A STARTLING EXPERIENCE FOR "WOG"
"The die rang sideways as it fell,
Rang cracked and thin,
Like a man's laughter heard in hell. . . ."
--_Swinburne._
It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening; a dry, acrid, coughing cold
lay over London.
In the little Kensington flat of Rita Wallace and Ethel Harrison, the
fire was low and almost out. The "Lulu bird" drooped on its perch and
Wog was crying quietly by the fire.
How desolate the flat seemed to the faithful Wog as she looked round
with brimming eyes.
The state and arrangement of a familiar room often seem organically
related to the human mind. Certainly we ourselves give personality to
rooms which we have long inhabited; and that personality re-acts upon
us at times when event disturbs it.
It was so now with the good and tender-hearted clergyman's daughter.
The floor of the sitting-room was littered with little pieces of paper
and odds and ends of string. Upon the piano--it was Wog's piano now, a
present from Rita--was a massive photograph frame of silver. There was
no photograph in it, but some charred remains of a photograph which had
been burned still lay in the grate.
Wog had burnt the photograph herself, that morning, early.
"You do it, darling," Rita had said to her. "I can't do it myself. And
take this box. It's locked and sealed. It has the letters in it. I
cannot burn them, but I don't want to read them again. I must not, now.
But keep it carefully, always. If ever I _should_ ask for it, deliver
it to me wherever I am."
"You must _never_ ask for it, my darling girl," Wog had said quickly.
"Let me burn the box and its contents."
"No, no! You must not, dearest Wog, my dear old friend! It would be
wrong. Rossetti had to open the coffin of his wife to get back the
poems which he had buried with her. Keep it as I say."
Wog knew nothing about Rossetti, and the inherent value of works of art
in manuscript didn't appeal to her. But she had been able to refuse her
friend nothing on this morning of mornings.
Wog was wearing her best frock, a new one, a present also. She had
never had so smart a frock before. She held her little handkerchief
very carefully that none of the drops that streamed from her eyes
should fall upon the dress and stain it.
"My bridesmaid dress," she said aloud with a choke of melancholy
laughter. "We mustn't spoil it, must we, Lulu bird?"
But the canary remained motionless upon its perch like a tiny stuffed
thing.
In one corner of the room was a large corded packing-case. It contained
a big and costly epergne of silver, in execrable taste and savouring
strongly of the mid-Victorian, a period when a choir of great voices
sang upon Parnassus but the greatest were content to live in
surroundings that would drive a minor poet of our era to insanity. This
was to be forwarded to Wiltshire in a fortnight or so.
It was Mr. Podley's present.
Wog's eyes fell upon it now. "What a kind good man Mr. Podley is," she
thought. "How anxious he has been to forward everything. And to give
dear Rita away also!"
Then this good girl remembered what a happy change in her own life and
prospects was imminent.
She was to be the head librarian of the Podley Pure Literature
Institute, vice Mr. Hands, retired. She was to have two hundred a year
and choose her own assistant.
Mr. and Mrs. Podley--at whose house Ethel had spent some hours--were
not exactly what one would call "cultured" people. They were homely;
but they were sincere and good.
"Now you, my dear," Mrs. Podley had said to her, "are just the lady we
want. You are a clergyman's daughter. You have had a business training.
The Library will be safe in your hands. And we like you! We feel
friends to you, Miss Harrison. 'Give it to Miss Harrison,' I said to my
husband, directly I had had a talk with you."
"But I know so little about literature," Wog had answered. "Of course I
read, and I have my own little collection of books. But to take charge
of a public library--oh, Mrs. Podley, _do_ you think I shall be able to
do it to Mr. Podley's satisfaction?"
Mrs. Podley had patted the girl upon her arm. "You're a good girl, my
dear," she said, "and that is enough for us. We mayn't be literary, my
husband and me, but we know a good woman when we meet her. Now you just
take charge of that library and do exactly as you like. Come and have
dinner with us every week, dearie. When all's said we're a lonely old
couple and a good girl like you, what is clever too, and born a lady,
is just what I want. Podley shall do something for your dear Father.
I'll see to that. And your brothers too, just coming from school as
they are. Leave it to me, my dear!"
About Rita the good dame had been less enthusiastic.
"The evening after Podley had to talk to her" (thus Mrs. Podley) "I
asked you both up here. I fell in love with you at once, my dear. Her,
I didn't like. Pretty as a picture; yes! But different somehow! Yet
sensible enough--really--as P. has told me. When he gave her a talking
to, as being an elderly and successful man who employed her he had well
a right to do, she saw at once the scandal and wrong of going about
with a married man--be he poet or whatnot. It was only her girlish
foolishness, of course. Poor silly lamb, she didn't know. But what a
blessing that all the time she was being courted by that young country
squire. I tell you, Miss H., that I felt like a mother to them in the
Church this morning."
These kindly memories of this great day passed in reverie through the
tear-charged heart of Wog.
But she was alone now, very much alone. She had adored Rita. Rita had
flown away into another sphere. The Lulu Bird was a poor consoler!
Still, Wog's sister Beatrice was sixteen now. She would have her to
live with her and pay her fees for learning secretarial duties at
Kensington College and Mr. Munford would find Bee a post. . . .
Wog pulled herself together. She had lost her darling, brilliant,
flashing Rita. _That was that!_ She must reconstruct her life and
press forward without regrets. Life had opened out for her, after all.
But now, at this immediate moment, there was a necessity for calling
all her forces together.
She did not know, she had refused to know, how Rita had dealt with Mr.
Lothian during the past three weeks. The poet had not written for a
fortnight; that she believed she knew, and she had hoped it meant that
his passion for her friend was over. Rita, in her new-found love, her
_legitimate_ love, had never mentioned the poet to Wog. Ethel knew
nothing of love, as far as it could have affected her. Yet the girl had
discerned--or thought she had--an almost frightened relinquishment and
regret on the part of Rita. Rita had expanded with joyous maiden
surrender to the advances and love-making of Dickson Ingworth. That was
her youth, her body. But there had been moments of revolt, moments when
the "wizards peeped and muttered," when the intellect of the girl
seemed held and captured, as the man who wooed her, and was this day
her husband, had never captured it--perhaps never would or could.
Rita Wallace had once said to Gilbert Lothian that she and Ethel did
not take a daily paper because of the expense.
Neither of these girls, therefore, was in the habit of glancing down
the births, marriages and deaths column. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees had run
over to Nice for a month, Ingworth was far too anxious and busy with
his appeal to Rita--none of the people chiefly concerned had read that
the Hon. Mary Lothian, third daughter of the Viscount Boultone and wife
of Gilbert Lothian, Esquire, of the Old House, Mortland Royal, was
dead.
For a fortnight--this was all Ethel Harrison knew--Rita had received no
communication from the Poet.
Ethel imagined that Rita had finally sent him about his business, had
told him of her quick engagement and imminent marriage. She knew that
something had happened with Mr. Podley--nearly three weeks ago. Details
she had none.
Yet, on the mantel-shelf, was a letter in Rita's handwriting. It was
addressed to Gilbert Lothian. Wog was to forward this to him.
The letter was unnerving. It was a letter of farewell, of course, but
Ethel did not like to handle any message from her dear young bride to a
man who was of the past and ought never, _never_! to have been in it.
And there was more than this.
When Ethel had returned from Charing Cross Station, after the early
wedding in St. Martin's Church and the departure of the happy couple
for Mentone, she had found a telegram pushed through the letter-box of
the flat, addressed "Miss Wallace."
She had opened it and read these words:
"_Arriving to you at 7:30 to-night, carissima, to explain all my
recent silence if you do not know already. We are coming into our
own._
GILBERT."
Wog didn't know what this might mean. She regarded it as one more
attempt, on the part of the married man who ought never to have had any
connection with Rita. She realised that Lothian must be absolutely
ignorant of Rita's marriage. And, knowing nothing of Mary Lothian's
death, she regarded the telegram with disgust and fear.
"How dreadful," she thought, in her virgin mind, untroubled always by
the lusts of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, "that this great man
should run after Cupid. He's got his own wife. How angry Father would
be if he knew. And yet, Mr. Lothian couldn't help loving Cupid, I
suppose. Every one loves her."
"I must be as kind as I can to him when he comes," she said to herself.
"He ought to be here almost at once. Of course, Cupid knows nothing
about the telegram saying that he's coming. I can give her letter into
his own hands."
. . . The bell whirred--ring, ring, ring--was there not something
exultant in the shrill purring of the bell?
Wog looked round the littered room, saw the letter on the mantel, the
spread telegram upon the table, breathed heavily and went out into the
little hall-passage of the flat.
"Click," and she opened the door.
Standing there, wearing a fur coat and a felt hat, was some one she had
never met, but whom she knew in an instant.
It was Gilbert Lothian. Yet it was not the Gilbert Lothian she had
imagined from his photograph. Still less the poet of Rita's confidences
and the verses of "Surgit Amari."
He looked like a well-dressed doll, just come there, like a quite
_convenable_ but rather unreal figure from Madame Tussaud's!
He looked at her for a quick moment and then held out his hand.
"I know," he said; "you're Wog! I've heard such a lot about you.
Where's Rita? May I come in?--she got my wire?"
. . . He was in the little hall before she had time to answer him.
Mechanically she led the way into the sitting-room.
In the full electric light she saw him clearly for the first time.
Ethel Harrison shuddered.
She saw a large, white face, with pinkish blotches on it here and
there--more particularly at the corners of the mouth and about the
nostrils. The face had an impression of immense _power_--of
_concentration_. Beneath the wavy hair and the straight eyebrows,
the eyes gleamed and shot out fire--shifting this way and that.
With an extraordinary quickness and comprehension these eyes glanced
round the flat and took in its disorder.
. . . "She got my wire?" the man said--finding the spread-out pink
paper upon the table in an instant.
"No, Mr. Lothian," Ethel Harrison said gravely. "Rita never got your
wire. It came too late."
The glaring light faded out of the man's eyes. His voice, which had
been suave and oily, changed utterly. Ethel had wondered at his voice
immediately she heard it. It was like that of some shopman selling
silks--a fat voice. It had been difficult for her to believe that
_this_ was Gilbert Lothian. Rita's great friend, the famous man, her
father's favourite modern poet.
But she heard a _voice_ now, a real, vibrant voice.
"Too late?" he questioned. "Too late for _what_?"
Ethel nodded sadly. "I see, Mr. Lothian," she said, "that you are
already beginning to understand that you have to hear things that will
distress you."
Lothian bowed. As he did so, _something_ flashed out upon the great
bloated mask his face had become. It was for a second only, but it was
sweet and chivalrous.
"And will you tell me then, Miss Harrison?" he said in a voice that was
beginning to tremble violently. His whole body was beginning to shake,
she saw.
With one hand he was opening the button of his fur coat. He looked up
at her with a perfectly white, perfectly composed, but dreadfully
questioning face.
Certainly his body _was_ shaking all over--it was as though little
ripples were running up and down the flesh of it--but his face was a
white mask of attention.
"Oh, Mr. Lothian!" the girl cried, "I am so sorry. I am so very sorry
for you. You couldn't help loving her perhaps, I am only a girl, I
don't pretend to know. But you must be brave. Rita is married!"
Puffed and crinkled lids fell over the staring eyes for a moment--as if
automatic pressure had suddenly pushed them down.
"_Married?_ Rita?"
"Oh, she ought to have told you! It was cruel of her! She ought to have
told you. But you have not written to her for two or three weeks--as
far as I know. . . ."
"_Married?_ Rita?"
"Yes, this morning, and Mr. Podley gave her away. But I have a letter
for you, Mr. Lothian. Rita asked me to post it. She gave it me in bed
this morning, before I dressed her for her marriage. Of course she
didn't know that you were going to be in town. I will give it to you
now."
She gave him the letter.
His hands took it with a mechanical gesture, though he made a little
bow of thanks.
Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling
up and down--it was horrible.
The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost.
. . . "But _I_ have come to marry Rita!"
Wog became indignant. "Mr. Lothian," she said, "you ought not to speak
like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You _are_
married. Please don't even hint at such things."
"How stupid you are, Wog," he said, as if he had known her for years;
in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. "My wife's
dead, dead and buried. . . . I thought you would both have known. . . ."
His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left
for him.
He drew the page out of the envelope and then he looked up at Ethel
Harrison again. There was a dreadful yearning in his voice now.
"Yes, yes, but _whom_ has my little Rita married?"
Real fear fell upon Ethel now. She became aware that this man had not
realised what had happened in any way. But the whole thing was too
painful. It must be got over at once.
"Mr. Ingworth Dickson, of course," she answered, with some sharpness in
her tones.
For a minute Lothian looked at her as if she were the horizon. Then he
nodded. "Oh, Dicker," he said in a perfectly uninterested voice--"Yes,
Dicker--just her man, of course. . . ."
He was reading the letter now.
This was Rita's farewell letter.
"_Gilbert dear_:
"I shall always read your books and poems, and I shall always think
of you. We have been tremendous friends, and though we shall never
meet again, we shall always think of each other, shan't we? I am
going to marry Dicker to-morrow morning, and by the time you see
this--Wog will send it--I shall be married. Of course we mustn't
meet or write to each other any more. You are married and I'm going
to be to-morrow. But do think of your little friend sometimes,
Gilbert. She will often think of you and read _all_ you write."
Lothian folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope with great
precision. Then he thrust it in the inner breast pocket of his coat.
Wog watched him, in deadly fear.
She knew now that elemental forces had been at work, that her lovely
Rita had evoked soul-shaking, sundering strengths. . . .
But Gilbert Lothian came towards her with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, I thank you, I thank you a thousand times," he said, "for all your
goodness to Rita--How happy you must have been together--you two
girls----"
He had taken both her hands in his. Now he dropped them suddenly.
Something, something quite beautiful, which had been upon his face,
snapped away.
The kindness and welcome in his eyes changed to a horror-struck stare.
He began to murmur and burble at the back of his throat.
His arms shot stiffly this way and that, like the arms of railway
signals.
He ran to one wall and slapped a flat palm upon it.
"Tumpany!" he said with a giggle. "My wild-fowling man! Mary used to
like him, so I suppose he's all right. But, damn him, looking out of
the wall like that with his ugly red face!--"
He began to sing. His lips were dark-red and cracked, his eyes fixed
and staring.
"Tiddle-iddle, iddle-tiddle, so the green frog said in the garden!"
Saliva dropped from the corners of his mouth.
His body was jerking like a puppet of a marionette display, actuated by
unseen strings.
He began to dance.
Blazing eyes, dropping sweat and saliva, twitching, awful body. . . .
She left him dancing clumsily like a performing bear. She fled
hurriedly down to the office of the commissionaire.
When the man, his assistant and Miss Harrison returned to the flat,
Lothian was writhing on the floor in the last stages of delirium
tremens.
As they carried him, tied and bound, to the nearest hospital, they had
to listen to a cryptic, and to them, meaningless mutter that never
ceased.
". . . Dingworth Ickson, Rary, Mita. Sorten Mims. Ha, ha! ha! Tubes
of poison--damn them all, blast them all--Jesus of the Cross! my
wife's face as she lay there dead, forgiving me!
"--Rita you pup of a girl, going off with a boy like Dicker. Rita!
Rita! You're mine--don't make such a howling noise, my girl, you'll
create a scandal--Rita! Rita!--damn you, _can't_ you keep quiet?
"All right, Mary darling. But why have you got on a sheet instead
of a nightdress? Mary! Why have they tied your face up under the
chin with that handkerchief? And what's that you're holding out to
me on your pale hand? Is that the _membrane_? Is that really the
diphtheria _membrane_ which choked you?--Come closer, let me see,
old chalk-faced girl. . . ."
At the hospital the house-surgeon on duty who admitted him said that
death _must_ supervene within twelve or fourteen hours.
He had not seen a worse case.
But when he realised who the fighting, tied, gibbering and obscene
object really was, bells rang in the private rooms of celebrated
doctors.
The pulsing form was isolated.
Young doctors came to look with curiosity upon the cursing mass of
flesh that quivered beneath the broad bands of webbing which held it
down.
Older doctors stood by the bed with eyes full of anxiety and pain as
they regarded what was once Gilbert Lothian; bared the twitching arms
and pressed the hypodermic needles into the loose bunches of skin that
skilled, pitiful fingers were pinching and gathering.
When they had calmed the twitching figure somewhat, the famous
physicians who had been hastily called, stood in a little group some
distance from the bed, consulting together.
Two younger men who sat on each side of the cot looked over the body
and grinned.
"The Christian Poet, oh, my eye!" said one.
"Surgit amari aliquid," the other replied with a disgusted sneer.
END OF BOOK THREE
EPILOGUE
A Year Later
"A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise."
WHAT OCCURRED AT THE EDWARD HALL IN KINGSWAY
"Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?"
--_The Ballad of Reading Gaol._
A great deal of interest in high quarters, both in London and New York
was being taken in the meeting of Leading Workers in the cause of
Temperance that was to be held in Kingsway this afternoon.
The new Edward Hall, that severe building of white stone which was
beginning to be the theatre of so many activities and which was so
frequently quoted as a monument of good taste and inspiration on the
part of Frank Flemming, the new architect, had been engaged for the
occasion.
The meeting was to be at three.
It was unique in this way--The heads of every party were to be
represented and were about to make common cause together. The
scientific and the non-scientific workers for the suppression and cure
of Inebriety had been coming very much together during the last years.
Never hostile to each other, they had suffered from a mutual lack of
understanding in the past.
Now there was to be an _entente cordiale_ that promised great things.
One important fact had contributed to this _rapprochement_. The earnest
Christian workers and ardent sociologists were now all coming to
realise that Inebriety is a disease and not, specifically, a vice. The
doctors had known this, had been preaching this for years. But the time
had arrived when religious workers in the same cause were beginning to
find that they could with safety join hands with those who (as they had
come to see) _knew_ and could define the springs of action which made
people intemperate.
The will of the intemperate individual was weakened by a _disease_. The
doctors had shown and proved this beyond possibility of doubt.
It was a _disease_. Its various causes were discovered and put upon
record. Its pathology was as clearly stated as a proposition in Euclid.
Its psychology was, at last, beginning to be understood.
And it was on the basis of psychology that the two parties were
meeting.
Science could take a drunkard--though really only with the drunkard's
personal connivance and earnest wish to reform--and in a surprisingly
short time, varying with individual cases, restore him to the world
sane, and in health.
But as far as individual cases went, science professed itself able to
do little more than this. It could give a man back his health of mind
and body, it could--thus--enable him to recall his soul from the red
hells where it had strayed. But it could not enable the man to _retain_
the gifts.
Religion stepped in here. Christianity and those who professed it said
that faith in Christ, and that only, could preserve the will; that, to
put it shortly, a personal love of Jesus, a heart that opened itself to
the mysterious operations of the Holy Spirit would be immune from the
disease for ever more.
Christian workers proved their contention by statistics as clear and
unmistakable as any other.
There was still one great question to be agreed upon. Religion and
Science, working together, _could_, and _did_, cure the _individual_
drunkard. Sometimes Science had done this without the aid of Religion,
more often Religion had done it without the aid of Science--that is to
say that while Science had really been at work all the time Religion
had not been aware of it and had not professedly called Science in to
help.
To eradicate the disease from individuals was being done every day by
the allied forces.
To eradicate the disease from nations, to stamp it out as cholera,
yellow fever, and the bubonic plague was being stamped out--that was
the question at issue.
That was, after all, the supreme question.
Now, every one was beginning--only beginning--to understand that recent
scientific discovery had made this wonderful thing possible.
Yellow fever had been destroyed upon the Isthmus of Panama. Small-pox
which ravaged countries in the past, was no more than a very occasional
and restricted epidemic now. Soon--in all human probability--tuberculosis
and cancer would be conquered.
The remedy for the disease of Inebriety was at hand.
Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers had enormous power in regard
to other diseases. People who disregarded their orders and so spread
disease were fined and imprisoned.
It was penal to do so.
In order that this beneficent state of things should come about, the
scientists had fought valiantly against many fetishes. They had fought
for years, and with the spread of knowledge they had conquered.
Now the biggest Fetish of all was tottering on its foolish throne. The
last idol in the temples of Dagon, the houses of Rimmon and the sacred
groves was attacked.
The great "Procreation Fetish" remained.
Were drunkards to be allowed to have children without State
restriction, or were they not?
That was the question which some of the acutest and most altruistic
minds of the English speaking races were about to meet and discuss this
afternoon.
* * * * *
Dr. Morton Sims drove down to the Edward Hall a little after two
o'clock.
The important conference was to begin at three, but the doctor had
various matters to arrange first and he was in a slightly nervous and
depressed state.
It was a grey day and a sharp East wind was blowing. People in the
streets wore furs and heavy coats; London seemed excessively cheerless.
It was but rarely that Morton Sims felt as he did as this moment. But
the day, or probably (as he thought) a recent spell of over-work, took
the pith out of him.
"It is difficult to avoid doing too much--for a man in my position," he
thought. "Life is so short and there is such an infinity of work. Oh,
that I could see England in a fair way to become sober before I die!
Still I must go on hard. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.'"
He went at once to a large and comfortable room adjoining the platform
of the big hall and communicating with it by a few steps and two doors,
one of red baize. It was used as the artists' room when concerts were
given, as a committee room now.
A bright fire burned upon the hearth, round which were several padded
armchairs, and over the mantel-shelf was an excellent portrait in oils
of King Edward the Seventh.
The Doctor took up a printed agenda of the meeting from a table. Bishop
Moultrie was to be in the chair and the list of names beneath his was
in the highest degree influential and representative. There were two or
three peers--not figure heads but men who had done and were doing great
work in the world. Mr. Justice Harley--Sir Edward Harley on the
programme--would be there. Lady Harold Buckingham, than whose name none
was more honoured throughout the Empire for her work in the cause of
Temperance, several leading medical men, and--Mrs. Julia Daly, who had
once more crossed the Atlantic and had arrived the night before at the
Savoy. Edith Morton Sims, who was lecturing in the North of England,
could not be present to-day, but she was returning to town at the end
of the week, when Mrs. Daly was to leave the hotel and once more take
up her residence with Morton Sims and his sister.
In a few minutes there was a knock at the door. The doctor answered, it
was opened by a commissionaire, and Julia Daly came in.
Morton Sims took her two hands and held them, his face alight with
pleasure and greeting.
"This is good," he said fervently. "I have waited for this hour. I
cannot say how glad I am to see you, Julia. You have heard from Edith?"
"The dear girl! Yes. There was a letter waiting for me at the Savoy
when I arrived last night. I am to come to you both on Saturday."
"Yes. It will be so jolly, just like old times. Now let me congratulate
you a thousand times on your great work in America. Every one over here
has been reading of your interview with the President. It was a great
stroke. And he really is interested?"
"Immensely. It is genuine. He was most kind and there is no doubt but
that he will be heart and soul with us in the future. The campaign is
spreading everywhere. And, most significant of all, _we are capturing
the prohibitionists_."
"Ah! that will mean everything."
"Everything, because they are the most earnest workers of all. But they
have seen that Prohibition has proved itself an impossibility. They
have failed despite their whole-hearted and worthy endeavours.
Naturally they have become disheartened. But they are beginning to see
the truth of our proposal. The scientific method is gaining ground as
they realise it more and more. In a year or two those states which
legislated Prohibition, will legislate in another way and penalise the
begetting of children by known drunkards. That seems to me certain.
After that the whole land may, I pray God, follow suit."
She had taken off her heavy sable coat and was sitting in a chair by
the fireside. Informed with deep feeling and that continuous spring of
hope and confidence which gave her so much of her power, the deep
contralto rang like a bell in the room.
Morton Sims leant against the mantel-shelf and looked down on his
friend. The face was beautiful and inspired. It represented the very
flower of intellect and patriotism, breadth, purity, strength. "Ah!" he
thought, "the figure of Britannia upon our coins and in our symbolic
pictures, or the Latin Dame of Liberty with the Phrygian cap, is not so
much England or France as this woman is America, the soul of the West
in all its power and beauty. . . ."
His reverie was broken in upon by her voice, not ringing with
enthusiasm now, but sad and purely womanly.
"Tell me," she was saying, "have you heard or found out anything of
Gilbert Lothian, the poet?"
Morton Sims shook his head.
"It remains an impenetrable mystery," he said. "No one knows anything."
Tears came into Mrs. Daly's eyes. "I loved that woman," she said. "I
loved Mary Lothian. A clearer, more transparent soul never joined the
saints in Paradise. Among the many, many things for which I have to
thank you, there is nothing I have valued more than the letter from you
which sent me to her at Nice. Mary Lothian was the sweetest woman I
have ever met, or ever shall meet. Sometimes God puts such women into
the world for examples. Her death grieved me more than I can say."
"It was very sudden."
"Terribly. We travelled home together. She was leaving her dying sister
in the deepest sadness. But she was going home full of holy
determination to save her husband. I never met any woman who loved a
man more than Mary Lothian loved Gilbert Lothian. What a wonderful man
he must have been, might have been, if the Disease had not ruined him.
I think his wife would have saved him had she lived. He is alive, I
suppose?"
"It is impossible to say. I should say not. All that is known is as
follows. A fortnight or so after his wife's funeral, Lothian, then in a
very dangerous state, travelled to London. He was paying a call at some
house in the West End when Delirium Tremens overtook him at last. He
was taken to the Kensington Hospital. Most cases of delirium tremens
recover but it was thought that this was beyond hope. However, as soon
as it was known who he was, some of the best men in town were called. I
understand it was touch and go. The case presented unusual symptoms.
There was something behind it which baffled treatment for a time."
"But he _was_ cured?"
"Yes, they pulled him through somehow. Then he disappeared. The house
in Norfolk and its contents were sold through a solicitor. A man that
Lothian had, a decent enough servant and very much attached to his
master, has been pensioned for life--an annuity, I think. He may know
something. The general opinion in the village is that he does know
something--I have kept on my house in Mortland Royal, you must know.
But this Tumpany is as tight as wax. And that's all."
"He has published nothing?"
"Not a line of any sort whatever. I was dining with Amberley, the
celebrated publisher, the other day. He published the two or three
books of poems that made Lothian famous. But he has heard nothing. He
even told me that there is a considerable sum due to Lothian which
remains unclaimed. Of course Lothian is well off in other ways. But
stay, though, I did hear a rumour!"
"And what was that?"
"Well, I dined at Amberley's house--they have a famous dining-room you
must know, where every one has been, and it's an experience. There was
a party after dinner, and I was introduced to a man called
Toftrees--he's a popular novelist and a great person in his own way I
believe."
Julia Daly nodded. She was intensely interested.
"I know the name," she said. "Go on."
"Well, this fellow Toftrees, who seems a decent sort of man, told me
that he believed that Gilbert Lothian was killing himself with absinthe
and brandy in Paris. Some one had seen him in Maxim's or some such
place, a dreadful sight. This was three or four months ago, so, if it's
true, the poor fellow must be dead by now."
"Requiescat," Julia Daly said reverently. "But I should have liked to
have known that his dear wife's prayers in Heaven had saved him here."
Morton Sims did not answer and there was a silence between them for a
minute or two.
The doctor was remembering a dreadful scene in the North London Prison.
. . . "If Gilbert Lothian still lived he must look like that awful
figure in the condemned cell had looked--like his insane half-brother,
the cunning murderer--" Morton Sims shuddered and his eyes became fixed
in thought.
He had told no living soul of what he had learned that night. He never
would tell any one. But it all came back to him with extreme vividness
as he gazed into the fire.
Some memory-cell in his brain, long dormant and inactive, was now
secreting thought with great rapidity, and, with these dark
memories--it was as though some curtain had suddenly been withdrawn
from a window unveiling the sombre picture of a storm--something new
and more horrible still started into his mind. It passed through and
vanished in a flash. His will-power beat it down and strangled it
almost ere it was born.
But it left his face pale and his throat rather dry.
It was now twenty minutes to three, as the square marble clock upon the
mantel showed, and immediately, before Julia Daly and Morton Sims spoke
again, two people came into the room.
Both were clergymen.
First came Bishop Moultrie. He was a large corpulent man with a big red
face. Heavy eyebrows of black shaded eyes of a much lighter tint, a
kind of blue green. The eyes generally twinkled with good-humour and
happiness, the wide, genial mouth was vivid with life and pleasant
tolerance, as a rule.
A fine strong, forthright man with a kindly personality.
Morton Sims stepped up to him. "My dear William," he said, shaking him
warmly by the hand. "So here you are. Let me introduce you to Mrs.
Daly. Julia, let me introduce the Bishop to you. You both know of each
other very well. You have both wanted to meet for a long time."
The Bishop bowed to Mrs. Daly and both she and the doctor saw at once
that something was disturbing him. The face only held the promise and
possibility of geniality. It was anxious, and stern with some inward
thought; very distressed and anxious.
And when a large, fleshy, kindly face wears this expression, it is most
marked.
"Please excuse me," the Bishop said to Julia Daly. "I have indeed
looked forward to the moment of meeting you. But something has
occurred, Mrs. Daly, which occupies my thoughts, something very
unusual. . . ."
Both Morton Sims--who knew his old friend so well--and Julia Daly--who
knew so much of the Bishop by repute--looked at him with surprise upon
their faces and waited to hear more.
The Bishop turned round to where the second Priest was standing by the
door.
"This is Father Joseph Edward," he said, "Abbot of the Monastery upon
the Lizard Promontory in Cornwall. He has come with me this afternoon
upon a special mission."
The newcomer was a slight, dark-visaged man who wore a black cape over
his cassock, and a soft clerical hat. He seemed absolutely
undistinguished, but the announcement of his name thrilled the man and
woman by the fire.
The Priest bowed slightly. There was little or no expression to be
discerned upon his face.
But the others in the room knew who he was at once.
Father Joseph Edward was a hidden force in the Church or England. He
was a peer's son who had flashed out at Oxford, fifteen years before,
as one of the cleverest, wildest, most brilliant and devil-may-care
undergraduates who had ever been at "The House." Both by reason of
wealth and position, but also by considered action, he had escaped
authoritative condemnation and had been allowed to take his first in
Lit. Hum.
But, as every one knew at his time Adrian Rathlone had been one of the
wildest, wealthiest and wickedest young men of his generation.
And then, as all the world heard, Adrian Rathlone had taken Holy
Orders. He had worked in the East End of London for a time, and had
then founded his Cornish Monastery by permission of the Chapter and
Bishop of Truro.
From the far west of England, where She stretches out her granite foot
to spurn the onslaught of the Atlantic, it had become known that broken
and contrite hearts might leave London and life, to seek, and find
Peace upon the purple moors of the West.
"But now, John," the Bishop said to Morton Sims, "I want to tell you
something. I want to explain a very important alteration in the agenda.
. . ."
There was no doubt about it whatever, the Bishop's usually calm and
suave voice was definitely disturbed.
He and Morton Sims bent over the table together looking at the printed
paper.
The Bishop had a fat gold pencil case in his hand and was pointing to
names upon the programme.
Mrs. Daly, from her seat by the fire, watched her friend, Morton Sims,
with _his_ friend, William Denisthorpe Moultrie, Father in God, with
immense interest. She was interested extremely in the Bishop's obvious
perturbation, but even more so to see these two celebrated men standing
together and calling each other by their Christian names like boys. She
knew that they had been at Harrow and Oxford together, she knew that
despite their disagreements upon many points they had always been fast
friends.
"What boys nice men are after all," she thought with a slight
sympathetic contraction of her throat. "'William'! 'John'!--Our men in
America are not very often like that--but what, what is the Bishop
saying?"
Her face became almost rigid with attention as she caught a certain
name. Even as she did so the Bishop spoke in an undertone to Morton
Sims, and then glanced slightly in her direction with a hint of a
question in his eyes.
"Mrs. Daly, William," Morton Sims said, "is on the Committee. She is
one of my greatest friends and, perhaps, the greatest friend Edith has
in the world. She was also a great friend of Mrs. Lothian and knew her
well. You need not have the slightest hesitation in saying anything you
wish before her."
Julia Daly rose from her seat, her heart was beating strangely.
"What is this?" she said in her gentle, but almost regal way. "Why, my
lord, the doctor and I were only talking of Gilbert Lothian and his
saintly wife a moment or two ago. Have you news of the poet?"
The Bishop, still with his troubled, anxious face, turned to her with a
faint smile. "I did not know, Mrs. Daly," he said, "that you took any
interest in Lothian, but yes, I have news."
"Then you can solve the mystery?" Julia Daly said.
The Bishop sighed. "If you mean," he said, "why Mr. Lothian has
disappeared from the world for a year, I can at least tell you what he
has been doing. John here tells me that you have known all about him,
so that I am violating no confidences. After his wife's death, poor
Lothian became very seriously ill in consequence of his excesses. He
was cured eventually, but one night--it was late at night in
Norfolk--some one, quite unlike the Gilbert Lothian I had known, came
to my house. It was like a ghost coming. He told me many strange and
terrible things, and hinted that he could have told me more, though I
forbade him. With every appearance of contrition, with his face
streaming with tears--ah, if ever during my career as a Priest I have
seen a broken and a contrite heart I saw it then--he wished, he told
me, to work out his soul's release, to go away from the world utterly
and to fight the Fiend Alcohol. He would go into no home, would submit
to no legal restraint. He wished to fight the devil that possessed him
with no other aids than spiritual ones. I sent him to Father Joseph
Edward."
"And he has cured himself?" the American lady said in a tone which so
rang and vibrated through the Committee room, with eyes in which such
gladness was dawning, that the three men there looked at her as if they
had seen a vision.
The monkish-looking clergyman replied.
"Quite cured," he said gravely. "He is saved in body and saved in soul.
You say his wife, Madam, was a Saint: I think, Madam, that our friend
is not very far from it now."
He stopped suddenly, almost jerkily, and his dark, somewhat saturnine
face became watchful and with a certain fear in it.
What all this might mean John Morton Sims was at a loss to understand.
That it meant something, something very out of the ordinary, he was
very well aware. William Moultrie was not himself--that was very evident.
And he had brought this odd, mediæval parson with him for some special
reason. Morton Sims was not very sympathetic toward the Middle Age.
Spoken to-day the word "Abbot" or "Father"--used ecclesiastically--always
affected him with slight disgust.
Nevertheless, he nodded to the Bishop and turned to Mrs. Daly.
"Gilbert Lothian is coming here during this afternoon," he said. "The
Bishop has specially asked me to arrange that he shall speak during the
Conference. It seems he has come specially from Mullion in Cornwall to
be present this afternoon. Father Joseph Edward has brought him. It
seems that he has something important to say."
For some reason or other, what it was the doctor could not have said,
Julia Daly seemed strangely excited at the news.
"Such testimony as his," she said, "coming from such a man as that,
will be a wonderful experience. In fact I do not know that there will
ever have been anything like it."
Morton Sims had not quite realised this aspect of the question. He had
wondered, when Moultrie had insisted upon putting Lothian's name down
as the third speaker during the afternoon. Moultrie was perfectly
within his rights, of course, as Chairman, but it seemed rather a
drastic thing to do. It was a disturbance of settled order, and the
scientific mind unconsciously resented it. Now, however, the scientific
mind realised the truth of what Julia Daly had said. Of course, if
Gilbert Lothian was really going to make a confession, and obviously
that was what he was coming here for under the charge of this
dark-visaged "Abbot"--then indeed it would be extremely valuable.
Thousands of people who had been "converted" and cured from drunkenness
had "given their experiences" upon temperance platforms, but they had
invariably been people of the lower classes. While their evidence as to
the reality of their conversion--their change--was valuable and real,
they were incapable one and all of giving any details of value to the
student and psychologist.
"Yes!" Morton Sims said suddenly, "if Mr. Lothian is going to speak,
then we shall gain very much from what he says."
But he noticed that the Bishop's face did not become less troubled and
anxious than before. He saw also that the silent clergyman sitting by
the opposite wall showed no sympathetic interest in his point of view.
He himself began to experience again that sense of uneasiness and
depression which he had experienced all day, and especially during his
drive to the Edward Hall, but which had been temporarily dispelled by
the arrival of Mrs. Daly.
In a minute or two, however, great people began to arrive in large
numbers. The Bishop, Morton Sims and Mrs. Daly were shaking hands and
talking continuously. As for Morton Sims, he had no time to think any
more about the somewhat untoward incidents in the Committee room.
The Meeting began.
The Edward Hall is a very large building with galleries and boxes. The
galleries now, by a clever device, were all hung round with dark
curtains. This made the hall appear much smaller and prevented the
sparseness of the audience having a depressing effect upon those who
addressed it.
Only some three hundred and fifty people attended this Conference. The
general public were not asked. Admission was by invitation. The three
hundred and fifty people who had come were, however, the very pick and
élite of those interested in the Temperance cause and instrumental in
forwarding it from their various standpoints.
Bishop Moultrie made a few introductory remarks. Then he introduced Sir
Edward Harley, the Judge. The Judge was a small keen-faced man. Without
his frame of horse hair and robe of scarlet he at first appeared
insignificant and without personality. But that impression was
dispelled directly he began to speak.
The quiet, keen, incisive voice, so precise and scholarly of phrase, so
absolutely germane to the thought, and so illuminating of it, held some
of the keenest minds in England as with a spell for twenty minutes.
Mr. Justice Harley advocated penal restriction upon the multiplication
of drunkards in the most whole-hearted way. He did not go into the
arguments for and against the proposed measure, but he gave
illustrations from his own experience as to its absolute necessity and
value.
He mentioned one case in which he had been personally concerned which
intensely interested his audience.
It was that of a murderer. The man had murdered his wife under
circumstances of callous cunning. In all other respects the murderer
had lived a hard-working and blameless life. He had become infatuated
with another woman, but the crime, which had taken nearly a month in
execution, had been committed entirely under the influence of alcohol.
"Under the influence of that terrible amnesic dream-phase which our
medical friends tell us of," the Judge said. "As was my duty as an
officer of the law I sent that man to his death. Under existing
conditions of society I think that what I was compelled to do was the
best thing that could have been done. But I may say to you, my lord, my
lords, ladies and gentlemen that it was not without a bitter personal
shrinking that I sent that poor man to pay the penalty of his crime.
The mournful bell which Dr. Archdall Reed has tolled is his 'Study in
Heredity' was sounding in my ears as I did so. That is one of the
reasons why I am here this afternoon to support the only movement which
seems to have within it the germ of public freedom from the devastating
disease of alcoholism."
The Judge concluded and sat down in his seat.
Bishop Moultrie rose and introduced the next speaker with a few
prefatory remarks. Morton Sims who was sitting next Sir Edward
whispered in his ear.
"May I ask, Sir Edward," he said, "if you were referring just now to
Hancock, the Hackney murderer?"
The little Judge nodded.
"Yes," he whispered, "but how did you know, Sims?"
"Oh, I knew all about him before his condemnation," the doctor replied.
"In fact I took a special interest in him. I was with him the night
before his execution and I assisted at the autopsy the next day."
The Judge gave a keen glance at his friend and nodded.
The Bishop in the Chair now read a few brief statements as to the
progress of the work that was being done. Lady Harold Buckingham was
down to speak next. She sat on the Bishop's left hand, and it was
obvious to the audience that she understood his next remark.
"You all have the printed programme in your hands," said the Bishop,
"and from it you will see that Lady Harold is set down to address you
next. But I have--" his voice changed a little and became uncertain and
had a curious note of apprehension in it--"I have to ask you to give
your attention to another speaker, whose wish to address the Meeting
has only recently been conveyed to me, but whose right to do so is, in
my judgment, indubitable. He has, I understand from Father Joseph who
has brought him here, something to say to us of great importance."
There was a low murmur and rustle among the audience, as well as among
the semicircle of people on the dais.
The name of Father Joseph Edward attracted instant attention. Every one
knew all about him; the slight uneasiness on the Bishop's face had not
been unremarked. They all felt that something unusual and stimulating
was imminent.
"It is Mr. Gilbert Lothian," the Bishop went on, "who wishes to address
you. His name will be familiar to every one here. I do not know, and
have not the least idea, as to what Mr. Lothian is about to say. All I
know is that he is most anxious to speak this afternoon, and, even at
this late hour pressure has been put upon me to alter the programme in
this regard, which it is impossible for me to resist."
Now every one in the hall knew that some sensation was impending.
People nodded and whispered; people whispered and nodded. There was
almost an apprehension in the air.
Why had this poet risen from the tomb as it were--this poet whose utter
disappearance from social and literary life had been a three weeks'
wonder--this poet whom everybody thought was dead, who, in his own
personality, had become but a faint name to those who still read and
were comforted by his poems.
Very many of that distinguished company had met Gilbert Lothian.
Nobody had known him well. His appearances in London society had been
fugitive and he had shown no desire to enter into the great world. But
still the best people had nearly all met him once or twice, and in the
minds of most of them, especially the women, there was a not ungrateful
memory of a man who talked well, had quite obviously no axe to grind,
no personal effort to further, who was only himself and pleased to be
where he was.
They were all talking to each other in low voices, wondering what the
scandal was, wondering why Gilbert Lothian had disappeared, waked up to
the fact of him, when Lothian himself came upon the platform.
Mr. Justice Harley vacated his seat and took the next chair, while
Lothian sat down on the right of the Chairman.
Some people noticed--but those were only a very few--that the dark
figure of a clergyman in a monastic cape and cassock came upon the
platform at the same time and sat down in the far background.
Afterwards, everybody said that they had noticed the entrance of Father
Joseph Edward and wondered at it. As a matter of fact hardly anybody
did.
The Bishop rose and placed his hands upon the little table before him.
He coughed. His voice was not quite as adequate as usual.
This is what he said. "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, whose name all of you must
know and whose works I am sure most of you, like myself, have in the
most grateful remembrance, desires to address you."
That was all the Bishop said--he made a motion with his hand and
Gilbert Lothian rose from his chair and took two steps to the front of
the platform.
Those present saw a young man of medium height, neither fat nor slim,
and with a very beautiful face. It was pale but the contour was
perfect. Certainly it was very pale, but the eyes were bright and the
æsthetic look and personality of the poet fitted in very well with what
people had known of him in the past.
Only Morton Sims, who was sitting within arm's reach of Lothian--and
perhaps half a dozen other people who knew rather more than the
rest--were startled at what seemed to be a transformation.
As Lothian began to speak Father Joseph Edward glided from his seat,
and leant over the back of Dr. Morton Sims' chair. This was a rather
extraordinary proceeding and at any other time it would have been
immediately remarked upon.
As it was, the first words which Gilbert Lothian spoke held the
audience so immediately that they forgot, or did not see the watchful
waiting "Abbot of Mullion."
In the first place Gilbert Lothian was perfectly self-possessed. He was
so self-possessed that his initial sentence created a sensation.
His way and manner were absolutely different from the ordinary
speaker--however self-possessed he may be. The poet's self-possession
had a quality of rigidity and automatism which thrilled every one. Yet,
it was not an automaton which spoke in the clear, vibrating voice that
Gilbert Lothian used.
The voice was terrible in its appeal--even in the first sentence of the
memorable speech. It was the sense of a personality standing in bonds,
impelled and controlled by something outside it and above it--it was
this that hushed all movement and murmur, that focussed all eyes as the
poet began.
The opening words of the poet were absolutely strange and
unconventional, but spoken quite simply and in very short sentences.
In the first instance it had been decided that reporters were not to be
admitted to this Conference. Eventually that decision had been altered
and a gentleman representing the principal Press Agency, together with
a couple of assistants, sat at a small table just below the platform.
It is from the shorthand transcript of the Press Agent and his
colleagues that the few words Gilbert Lothian spoke have been arranged
and set down here.
Those who were present have read the words over and over again.
They have remembered the gusts of emotion, of fear, of gladness--all
wafted from the wings of tragedy, and perhaps illuminated by the light
of Heaven, that passed through the Edward Hall on this afternoon.
. . . He was speaking.
"I have only a very few words to say. I want what I say to remain in
your minds. I am speaking to you, as I am speaking, for that reason. I
beg and pray that this will be of help. You see--" he made an
infinitely pathetic gesture of his hands and a wan smile came upon his
face--"You see you will be able to use my confession for the sake of
others. That is the reason----"
Here Lothian stopped. His face became whiter than ever. His hand went
up to his throat as if there was some obstruction there.
Bishop Moultrie handed him a glass of water. He took it, with a hand
that trembled exceedingly. He drank a little but spilt more than he
drank.
The black clothed figure of the Priest half rose and took the glass
from the poet. All the people there sat very still. Some of them saw
the Priest hold up something before the speaker's face--a little bronze
something. A Crucifix.
The Bishop covered his face with his hands and never looked up again.
Gilbert went on. "You have come here," he said, "to make a combined
effort to kill alcoholism. I have come to show you in one single
instance what alcoholism means."
Some one right at the back of the hall gave a loud hysterical sob.
The speaker trembled, recovered himself by a great effort and went on.
"I had everything;" he said with difficulty, "God gave me everything,
almost. I had money to live in comfort; I achieved a certain sort of
fame; my life, my private life, was surrounded by the most angelic and
loving care."
His figure swayed, his voice fainted into a whisper.
Dr. Morton Sims had now covered his face with his hands.
Mrs. Julia Daly was staring at the speaker. Her eyes were just
interrogation. There was no horror upon her face. Her lips were parted.
The man continued.
"Drink," he said, "began in me, caught me up, twisted me, destroyed me.
The terrible False Ego, which many of you must know of, entered into my
mind, dominated, and destroyed it.
"I was possessed of a devil. All decent thoughts, all the natural
happinesses of my station, all the gifts and pleasant outlooks upon
life which God had given went, not gradually, but swiftly away.
Something that was not myself came into me and made me move, and walk,
and talk as a minion of hell.
"I do not know what measure of responsibility remained to me when I did
what I did. But this I know, that I have been and am the blackest, most
hideous criminal that lives to-day."
The man's voice was trembling dreadfully now, quite unconsciously his
left hand was gripping the shoulder of the Abbot of Mullion. His eyes
blazed, his voice was so forlorn, so hopeless and poignant that there
was not a sound among the several hundreds there.
"My lord,--" he turned to the Bishop with the very slightest
inclination of his head--"ladies and gentlemen, I killed my wife.
"My wife--" The Bishop had risen from his chair and Father Joseph
Edward was supporting the swaying figure with the pale, earnest
face.--"My wife loved me, and kept me and held me and watched over me
as few men's wives have ever done. I stole poison with which to kill
her. I stole poison from, from you, doctor!"
He turned to Dr. Morton Sims and the doctor sat in his seat as if
frozen to it by fear.
"Yes! I stole it from you! You were away in Paris. You had been making
experiments. In the cupboard in the laboratory which you had taken from
old Admiral Custance, I knew that there were phials of organic poisons.
My wife died of diphtheria. She died of it because I had robbed
your bottles--I did so and took the poison home and arranged that
Mary. . . ."
There was a loud murmur in the body of the hall. A loud murmur stabbed
with two or three faint shrieks from women.
The Bishop again leant over the table with his hands over his face.
Morton Sims was upon his feet. His hands were on Lothian's arm, his
voice was pleading.
"No! no!" he stammered. "You mustn't say these things. You, you----"
Gilbert Lothian looked into the face of his old friend for a second.
Then he brushed his arm away and came right to the edge of the
platform.
As he spoke once more he did not seem like any quite human person.
His face was dead white, his hands fell at his sides--only his eyes
were awake and his voice was vibrant.
"I am a murderer. I killed and murdered with cunning, long-continued
thought, the most sweet and saintly woman that I have ever known. She
was my wife. Why I did this I need not say. You can all make in your
minds and formulate the picture of a poisoned man lusting after a
strange woman.
"But I did this. I did this thing--you shall hear it and it shall
reverberate in your minds. I am a murderer. I say it quite calmly,
waiting for the inevitable result, and I tell you that Alcohol, and
that Alcohol alone has made me what I am.
"This, too, I must say. Disease, or demoniacal possession, as it may
be, I have emerged from both. I have held God's lamp to my breast.
"There is only one cure for Alcoholism. There is only one influence
that can come and catch up and surround and help and comfort the sodden
man.
"That is the influence of the Holy Spirit."
As he concluded there was a loud uproar in the Edward Hall.
Upon the platform the well-known people there were gazing at him,
surrounding him, saying, muttering this and that.
The people in the body of the hall had risen in horrified groups and
were stretching out their hands towards the platform.
The Meeting which had promised so much in the Cause of Temperance was
now totally dissolved--as far as its agenda went.
The people dispersed very gradually, talking among themselves in low
and horror-struck voices.
It was now a few minutes before five o'clock.
In the Committee room--where the bright fire was still burning--Gilbert
Lothian remained.
The Judge, the several peers, had hurried through without a glance at
the man sitting by the fireside.
Lady Harold Buckingham, as she went through, had stopped, bowed, and
held out her hand.
She had been astonished that Gilbert Lothian had risen, taken her hand
and spoken to her in quite the ordinary fashion of society.
She too had gone.
The Bishop had shaken Gilbert Lothian by the hand and nodded at him as
who should say, "Now we understand each other--Good-bye."
Only Morton Sims, Julia Daly and the Priest had waited.
They had not to wait long.
There came a loud and authoritative knock at the door, within an hour
of the breaking up of the Conference.
Gilbert Lothian rose, as a pleasant-looking man in dark clothes with a
heavy moustache entered the room.
"Mr. Gilbert Lothian, I think," the pleasant-looking man said, staring
immediately at the poet.
Gilbert made a slight inclination of his head.
The pleasant-looking man pulled a paper out of his pocket and read
something.
Gilbert bowed again.
"It is only a short distance, Mr. Lothian," said the pleasant-looking
man cheerfully, "and I am sure you will go with me perfectly quietly."
As he said it he gave a half jerk of his head towards the corridor
where, quite obviously, satellites were waiting.
Gilbert Lothian put out his hands. One wrist was crossed over the
other. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that I shall come with you
quietly, so please put the manacles upon my wrists."
The pleasant gentleman did so. Father Joseph Edward followed the
pleasant gentleman and Gilbert Lothian.
As the little cortège turned out of the Committee room, Julia Daly
turned to Dr. Morton Sims.
Her face was radiant. "Oh," she said, "at last I know!"
"You know?" he said, horror still struggling within him, much as he
would have wished to control it, "you know nothing, Julia! You do not
know that the dreadful power of heredity has repeated itself within a
circumscribed pattern. You do not know that this man, Lothian, has
done--in his own degree and in his own way--just what a bastard brother
of his did two years ago. The man who was begotten by Gilbert Lothian's
father killed his wife. Gilbert Lothian has done so too."
The woman put her hands upon the other's shoulders and looked squarely
into his face.
"Oh, John," she said--it was the first time she had ever called him by
his Christian name--"Oh, John, be blind no more. This afternoon our
Cause has been given an Impetus such as it has never had before.
"Just think how splendidly Gilbert Lothian is going to his shameful
death."
"Oh, it won't be death. We shall make interest and it will be penal
servitude for life."
Julia Daly made a slight motion of her hands.
"As you will," she said, "and as you wish. I think he would prefer
death. But if he is to endure a longer punishment, that also will bring
him nearer, and nearer, and nearer to his Mary."
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been
retained as printed.