Gilbert glanced at the catalogue. "He was fervently pious, a faithful husband, a fond parent, a kind master, and an enthusiastic lover and patron of the fine arts."
"How familiar that sort of stuff sounds," she answered. "It"s written for the schools which come here to see history in the flesh--or wax rather. Every English school girl of the upper middle cla.s.ses has been brought here once in her life. Oh, here"s Milton! What does it say about him?"
--"Sold his immortal poem "Paradise Lost" for the sum of five pounds,"
Lothian answered grimly.
"_Much_ better to be a modern poet, Gilbert dear! But I"m disappointed.
These figures don"t thrill one at all. I always thought one was thrilled and astonished here."
"So you will be, Cupid, soon. Don"t you see that all these people are only names to us. Here they are names dressed up in clothes and with pink faces and gla.s.s eyes. They"re too remote. Neither of us is going to connect that thing"--he flung a contemptuous movement of his thumb at Milton--"with "Lycidas." We shall be interested soon, I"m sure. But won"t you have something to eat?"
"No. I don"t want food. After all, this is strange and fantastic. We"ve lots more to see yet, and these kings and queens are only for the schools. Let"s explore and explore. And let"s talk about it all as we go, Gilbert! Talk to me as you do in your letters. Talk to me as you did at the beginning, illuminating everything with your mind. That"s what I want to hear once again!"
She thrust her arm in his, and desire fled away from him. The Dead Sea Fruit, the "Colloque Sentimental" existed no more, but, humour, the power of keen, incisive phrase awoke in him.
Yes, this was better!--their two minds with play and interplay. It would have been a thousand times better if it had never been anything else save this.
They wandered into the Grand Saloon, made their bow to Sir Thomas Lipton--"Wog and I find his tea really the best and cheapest," Rita said--decided that the Archbishop of Canterbury had a suave, but uninteresting face, admired the late Mr. Dan Leno, who was posed next to Sir Walter Scott, and gazed without much interest at the royal figures in the same room.
King George the Fifth and his spouse; the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn--Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert, K.G., K.T., K.P., G.C.M.C.; Princess Royal of England--Her Royal Highness Princess Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar; and, next to these august people, little Mr. Dan Leno!
"Poor little man," Rita said, looking at the sad face of the comedian.
"Why should they put him here with the King and the Queen? Do they just plant their figures anywhere in this show?"
Gilbert shook his head. In this abnormal place--one of the strangest and most psychologically interesting places in the world--his freakish humour was to the fore.
"What a little stupid you are, Rita!" he said. "The man who arranges these groups is one of the greatest philosophers and students of humanity who ever lived. In this particular case the ghost of Heine must have animated him. The court jester! The clown of the monarch--I believe he did once perform at Sandringham--set cheek by jowl with the great people he amused. It completes the picture, does it not?"
"No, Gilbert, since you pretend to see a design in the arrangement, I don"t think it _does_ complete the picture. Why should a mere little comic man be set to intrude--?"
He caught her up with whimsical grace. "Oh, but you don"t see it at all!" he cried, and his vibrating voice, to which the timbre and life had returned, rang through "Room No. 2."
--"This place is designed for the great ma.s.s of the population. They all visit it. It is a National Inst.i.tution. People like you and me only come to it out of curiosity or by chance. It"s out of our beat.
Therefore, observe the genius of the plan! The Populace has room in its great stupid heart for only a few heroes. The King is always one, and the popular comedian of the music halls is always another. These, with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, satisfy all the hunger for symbols to be adored. Thus Dan Leno in this splendid company. Room No. 2 is really a subtle and ironic comment upon the psychology of the crowd!"
Rita laughed happily. "But where are the Toftrees?" she said.
"In the Chamber of Horrors, probably, for murdering the public taste.
We are sure to find them here, seated before two Remingtons and with the actual books with which the crime was committed on show."
"Oh, I"ve heard about the "Chamber of Horrors." Can we go, Gilbert? Do let"s go. I want to be thrilled. It"s such a funereal day."
"Yes it is, grey as an old nun. I"m sorry I was unkind in the cab, dear. Forgive me."
"I"ll forgive you anything. I"m so unhappy, Gilbert. It"s dreadful to think of you being gone. All my days and my nights will be grey now.
However shall I do without you?"
There was genuine desolation in her voice. He believed that she really regretted _his_ departure and not the loss of the pleasures he had been giving her. His blood grew hot once more--for a single moment--and he was about to embrace her, for they were alone in the room.
And then listlessness fell upon him before he had time to put his wish into action. His poisoned mind was vibrating too quickly. An impulse was born, only to be strangled in the brain before the nerves could telegraph it to the muscles. His whole machinery was loose and out of control, the engines running erratically and not in tune. They could not do their work upon the fuel with which he fed them.
He shuddered. His heart was a coffer of ashes and within it, most evil paramours, dwelt the quenchless flame and the worm that dieth not.
... They went through other ghostly halls, thronged by a silent company which never moved nor spake. They came to the entrance of that astounding mausoleum of wickedness, The Chamber of Horrors.
There they saw, as in a faint light under the sea, the legion of the lost, the horrible men and women who had gone to swell the red quadrilles of h.e.l.l.
In long rows, sitting or standing, with blood-stained knives and hangmen"s ropes in front of them, in their shameful resurrection they inhabited this place of gloom and death.
Here, was a man in shirt-sleeves, busy at work in a homely kitchen lit by a single candle. Alone at midnight and with sweat upon his face he was breaking up the floor; making a deep hole in which to put something covered with a spotted shroud which lay in a bedroom above.
There, was the "most extraordinary relic in the world," the knife of the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and twenty thousand human beings besides.
The strange precision of portraiture, the somewhat ghastly art which had moulded these evil faces was startlingly evident in its effect upon the soul.
When a _great_ novelist or poet creates an evil personality it shocks and terrifies us, but it is never wholly evil. We know of the monster"s antecedents and environment. However stern we may be in our att.i.tude towards the crime, sweet charity and deep understanding of the motives of human action often give us glimmerings which enable us to pity a lamentable human being who is a brother of ours whatever he may have done.
But here? No. All was sordid and horrible.
Gilbert and Rita saw rows upon rows of faces which differed in every way one from the other and were yet dreadfully alike.
For these great sinister dolls, so unreal and so real, had all a likeness. The smirk of cruelty and cunning seemed to lie upon the waxen masks. Colder than life, far colder than death, they gave forth emanations which struck the very heart with woe and desolation.
To many visitors the Chamber of Horrors is all its name signifies. But it is a place of pleasure nevertheless. The skin creeps but the sensation is pleasant. It provides a thrill like a switchback railway.
But it is not a place that artists and imaginative people can enter and easily forget. It epitomises the wages of sin. It ought to be a great educational force. Young criminals should be taken there between stern guardians, to learn by concrete evidence which would appeal to them as no books or sermons could ever do, the Nemesis that waits upon unrepentant ways.
The man and the girl who had just entered were both in a state of nervous tension. They were physically exhausted, one by fierce indulgence in poison, the other by three weeks of light and feverish pleasure.
And more than this.
Each, in several degree, knew that they were doing wrong, that they had progressed far down the primrose path led by the false flute-players.
"I couldn"t have conceived it was so, so unnerving, Gilbert," Rita said, shrinking close to him.
"It is pretty beastly," Lothian answered. "It"s simply a dictionary of crime though, that"s all--rather too well ill.u.s.trated."
"I don"t want to know of these horrors. One sees them in the papers, but it means little or nothing. How dreadful life is though, under the surface!"
Gilbert felt a sudden pang of pity for her, so young and fair, so frightened now.--Ah! _he_ knew well how dreadful life was--under the surface!
For a moment, in that tomb-like place a vision came to him, sunlit and splendid, calm and beautiful.
He saw his life as it might be--as doubtless G.o.d meant it to be, a favoured, fortunate and happy life, for G.o.d does not, in His inscrutable wisdom chastise all men. Well-to-do, brilliant of mind, with trained capacity to exact every drop of n.o.ble joy from life; blessed with a sweet and beautiful woman to watch over him and complement him; did ever a man have a fairer prospect, a luckier chance?
His h.e.l.l was so real. Heaven was so near. He had but to say, "I will not," and the sun would rise again upon his life. To the end he would walk dignified, famous, happy, loving and deeply-loved--if only he could say those words.
A turn of the hand would banish the Fiend Alcohol for ever and ever!