Part 5 (1/2)

A cunning murderer with a poisoned mind and body on one side, the brilliant young poet in the sunlight of success and high approbation upon the other!

Mystery of mysteries that G.o.d should allow so foul a thing to dominate and tangle the fair threads and delicate tissues of life!

”Well, that's that!” said the doctor, in a phrase he was fond of using when he dosed an episode in his mind. ”I'll make my notes on Hanc.o.c.k's case and forget it until I find it necessary to use them in my work.

And I'll lock up the poems Moultrie has sent me and I won't look at the book again for a month. Then I shall be able to read the verses for themselves and without any arriere-pensee.

”But, I wonder ... ?”

The brougham stopped at the doctor's house in Russell Square.

BOOK ONE

LOTHIAN IN LONDON

”Myself, arch traitor to myself, My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, My clog whatever road I go.”

THE DRUNKARD

CHAPTER I

UNDER THE WAGGON-ROOF. A DINNER IN BRYANSTONE SQUARE

”Le veritable Amphitryon est l'Amphitryon ou l'on dine.”

--_Moliere._

It was a warm night in July when Mr. Amberley, the publisher, entertained a few friends at dinner to meet Gilbert Lothian, the poet.

Although the evening was extremely sultry and the houses of the West End were radiating the heat which they had stored up from the sun-rays during the day, Mr. Amberley's dining room was deliciously cool.

The house was one of those roomy old-fas.h.i.+oned places still to be found unspoiled in Bryanstone Square, and the dining room, especially, was notable. It was on the first floor, over-looking the square, a long and lofty room with a magnificent waggon-roof which was the envy of every one who saw it, and gave the place extraordinary distinction.

The walls were panelled with oak, which had been stained a curious green, that was not olive nor ash-green but partook of both--the veritable colour, indeed, of the grey-green olive trees that one sees on some terrace of the Italian Alps at dawn.

The pictures were very few, considering the size of the room, and they were all quite modern--”In the movement”--as shrewd Mr. Amberley was himself.

A portrait of Mrs. Amberley by William Nicholson, which was quite famous in its way, displayed all the severe pregnancy and almost solemn reserve of this painter. There was a pastel of Prydes' which showed--rather suggested--a squalid room in which a gentleman of 1800, with a flavour of Robert Macaire about him, stood in the full rays of the wine and honey-coloured light of an afternoon sun.

Upon yet another panel was a painting upon silk by Charles Conder, inspired of course, by Watteau, informed by that sad and haunting catching after a fairyland never quite reached, which is the distinctive note of Conder's style, and which might well have served for an ill.u.s.tration to a grotesque fantasy of Heine.

Mrs. Amberley loved this painting. She had a Pater-like faculty of reading into--or from--a picture, something which the artist never thought about at all, and she used to call this little masterpiece ”An Ode of Horace in Patch, Powder and Peruque!” She adored these perfectly painted little snuff-box deities who wandered through shadowy mists of amethyst and rouge-de-fer in a fantastic wood.

It is extremely interesting to discover, know of, or to sit at ease in a room which, in its way, is historic, and this is what the Amberleys'

guests always felt, and were meant to feel.