"I ought to, but--I shouldn"t!" she answered recklessly, and all his blood became fired.
Yet at that, he leant back in his chair and laughed a frank laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt. The tension was over, the dangerous moment pa.s.sed, and soon afterwards they wandered out into the night, to go upon the pier "just for half an hour" before starting for London.
And neither of them saw that upon one of the lounges in the great hall, sipping coffee and talking to the newspaper-peer Herbert Toftrees was sitting.
He saw them at once and started, while an ugly look came into his eyes.
"Look," he said. "There"s Gilbert Lothian, the Christian Poet!"
"So that"s the man!" said Lord Morston, "deuced pretty wife he"s got.
And very fine work he does too, by the way."
"Oh, that"s not his wife," Toftrees answered with contempt. "I know who that is quite well. Lothian keeps his wife somewhere down in the country and no one ever sees her." And he proceeded to pour the history of the Amberleys" dinner-party into a quietly amused and cynical ear.
The swift rush back to London under the stars was quiet and dreamy.
Repose fell over Gilbert and Rita as they sat side by side, repose "from the cool cisterns of the midnight air."
They felt much drawn to each other. Laughter and all feverish thoughts were swept away by the breezes of their pa.s.sage through the night. They were old friends now! An affection had sprung up between them which was to be a real and enduring thing. They were to be dear friends always, and that would be "perfectly sweet."
Rita had been so lonely. She had wanted a friend so.
He was going home on the morrow. He had been too long away.
But he would be up in town again quite soon, and meanwhile they would correspond.
"Dear little Rita," he said, as he held her hand outside the door of the block of flats in Kensington. "Dear child, I"m so glad."
It was a clear night and the clocks were striking twelve.
"And I"m glad, too," she answered,--"Gilbert!"
He was soon at his club, had paid the chauffeur and dismissed him.
There was no one he wanted to talk to in either of the smoking rooms, and so, after a final peg he went upstairs to bed. He was quite peaceful and calm in mind, very placidly happy and pleased.
To-morrow he would go home to Mary.
He said his prayers, begging G.o.d to make this strange and sweet friendship that had come into his life of value to him and to his little friend, might it always be fine and pure!
So he got into bed and a pleasant drowsiness stole over him; he had a sense of great virtue and peace. All was well with his soul.
"Dear little Rita," were the words he murmured as he fell asleep and lay tranquil in yet another phase of his poisoned life.
No dreams disturbed his sleep. No premonition came to tell him whither he had set his steps or whither they would lead him.
A mile or two away there was a nameless grave of shame, within a citadel where "pale Anguish keeps the gate and the Warder is Despair."
But no spectre rose from that grave to warn him.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK
BOOK TWO
LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK
"Not with fine gold for a payment, But with coin of sighs, But with rending of raiment And with weeping of eyes, But with shame of stricken faces And with strewing of dust, For the sin of stately places And lordship of l.u.s.t."
CHAPTER I
VIGNETTE OF EARLY MORNING. "GILBERT IS COMING HOME!"
"Elle se repand dans ma vie Comme un air impregne de sel, Et dans mon ame ina.s.souvie Verse le got de l"eternel."
--_Baudelaire._
The white magic of morning was at work over the village of Mortland Royal. From a distant steading came the thin brazen cry of a c.o.c.k, thin as a bugle, and round the Lothians" sleeping house the bubble of bird-song began.
In the orchard before the house, which ran down to the trout stream, Trust, the brown spaniel dog, came out of a barrel in his little fenced enclosure, sniffed the morning air, yawned, and went back again into his barrel. White mist was rising from the water-meadows, billowed into delicate eddies and spirals by the first breeze of day, and already touched by the rosy fingers of dawn.
In the wood beyond the meadows an old c.o.c.k-pheasant made a sound like high hysteric laughter.
The house, with its gravel-sweep giving directly on to the unfenced orchard, was long and low. The stones were mellowed by time, and orange, olive, and ash-coloured lichens clung to them. The roof was of tiles, warm red and green with age, the windows mullioned, the chimney-stack, which cut deep into the roof, high and with the grace of Tudor times.
The place was called the "Old House" in the village and was a veritable sixteenth century cottage, rather spoilt by repairs and minor extensions, but still, in the silent summer morning, with something of the grace and fragrance of an Elizabethan song. It was quite small, really, a large cottage and nothing more, but it had a personality of its own and it was always very tranquil.
On such a summer dawn as this with the rabbits frisking in the pearl-hung gra.s.s, on autumn days of brown and purple, or keen spring mornings when the wind fifed a tune among the bare branches of the apple-trees; on dead winter days when sea-birds from the marshes flitted against the grey sky like sudden drifts of snow, a deep peace ever brooded over the house.
The air began to grow fresher and the mists to disperse as the breeze came over the great marshes a mile beyond the village. Out on the mud-flats with their sullen tidal creeks the sun was rising like a red Host from the far sea which tolled like a Ma.s.s bell. The curlews with their melancholy voices were beginning to fly inland from the marshes, high up in the still sky. The plovers were calling, the red-shanks piping in the marrum gra.s.s, and a sedge of herons shouted their hoa.r.s.e "frank, frank" as they clanged away over the saltings.
Only the birds were awake in this remote Norfolk village, the cows in the meadows had but just turned in their sleep, and not even the bees were yet a-wing. Peace, profound and brooding, lay over the Poet"s house.
Dawn blossomed into perfect morning, all gold and blue. It began, early as it was, to grow hot. Trust came out of his barrel and began to pad round his little yard with bright brown eyes.
There was a sound of some one stirring in the silent house, and presently the back door, in the recess near the entrance gates, was flung wide open and a housemaid with untidy hair and eyes still heavy with sleep, stood yawning upon the step. There was a rattle of cinders and the cracking of sticks as the fire was lit in the kitchen beyond.
Trust, in the orchard, heard the sound. He could smell the wood-smoke from the chimney. Presently one of the Great Ones, the Beloved Ones, would let him out for a scamper in the dew. Then there would be biscuits for the dog Trust.
And now brisk footsteps were heard upon the road outside the entrance gates. In a moment more these were pushed open with a rattle, and Tumpany swung in humming a little tune.
Tumpany was a shortish thick-set man of fifty, with a red clean-shaven face. He walked with his body bent forward, his arms hanging at his sides, and always seemed about to break into a short run. It was five years since he had retired even from the coast-guard, but Royal Navy was written large all over him, and would be until he tossed off his last pint of beer and sailed away to Fidler"s Green--"Nine miles to windward of h.e.l.l," as he loved to explain to the housemaid and the cook.
Tumpany"s wife kept a small shop in the village, and he himself did the boots and knives, cleaned Gilbert"s guns and went wild-fowling with him in the winter, was the more immediate Providence of the Dog Trust, and generally a most important and trusted person in the little household of the Poet.