The Drunkard

"Random thoughts, Cupid! random thoughts! They come to me like moths through the still night, and I put them down for you. A grey-fawn Papillon de nuit is fluttering round my candles now and sometimes he falls flapping and whirring on my paper like a tiny clock-work toy. But I will not kill him. I am happy in writing to my friend, distilling my friendship for you in the lonely laboratory of self, so he shall go unharmed. His ancestors may have feasted upon royal tapestries and laid their eggs in the purple robes of kings!

"What are the moths like in Kensington this night, Cupid? – But of course you are asleep now. I make a picture for myself of you sleeping.

"The whole village is asleep now, save only me, and I am trying to reconstruct our afternoon and evening together, five days ago or was it six? It is more than ever possible to do that at midnight and alone, though every detail is etched upon my memory and I am only adding colour.

"How happy we were! It is so strange to me to think how instantly we became friends – as we are agreed we are always to be, you and I. And think of all we still have to find out about each other! There are golden days coming in our friendship, all sorts of revelations and surprises. There are so many enchanted places in the Kingdom of Thought to which I have the key, so many doors I shall open for you.

"Ours shall be a perfect friendship – of your bounty I crave again what you have already given! – and I will build it up as an artificer in rare woods or stained marbles, a carver of moon-stones, a builder of temples in honey-coloured Travertine, makes beautiful states in which the soul can dwell, out of beautiful perishable things.

"How often do two people meet as you and I have met? Most rarely. Men and women fall in love, sometimes too early, sometimes too late. There is a brief summer, and then a long winter of calm grey days which numb the soul into acquiescence, or stab the dull tranquillity with the lightnings of tragedy and woe.

"We have the better part! We are to be friends, Rita, you and I – that is the rivulet of repeated melody which runs through my first letter to you. Some sad dawn will rise for me, when you tell of something nearer and more poignant than anything I can offer you. It will be a dawn in which, for you the trumpets, the sackbuts and the psalteries of Heaven will sound. And your friend will bless you; and retire to the back of the scene with a most graceful bow!

"In the last act of the play, when all the players appear as Nymphs and Graces, and Seasons, your friend will be found wearing the rich yet sober liveries of Autumn, saluting Spring and her Partner with a courtly song, and a dance which expresses his sentiments according to the best choreographic traditions.

"But, as he retires among the last red leaves of the year, and walks jauntily down the forest rides as the setting sun shows the trees already bare, he will know one thing, even if Spring does not know it then – when she turns to her Partner.

"He will know that in her future life, his voice, his face, can never be quite forgotten. Sometimes, at the feast, 'surgit amari aliquid' that he is not present there with the wistful glance, the hands that were ever reverent, the old familiar keys!

"For a brief instant of recollection, he will have for you 'L'effet d'un clair-de-lune par une nuit d'été'. And you will say to yourself, 'Ami du temps passés, vos paroles me reviennent comme un écho lointain, comme le son d'un cloche apporté par le vent; et il me semble que vous êtes là quand je lis des passages d'amour dans vos livres'."

A click of glass against glass, the low sound of drinking, a black shadow parodied and repeated upon the ceiling in the candle-glow.

The letter is nearly finished now – the bottle is nearly empty.

"'Tiens!' I hear you say – by the way, Rita, where did you learn to speak such perfect French? They tell me in Paris and, Mon Dieu! in Tours even! that I speak well. Mais, toi! ..

"Well 'How stupid!' I hear you say. 'Why does Gilbert strike this note of the 'cello and the big sobbing flutes at the very beginning of things?'

"Why, indeed? I hardly know myself. But it is very late now. The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning. Soon the jocund noises of dawn will begin.

"Let it be so for you and me. There are long and happy days coming in our friendship. The end is not yet! Soon, quite soon, I will return to London with a pocket-full of plans for pleasure, and the magician's wand polished like the poker in the best parlour of an evangelical household, and charged with the most superior magic!

"Meanwhile I shall write you my thoughts as you must send me yours.

    "I kiss your hand,
    "GILBERT LOTHIAN."

The figure rose from the bed, gathering the papers together, putting them into a drawer of the dressing-table.

It staggered a little.

"I'm drunk," came in a tired voice, from lips that were parched and dry.

With trembling hands the empty bottle was hidden, the glass washed out and replaced, the door noiselessly unlocked.

Then Lothian lurched to the open window.

It was as he had said, dawn was at hand. But a thick grey mist hid everything. Phantoms seemed to sway in it, speaking to each other with tiny doll-like squeaks.

There were no jocund noises as he crept back into bed and fell into a stupor, snoring loudly.

No jocund noises of Dawn.

CHAPTER IV

DICKSON INGWORTH UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

"On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens."

    – Proverb of Provence.

Lothian and Dickson Ingworth were driving into Wordingham.

It was just after lunch and there was a pleasant cold-snap in the air, a hint of Autumn which would soon be here.

The younger man was driving, sending the cob along at a good pace, quite obviously a skilful and accustomed whip.

His host sat by his side and looked up at him with some curiosity, a curiosity which had been growing upon him during the last few days.

Ingworth was certainly good-looking, in a boyish, rather rakish fashion. There were no indications of dissipation in his face. He was not a dissipated youth. But there was, nevertheless, in the cast of the features, something that suggested rather more than staidness. The hair was dark red and very crisp and curly, the mouth was well-shaped and rather thick in the lips. Upon it, more often than not, was the hint of a smile at some inward thought, "rather like some youthful apprentice pirate, not adventured far upon the high seas yet, but with sufficient experience to lick the chops of memory now and then" .. thus Gilbert's half amused, half wondering thought.

And the eyes? – yes, there was something a little queer about the eyes. They were dark, not very steady in expression, and the whites – by Jove! that was it – had a curious opalescence at times. Could it possibly be that his friend had a touch of the tar-brush somewhere? It was faint, elusive, born more of a chance thought than of reality perhaps, and yet as the dog-cart bowled along the straight white road Gilbert wondered more and more.

He had known the lad, who was some two and twenty years of age, for twelve months or more. Where had he met him? – Oh, yes, at an exhibition of caricatures in the Carfax Gallery. Cromartie had introduced them. Ingworth had made friends at once. In a graceful impulsive way he had taken Lothian into a corner, and, blushing a good deal, had told him how much he had wanted to know him. He had just come down from Oxford; he told the poet how eagerly he was being read by the younger men there.

That was how it had begun.

Friendship was an immediate result. Lothian, quite impervious to flattery and spurning coteries and the "tea-shops," had found this young man's devotion a pleasant thing. He was a gentleman and he didn't bore Gilbert by literary talk. He was, in short, like an extremely intelligent fag to a boy in the sixth form of a public school. He spoke the same language of Oxford and school that Gilbert did – the bond between them was just that, and the elder and well-known man had done all he could for his protégé.

From Gilbert's point of view, the friendship had occurred by chance, it had presented no jarring elements, and he had drifted into it with good-natured acquiescence.

It was a fortnight after Mary had sent the invitation to Ingworth, who could not come at the moment, being kept in London by "important work." He had now arrived, and this was the eighth day of his visit.

"I can't understand Tumpany letting this beast down," Ingworth said. "He's as sure footed as possible. Was Tumpany fluffed?"

"I suppose he was, a little."

"Then why didn't you drive, Gilbert?"

"I? Oh, well, I did myself rather well in the train coming down, and so I thought I'd leave it to William!"

Gilbert smiled as he said this, his absolutely frank and charming smile – it would have disarmed a coroner!

Ingworth smiled also, but here was something self-conscious and deprecating. He was apologising for his friend's rueful but open statement of fact. The big man had said, in effect, "I was drunk," the small man tried to excuse the plain statement with quite unnecessary sycophancy.

"But you couldn't have been very bad?"

"Oh, no, I wasn't, Dicker. But I was half asleep as we got into the village, and as you see this cart is rather high and with a low splashboard. My feet weren't braced against the foot-bar and I simply shot out!"