The Drunkard. Thorne Guy

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СКАЧАТЬ blushed and stammered as he spoke, but there was a fine loyalty in his voice.

      "It seems rather dreadful, Mrs. Amberley," he said, quite thinking that he was committing literary suicide as he did so. "It is dreadful of course. But Gilbert is such a fine chap when he's – when he's, all right! You can't think! And then, 'Surgit Amari'! Don't let's forget he wrote 'The Loom' – 'Delicate Threads! O fairest in life's tissue,'" he quoted from the celebrated verse.

      Then Rita Wallace spoke. "He is great," she said. "He is manifesting himself in his own way. That is all. To me, at any rate, the meeting with Mr. Lothian has been wonderful."

      Mrs. Toftrees stared with undisguised dislike of such assertions on the part of a young girl.

      But Mrs. Amberley, always kind and generous-hearted, had been pleased and touched by Dickson Ingworth's defence of his friend and master. She quite realised what the lad stood to lose by doing it, and what courage on his part it showed. And when Rita Wallace chimed in, Mrs. Amberley dismissed the whole occurrence from her mind as she beamed benevolently at the two young people on the sofa.

      "Let's forget all about it," she said. "Mrs. Toftrees, help me to make my husband sing. He can only sing one song but he sings it excellently – 'In cellar cool' – just the thing for a hot night. Joseph! do as I tell you!"

      The little group of people rearranged themselves, as Muriel sat down at the piano to accompany her father.

      "Le metier de poëte laisse a désirer," Toftrees murmured to his wife with a sneer which almost disguised the atrocious accent of his French.

      CHAPTER III

      SHAME IN "THE ROARING GALLANT TOWN"

      – "Is it for this I have given away

      Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?"

      "'Très volontiers' repartit le démon. 'Vous aimez

      les tableaux changeants; je veux vous contenter.'"

– Le Sage.

      When the door of the house had closed after him, and with Mr. Amberley's courteous but grave good-night ringing in his ears, Gilbert Lothian walked briskly away across the Square.

      It was very hot. The July sun, that tempest of fire which had passed over the town during the day, had sucked up all the sweetness from the air and it was sickly, like air under a blanket which has been breathed many times. As it often is in July, London had been delightfully fresh at dawn, when the country waggons were bringing the sweet-peas and the roses to market, and although his mind had not been fresh as the sun rose over St. James' where he was staying, Lothian had enjoyed the early morning from the window of his bedroom. It had been clear and scentless, like a field with the dew upon it, in the country from which he had come five days ago.

      Now his mind was like a field in the full sun of noon, parched and full of hot odours.

      He was perfectly aware that he had made a faux pas. How far it went, whether he was not exaggerating it, he did not know. The semi-intoxicated person – more especially when speech and gait are more or less normal, as in his case – is quite incapable of gauging the impression he makes on others. In lax and tolerant circles where no outward indication is given him of his state, he goes on his way pleased and confident that he has made an excellent impression, sure that no one has found him out.

      But his cunning and self-congratulation quite desert him when he is openly snubbed or reproved. "Was I very far gone?" he afterwards asks some confidential friend who may have been present at his discomfiture. And whatever form the answer may take, the drunkard is abnormally interested in all the details of the event. Born of the toxic influences in his blood, there is a gaunt and greedy vanity which insists upon the whole scene being re-enacted and commented upon.

      Lothian had no one to tell him how far he had gone, precisely what impression he had made upon his hosts and their guests. He felt with a sense of injury that Dickson Ingworth ought to have come away with him. The young man owed so much to him in the literary life! It was a treachery not to have come away with him.

      As he got into a cab and told the man to drive him as far as Piccadilly Circus, he was still pursuing this train of thought. He had taken Ingworth to the Amberleys', and now the cub was sitting in the drawing room there, with those charming girls! quite happy and at ease. He, Gilbert Lothian himself! was out of it all, shut out from that gracious house and those cultured people whom he had been so glad to meet.

      .. Again he heard the soft closing of the big front door behind him, and his skin grew hot at the thought. The remembrance of Amberley's quiet courtesy, but entire change of manner in the hall, was horrible. He felt as if he had been whipped. The dread of a slight, the fear of a quarrel, which is a marked symptom of the alcoholic – is indeed his torment and curse through life – was heavy upon Lothian now.

      The sense of impotence was sickening. What a weak fool he had been to break down and fly like that. To run away! What faltering and trembling incapacity for self-assertion he had shown. He had felt uneasy with the very servant who gave him his opera hat!

      And what had he done after all? Very little, surely.

      That prelude of Chopin always appealed to him strongly. He had written about it; Crouchmann had played it privately for him and pointed out new beauties. Certainly he had only met Miss Amberley for the first time that night and he may have been a little over-excited and effusive. His thoughts – a poet's thoughts after all – had come too quickly for ordered expression. He was too Celtic in manner, too artistic for these staid cold folk.

      He tried to depreciate the Amberleys in his thoughts. Amberley was only a glorified trades-man after all! Lothian tried to call up within him that bitter joy which comes from despising that which we really respect or desire. "Yes! damn the fellow! He lived on poets and men of letters – privileged people, the salt of the earth, the real forces of life!"

      And yet he ought to have stayed on and corrected his mistake. He had made himself ridiculous in front of four women – he didn't care about the men so much – and that was horribly galling.

      As the cab swung down Regent Street, Lothian was sure that if his nerves had not weakened for a moment he would never have given himself away. It was, he felt, very unfortunate. He knew, as he could not help knowing, that not only had he a mind and power of a rare, high quality, but that he possessed great personal charm. What he did not realise was how utterly all these things fled from him when he was not quite sober. Certainly at this moment he was unable to comprehend it in the slightest. Realisation would come later, at the inevitable punishment hour.

      He over-paid his cabman absurdly. The man's quick and eager deference pleased him. He was incapable of any sense of proportion, and he felt somehow or other reinstated in his own opinion by this trivial and bought servility.

      He looked at his watch. It was not very much after ten, and he became conscious of how ridiculously early he had fled from the Amberleys'. But as he stood on the pavement – in the very centre of the pleasure-web of London with its roar and glare – he pushed such thoughts resolutely from him and turned into a luxurious "lounge," celebrated among fast youths and pleasure-seekers, known by an affectionate nick-name at the Universities, in every regimental mess or naval ward-room in Great Britain.

      As he went down a carpeted passage he saw himself in the long mirror that lined it. He looked quite himself, well-dressed, prosperous, his face under full control and just like any other smart man about town.

      At this hour, there were not many people in the place. It would become crowded and noisy later on.

      The white СКАЧАТЬ