The Drunkard. Thorne Guy

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СКАЧАТЬ out of the bottle after all! Toftrees himself had been deeply moved by the poems, and yet, he now imagined, the author was probably drunk when he wrote them! If only the world knew! – it ought to know. Blackguards who, for some reason or other, had been given angel voices should be put in the pillory for every one to see. Hypocrite! ..

      Ingworth opened the door of the drawing room very quietly. Music had begun, and as he and Toftrees entered, Muriel Amberley was already half way through one of the preludes of Chopin.

      Mrs. Amberley and Mrs. Toftrees were sitting close together and carrying on a vigorous, whispered conversation, despite the music. Mr. Amberley was by himself in a big arm-chair near the piano, and Lothian sat upon a settee of blue linen with Rita Wallace.

      As he sank into a chair Toftrees glanced at Lothian.

      The poet's face was unpleasant. When he had been talking to Amberley it had lighted up and had more than a hint of fineness. Now it was heavy again, veiled and coarsened. Lothian's head was nodding in time to the music. One well-shaped but rather red hand moved restlessly upon his knee. The man was struggling – Toftrees was certain of it – to appear as if the music was giving him intense pleasure. He was thinking about himself and how he looked to the other people in the room.

      Drip, drip, drip! – it was the sad, graceful prelude in which the fall of rain is supposed to be suggested, the hot steady rain of the Mediterranean which had fallen at Majorca ever so many years ago and was falling now in sound, though he that caught its beauty was long since dust. Drip, drip! – and then the soft repetition which announced that the delicate and lovely vision had reached its close, that the august grey harmonies were over.

      For a moment, there was silence in the drawing room.

      Muriel's white fingers rested on the keys of the piano, the candles threw their light upwards upon the enigmatic maiden face. Her father sighed quietly – happily also as he looked at her – and the low buzz of Mrs. Amberley's and Mrs. Toftrees' talk became much more distinct.

      Suddenly Gilbert Lothian jumped up from the settee. He hurried to the piano, his face flushed, his eyes liquid and bright.

      It was consciously and theatrically done, an exaggeration of his bow in the dining room – not the right thing in the very least!

      "Oh, thank you! Thank you!" he said in a high, fervent voice. "How wonderful that is! And you played it as Crouchmann plays it – the only interpretation! I know him quite well. We had supper together the other night after his concert, and he told me – no, that won't interest you. I'll tell you another time, remind me! Now, do play something else!"

      He fumbled with the music upon the piano with tremulous and unsteady hands.

      "Ah! here we are!" he cried, and there was an insistent note of familiarity in his voice. "The book of Valses! You know the twelfth of course? Tempo giusto! It goes like this .."

      He began to hum, quite musically, and to wave his hands.

      Muriel Amberley glanced quickly at her father and there was distress in her eyes.

      Amberley was standing by the piano in a moment. He seemed very much master of himself, serene and dominant, by the side of Gilbert Lothian. His face was coldly civil and there was disgust in his eyes.

      "I don't think my daughter will play any more, Mr. Lothian," he said.

      An ugly look flashed out upon the poet's face, suspicion and realisation showed there for a second and passed.

      He became nervous, embarrassed, almost pitiably apologetic. The savoir-faire which would have helped some men to take the rebuke entirely deserted him. There was something assiduous, almost vulgar, a frightened acceptance of the lash indeed, which immensely accentuated the sudden défaillance and break-down.

      In the big drawing room no one spoke at all.

      Then there was a sudden movement and stir. Gilbert Lothian was saying good-night.

      He had remembered that he really had some work to do before going to bed, some letters to write, as a matter of fact. He was shaking hands with every one.

      "I do hope that I shall have the pleasure of hearing you play some more Chopin before long, Miss Amberley! Thank you so much Mrs. Amberley – I'm going to write a poem about your beautiful Dining Room. I suppose we shall meet at the Authors' Club dinner on Saturday, Mr. Toftrees? – so interested to have met you at last."

      .. The people in the drawing room heard him chattering vivaciously to Mr. Amberley, who had accompanied his departing guest into the hall.

      No one said a single word. They heard the front door close, and the steps of the master of the house as he returned to them. They were all waiting.

      When Amberley came in he made a courtly attempt at ignoring what had just occurred. The calm surface of the evening had been rudely disturbed – yes! For once even an Amberley party had gone wrong – there was to be no fun from this meeting of young folk to-night.

      But it was Mrs. Amberley who spoke. She really could not help it. Mrs. Toftrees had been telling her of various rumours concerning Gilbert Lothian some time before the episode at the piano, and with all her tolerance Mrs. Amberley was thoroughly angry.

      That such a thing should have happened in her house, before Muriel and her girl friend – oh! it was unthinkable!

      "So Mr. Gilbert Lothian has gone," she said with considerable emphasis.

      "Yes, dear," Mr. Amberley answered as he sat down again, willing enough that nothing more should be said.

      But it was not to be so.

      "We can never have him here again," said the angry lady.

      Amberley shook his head. "Very unfortunate, extremely unfortunate," he murmured.

      "I cannot understand it. Such a thing has never happened here before. Now I understand why Mr. Lothian hides himself in the country and never goes about. Il y avait raison!"

      "I don't say that genius is any excuse for this sort of thing," Amberley replied uneasily, "and Lothian has genius – but one must take more than one thing into consideration .."

      He paused, not quite knowing how to continue the sentence, and genuinely sorry and upset. His glance fell upon Herbert Toftrees, and he had a sort of feeling that the novelist might help him out.

      "Don't you think so, Toftrees?" he asked.

      The novelist surveyed the room with his steady grey eyes, marshalling his hearers as it were.

      "But let us put his talent aside," he said. "Think of him as an ordinary person in our own rank of life – Mrs. Amberley's guest. Certainly he could not have taken anything here to have made him in the strange state he is in. Surely he must have known that he was not fit to come to a decent house."

      "I shall give his poems away," Muriel Amberley said with a little shudder. "I can never read them again. And I did love them so! I wish you hadn't asked Mr. Lothian to come here, Father."

      "There is one consolation," said Mrs. Toftrees in a hard voice; "the man must be realising what he has done. He was not too far gone for that!"

      A new voice broke into the talk. It came from young Dickson Ingworth who had slid into the seat by Rita Wallace when Lothian went to the piano.

      He СКАЧАТЬ