Part 37 (2/2)

He leant back and laughed aloud.

”Oh, d.i.c.ker!” he said, ”what a babe you are!”

Ingworth grew red. He was furious, but dared say nothing more. He felt as if he had been trying to bore a tunnel through the Alps with a boiled carrot and had wasted a franc in paying some one to hold his shadow while he made the attempt!

Lothian's laughter was perfectly genuine. He cared absolutely nothing what Toftrees said or thought about him. But he did care about the young man at his side.

... The other Self, the new Ego, suddenly became awake and dominant.

Suspicion reared its head.

For days and days now he had drunk hardly anything. The anti-alcoholic medicines that Morton Sims had administered were gradually strengthening the enfeebled will and bringing back the real tenant of his soul. But now ...

Here was one whom he had thought his friend. It was not so then! An enemy sat by his side?--he would soon discover.

And then, with a skill which made the lad a plaything in his hands, with a cunning a hundred times deeper than Ingworth's immature s.h.i.+ftiness, Lothian began his work.

But it was not the real Lothian. It was the adroit devil waked to life that set itself to the task as the dog-cart rattled into the little country town and drew up before the George Hotel in the Market Square.

”Thanks awfully, old chap,” Lothian said cheerfully as they turned under the archway into the stable yard. ”You're a topping whip, you know, d.i.c.ker. I can't drive a bit myself. But I like to see you.”

For a moment Ingworth forgot his rancour at the praise. Unconscious of the dominant personality and the mental grin behind the words, he swallowed the compliment as a trout gulps a fly.

They descended from the trap and the stable-men began to unharness the cob. Lothian thrust his arm through the other's. ”Come along, Jehu!” he said. ”I want a drink badly, and I'm sure you do, after the drive. I don't care what you say, that cob is _not_ so easy to handle.” ...

His voice was lost in the long pa.s.sage that led from the stable yard to the ”saloon-lounge.”

CHAPTER V

A QUARREL IN THE ”MOST SELECT LOUNGE IN THE COUNTY”

”I strike quickly, being moved... . A dog of the house of Montague moves me.”

--_Romeo and Juliet._

The George Hotel in Wordingham was a most important place in the life and economy of the little Norfolk town.

The town drank there.

In the handsome billiard room, any evening after dinner, one might find the solicitor, the lieutenant of the Coast-guards, in command of the district, a squire or two, Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger the estate agents and auctioneers, Mr. Reeves the maltster and local J.P.--town, not county--and in fact all the local notabilities up to a certain point, including Mr. Helzephron, the landlord and Wors.h.i.+pful Master of the Wordingham Lodge of Freemasons for that year.

The Doctor, the Bank Manager and, naturally, the Rector, were the only people of consequence who did not ”use the house” and make it their club. They were definitely upon the plane of gentlefolk and could not well do so. Accordingly they formed a little bridge playing coterie of their own, occasionally a.s.sisted by the Lieutenant, who preferred the Hotel, but made fugitive excursions into the somewhat politer society which was his _milieu_ by birth.

Who does not know them, these comfortable, respectable hotels in the High Streets or Market Places of small country towns? Yet who has pointed the discovering finger at them or drawn attention to the smug and _convenable_ curses that they are?

”There was a flaunting gin palace at the corner of the street,”--that is the sort of phrase you may read in half a hundred books. The holes and dens where working people get drunk, and issuing therefrom make night hideous at closing time, stink in the nostrils of every one. They form the texts and ill.u.s.trations of many earnest lectures, much fervent sermonizing. But nothing is said of the suave and well-conducted establishments where the prosperous inebriates of stagnant county towns meet to take their poison. When the doors of the George closed in Wordingham and its little coterie of patrons issued forth, gravely, pompously, a little unsteadily perhaps, to seek their homes, the Police Inspector touched his cap--”The gentlemen from the George, going home!”

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