Chapter V: A Quarrel in the "most Select Lounge in the County"

"I strike quickly, being moved. . . . A dog of the house of
Montague moves me."

--_Romeo and Juliet._

The George Hotel in Wordingham was a most important place in the life and economy of the little Norfolk town.

The town drank there.

In the handsome billiard room, any evening after dinner, one might find the solicitor, the lieutenant of the Coast-guards, in command of the district, a squire or two, Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger the estate agents and auctioneers, Mr. Reeves the maltster and local J.P.--town, not county--and in fact all the local notabilities up to a certain point, including Mr. Helzephron, the landlord and Worshipful Master of the Wordingham Lodge of Freemasons for that year.

The Doctor, the Bank Manager and, naturally, the Rector, were the only people of consequence who did not "use the house" and make it their club. They were definitely upon the plane of gentlefolk and could not well do so. Accordingly they formed a little bridge playing coterie of their own, occasionally assisted by the Lieutenant, who preferred the Hotel, but made fugitive excursions into the somewhat politer society which was his _milieu_ by birth.

Who does not know them, these comfortable, respectable hotels in the High Streets or Market Places of small country towns? Yet who has pointed the discovering finger at them or drawn attention to the smug and _convenable_ curses that they are?

"There was a flaunting gin palace at the corner of the street,"--that is the sort of phrase you may read in half a hundred books. The holes and dens where working people get drunk, and issuing therefrom make night hideous at closing time, stink in the nostrils of every one. They form the texts and illustrations of many earnest lectures, much fervent sermonizing. But nothing is said of the suave and well-conducted establishments where the prosperous inebriates of stagnant county towns meet to take their poison. When the doors of the George closed in Wordingham and its little coterie of patrons issued forth, gravely, pompously, a little unsteadily perhaps, to seek their homes, the Police Inspector touched his cap--"The gentlemen from the George, going home!"

But the wives knew all about such places as the George.

It is upon the women that the burden falls, gentle or simple, nearly always the women.

Mrs. Gaunt, the naval officer's wife, knew very well why her husband had never got his ship, and why he "went into the Coast-guard." She was accustomed to hear unsteady steps upon the gravel sweep a little after eleven, to see the flushed face of the man she loved, to know that he had spent the evening tippling with his social inferiors, to lie sad and uncomplaining by his side while his snores filled the air and the bedroom was pervaded by the odour of spirits--an Admiral's daughter she, gently nurtured, gently born, well accustomed to these sordid horrors by now.

Mrs. Reeves, the Maltster's wife, was soured in temper and angular of face. She had been a pretty and trusting girl not so long ago as years measure. She "gave as good as she got," and the servants of the big bourgeois house with its rankly splendid furniture only turned in their sleep when, towards midnight and once or twice a month, loud recriminations reached them from the downstairs rooms.

The solicitor, a big genial brute with a sense of humour, only frightened to tears the elderly maiden sister who kept his house. He was never unkind, never used bad language, and was merely noisy, but at eight o'clock on the mornings following an audit dinner, a "Lodge Night," or the evening of Petty Sessions, a little shrivelled, trembling spinster would creep out of the house before breakfast and kneel in piteous supplication at the Altar rails for the big, blond and jovial brother who was "dissolving his soul" in wine--the well-remembered phrase from the poem of Longfellow which she had learned at school was always with her and gave a bitter urgency to her prayers.

All the company who met almost nightly at the George were prosperous, well-to-do citizens. The government of the little town was in their hands. They administered the laws for drunkards, fined them or sent them to prison at Norwich. Their prosperity did not suffer. Custom flowed to Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger, who were always ready to take or stand a drink. The malt of Mr. Reeves was bought by the great breweries of England and deteriorated nothing in quality, while more money than the pompous and heavy man could spend rolled into his coffers. The solicitor did his routine conveyancing and so on well enough.

No one did anything out of the ordinary. There were no scandals, "alarums and excursions." It was all decent and ordered.

The doctor could have given some astonishing evidence before a Medical Commission. But he was a wise and quiet general practitioner who did his work, held his tongue and sent his three boys to Cambridge.

The Rector might have had an illuminating word to say. He was a good but timid man, and saw how impossible it was to make any movement. They were all his own church-wardens, sidesmen, supporters! How could he throw the sleepy, stagnant, comfortable town into a turmoil and disorder in which souls might be definitely lost for ever?

He could only pray earnestly as he said the Mass each morning during the seasons of the year.

It is so all over England. Deny it who may.

In Whitechapel the Fiend Alcohol is a dishevelled fury shrieking obscenities. In the saloons and theatres of the West End he is a suave Mephistopheles in evening dress. In Wordingham and the other provincial towns and cities of England, he appears as a plump and prosperous person in broadcloth, the little difficulty about his feet being got over by well-made country shoes, and with a hat pressed down over ears that may be a trifle pointed or may not.

But the mothers, the wives, the sisters recognise him anywhere.

The number of martyrs is uncounted. Their names are unknown, their hidden miseries unsung.

Who hears the sobs or sees the tears shed by the secret army of Slaves to the Slaves of Alcohol?

It is they who must drink the cup to the last dregs of horror and of shame. The unbearable weight is upon them, that is to say, upon tenderness and beauty, on feebleness and Love. Women endure the blows, or cruel words more agonising. They are the meek victims of the Fiend's malice when he enters into those they love. It is womanhood that lies helpless upon the rack for ruthless hands to torture.

Cujus animam geminentem!

--She whose soul groaning, condoling and grieving the sword pierced through!

Saviours sometimes, sufferers always.

* * * * *

Into the "lounge" of the George Hotel came Gilbert Lothian and Dickson Ingworth.

They were well-dressed men of the upper classes. Their clothes proclaimed them--for there will be (unwritten) sumptuary laws for many years in England yet. Their voices and intonation stamped them as members of the upper classes. A railway porter, a duke, or the Wordingham solicitor would alike have placed them with absolute certainty.

They were laughing and talking together with bright, animated faces, and in this masked life that we all lead to-day no single person could have guessed at the forces and tragedies at work beneath.

They sat down in a long room with a good carpet upon the floor, dull green walls hung with elaborate pictures advertising whiskeys, in gold frames, and comfortable leather chairs grouped in threes round tables with tops of hammered copper.

Mr. Helzephron did everything in a most up-to-date fashion--as he could well afford. "The most select lounge in the county" was a minor heading upon the hotel note-paper.

At one end of the room was a semicircular counter, upon which were innumerable regiments of tumblers and wine-glasses and three or four huge crystal vessels of spirits, tulip-shaped, with gilded inscriptions and shining plated taps.

Behind the counter was Miss Molly Palmer, the barmaid of the hotel, and, behind her, the alcove was lined with mirrors and glass shelves on which were rows of liqueur flasks, bottles of brandy and dummy boxes of chocolates tied up with scarlet ribands.

"Now tell me, Dicker," Lothian said, lighting a cigarette, "how do you mean about Toftrees?"

The glamour of the past was on the unstable youth now, the same influence which had made him--at some possible risk to himself--defend Lothian so warmly in the drawing room at Bryanstone Square.

The splendour of Toftrees was far away, dim in Lancaster Gate.

"Oh, he's jealous of you because you really can write, Gilbert! That must be it. But he really has got his knife into you!"

Internally, Lothian winced. "Oh, but I assure you he has not," was all that he said.

Ingworth finished his whiskey and soda. "Well, you know what I mean, old chap," he replied. "He's going about saying that you aren't sincere, that you're really fluffed when you write your poems, don't you know. The other night, at a supper at the Savoy, where I was, he said you were making a trade of Christianity, that you didn't really believe in what you wrote, and couldn't possibly."

Lothian laughed. "Have another whiskey," he said. "And what did you say, Dicker?"

There was a sneer in Lothian's voice which the other was quite quick to hear and to resent. On that occasion he had not defended his friend, as it happened.

"Oh, I said you meant well," Ingworth answered with quick impertinence, and then, afraid of what he had done hurriedly drained the second glass which the barmaid had just brought him.

"Well, I do, really," Lothian replied, so calmly that the younger man was deceived, and once more angry that his shaft had glanced upon what seemed to be impenetrable armour.

Yet, below the unruffled surface, the poet's mind was sick with loathing and disgust. He was not angry with Ingworth, against Toftrees he felt no rancour. He was sick, deadly sick with himself, inasmuch as he had descended so low as to be touched by such paws as these.

"I'll get through his damned high-and-mighty attitude yet," Ingworth thought to himself.

"I say," he remarked, "did you enjoy your trip to Brighton with Rita Wallace? Toftrees saw you there, you know. He was dining at the Metropole the same night."

He had pierced--right through--though he did not know it.

"Rather dangerous, wasn't it?" he continued. "Suppose your wife got to know, Gilbert?"

Something, those letters, near his heart, began to throb like a pulse in Lothian's pocket. One of the letters had arrived that very morning.

"Look here, Ingworth," he said, and his face became menacing, "you rather forget yourself, I think, in speaking to me in this way. You're a good sort of boy--at least I've thought so--and I've taken you up rather. But I don't allow impudence from people like you. Remember!"

The ice-cold voice frightened the other, but he had to the full that ape-like semi-courage which gibbers on till the last moment of a greater animal's patience.

The whiskey had affected him also. His brain was becoming heated.

"Well, I don't know about impudence," he answered pertly and with a red face. "Anyhow, Rita dined with _me_ last week!"

He brought it out with a little note of triumph.

Lothian nodded.

"Yes, and you took her to that disgusting little café Maréchale in Soho. You ought not to take a lady to such a place as that. You've been long enough in London to know. Don't be such a babe. If you ever get a nice girl to go out with you again try and think things out a little more."

Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes.

"She's been writing to you!" he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else.

Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon?

"I _beg_ your pardon?" Lothian said coolly.

"Yes, she has!" the young fellow hissed. "You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man. She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!--Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!"

Gilbert lifted his glass and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town.

Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair.

"You dirty little hanger-on," he said in a low voice, "how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!"

Without heat, without anger, but merely as a necessary measure of precaution or punishment, he smashed his left fist into Ingworth's jaw and laid him flat upon the carpet.

The girl behind the bar, who knew who Gilbert Lothian was very well, had been watching what was going on with experienced eyes.

She had seen, or known with the quick intuition of her training, that a row was imminent between the famous Mr. Lothian--whose occasional presences in the "lounge" were thought to confer a certain lustre upon that too hospitable rendezvous--and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair.

Molly Palmer had pressed the button of her private bell, which called Mr. Helzephron himself from his account books in the office.

Mr. Helzephron was a slim, bearded man, black of hair and saffron of visage. He was from Cornwall, in the beginning, and combined the inherent melancholy and pessimism of the Celt with the Celt's shrewd business instincts when he transplants himself.

He entered at that moment and caught hold of the wretched Ingworth just as the young man had risen, saw red, and was about to leap over the table at Lothian, whom, in all probability he would very soon have demolished.

Helzephron's arms and hands were like vices of steel. His voice droned like a wasp in a jam jar.

"Now, then," he said, "what's all this? What's all this, sir? I can't have this sort of thing going on. Has this gentleman been insulting you, Mr. Lothian?"

Ingworth was powerless in the Cornishman's grip. For a moment he would have given anything in the world to leap at the throat of the man at the other side of the table, who was still calmly smoking in his chair.

But quick prudence asserted itself. Lothian was known here, a celebrity. He was a celebrity anywhere, a public brawl with him would be dreadfully scandalous and distressing, while in the end it would assuredly not be the poet who would suffer most.

And Ingworth was a coward; not a physical coward, for he would have stood up to any one with nothing but glee in his heart, but a moral one. Lothian, he knew, wouldn't have minded the scandal a bit, here or anywhere else. But to Ingworth, cooled instantly by the lean grip of the landlord, the prospect was horrible.

And to be held by another man below one in social rank, landlord of an inn, policeman, or what not, while it rouses the blood of some men to frenzy, in others brings back an instant sanity.

Ingworth remained perfectly still.

For a second or two Lothian watched him with a calm, almost judicial air. Then he flushed suddenly, with a generous shame at the position.

"It's all right, Helzephron," he said. "It's a mistake, a damned silly mistake. As a matter of fact I lost my temper. Please let Mr. Ingworth go."

Mr. Helzephron possessed those baser sides of tact which pass for sincerity with many people.

"Very sorry, I'm sure," he droned, and stood waiting with melancholy interest to see what would happen next.

"I'm very sorry, Dicker," Lothian said impulsively; "you rather riled me, you know. But I behaved badly. It won't do either of us any good to have a rough and tumble here, but of course" . . . he looked significantly at the door.

Ingworth took him, and admired him for his simplicity. The old public school feeling was uppermost now. He knew that Gilbert knew he was no coward. He knew also that he could have knocked the other into a cocked hat in about three minutes.

"I was abominably rude, Gilbert," he said frankly. "Don't let's talk rot. I'm sorry."

"It's good of you to take it in that way, Dicker. I'm awfully sorry, too."

Mr. Helzephron interposed. "All's well that ends well," he remarked sententiously. "That's the best of gentlemen, they do settle these matters as gentlemen should. Now if you'll come with me, sir, I'll take you to the lavatory and you can sponge that blood off your face. You're not marked, really."

With a grin and a wink to Lothian, both of which were returned, Ingworth marched away in the wake of the landlord.

The air was cleared.

Gilbert was deeply sorry for what he had done. He had quite forgotten the provocation that he had received. "Good old sportsman, Dicker!" he thought; "he's a fine chap. I was a bounder to hit him. It would have served me jolly well right if he'd given me a hiding."

And the younger man, as he went to remove the stain of combat, had kindly and generous thoughts of his distinguished friend.

But, _che sara sara_, these kindly thoughts were but to bloom for an hour and fade. Neither knew that one of them was so soon to be brought to the yawning gates of Hell itself, and, at the very last moment, the unconscious action of the other was to snatch him from them.

Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof God alone knows the pattern and directs the loom. Neither of them knew.

The barmaid, a tall, fresh-faced young girl, came down the room and took the empty glasses from the table.

"I say, Mr. Lothian," she remarked, "it's no business of mine, and no offence meant, but you didn't ought to have hit him."

"I know," Gilbert answered, "but why do you say so?"

"He's got such nice curly hair!" she replied with a provocative look from her bright eyes, and whisked away to the shelter of her counter.

Lothian sighed. During the years he had lived in Norfolk he had seen many fresh-faced girls come and go. Only a few days before, he had read a statement made by Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army that the number of immoral women in the West End of London who have been barmaids is one quarter of the whole. . . .

At that moment, this Miss Molly Palmer was the _belle des coulisses_ of Wordingham. The local bloods quarrelled about her, the elder men gave her gloves on the sly, her pert repartees kept the lounge in a roar from ten to eleven.

Once, with a sneer and as one man of the world to another, Helzephron had shown Lothian a trade paper in which these girls are advertised for--

"Barmaid wanted, must be attractive."

"Young lady wanted for select wine-room in the West End, gentlemen only, must be well educated and of good appearance, age not over twenty-five."

"Required at once, attractive young lady as barmaid--young. Photograph."

. . . A great depression fell upon the poet. Everywhere he turned just now ennui and darkness seemed to confront him. His youth was going. His fame brought no pleasure nor contentment. The easy financial circumstances of his life seemed to roll over him like a weed-clogged wave. His wife's love and care--was not that losing its savour also? The delightful labour of writing, the breathless and strenuous clutching at the waiting harps of poetry, was not he fainting and failing in this high effort, too?

His life was a grey, numbed thing. He was reminded of it whichever way he turned.

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

Yes! when he knelt at the Mass 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 Passion 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 glass 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 passing 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 coarse 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 space and was observed of both.

"Now, Dicker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink--the local bloods, I mean. It's their substitute 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 être_ 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 Dickens 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 class, 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.

A woman was sitting upon a plush-covered bench by the wall. She was a dark gipsy looking creature, coarsely handsome and of an opulent figure. She stood up as Helzephron came out into the hall, and there seemed to be a suggestion of great boldness and flaunting assertion about her, oddly restrained and overlaid by a timidity quite at variance with her appearance.

The landlord was in front, and for a moment Lothian was concealed. Then, as he was about to wish Helzephron good afternoon and turned for the purpose, he came into view of the new barmaid.

She saw him full face and an instant and horrible change came over her own. It faded to dead paper-white. The dark eyes became fixed like lenses. The jaw dropped like the jaw of a ventriloquist's puppet, a strangled gurgle came from the open mouth and then a hoarse scream of terror. The woman's arms jerked up in the air as if they had been pulled by strings, and her hands in shabby black gloves curved into claws and were rigid. Then she spun round, caught her boot in the leg of the chair and fell in a swoon upon the floor.

The landlord swore in his surprise and alarm.

Then, keen as a knife, he whipped round and looked at Lothian.

Lothian's face expressed nothing but the most unbounded astonishment. Help was summoned and the woman was carried into the landlord's private office, where restoratives were applied.

In three or four minutes she opened her eyes and moaned. Lothian, Helzephron and a chambermaid who was attending on her, were the only other people in the office.

"There, there," said the landlord irritably, when he saw that consciousness was returning. "What in heaven's name did you go off like that for? You don't belong to do that sort of thing often I hope. If so I may as well tell you at once that you'll be no good here."

"I'm very sorry, sir," said the poor creature, trembling and obviously struggling with rising hysteria. "It took me sudden. I'm very strong, really, sir. It shan't happen again."

"I hope not," Helzephron answered in a rather more kindly tone. "Elsie, go into the lounge and ask Miss Palmer for a little brandy and water--but what took you like this?"

The woman hesitated. Her glance fell upon Lothian who was standing there, a pitying and perplexed spectator of this strange scene. She could not repress a shudder as she saw him, though both men noticed that the staring horror was going from her eyes and that her face was relieved.

"I'm very sorry," she said again, "but the sight of that gentleman coming upon me sudden and unexpected was the cause of it."

"This gentleman!" Helzephron replied. "This is Mr. Gilbert Lothian, a famous gentleman and one of our country gentleman in Norfolk. What can you have to do with him?"

"Oh, nothing sir, nothing. But there's a very strong resemblance in this gentleman to some one"--she hesitated and shuddered--"to some one I once knew. I thought it was him come back at first. I see now that there's lots of difference. I've had an unhappy life, sir."

She began to sob quietly.

"Now, drink this," said the landlord, handing her the brandy which the chambermaid had just brought. "Stop crying and Elsie will take you up to your room. Your references are all right and I don't want to know nothing of your history. Do your duty by me like a good girl and you'll find me a good master. Your past's nothing to me."

Lothian and the landlord went out into the stable yard where the rainbow-throated pigeons were murmuring on the tiled roofs, and the ostler--like Mousqueton--was spitting meditatively. They discussed this strange occurrence.

"I never saw a woman so frightened!" said Mr. Helzephron. "You might have been old Bogy himself, Mr. Lothian. I didn't know what to think for a moment! I hope she doesn't drink."

"Well, I suppose we've all got a double somewhere or other," Lothian answered. "I suppose she saw some likeness in me to some one who has ill used her, poor thing."

"Oh, yes, sir," Helzephron replied. "That's it--she said as much. Half the plays and novels turn on such likenesses. I used to be a great play-goer when I was in London and I've seen all the best actresses. But I'm damned if I ever see such downright horror as there was in that girl's face. He must have been a bad un whoever he was. Real natural tragedy in that face--William, put in Mr. Lothian's horse."

He said good-bye and re-entered the hotel.

Lothian remained in the centre of the yard. He lit a cigarette and watched the horse being harnessed. His face was clouded with thought.

It was very strange! How frightful the poor woman had looked. It was a nightmare face, a face of Gustave Doré from the Inferno engravings!

He never saw the woman again, as it happened, and never knew who she was. If he had read of the Hackney murder in the papers of the year before he had given it no attention. He knew nothing of the coarse siren for whose sake the poisoned man of Hackney had killed the wife who loved him, and who, under an assumed name, was living out her obscure and haunted life in menial toil.

Dr. Morton Sims might have thrown some light upon the incident at the George perhaps. But then Dr. Morton Sims never heard of it and it soon passed from the poet's mind.

No doubt the Fiend Alcohol who provided the incidental music at the head of his orchestra was smiling.

For the Overture to the Dance of Death is curiously coloured music and there are red threads of melody interwoven with the sable chords.