There was a time when the Holy Mysteries brought him a joy which was priceless and unutterable.

Yes! when he knelt at the Ma.s.s with Mary by his side, he had felt the breath of Paradise upon his brow. Emptied of all earthly things his soul had entered into the mystical Communion of Saints.

To husband and wife, in humble supplication side by side, the still small voice had spoken. The rushing wind of the Holy Ghost had risen around them and the Pa.s.sion of Jesus been more near.

And now?--the man rose from his chair with a laugh so sad and hollow, a face so contorted with pain, that it startled the silly girl behind the bar.

She made a rapid calculation. "He was sober when 'e come," she thought in the vernacular, "and 'e can stand a lot, can Mr. Lothian. It's nothing. Them poets!"

"Something amusing you?" she said with her best smile.

Lothian nodded. "Oh, just my thoughts," he replied. "Give me another whiskey and soda--a fat one, yes, a little more, yes, that'll do."

For a moment, a moment of hesitation, he held it out at arm's length.

The sunlight of the afternoon blazed into the gla.s.s and turned the liquid to molten gold.

The light came from a window in the roof, just over the bar itself. The remainder of the room was in quiet shadow.

He looked down into the room and shuddered. It was typical of his life now.

He looked up at the half open window from which the glory came.

"Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!" he said, with a sad smile.

Molly Palmer watched him. "Juggins!" she thought, "them poets!"

But Lothian's words seemed to call for some rejoinder and the girl was at a loss.

"Wish you meant it!" she said at length, wondering if that would meet the occasion--as it often met others.

Lothian laughed, and drank down the whiskey.

The light from above faded almost instantly--perhaps a cloud was pa.s.sing over the sun.

But, _au contraire_, the shadow of the room beyond had invitation now. It no longer seemed sombre.

He went into the shadows and sat down in the same chair where he had been before.

He smiled as he lit another cigarette. How strange moods were! how powerful for a moment, but how quickly over! The letters in his breast pocket seemed to glow out with material warmth, a warmth that went straight to his heart through the cloth and linen of his clothing. The new Ego was fed. Rita!

Yes! at least life had given him this and was it not the treasure of treasures? There was nothing coa.r.s.e nor earthly in this at least!

The music of the Venusberg throbbed in all his pulses, calling, calling from the hollow hill. He did not realise from where it came--this magic music--and that there is more than one angelic choir.

Rita and Gilbert. Gilbert and Rita!

The words and music of one song!

So we observe that now the masked musicians in the unseen orchestra are in their places.

Any little trouble with the Management is over. Opposition players have sorrowfully departed. The Audience has willed it so, and the band only awaits its leader.

Monsieur L'Ame du Vin, that celebrated conductor, has just slid into his seat. He smirks at his players, gives an intelligent glance at the first violin, and taps upon the desk.

Three beats of the baton, a raised left hand, and once more the oft repeated overture to the Dance of Death commences, with the Fiend Alcohol beating time.

Ingworth came back soon. There was a slight bruise upon his upper lip, but that was all.

The two men--it was to be the last time in lives which had so strangely crossed--were friends in a sense that they had never been before. Both of them looked back upon that afternoon during the immediate days to come with regret and sorrow. Each remembered it differently, according to the depth of individual temperament. But it was remembered, as an hour when strife and turmoil had ceased; when, trembling on the brink of unforeseen events to come, there was pause and friendship, when the good in both of them rose to the surface for a little s.p.a.ce and was observed of both.

"Now, d.i.c.ker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink--the local bloods, I mean. It's their subst.i.tute for afternoon tea, don't you know. They sit here talking about nothing to friends who have devoted their lives to the subject. Watch it for your work. You'll learn a lot. That must have been the way in which Flaubert got his stuff for 'Madame Bovary.'"

Something of the artist's fire animated the lad. He was no artist. He hadn't read "Madame Bovary," and it wouldn't have interested him if he had. But the plan appealed to him. It fitted in with his method of life. It was getting something for nothing. Yet he realised, to give him his due, a little more than this. He was sitting at the feet of his Master.

But as it happened, on that afternoon the local bloods were otherwise employed, for at any rate they made no appearance.

Lothian felt at ease. He had one or two more pegs. He had been so comparatively abstemious since his accident and under the regime of Dr.

Morton Sims, that what he took now had only a tranquillising and pleasantly narcotic influence.

The nervous irritation of an hour before which had made him strike his friend, the depression and hollow misery which succeeded it, the few minutes of lyrical exaltation as he thought of Rita Wallace, all these were merged in a sense of _bien etre_ and drowsiness.

He enjoyed an unaccustomed and languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for a time.

Mr. Helzephron sat down at their table after a time and prosed away in his monotonous voice. He was a man of some education, had read, and was a d.i.c.kens lover. He did not often have the opportunity of conversation with any one like Lothian and he made the most of it. Like many common men who are anxious to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, he thought that the surest way to do so was to abuse his neighbours, thus, as he imagined, proclaiming himself above them and flattering his hearer. Lothian always said of the landlord of the George that he was worth his weight in gall, and for a time he was amused.

At five o'clock the two visitors had some tea and toast and at the half hour both were ready to go.

"I'll run round to the post office," Ingworth said, "and see if there are any late letters."

"Very well," Gilbert answered, "and I'll have the horse put in."

The afternoon post for Mortland Royal left the town at three, and letters which came in by the five o'clock mail were not delivered at the village until the next morning unless--as now--they were specially called for.

Ingworth ran off.

"Well, Mr. Lothian," said the landlord. "I don't often have the pleasure of a talk with you. Just one more with me before you go?"

They were standing together at the bar counter when a page boy entered the lounge and went up to his master. "Please, sir," he said, "the new young lady's come."

"Oh, very well," Helzephron answered. "I'll be out in a minute. Where is she?"

"In the hall, sir. And shall Boots go down for her trunk?"

"Yes; tell him to go to the station at once with the hand-cart. A new barmaid," he said, turning to Gilbert, "for the four ale bar, a woman of about thirty, not much cla.s.s, you understand, wouldn't do for the lounge, but will keep the working men in order. It's astonishing how glad they are to get a job when they're about thirty! They're no draw then, and they know it. The worst of it is that these older women generally help themselves from the till or the bottle! I've had fifty applications for this job."

He led the way out into the hall of the hotel, followed by Lothian, who was on his way to the stable yard.