Part 36 (1/2)
As they glided down the wide bends of the descent, d.i.c.k plied the wretched Melchard with dose after dose of throat-rasping spirit. After the second half-tumbler the man wept, sobbing out entreaties for mercy.
And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard the voice and words of her lover's reply--words not meant for her hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision of the speaker's pa.s.sion which carried them, against the wind, to her ears.
”Pity! Pity on a filthy creature that never felt it--not even for his own filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on the pa.s.sions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jaded pleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculator calculating huge revenues from the festering putrefaction of human disease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul to me--but--drink that down, or, by G.o.d! I'll smash every bone in your face.”
A gasp, a spasmodic sound of gulping, another gasp--and silence.
Two-thirds of the bottle's contents was down the man's throat. d.i.c.k poured the remnant into his flask and sat watching the effects.
Satisfied at last that he had induced complete alcoholic coma, he touched Amaryllis on the shoulder.
”Stop her as soon as you can,” he said. ”I'll drive now.”
When they were off again, she asked, in a voice none too steady, what he had been doing to the wretched man behind her.
”Made him absolutely blind--blotto,” he answered.
”You sounded rather dreadful, d.i.c.k,” she said; adding, after a hesitation, ”Cruel--almost.”
His face was set on the road ahead of him, and his profile, she thought, though not definitely vindictive in expression, was hard as stone.
”Cruel?” he asked.
”You said awful things in a very dreadful voice.”
”The awful thoughts I had account for the voice, beloved,” he explained.
”They couldn't be said to him. I thought of his hands touching you--his voice speaking to you--you, young as an angel, as beautiful as the G.o.ddess that floated in upon the world in a mother-of-pearl dinghy! As clever as that other one with the fireman's tin hat, as game as Jimmy Wilde, and as kind as Heaven. Spoke to _you_--touched you--looked at you--blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom, when--. My G.o.d! woman,” cried poor d.i.c.k, as if a flame came from the marble lips of him, ”I could have watched him through an hour of rack and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's the cruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos.
Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture of arrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his d.a.m.ned Caliban! And I only did that because there weren't any handcuffs handy.”
Uttered in a voice wonderfully soft, yet vibrating with a quality which thrilled him like some tone of a celestial violin, her answering question reached him through the rush of their speed.
”Do you love me like that?” she asked.
To the short nod of his white silhouette he added curtly:
”Be quiet, please. I'm driving.”
She chuckled softly to herself, thinking how well already she began to understand his ways--ways so odd and dear, she told herself, that never, she was sure, would she tire of them.
CHAPTER XXII.
LORD LABRADOR.
The Roman causeway ran into the macadam high road from Harthborough to Timsdale-Horton almost on the level, with still a slight fall towards Harthborough, the smoke of whose chimneys was already visible.
Half a mile ahead of them was a knot of men, gathered about what might have been a wheelbarrow. A quarter of a mile further,
”Three men,” said d.i.c.k.