Part 30 (1/2)

”Yes,” she said, ”Tumpany is a good fellow at heart. And, like most people who drink, when he is himself he is a quite delightful person.”

She went out into the hall, tall and beautiful, the jewels in her hair and on her hands sparkling in the candlelight.

Morton Sims took one of the candles from the table and went up to the couch.

A shadow flickered over the face of the man who was lying there.

It was but momentary, but in that instant the watcher became cold. The silver of the candle-stick stung the palm of a hand which was suddenly wet.

This tranquil, lovely room with its soft yellow light, dissolved and s.h.i.+fted like a scene in a dream... .

... It was a raw winter's morning. The walls were the whitewashed walls of a prison mortuary. There was a smell of chloride of lime... .

And lying upon a long zinc slab, with little grooves and depressions running down to the eye-hole of a drain, was a still figure whose face was a ghastly caricature of this face, hideously, revoltingly alike ...

Mary Lothian, Tumpany, and two maid-servants came into the room, and with some difficulty the poet was carried upstairs.

He was hardly laid upon his bed when the rain came, falling in great sheets with a loud noise, cooling and purging the hot air.

CHAPTER III

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INEBRIATE, AND THE LETTER OF JEWELLED WORDS

”Verbosa ac grandis epistola venit a Capreis.”

--_Juvenal._

It was three days after the accident.

Gilbert lay in bed. His head was crossed with bandages, his wrist was wrapped with lint and a wet compress was upon the ankle of his strained left foot.

The windows of his bedroom were wide to the sun and air of the morning.

There were two pleasant droning sounds. A bee was flying round the room, and down below in the garden Tumpany was mowing the strip of lawn before the house. Gilbert was very tranquil. He was wrapped round with a delicious peace of mind and body. He seemed to be floating in some warm ether of peace.

There was a table by the side of his bed. In a slender vase upon it was a single marguerite daisy with its full green stem, its rays of white--Chinese white in a box of colours--round the central gold. Close to his hand, upon the white turned down sheet was a copy of ”John Inglesant.” It was a book he loved and could always return to, and he had had his copy bound in most sumptuous purple.

Mary came into the bedroom.

She was carrying a little tray upon which there was a jug of milk and a bottle of soda water. There was a serene happiness upon her face. She had him now--the man she loved! He was hers, her own without possibility of interference. She was his Providence, he depended utterly upon her.

There are not many women like this in life, but there are some. Perhaps they were more frequent in the days of the past. Women who have no single thought of Self: women whose thoughts are always prayers: women in whose veins love takes the place of blood, whose hearts are cisterns of sweet charity, whose touch means healing, whose voices are like harps that sound forgiveness and devotion alone.

She put the tray upon the bedside table and sat down upon the bed, taking his unwounded hand in hers, stroking it with the soft cus.h.i.+ons of her fingers, holding up its well-shaped plumpness as if it were a toy.

”There is something so comic about your hands, darling!” she said. ”They are so nice and fat and jolly. They make me want to laugh!”

To Gilbert his wife's happy voice seemed but part of the dream-like peace which lay upon him. He was drowsy with incense. How fresh and fragrant she was! he thought idly. He pulled her down to him and kissed her and the gilded threads of her hair brushed his forehead. Her lips were cool as violets with the dew upon their petals. She belonged to him. She was part of the pleasant furniture of the room, the hour!