"My lord,--" he turned to the Bishop with the very slightest inclination of his head--"ladies and gentlemen, I killed my wife.
"My wife--" The Bishop had risen from his chair and Father Joseph Edward was supporting the swaying figure with the pale, earnest face.--"My wife loved me, and kept me and held me and watched over me as few men"s wives have ever done. I stole poison with which to kill her. I stole poison from, from you, doctor!"
He turned to Dr. Morton Sims and the doctor sat in his seat as if frozen to it by fear.
"Yes! I stole it from you! You were away in Paris. You had been making experiments. In the cupboard in the laboratory which you had taken from old Admiral Custance, I knew that there were phials of organic poisons.
My wife died of diphtheria. She died of it because I had robbed your bottles--I did so and took the poison home and arranged that Mary... ."
There was a loud murmur in the body of the hall. A loud murmur stabbed with two or three faint shrieks from women.
The Bishop again leant over the table with his hands over his face.
Morton Sims was upon his feet. His hands were on Lothian"s arm, his voice was pleading.
"No! no!" he stammered. "You mustn"t say these things. You, you----"
Gilbert Lothian looked into the face of his old friend for a second.
Then he brushed his arm away and came right to the edge of the platform.
As he spoke once more he did not seem like any quite human person.
His face was dead white, his hands fell at his sides--only his eyes were awake and his voice was vibrant.
"I am a murderer. I killed and murdered with cunning, long-continued thought, the most sweet and saintly woman that I have ever known. She was my wife. Why I did this I need not say. You can all make in your minds and formulate the picture of a poisoned man l.u.s.ting after a strange woman.
"But I did this. I did this thing--you shall hear it and it shall reverberate in your minds. I am a murderer. I say it quite calmly, waiting for the inevitable result, and I tell you that Alcohol, and that Alcohol alone has made me what I am.
"This, too, I must say. Disease, or demoniacal possession, as it may be, I have emerged from both. I have held G.o.d"s lamp to my breast.
"There is only one cure for Alcoholism. There is only one influence that can come and catch up and surround and help and comfort the sodden man.
"That is the influence of the Holy Spirit."
As he concluded there was a loud uproar in the Edward Hall.
Upon the platform the well-known people there were gazing at him, surrounding him, saying, muttering this and that.
The people in the body of the hall had risen in horrified groups and were stretching out their hands towards the platform.
The Meeting which had promised so much in the Cause of Temperance was now totally dissolved--as far as its agenda went.
The people dispersed very gradually, talking among themselves in low and horror-struck voices.
It was now a few minutes before five o"clock.
In the Committee room--where the bright fire was still burning--Gilbert Lothian remained.
The Judge, the several peers, had hurried through without a glance at the man sitting by the fireside.
Lady Harold Buckingham, as she went through, had stopped, bowed, and held out her hand.
She had been astonished that Gilbert Lothian had risen, taken her hand and spoken to her in quite the ordinary fashion of society.
She too had gone.
The Bishop had shaken Gilbert Lothian by the hand and nodded at him as who should say, "Now we understand each other--Good-bye."
Only Morton Sims, Julia Daly and the Priest had waited.
They had not to wait long.
There came a loud and authoritative knock at the door, within an hour of the breaking up of the Conference.
Gilbert Lothian rose, as a pleasant-looking man in dark clothes with a heavy moustache entered the room.
"Mr. Gilbert Lothian, I think," the pleasant-looking man said, staring immediately at the poet.
Gilbert made a slight inclination of his head.
The pleasant-looking man pulled a paper out of his pocket and read something.
Gilbert bowed again.
"It is only a short distance, Mr. Lothian," said the pleasant-looking man cheerfully, "and I am sure you will go with me perfectly quietly."
As he said it he gave a half jerk of his head towards the corridor where, quite obviously, satellites were waiting.
Gilbert Lothian put out his hands. One wrist was crossed over the other. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that I shall come with you quietly, so please put the manacles upon my wrists."
The pleasant gentleman did so. Father Joseph Edward followed the pleasant gentleman and Gilbert Lothian.
As the little cortege turned out of the Committee room, Julia Daly turned to Dr. Morton Sims.
Her face was radiant. "Oh," she said, "at last I know!"
"You know?" he said, horror still struggling within him, much as he would have wished to control it, "you know nothing, Julia! You do not know that the dreadful power of heredity has repeated itself within a circ.u.mscribed pattern. You do not know that this man, Lothian, has done--in his own degree and in his own way--just what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d brother of his did two years ago. The man who was begotten by Gilbert Lothian"s father killed his wife. Gilbert Lothian has done so too."
The woman put her hands upon the other"s shoulders and looked squarely into his face.
"Oh, John," she said--it was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian name--"Oh, John, be blind no more. This afternoon our Cause has been given an Impetus such as it has never had before.
"Just think how splendidly Gilbert Lothian is going to his shameful death."
"Oh, it won"t be death. We shall make interest and it will be penal servitude for life."
Julia Daly made a slight motion of her hands.