Part 39 (1/2)
Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes.
”She's been writing to you!” he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else.
Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon?
”I _beg_ your pardon?” Lothian said coolly.
”Yes, she has!” the young fellow hissed. ”You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man.
She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!--Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!”
Gilbert lifted his gla.s.s and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town.
Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair.
”You dirty little hanger-on,” he said in a low voice, ”how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!”
Without heat, without anger, but merely as a necessary measure of precaution or punishment, he smashed his left fist into Ingworth's jaw and laid him flat upon the carpet.
The girl behind the bar, who knew who Gilbert Lothian was very well, had been watching what was going on with experienced eyes.
She had seen, or known with the quick intuition of her training, that a row was imminent between the famous Mr. Lothian--whose occasional presences in the ”lounge” were thought to confer a certain l.u.s.tre upon that too hospitable rendezvous--and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair.
Molly Palmer had pressed the b.u.t.ton of her private bell, which called Mr. Helzephron himself from his account books in the office.
Mr. Helzephron was a slim, bearded man, black of hair and saffron of visage. He was from Cornwall, in the beginning, and combined the inherent melancholy and pessimism of the Celt with the Celt's shrewd business instincts when he transplants himself.
He entered at that moment and caught hold of the wretched Ingworth just as the young man had risen, saw red, and was about to leap over the table at Lothian, whom, in all probability he would very soon have demolished.
Helzephron's arms and hands were like vices of steel. His voice droned like a wasp in a jam jar.
”Now, then,” he said, ”what's all this? What's all this, sir? I can't have this sort of thing going on. Has this gentleman been insulting you, Mr. Lothian?”
Ingworth was powerless in the Cornishman's grip. For a moment he would have given anything in the world to leap at the throat of the man at the other side of the table, who was still calmly smoking in his chair.
But quick prudence a.s.serted itself. Lothian was known here, a celebrity. He was a celebrity anywhere, a public brawl with him would be dreadfully scandalous and distressing, while in the end it would a.s.suredly not be the poet who would suffer most.
And Ingworth was a coward; not a physical coward, for he would have stood up to any one with nothing but glee in his heart, but a moral one. Lothian, he knew, wouldn't have minded the scandal a bit, here or anywhere else. But to Ingworth, cooled instantly by the lean grip of the landlord, the prospect was horrible.
And to be held by another man below one in social rank, landlord of an inn, policeman, or what not, while it rouses the blood of some men to frenzy, in others brings back an instant sanity.
Ingworth remained perfectly still.
For a second or two Lothian watched him with a calm, almost judicial air. Then he flushed suddenly, with a generous shame at the position.
”It's all right, Helzephron,” he said. ”It's a mistake, a d.a.m.ned silly mistake. As a matter of fact I lost my temper. Please let Mr. Ingworth go.”
Mr. Helzephron possessed those baser sides of tact which pa.s.s for sincerity with many people.
”Very sorry, I'm sure,” he droned, and stood waiting with melancholy interest to see what would happen next.