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 gla.s.s 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 l.u.s.tre upon that too hospitable rendezvous--and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair.
Molly Palmer had pressed the b.u.t.ton 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.suredly 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.s 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, d.i.c.ker," 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 c.o.c.ked 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, d.i.c.ker. 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, d.i.c.ker!" 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 h.e.l.l itself, and, at the very last moment, the unconscious action of the other was to s.n.a.t.c.h him from them.
Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof G.o.d 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 gla.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances 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.