A Duel Part 35

CHAPTER XXI

OUT OF THE BLUE

Mrs. Gregory Lamb's "At Home" was crowded by rather a nondescript gathering. The lady's hospitality was scarcely of the kind which discriminates. Had she set herself to pick and choose her acquaintances, their number might have been considerably less. She had learnt that the people she wished to know were apt not to be anxious to know her; rather the other way. She had to be content with the society of those who did wish to know her. Whether she was particularly desirous of the honour of their acquaintance was another matter altogether. As she wished to know somebody, using the word in the sense of a noun of mult.i.tude, she had to put up with what she could get.

The result was a little confusing. This is not to say that there were no decent persons among the hordes which thronged her rooms: there were. Possibly the chief objection which could be urged against them was that, for the most part, they were hungry. Not only as regards the physical appet.i.te; though a large proportion of them were quite willing to consume all the food they could obtain, and all the drink. They were hungry in every sense of the word. To use a significant euphemism, a very great majority of Mrs. Lamb's guests were "on the make". They all wanted something. Many wanted a great many things, and wanted them very badly. There was a generous fringe of what is called the "literary, musical and artistic world"--those excellent people who will go into every house into which they can gain admittance. Singers who are looking for people who will listen while they sing, and who will pay for listening. Authors in search of an "opening," victims of that quaint delusion that in order to achieve popularity it is necessary to keep one's person well in the public eye, as if it were not easier for the novelist who lives in the centre of Timbuctoo to gain, and keep, a circulation of a hundred thousand copies--that consummation so devoutly to be desired!--than for the pet of London drawing-rooms. Composers who wanted some one to hear their "works"; musicians who were apparently content to play on their various instruments, and keep on playing, whether they were listened to or not; artists who nourished more or less timid hope that, having provided them with food, and drink, and house-room, their hostess would purchase half a dozen of their "sketches," by way of providing a pleasant climax to their evening's entertainment; actors--and actresses!--who were willing to do anything, from the "splits" to "Hamlet," and to do it then and there; dramatists, who could have told you tales--and tried to!--of managerial incompetence which would have made your blood run cold, if they had not been so monotonously alike. These worthy folk, foredoomed to failure, were at Mrs. Lamb's in force.

There were others. Birds, some of them, of the same plumage, who had achieved a more successful flight, and promised to sustain it, and perhaps fly even higher. Men and women who had won for themselves prominent places in their several callings--perhaps not quite in the front rank, but still near enough--who, having been in many such, understood what kind of house it was that they were in. It is to be feared that they regarded their hostess at best with but amus.e.m.e.nt, wondering, if she really had as much money as people said, how it was that she was willing to get so little for it.

Then there were the nondescripts--that large battalion. Some actually with t.i.tles, though probably a trifle smirched. People who were the Lord alone knew who, or what they did for a living.

Persons who claimed to be something in the City, and no doubt were; whose wives, if they had them, gave you the impression that their husbands were in the same line of business as the Rothschilds. There was probably no trade or profession, from the highest to the lowest, which went unrepresented that night in Connaught Square.

And besides all these there were the score or so of individuals whom the hostess really knew, or thought she did. And among them moved Mrs. Lamb, as if she knew them all. Beautifully dressed, probably the best, without doubt the most expensively, dressed woman there. There were diamonds on her fingers, her wrists, on her bosom, about her neck, in her hair. If they were real, and it were blasphemy to doubt it, she would have been reduced into something worth having if she had been put up to auction as she stood. She looked, if not exactly divine, then certainly not unprepossessing. There were many present, both male and female, who thought her lovely, one of the loveliest women they had ever seen. That was just the a.s.semblage to which such charms as hers would make their most strenuous appeal, so that, since a woman loves appreciation, in her generation she was wise.

For one so young, and in years she still was very young, she bore herself with singular ease. She had cast herself for the _role_ of great lady. If the type on which she had fashioned herself smacked somewhat of the theatre, her success was none the less, but rather all the more, on that account. In her way she really and truly was irresistible. So full of smiles and of sweetness, so good to look upon. So tall and well set, with such splendid arms and shoulders, such a rounded neck, such good-humour in her face. There was such a suggestion of youth about her--the youth which must prevail, of vital force, of physical vigour. She presented in herself such a striking example of the creed that's all for the best in this best of all possible worlds. She was such an excellent product of that great and shining G.o.d, Success. He had showered on her all his gifts, and she on her part seemed quite willing to divide them with whoever would. She seemed to have the knack of saying the right thing to the right person, being possessed either of a wonderful memory for names and faces, or, in an almost miraculous degree, of the trick of arriving, on the instant, at just conclusions from the scantiest data. She knew who wrote songs; what songs they had written; even what songs they were about to write; and who liked it to be thought that they were distant connections of the Rothschilds. She either had this information stored away in innumerable cells in her illimitable brain, or she picked it from people while they talked to her, out of their eyes, lips, pockets, without their suspecting that she was doing anything of the kind.

She might have stood as the personification of human happiness, as the possessor of everything that the heart could desire.

There were many there who credited her with being both these things, envying her more or less, admiring her perhaps even more. They would have readily believed that in her bed of roses there was not one crumpled leaf. Her radiant bearing, her beaming visage, seemed to suggest that she lived, and moved, and had her being in the lotus-land of happy dreams, which, for her, had grown realities.

As the evening advanced she seemed to become, if anything, more light-hearted--gayer still--as if the success of her gathering, the happy looks with which she everywhere was greeted, had inoculated her with some subtle essence which raised her out of herself. Harry Talfourd and Margaret Wallace came, in a "growler," when she was at her best and brightest. Although it was late, and some of the earliest comers were going, others were still arriving. A long line of vehicles were slowly depositing their occupants at the front door. In this line Mr.

Talfourd's cab took its proper place, in the rear, and in that line it bade fair to continue for some considerable time. The lady and gentleman soon grew impatient.

"Are we going to stay in this cab all night?" inquired Margaret.

The gentleman put his head out of the window.

"It looks as if we were. We're about half a mile from the house, and there seems to be no end of confusion; people are both coming and going, and there's a fine old muddle. I say, Meg, it's quite fine and dry; do you think you could get out and walk the rest of the way? or would it make a mess of you?"

"Make a mess of me! what do you mean? Open that door; I'll soon show you."

He opened the door, and she showed him.

Getting through the wide open portals of Mrs. Lamb's residence, and then up the staircase, on which people were ascending and descending in a continual stream, occupied some time.

"I feel," observed Margaret, when they had reached the drawing-room door, "as if I had gone through a course of the 'home-exerciser,' or whatever they call the thing which is guaranteed to give employment to every muscle in your body. If all these persons are Mrs. Lamb's friends she must be a well-loved woman."

In the drawing-rooms themselves there was room to move slowly, if one observed a few necessary precautions. At their first entrance nothing could be seen of their hostess. As Harry piloted her through the room Margaret found sufficient occupation in the spectacle presented by her fellow-guests. In the course of her somewhat varied experiences she had met some curiosities, but never before had she encountered such specimens of humanity as were about her now. While she was wondering who they could be, and where they could have come from, Harry gently pressed her arm.

"There's Mrs. Lamb in the other room; I'll introduce you."

Margaret looked, and saw, in the smaller room which was beyond, a woman standing, with her back towards her, whom she became instinctively conscious was her hostess. Not only was she the most striking figure in that great crowd, but she was surrounded by a number of people, to all of whom she seemed to be talking at once. Her head being turned away, her face was not visible from where they were, so that it could have told her nothing; yet so singular sometimes is feminine human nature, that Harry had hardly finished speaking when Margaret replied--

"Please don't introduce me to that woman; I'd rather you didn't.

Take me away at once."

There was something so unusual in the girl's tone that Harry stared at her in amazement.

"Meg! is there anything wrong?"

"Thank you, there is nothing wrong, only--I want to go."

"Go! You can't go now--it's impossible--before I've introduced you, since you're here for that special purpose."

"I don't want to be introduced. I'd rather you didn't. Harry, you mustn't!"

"Meg, don't look like that. She's not an ogre; she won't bite you. Child, what's gone wrong with you all of a sudden? You needn't stop more than five minutes--and this atmosphere's enough to asphyxiate any one; but, after what I said to her this morning, and since you have come, the commonest courtesy compels me to introduce you; afterwards we can go at once; any excuse will serve. Anyhow it's too late now for us to think of going before I've made you known to her."

What Mr. Talfourd said seemed to be the fact. The current had borne them so close to their hostess that she had but to turn round to find herself within arm's length of them. Margaret was silent. Harry did not look at her face; he was careful not to do so. The sudden curious change in the girl's manner had affected him more than he would have cared to admit. He knew that she was not a person who was liable to be beset by fantastic whims and fancies, and that there was probably some substantial reason for the alteration which had taken place in her. His wish was to get through the ceremony of introduction with as much speed, and as little ostentation, as he could, and then depart, if the feat were possible, more quickly than they had come. With this intention, taking the bull a little by the horns, he addressed their hostess while her back was still turned towards them.

"Mrs. Lamb!"

At the sound of the voice, for whose accents she had been listening all the evening, the lady moved round with quite a little swirl of her draperies; there was just sufficient open s.p.a.ce about her to enable her to do it.

"Mr. Talfourd! I thought you had forgotten me, and were never coming. And--have you brought the lady?"

"I have. Permit me to introduce to you Miss Margaret Wallace."

There have possibly been moments in most of our lives when we have been visited by something of the nature of a thunderbolt, and sometimes it has seemed to drop out of the clearest of blue skies. That was the moment in her life in which the thunderbolt descended on Mrs. Lamb, and with such crushing force that, for a too perceptible period of time, it left her literally bereft of her right senses. Its utter unexpectedness was no slight factor in the havoc which it wrought. Possibly more than she had been able to do for a considerable interval she had succeeded in putting behind her matters which were wont to press too closely; for the moment she had forgotten Pitmuir--all that it meant.

This was a case in which forgetfulness meant happiness, or a very tolerable subst.i.tute. If only for a few fleeting minutes her mind was at peace.

And, on a sudden, without a moment's warning, not dreaming that such a meeting was even within the range of possibility, she found herself confronted by the one person in the world whom she would have traversed the universe to avoid. There, in her own drawing-room, within two feet of her was the girl who was the only living creature whose image haunted her, both awake and asleep.

She had had communion of late with ghosts--unwillingly enough, for she had resorted to every means with which she was acquainted to drive them from her. Yet come they would.

Therefore it was not, after all, so strange, that in the first moments of what practically amounted to delirium, she supposed that this bonny, fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, whom she so hated and so feared, was one of them.

When she heard her name, and saw her face, she moved back upon the people who were behind, oblivious that they were there. The whole fashion of her countenance was changed. She held out her arms, as if to ward off something whose approach she feared. And she exclaimed, in a voice which none of those about had heard from her before--

"You can't come in!--you can't! He says you're not to--and you shan't! Go away! go away!"

Not one person in the throng which was around her had a notion what she meant, Margaret no more than any of them. She herself drew back and clung to Mr. Talfourd's arm, as if in fear. But her fear was as nothing to the other's. Their hostess offered in herself a picture for her guests' inspection which it was not pleasant to behold. She seemed to have all at once become transformed into a gibbering idiot. While she persistently drew farther and farther back, she kept repeating--

"You shan't come in!--you shan't! He says you're not to--and you shan't! you shan't! I say you shan't!"

There was among the onlookers a medical man, one who had had experience of different phases of lunacy. Perceiving that this was a case which entered into his domain, he forced himself to the front. He put his hand upon his hostess' bare shoulder.

"Mrs. Lamb! what has affected you? There is nothing here to cause you the slightest disturbance. Control yourself, I beg."

His tone of calm authority had instant effect. Mrs. Lamb was still, she ceased to gibber. Her arms fell to her sides. She remained motionless, staring in front of her, as one in a dream.

Putting her hands up to her face, a convulsion seemed to pa.s.s all over her. When she removed her hands she was awake, and understood, and knew what she had done. The knowledge was more than she could bear.

"Let me pa.s.s," she cried.

They let her pa.s.s. She swept through her guests, who huddled themselves together to let her go, like some incensed wild creature, out of the room, from their sight.

CHAPTER XXII