothing of what he said.
But with knife-winds upon his face, thin needles in his joints; sodden
flesh quivering with nervous tremors and wet with warm brine, he went
onwards with purpose.
He was in the Amnesic Dream-phase.
Every foul and bestial impulse which is hidden in the nature of man was
riotous and awake.
The troglodytes showed themselves at last.
All the unnameable, unthinkable things that lie deep below the soul,
far below the conscience, in the lowest and sealed cellars of
personality, had burst from their hidden prisons.
The Temple of the Holy Ghost was full of the squeaking, gibbering
Powers of utmost, nethermost Hell.
--These are similes which endeavour to hint at the frightful Truth.
Science sums it up in a simple statement. Lothian was now in "The
Amnesic dream-phase."
He came to where a grass road bounded by high hedges led down to the
foreshore.
Crouching under the sentinel hedge of the road's end, he lit a match
and looked at his watch.
It was fifteen minutes past ten o'clock.
Old Phoebe Hannett and her daughter, the servants of Morton Sims at
the "Haven," would now be fast in slumber. Christopher, the doctor's
personal servant, was in Paris with his master.
The Person who walked in a Dream turned up the unused grass-grown road.
He was now at the East end of the village.
The path brought him out upon the highroad a hundred yards above the
rectory, Church, and the schools. From there it was a gentle descent to
the very centre of the village, where the "Haven" was.
There were no lights nor lamp-posts in the village. By now every one
would be gone to bed. . . .
There came a sudden sharp chuckle into the night. Something was
congratulating itself with glee that it had put water-boots with
india-rubber soles upon its feet; noiseless soles that would make no
sound upon the gravelled ways about the familiar house that had
belonged to Admiral Custance.
. . . Lothian lifted the latch of the gate which led to the short
gravel-drive of the "Haven" with delicate fingers. An expert handles a
blown bird's-egg so.
It rose. It fell. Not a crack came from the slowly-pushed gate which
fell back into its place with no noise, leaving the night-comer inside.
The gables of the house rose black and stark against the sky. The
attic-windows where old dame Hannett and her daughter slept were black.
They were fast in sleep now.
The night-intruder set his gun carefully against the stone pillar of
the gate. Then he tripped over the pneumatic lawns before the house
with almost a dance in his step.
He frisked over the lawns, avoiding the chocolate patches that meant
flower-beds, with complacent skill.
Just then no clouds obscured the moon, which rode high before the
advancing figure.
A fantastic shadow followed Lothian, coquetting with the flower beds,
popping this way and that, but ever at his heels.
It threw itself about in swimming areas of grey vagueness and then
concentrated itself into a black patch with moving outlines.
There was an ecstasy about this dancing shadow.
And now, the big building which had been a barn and which Admiral
Custance had re-built and put to various uses, cut wedge-like into the
lit sky.
The Shadow crept close to the Dream Figure and crouched at its heels.
It seemed to be spurring that figure on, to be whispering in its
ear. . . .
We know all about the Dream Figure. Through the long pages of this
chronicle we have learned how, and of what, It has been born.
And were it not that experts of the Middle Age--when Demonology was a
properly recognised science--have stated that a devil has never a
shadow, we should doubtless have been sure that it was our old friend,
the Fiend Alcohol, that contracted and expanded with such fantastic
measures over the moon-lit grass.
Lothian knew his way well about this domain.
Admiral Custance had been his good friend. Often in the old sailor's
house, or in Lothian's, the two had tippled together and drank toasts
to the supremacy which Queen Britannia has over the salt seas.
The lower floor of the barn had been used as a box-room for trunks and
a general store-house, though the central floor-space was made into a
court for Badminton; when nephews and nieces, small spars of Main and
Mizzen and the co-lateral Yardarms, came to play upon a retired
quarter-deck.
The upper floor had ever been sacred to the Admiral and his hobbies.
From below, the upper region was reached by a private stairway of wood
outside the building. Of this entrance the sailor had always kept the
key. A little wooden balcony ran round the angle of the building to
where, at one end, a large window had been built in the wall.
Lothian went up the outside stairs noiselessly as a cat, and round the
little gallery to the long window. Here he was in deep shadow.
The two leaves of the window did not quite meet. The wood had shrunk,
the whole affair was rickety and old.
As he had anticipated, the night-comer had no difficulty in pushing the
blade of his shooting knife through the crevice and raising the simple
catch.
He stepped into the room, long empty and ghostly.
First, he closed the window again, and then let down the blue blind
over it. A skylight in the sloped roof provided all the other light.
Through this, now, faint and fleeting moonlights fell.
By the gallery door there was a mat. Lothian stepped gingerly to it and
wiped the india-rubber boots he wore.
Then he took half a wax candle from a side-pocket and lit it. It was
quite impossible that the light could be seen from outside, even if
spectators there were, in the remote slumbering village.
In the corners of the long room, black-velvet shadows lurked as the
yellow candle flame moved.
A huge spider with a body as big as sixpence ran up one canvas-covered
wall. Despite the cold, the air was lifeless and there was a very faint
aroma of chemical things in it.
On all sides were long deal tables covered with a multiplicity of
unusual objects.
Under a big bell of glass, popped over it to keep the dust away, was a
large microscope of intricate mechanism. Close by was a section-cutter
that could almost make a paring of a soul for scrutiny. Leather cases
stood here and there full of minute hypodermic syringes, and there was
a box of thin glass tubes containing agents for staining the low
protoplasmic forms of life which must be observed by those who wish to
arm the world against the Fiend Alcohol.
At the far end of the room, on each side of the fireplace were two
glass-fronted cupboards, lined with red baize. In one of them Admiral
Custance had kept his guns.
These cupboards had been constructed by the village carpenter--who had
also made the gun cupboard in Lothian's library. They were excellent
cupboards and with ordinary locks and keys--the Mortland Royal
carpenter, indeed, buying these accessories of his business of one
pattern, and by the gross, from Messrs. Pashwhip and Moger's
iron-mongery establishment in Wordingham.
Lothian took the key of his own gun cupboard from his waistcoat pocket.
It fitted the hole of the cupboard here--on the right side of the
fireplace, exactly as he had expected.
The glass doors swung open with a loud crack, and the contents on the
shelves were clearly exposed to view.
Lothian set his candle down upon the edge of an adjacent table and
thought for a moment.
During their intimate conversations--before Lothian's three weeks in
London with Rita Wallace, while his wife was at Nice, Dr. Morton Sims
had explained many things to him. The great man had been pleased to
find in a patient, in an artist also, the capability of appreciating
scientific truth and being interested in the methods by which it was
sought.
Lothian knew therefore, that Morton Sims was patiently following and
extending the experiments of Professor Fraenkel at his laboratory in
Halle, varying the investigation of Deléarde and carrying it much
farther.
Morton Sims was introducing alcohol into rabbits and guinea pigs,
sub-cutaneously or into the stomach direct, exhibiting the alcohol in
well-diluted forms and over long periods. He was then inoculating these
alcoholised subjects, and subjects which had not been alcoholised, with
the bacilli of consumption--tubercle bacilli--and diphtheria toxin--the
poison produced by the diphtheria bacillus.
He was endeavouring to obtain indisputable evidence of increased
susceptibility to infection in the animal body under alcoholic
influences.
Of all this, Lothian was thoroughly aware. He stood now--if indeed it
_was_ Gilbert Lothian the poet who stood there--in front of an open
cupboard; the cupboard he had opened by secrecy and fraud.
Upon those shelves, as he well knew, organic poisons of immeasurable
potency were resting.
In those half-dozen squat phials of glass, surrounded with felt and
with curious stoppers, an immense Death was lurking.
All the quick-firing guns of the navies of the world were not so
powerful as one of these little glass receptacles.
The breath came thick and fast from the intruder. It went up in clouds
from his heated body; vapourised into steam which looked yellow in the
candlelight.
After a minute he drew near to the cupboard.
A trembling, exploring finger pushed among the phials. It isolated one.
Upon a label pasted on the glass, were two words in Greek characters,
"[Greek: diphth. toxin.]"
Here, in this vessel of gelatinous liquid, lurked the destroying army
of diphtheria bacilli, millions strong.
The man held up the candle and its light fell full upon the neat
cursive Greek, so plain for him to read.
He stared at it with focussed eyes. His head was pushed forward a
little and oscillated slowly from side to side. The sweat ran down it
and fell with little splashes upon the floor.
Then his hand began to tremble and the light flickered and danced in
the recesses of the cupboard.
He turned away, shaking, and set the candle end upon the table. It
swayed, toppled over, flared for a moment and went out.
But he could not wait to light it again. His attendant devil was
straying, he must be called back . . . to help.
Lothian plunged his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a flat
flask of silver. It was full of undiluted whiskey.
He took a long steady pull, and the fire went through him instantly.
With firm fingers now, he screwed on the top of the flask and re-lit
the candle stump. Then he took the marked phial from the cupboard shelf
and set it on the table.
From a side pocket he took the little oil-bottle belonging to a
travelling gun-case and unscrewed the top of that.
And now, with cunning knowledge, he takes the thick, grey woollen scarf
from his neck and drenches a certain portion of its folds with raw
whiskey from his flask. He binds the muffler round the throat and nose
in such fashion that the saturated portion confines all the outlets of
his breathing.
One must risk nothing one's self when one plays and conjures with the
spawn and corruptions of death!
. . . It is done, done with infinite nicety and care--no trembling
fingers now.
The vial is unstopped, the tube within has poured a drop or two of its
contents into the oil-bottle, the projecting needle of which is damp
with death.
The cupboard is closed and locked again. Ah! there is candle grease
upon the table! It is scraped up, to the minutest portion, with the
blade of the shooting knife.
Then he is out upon the balcony again. One last task remains. It is to
close the long windows so that the catch will fall into its rusty
holder and no trace be left of its ever having been opened.
This is not easy. It requires preparation, dexterity and thought.
Cunning fingers must use the thin end of the knife to bend the little
brass bracket which is to receive the falling catch. It must be bent
outwards, and in the bending a warning creak suggests that the screws
are parting from the rotten wood.
But it is done at last, surely dexterously. No gentlemanly burglar of
the magazines could have done it better.
. . . There is no moon now. It is necessary to feel one's way in
silence over the lawn and reach the outer gate.
This is done successfully, the Fiend is a good quick valet-fiend
to-night and aids at every point.
The gate is closed with a gentle "click," there is only the "pad, pad"
of the night-comer's footsteps passing along the dark village street
towards the Old House with poison in his pocket and murder in his
heart.
Outside his own gate, Lothian's feet assume a brisk and confidential
measure. He rattles the latch of the drive gate and tries to whistle in
a blithe undertone.
Bedroom windows may be open, it will be as well that his low, contented
whistle--as of one returning from healthy night-sport--may be heard.
His lips are too cracked and salt to whistle, however. He tries to hum
the burden of a song, but only a faint "croak, croak," sounds in the
cold, quiet night--for the wind has fallen now.
Not far away, behind the palings of his little yard, The Dog Trust
whines mournfully.
Once he whines, and then with a full-throat and opened muzzle Dog Trust
bays the moon behind its cloud-pall.
When he hears the footfall of one he knows and loves, Dog Trust greets
it with low, anxious whines.
He is no watch-dog. His simple duties are unvaried from the marsh and
field. Growl of hostility to night-comers he knows not. His faithful
mind has been attuned to no reveillé note.
But he howls mournfully now.
The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the
dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and
hostile approaching the house.
So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete
sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into
the warm straw of his kennel.
Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house.
The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath
of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one.
The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud
anchored to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings.
It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a
bugle in the mind.
Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived
fresh and happy at the Old House.
He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In
Essex the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon
anticipation and the morning.
In the kitchen Phoebe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of
the hour.
The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready
for the four-wheel dogcart.
"Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress
will have a chance to get right. . . . Master said good-bye to Mistress
last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche.
"Yes, but he may want to go in again and disturb her."
"I don't believe he will. She's asleep now. Those things Dr. Heywood
give her keep her quiet. But still you'd better go quietly into her
room with her morning milk, Blanche. If she's asleep, just leave it
there, so she'll find it when she wakes up."
"Very well, cook, I will," the housemaid said--"Oh, there's that
Tumpany!"
Tumpany came into the kitchen. He wore his best suit. He was quite
dictatorial and sober. He spoke in brisk tones.
"What are you going to do, my girl?" he said to Blanche in an
authoritative voice.
"Hush, you silly. Keep quiet, can't you?" Phoebe said angrily.
"Blanche is taking up Mistress' milk in case she wakes."
"Where's master, then?"
"Master is in the library. He'll be down in a minute."
"Can I go up to him, cook? . . . There's something about the guns----"
"No. You can _not_, Tumpany. But Blanche will take any message.--Blanche,
knock at the library door and say Tumpany wants to see Master. But do
it quietly. Remember Missis is sleeping at the other end of the
passage."
As Blanche went up the stairs with her tray, the library door was open,
and she saw her master strapping a suit case. She stopped at the open
door.
--"Please, sir, Tumpany wants to speak to you."
Lothian looked up. It was almost as if he had expected the housemaid.
"All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got
there--oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table,
and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make
him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress."
The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the
room, closing the door after her.
It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer
in the table.
Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The
Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver
plated top.
In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The
man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to
the glass of milk.
Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top.
The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of
death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head,
hung from the slanting point.
Lothian plunged the needle into the glass of milk, moving it this way
and that.
He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity
he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer.
He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed
by Tumpany.
"What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray
and left the room with it.
"I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the
ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through
thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and
locked now, sir. You've got the keys."
"By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had
made at Tolley's--where are they?"
"Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard.
"Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it
in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when
we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the
key of the ten-bore case."
"Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down
and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me."
"Yes. I'll be down in a minute."
Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the
bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom.
He met Blanche in the corridor.
"Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I
just put her milk on the table and came out quietly."
"Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute."
In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand
and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the
water, which immediately became a purplish pink.
He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now
tightly stoppered again, in one of them.
For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the
bottle, drying them on a towel.
. . . There was no possible danger of infection now. As for the bottle,
he would throw it out of the window of the train when he was a hundred
miles from Mortland Royal.
He came out into the corridor once more. His face was florid and too
red. Close inspection would have disclosed the curiously bruised look
of the habitual inebriate. But, in his smart travelling suit of Harris
tweed, with well-brushed hair, white collar and the "bird's eye" tie
that many country gentlemen affect, he was passable enough.
A dreamy smile played over his lips. His eyes--not quite so bloodshot
this morning--were drowsed with quiet thought.
As he was about to descend the stairs he turned and glanced towards a
closed door at the end of the passage.
It was the door of Mary's room and this was his farewell to the wife
whose only thought was of him, with whom, in "The blessed bond of board
and bed" he had spent the happy years of his first manhood and success.
A glance at the closed door; an almost complacent smile; after all
those years of holy intimacy this was his farewell.
As he descended the stairs, the Murderer was humming a little tune.
The two maid servants were in the hall to see him go. They were fond of
him. He was a kind and generous master.
"You're looking much better this morning, sir," said Phoebe. She was
pretty and privileged. . . .
"I'm feeling very well, Phoebe. This little trip will do me a lot of
good, and I shall bring home lots of birds for you to cook. Now mind
both you girls look after your Mistress well. I shall expect to see her
greatly improved when I return. Give her my love when she wakes up.
Don't forward any letters because I am not certain where I shall be. It
will be in the Blackwater neighbourhood, Brightlingsea, or I may make
my headquarters at Colchester for the three days. But I can't be quite
sure. I shall be back in three days."
"Good morning, sir. I hope you'll have good sport."
"Thank you, Phoebe--that's right, Tumpany, put Trust on the seat
first and then get up yourself--what's the matter with the dog?--never
saw him so shy. No, James, you drive--all right?--Let her go then."
The impatient mare in the shafts of the cart pawed the gravel and was
off. The trap rolled out of the drive as Lothian lit a cigar.
It really was a most perfect early morning, and there was a bloom upon
the stubble and Mortland Royal wood like the bloom upon a plum.
The air was keen, the sun bright. The pheasants chuckled in the wood,
the mare's feet pounded the hard road merrily.
"What a thoroughly delightful morning!" Lothian said to the groom at
his side and his eyes were still dreamy with subtle content.