The Drunkard

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!"