Part 36 (1/2)

With trembling hands the empty bottle was hidden, the gla.s.s washed out and replaced, the door noiselessly unlocked.

Then Lothian lurched to the open window.

It was as he had said, dawn was at hand. But a thick grey mist hid everything. Phantoms seemed to sway in it, speaking to each other with tiny doll-like squeaks.

There were no jocund noises as he crept back into bed and fell into a stupor, snoring loudly.

No jocund noises of Dawn.

CHAPTER IV

d.i.c.kSON INGWORTH UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

”On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens.”

--_Proverb of Provence._

Lothian and d.i.c.kson Ingworth were driving into Wordingham.

It was just after lunch and there was a pleasant cold-snap in the air, a hint of Autumn which would soon be here.

The younger man was driving, sending the cob along at a good pace, quite obviously a skilful and accustomed whip.

His host sat by his side and looked up at him with some curiosity, a curiosity which had been growing upon him during the last few days.

Ingworth was certainly good-looking, in a boyish, rather rakish fas.h.i.+on. There were no indications of dissipation in his face. He was not a dissipated youth. But there was, nevertheless, in the cast of the features, something that suggested rather more than staidness. The hair was dark red and very crisp and curly, the mouth was well-shaped and rather thick in the lips. Upon it, more often than not, was the hint of a smile at some inward thought, ”rather like some youthful apprentice pirate, not adventured far upon the high seas yet, but with sufficient experience to lick the chops of memory now and then” ... thus Gilbert's half amused, half wondering thought.

And the eyes?--yes, there was something a little queer about the eyes.

They were dark, not very steady in expression, and the whites--by Jove!

that was it--had a curious opalescence at times. Could it possibly be that his friend had a touch of the tar-brush somewhere? It was faint, elusive, born more of a chance thought than of reality perhaps, and yet as the dog-cart bowled along the straight white road Gilbert wondered more and more.

He had known the lad, who was some two and twenty years of age, for twelve months or more. Where had he met him?--Oh, yes, at an exhibition of caricatures in the Carfax Gallery. Cromartie had introduced them.

Ingworth had made friends at once. In a graceful impulsive way he had taken Lothian into a corner, and, blus.h.i.+ng a good deal, had told him how much he had wanted to know him. He had just come down from Oxford; he told the poet how eagerly he was being read by the younger men there.

That was how it had begun.

Friends.h.i.+p was an immediate result. Lothian, quite impervious to flattery and spurning coteries and the ”tea-shops,” had found this young man's devotion a pleasant thing. He was a gentleman and he didn't bore Gilbert by literary talk. He was, in short, like an extremely intelligent f.a.g to a boy in the sixth form of a public school. He spoke the same language of Oxford and school that Gilbert did--the bond between them was just that, and the elder and well-known man had done all he could for his protege.

From Gilbert's point of view, the friends.h.i.+p had occurred by chance, it had presented no jarring elements, and he had drifted into it with good-natured acquiescence.

It was a fortnight after Mary had sent the invitation to Ingworth, who could not come at the moment, being kept in London by ”important work.”

He had now arrived, and this was the eighth day of his visit.

”I can't understand Tumpany letting this beast down,” Ingworth said.

”He's as sure footed as possible. Was Tumpany fluffed?”

”I suppose he was, a little.”