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"Certainly, I will," Sims answered, looking at the man with a keen, experienced eye which made him shift uneasily upon his feet. "Wait here for a moment."
He hurried back into the library and put lint, cotton-wool and a pair of blunt-nosed scissors into a hand-bag. Then, calling for a candle and lighting it, he went out into the stable yard and up to the room above the big barn, emerging in a minute or two with a bottle of antiseptic lotion.
These were all the preparations he could make until he knew more. The thing might be serious or it might be little or nothing. Fortunately Lothian's house was not five minutes' walk from the "Haven." If instruments were required he could fetch them in a very short time.
As he left the house with Tumpany, he noticed that the man lurched upon the step. Quite obviously he was half intoxicated.
With a cunning born of long experience of inebriate men, the doctor affected a complete unconsciousness of what he had discovered. If he put the man upon his guard he would get nothing out of him, that was quite certain.
"He's made a direct statement so far," the doctor thought. "He's only on the border-land of intoxication. For as long as he thinks I have noticed nothing he will be coherent. Directly he realises that I have spotted his state he'll become confused and ashamed and he won't be able to tell me anything."
"This is very unfortunate," he said in a smooth and confidential voice. "I do hope it is nothing very serious. Of course I know your master very well by name."
"Yessir," Tumpany answered thickly, but with a perceptible note of pleasure in his voice. "Yessir, I should say Master is one of the best shots in Norfolk. You'd have heard of him, of course."
"But how did it happen?"
"This 'ere accident, sir?" said Tumpany rather vaguely, his mind obviously running upon his master's achievements among the wild geese of the marshes.
"Yes, the accident," the doctor answered in his smooth, kindly voice – though it would have given him great relief to have boxed the ears of his beery guide.
"I was driving master home, sir. It's not our trap. We don't keep one. We hires in the village, but the man as the trap belongs to couldn't go. So I drove, sir."
Movement had stirred up the fumes of alcohol in this barrel! Oh, the interminable repetitions, the horrid incapacity for getting to the point of men who were drunk! Lives of the utmost value had been lost by fools like this – great events in the history of the world had turned upon an extra pot of beer! But patience, patience!
"Yes, you drove, and the horse stumbled. Did the horse come right down?"
"I'm not much of a whip, sir, as you may say, though I know about ordinary driving. They say that a sailor-man is no good with a horse. But that isn't true."
Yet despite the irritation of his mind, the necessity for absolute self-control, the expert found time to make a note of this further instance of the intolerable egotism that alcohol induces in its slaves.
"But I expect you drove very well, indeed! Then the horse did not come right down!"
Just at the right moment, carefully calculated to have its effect, the doctor's voice became sharper and had a ring of command in it.
There was an instant response.
"No, sir. The cob only stumbled. But master was sitting loose like. He fell out like a log, sir. He made a noise like a piece of luggage falling."
"Oh! Did he fall on his head?"
"Yessir. But he had a stiff felt hat on. I got help and as we carried him into the house he was bleeding awful."
"Curious that he should fall like that. Was he, well, was he quite himself should you think?"
It was a bow drawn at a venture, and it provoked a reply that instantly told Morton Sims what he wanted to know.
"Oh, yessir! By all means, sir! Most cert'nly! Master was as sober as a judge, sir!"
"Of course," Sims replied in a surprised tone of voice. "I thought that he might have been tired by the journey from London."
.. So it was true then! Lothian was drunk. The thing was obvious. But this was a good and loyal fellow, not to give his master away.
Morton Sims liked that. He made a note that poor beery Tumpany should have half a sovereign on the morrow, when he was sober. Then the two men turned in through the gates of the Old House.
The front door was wide open to the night. The light which flowed out from the tall lamp upon an oak table in the hall cut into the black velvet of the drive with a sharply defined wedge of orange-yellow.
There was something ominous in this wide-set door of a frightened house.
The doctor walked straight into the hall, a small old-fashioned place panelled in white.
To the right another door stood open. In the doorway stood a maid-servant with a frightened face. Beyond her, through the archway of the door, showed the section of a singularly beautiful room.
The maid started. "Oh, you've come, sir!" she said – "in here please, sir."
The doctor followed the girl into the lit room.
This is what he saw: —
A room with the walls covered with canvas of a delicate oat-meal colour up to the height of seven feet. Above this a moulded beading of wood which had been painted vermilion – the veritable post-box red. Above this again a frieze of pure white paper. At set intervals upon the canvas were brilliant colour-prints in thin gold frames. The room was lit with many candles in tall holders of silver.
At one side of it was a table spread for supper, gleaming with delicate napery and cut glass, peaches in a bowl of red earthenware, ruby-coloured wine in a jug of German glass with a lid of pewter shaped like a snake's head.
At the other side of the room was a huge Chesterfield couch, upholstered in broad stripes of black and olive linen.
The still figure of a man in a tweed suit lay upon the couch. There was blood upon his face and clotted rust-like stains upon his loosened collar. A washing-bowl of stained water stood upon the green carpet.
Upon a chair, by the head of the couch a tall woman with shining yellow hair was sitting. She wore a low-cut evening dress of black, pearls were about the white column of her throat, a dragon fly of emeralds set in aluminium sparkled in her hair, and upon her wrists were heavy Moorish bracelets of oxydised silver studded with the bird's egg blue of the turquoise stone.
For an instant, not of the time but of thought, the doctor was startled.
Then, as the stately and beautiful woman rose to meet him, he understood.
She had decked herself, adorned her fair body with all the braveries she had so that she might be lovely and acceptable to her husband's eyes as he came home to her. Came home to her .. like this!
Morton Sims had shaken the slim hand, murmured some words of condolence, and hastened to the motionless figure upon the couch.
His deft fingers were feeling, pressing, touching with a wonderful instinct, the skull beneath the tumbled masses of blood-clotted hair.
Nothing there, scalp wounds merely. Arms, legs – yes, these were uninjured too. The collar-bone was intact under the flesh that cushioned it. The skin of the left wrist was lacerated and bruised – Lothian, of course, had been sitting on the left side of the driver when he fell like a log from the gig – but the bones of the hand and arm were normal. There was not a single symptom of brain concussion. The deep gurgling breathing, the alarming snore-like sound that came from between the curiously pure and clear-cut lips, meant one thing only.
Morton Sims stood up.
Mary Lothian was waiting. There was an agony of expectation in her eyes.
"Not the least reason to be alarmed," said the doctor. "Some nasty cuts in the scalp, that is all."
She gave a deep sigh, a momentary shudder, and then her face became calm.
"It is so kind of you to come, Doctor," she said. – "Then that deep spasmodic breathing – he has not really hurt his head?"
"Not in the least as far as I can say, and I am fairly certain. We must get him up to bed. Then I can cut away the hair and bandage the wounds. I must take his temperature also. It's possible – just possible that the shock may have unpleasant results, though I really don't think it will. I will give him some bromide though, as soon as he wakes up."
"Ah!" she said. That was all, but it meant everything.
He knew that to this woman, at least, plain-speaking was best.
"Yes," he continued, "I am sorry to say that he is under the influence of alcohol. He has obviously been drinking heavily of late. I am a specialist in such matters and I can hardly be mistaken. There is just a possibility that this may bring on delirium tremens – only a possibility. He has never suffered from that?"
"Oh, never. Thank God never!" A sob came into her voice. Her face glowed with the love and tenderness within, the blue eyes seemed set in a soul rather than in a face, so beautiful had they become. "He's so good," she said with a wistful smile. "You can't think what a sweet boy he is when he doesn't drink any horrible things."
"Madam, I have read his poems. I know what an intellect and force lies drugged upon that sofa there. But we will soon have the flame burning clearly once more. It has been the work of my life to study these cases."
"Yes, I know, Doctor. I have heard so much of your work."
"Believe then that I am going to save this foolish young man, to give him back to you and to the world. A free man once more!"
"Free!" she whispered. "Oh, free from his vice!"
"Vice, Madam! I thought that all intelligent people understood by this time. For the last ten years I and my colleagues have been trying to make them understand! It is not a vice from which your husband suffers. It is a disease!"
He saw that she was pleased that he had spoken to her thus – though he was in some doubt if she appreciated what he had actually said.
But already the shuttle of an incipient friendship was beginning to dart between them.
Two high clear souls had met and recognised each other.
"Well, suppose we get him to bed, Doctor," she said. "We can carry him up between us. There are two maids, and Tumpany is quite sober enough to help."
"Quite!" the doctor answered. "I rather like that man upon a first meeting."
Mary laughed – a low contralto laugh. "She has a sense of humour too!" the doctor thought.
"Yes," she said, "Tumpany is a good fellow at heart. And, like most people who drink, when he is himself he is a quite delightful person."
She went out into the hall, tall and beautiful, the jewels in her hair and on her hands sparkling in the candlelight.
Morton Sims took one of the candles from the table and went up to the couch.
A shadow flickered over the face of the man who was lying there.
It was but momentary, but in that instant the watcher became cold. The silver of the candle-stick stung the palm of a hand which was suddenly wet.
This tranquil, lovely room with its soft yellow light, dissolved and shifted like a scene in a dream..
.. It was a raw winter's morning. The walls were the whitewashed walls of a prison mortuary. There was a smell of chloride of lime..
And lying upon a long zinc slab, with little grooves and depressions running down to the eye-hole of a drain, was a still figure whose face was a ghastly caricature of this face, hideously, revoltingly alike.
Mary Lothian, Tumpany, and two maid-servants came into the room, and with some difficulty the poet was carried upstairs.
He was hardly laid upon his bed when the rain came, falling in great sheets with a loud noise, cooling and purging the hot air.
CHAPTER III
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INEBRIATE, AND THE LETTER OF JEWELLED WORDS
"Verbosa ac grandis epistola venit a Capreis."– Juvenal.It was three days after the accident.
Gilbert lay in bed. His head was crossed with bandages, his wrist was wrapped with lint and a wet compress was upon the ankle of his strained left foot.
The windows of his bedroom were wide to the sun and air of the morning. There were two pleasant droning sounds. A bee was flying round the room, and down below in the garden Tumpany was mowing the strip of lawn before the house. Gilbert was very tranquil. He was wrapped round with a delicious peace of mind and body. He seemed to be floating in some warm ether of peace.
There was a table by the side of his bed. In a slender vase upon it was a single marguerite daisy with its full green stem, its rays of white – Chinese white in a box of colours – round the central gold. Close to his hand, upon the white turned down sheet was a copy of "John Inglesant." It was a book he loved and could always return to, and he had had his copy bound in most sumptuous purple.
Mary came into the bedroom.
She was carrying a little tray upon which there was a jug of milk and a bottle of soda water. There was a serene happiness upon her face. She had him now – the man she loved! He was hers, her own without possibility of interference. She was his Providence, he depended utterly upon her.
There are not many women like this in life, but there are some. Perhaps they were more frequent in the days of the past. Women who have no single thought of Self: women whose thoughts are always prayers: women in whose veins love takes the place of blood, whose hearts are cisterns of sweet charity, whose touch means healing, whose voices are like harps that sound forgiveness and devotion alone.
She put the tray upon the bedside table and sat down upon the bed, taking his unwounded hand in hers, stroking it with the soft cushions of her fingers, holding up its well-shaped plumpness as if it were a toy.
"There is something so comic about your hands, darling!" she said. "They are so nice and fat and jolly. They make me want to laugh!"
To Gilbert his wife's happy voice seemed but part of the dream-like peace which lay upon him. He was drowsy with incense. How fresh and fragrant she was! he thought idly. He pulled her down to him and kissed her and the gilded threads of her hair brushed his forehead. Her lips were cool as violets with the dew upon their petals. She belonged to him. She was part of the pleasant furniture of the room, the hour!
"How are you feeling, darling? You're looking so much better!"
"My head hurts a little, but not much. But my nerves are ever so much better. Look how steady my hand is." He held it out with childish pride.
"And you'll see, Molly dear, that when I'm shaved, my complexion will be quite nice again! It's a horrid nuisance not to be able to shave. Do I look very bad?"
"No, you wicked image! You're a vain little wretch, Gillie, really!"
"I'm quite sure that I'm not. But, Molly, it's so nice to be feeling better. Master of one's self. Not frightened about things."
"Of course it is, you old stupid! If you were always good how much happier you'd be! Take my advice. Do what I tell you, and everything will come right. You've got a great big brain, but you're a silly boy, too! Think how much more placid you are now. Never take any more spirits again!"
"No, I won't, darling. I promise you I won't."
"That's right, dear. And this nice new doctor will help you. You like him, don't you?"
"Molly! What a dear simple fool you are! Like him? You don't in the least realise who he is. It's Morton Sims, Morton Sims himself! He's a fearfully important person. Twice, they say, he's refused to take a baronetcy. He's come down here to do research work. It's an enormous condescension on his part to come and plaster up my head. It's really rather like Lord Rosebery coming to shave one! And he'll send in a bill for about fifty pounds!"
"He won't, Gillie dear. I'm sure. But if he does, what's the use of worrying? I'll pay it out of my own money, and I've got nearly as much as you – nasty miser!"
They laughed together at this. Mary had three or four hundreds a year of her own, Gilbert a little more, independently of what he earned by writing. Mary was mean with her money. That is to say, she saved it up to give to poorer people and debated with herself about a new frock like a chancellor of the Exchequer about the advisability of a fresh tax. And Lothian didn't care and never thought about money. He had no real sense of personal property. He liked spending money. He was extravagant for other people. If he bought a rare book, a special Japanese colour-print, any desirable thing – he generally gave it away to some one at once. He really liked people with whom he came into contact to have delightful things quite as much as he liked to have them himself.
Nor was this an outcome of the poisoned state of his body, his brain, and – more terrible than all! – of his mind. It was genuine human kindness, an eager longing that others should enjoy things that he himself enjoyed so poignantly.
But what he gave must be the things that he liked, though to all necessity he was liberal. A sick poor person without proper nourishment, a child without a toy, some wretched tramp without tobacco for his pipe – to him these were all tragedies, equal in their appeal to his charity. And this was because of his trained power of psychology, his profound insight into the minds of others, though even that was marred by a Rousseau-like belief that every one was good and decent at heart! Still, the need of the dying village consumptive for milk and calf's-foot jelly, was no more vivid in his mind than the need of the tramp for a smoke. As far as he was able, it was his Duty, his happy duty, to satisfy the wants of both.
Mary was different.
The consumptive, yes! Stout flannel shirts for old shepherds who must tend the birth of lambs on bitter Spring midnights. Food for the tramp, too – no dusty wayfarer should go unsatisfied from the Lothians' house! But not the subsequent shilling for beer and shag and the humble luxury of the Inn kitchen that Gilbert would have bestowed.
Such was her wise penuriousness in its calm economy of the angels!
Yet, her husband had his economy also. Odd as it was, it was part of his temperament. If he had bought a rare and perfect object of art, and then met some one who he saw longed for it, but couldn't afford to have it in the ordinary way, he took a real delight in giving it. But it would have been easier for him to lop off a hand than to present one of the Toftrees' novels to any one who was thirsting for something to read. He would have thought it immoral to do so.
He had a great row with his wife when she presented a gaudy pair of pink-gilt vases to an ex-housemaid who was about to be married.
"But dear, she's delighted," Mary had said.
"You've committed a crime! It's disgraceful. Oblige me by never doing anything of the sort again. Why didn't you give her a ham?"
"Molly, may I have a cigarette?"
"Hadn't you better have a pipe? The doctor said that you smoked far too many cigarettes and that they were bad for you."
For three days Lothian had had nothing to drink but a glass of Burgundy at lunch and dinner. Lying in bed, perfectly tranquil, calling upon no physical resources, the sense of nerve-rest within him was grateful and profound.
But the inebriate lives almost entirely upon momentary sensation. The slightest recrudescence of health makes him forget the horrors of the past.
In the false calm of his quiet room, his tended state, the love and care surrounding him, Gilbert had already come to imagine that he was what he hoped to be in his saner moments. He had, at the moment, not the least desire for a drink. In three days he was already complacent and felt himself strong!
Yet his nerves were still unstable and every impulse was on a hair trigger, so to speak.
The fact became evident at once.
He knew well enough that when he began to smoke pipes the most pressing desire of the other narcotic, alcohol, became numbed. Cigarettes stimulated that desire, or at least accompanied it. He could not live happily without cigarettes.
He knew that Mary knew this also – experience of him had given her the sad knowledge – and he was quite certain that Dr. Morton Sims must know too.
The extraordinary transitions of the drunkard from one mental state to another are more symptomatic than any other thing about him. Gilbert's face altered and became sullen. A sharp and acid note tuned his voice.
"I see," he said, "you've been talking me over with Morton Sims. Thank you so very much!"
He began to brag about himself, a thing he would have been horrified to do to any one but Mary. Even with her it was a weak weapon, and sometimes in his hands a mean and cruel one too.
".. You were kind enough to marry me, but you don't in the least seem to understand whom you have married! Is my art nothing to you? Do you realise who I am at all – in any way? Of course you don't! You're too big a fool to do so. But other women know! At any rate, I beg you will not talk over your husband with stray medical men who come along. You might spare me that at least. I should have thought you would have had more sense of personal dignity than that!"
She winced at the cruelty of his words, at the wounding bitterness which he knew so well how to throw into his voice. But she showed no sign of it. He was a poisoned man, and she knew it. Morton Sims had made it plainer than ever to her at their talks downstairs during the last three days. It wasn't Gillie who said these hard things, it was the Fiend Alcohol that lurked within him and who should be driven out..
It wasn't her Gilbert, really!
In her mind she said one word. "Jesus!" It was a prayer, hope, comfort and control. The response was instant.
That secret help had been discovered long since by her. Of her own searching it had come, and then, one day she had picked up one of her husband's favourite books and had read of this very habit she had acquired.
"Inglesant found that repeating the name of Jesus simply in the lonely nights kept his brain quiet when it was on the point of distraction, being of the same mind as Sir Charles Lucas when 'Many times calling upon the sacred name of Jesus,' he was shot dead at Colchester."
The spiritual telegraphy that goes on between Earth and Heaven, from God to His Saints is by no means understood by the World.
"You old duffer," Mary said. "Really, you are a perfect blighter – as you so often call me! Haven't you just been boasting about feeling so much better? And, fat wretch! am I not doing everything possible for you. Of course I've talked you over with the doctor. We're going to make you right! We're going to make you slim and beautiful once more. My dear thing! it's all arranged and settled. Don't bubble like a frog! Don't look at your poor Missis as if she were a nasty smell! It's no use, Gillie dear, we've got you now!"
No momentary ill-humour could stand against this. He was, after all, quite dependent upon the lady with the golden hair who was sitting upon his bed.
And it was with no more Oriental complacence, but with a very humble-minded reverence, that the poet drew his wife to him and kissed her once more.
".. But I may have a cigarette, Molly?"
"Of course you may, if you want one. It was only a general sort of remark that the doctor made. A few cigarettes can't harm any one. Don't I have two every day myself – since you got me into the habit? But you've been smoking fifty a day, for weeks before you went to town."
"Oh, Molly! What utter rot! I never have!"
"But you have, Gilbert. You smoke the Virginian ones in the tins of fifty. You always have lots of tins, but you never think how they come into the house. I order them from the grocer in Wordingham. They're put down in the monthly book – so you see I know!"
"Fifty a day! Of course, it's appalling."
"Well, you're going to be a good boy now, a perfect angel. Here you are, here are three cigarettes for you. And you're going to have a sweet-bread for lunch and I'm going to cook it for you myself!"
"Dear old dear!"
"Yes, I am. And Tumpany wants to see you. Will you see him? Dr. Morton Sims won't be here for another half hour."
"Yes, I'll have Tumpany up. Best chap I know, Tumpany is. But why's the doctor coming? My head's healed up all right now."
There was a whimsical note in his voice as he asked the question.