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 multitude, 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 appetite; 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 amusement, 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 titles, 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 assemblage 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 therôleof 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 god, 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 space 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 substitute. 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 pass 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 pass," she cried.
They let her pass. 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.
Harry Talfourd hurried Margaret Wallace into the street as fast as circumstances permitted, while the guests at Mrs. Lamb's were looking at each other, exchanging whispers, asking what had happened, what the thing which had happened meant. A few seconds after the hostess' departure the crowded rooms were filled with the buzz of voices, which rose higher and higher until it became a pandemonium of noise. Mrs. Lamb's "At Home" had resolved itself into chaos.
Outside in the street Mr. Talfourd did not find it easy to get a cab; the chaos within was already beginning to make itself felt without. The whole roadway was a confusion of vehicles. Perceiving that it was inadvisable to stand still, since they immediately became the cynosure of curious, and even impertinent, eyes, Harry marched resolutely onward, holding the girl tightly by the arm. They had to go some little distance before they could find a four-wheeled cab which would condescend to give them shelter.
So soon as they were in, Margaret drew back into the corner of her seat with a movement so eloquent that Harry seemed to hear her shiver. He was silent, trying to collect his thoughts. He was as much at a loss as any of the excited people they were leaving behind. When he spoke it was lightly, as if he desired to make as little of the matter as might be. He was conscious that in the farther corner, as far away from him as she could get, was the girl he loved, in a mood wholly unlike any that he had known before. He was fearful of what might be coming next. So he endeavoured not to be serious.
"This promises to be a night of adventure. Did you ever see such a scramble for cabs? People were rushing out of the house as if it were on fire. We'll hope there'll be no accident before they've finished. What did you think of Mrs. Gregory Lamb? Something must have occurred to upset her equilibrium; she showed quite a new side of her character." Margaret was still. He seemed to hear her breathe; he wondered if it were possible that she was crying. He put out his hand, touching hers gently with his finger-tips. Although she did not repulse him she remained impassive, not in any way acknowledging his caress. "Meg, I hope you're not worrying yourself about that woman's behaviour. She's not quite responsible, I fancy. She certainly wasn't to-night, but there was nothing that need trouble you."
"I am wondering what she meant."
"Meant? My dear child, she meant nothing, absolutely nothing. She's a trifle mad, that's all."
"I'm not so sure. I believe she did mean something."
"What on earth makes you think that? What could she mean?"
"I can't explain. At present I don't understand myself; but I shall--I know I shall. Only I'm afraid."
"Afraid! Sweetheart, don't talk like that! You make me feel as if I had done something I oughtn't to have done."
"You have done nothing. Still I wish you hadn't introduced me. I asked you not to."
"But, Meg! the whole thing was your own proposition; the whole idea was yours from first to last."
"Yes, I know; but then I didn't understand."
"What didn't you understand?"
"I hadn't seen her."
"You hadn't seen her? Meg, have you ever seen Mrs. Lamb before?"
"Never."
"Has she ever seen you?"
"That's what I'm wondering; that's what I'm trying to make out."
"It's a very mysterious business altogether; and the way you're taking it seems to me to be not the least mysterious part of the whole affair--and I can't say that I'm fond of mysteries. However, as some one or other says in a play, though I'm afraid I can't tell you what play, 'Time will show'."
When they reached Margaret's rooms they found that Frank Staines and Mr. Winton had arrived already, and were waiting for them at the street door. They all went up together. So soon as they were in the room Mr. Winton asked his question--
"Well, Miss Wallace, is Mrs. Lamb to create Lady Glover?"
Had he put to her an inquiry on the answer to which the whole happiness of her life was dependent, it could hardly have moved her more.
"Never! never! never!"
She repeated the word three times over, with each time an additional emphasis. Mr. Winton, probably accustomed to strenuous utterances on the part of ladies to whom the theatre was the chief end and aim of their existence, appeared to be entertained by her intensity. Putting his hands behind his back he regarded her with smiling face.
"And isn't she to produce the play?--that is, if she's willing to do so if she's not to be allowed to play in it?"
"She is to have nothing to do with it--nothing."
"You appear to have arrived, Miss Wallace, at a decision which is final and conclusive, and to have done so in a very short space of time."
"I have."
"The matter is placed beyond the pale of my discussion?"
"It is."
Mr. Winton turned to Harry with a little gesture of amusement.
"Then, Talfourd, we shall have to seek for another capitalist, and as that is not a bird which is easy to find, 'The Gordian Knot' will have to be shelved for a still further indefinite period. Let's trust that some of us will live to see it produced."
In her turn Margaret faced Harry with an air of penitence.
"I'm so sorry, but I would rather that it were never produced at all than that it should owe anything to that woman--and you know how I have set my heart on its success."
He tried to comfort her, as if the loss were hers.
"'The Gordian Knot' won't spoil by keeping; don't let it trouble you a little bit; dismiss Mrs. Lamb from your mind as if she had never been. She's nothing to you, or to me, or to any of us; she's just--like that!"
He snapped his fingers in the air, as if by the action he expressed her valuation. Margaret answered with an enigmatic smile.
"Like that? I don't think she'll be to me like that--ever."
"But, my dear girl, why not? why not?"
"Ah! that I cannot tell you, because I don't know. But I shall know, and, when I do, I daresay I shall wish I didn't."
Harry threw up his hands in the air as if it were a case which baffled him. Frank Staines, who had been listening with a twinkle in his eyes, observed--
"I understand, Miss Wallace, that your appearance at Mrs. Lamb's furnished the occasion for quite a dramatic interlude".
Margaret moved her shoulders, as if the recollection made her shudder.
"I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind--thank you very much. I'm awfully sorry to turn you people out, but--I think I'd like to go to bed, if I may."
When the three men found themselves in the street Winton said to Harry--
"Miss Wallace's idea does not seem to have been altogether a success".
Harry did not reply at once; when he did his tone was a little grim.
"I'm not so sure. My own impression is--though if you were to ask me I could not tell you in so many set terms on what it's founded--that we're well rid of the lady, and that we are rid of her I think there's very little doubt."
Frank Staines remarked--
"If the lady's mad, or if she's subject to fits of madness--and if she isn't I don't know what she is--it's just as well that you've discovered it before it was too late".
Judging from their silence that seemed to be the opinion of the others also.
The next morning Miss Wallace was distinctly in an uncommunicative mood, as Miss Johnson, who paid her a very matutinal call, found, whereupon the young lady expressed herself with characteristic frankness.
"Really, Meg, I've known you for quite a time, and I was just beginning to think that you were a really Christian person, but now it's actually bursting on me that you can be nothing of the kind. You sit there, mumchance, looking all sorts of things and saying nothing; and if there can be anything more exasperating than that, I should like to know what, it is. You promised, last night, before you went to Mrs. Lamb, that you would tell me everything that happened--I'm sure something did happen, by the looks of you--yet the more I ask you questions, the more you won't answer them. Do you call that being as good as your word? I don't--so that's plain. I'm disappointed in you, Margaret Wallace."
Margaret smiled, a little wanly.
"I hope you'll forgive me, Dollie, please! but I can't talk to you just now, and especially about last night. Ask Harry, or Mr. Staines, they'll tell you everything, and perhaps a little later I will myself, but just now I really and truly can't."
Dollie, eyeing her shrewdly, perceiving she was in earnest, bowed to the inevitable.
"Very well; I shouldn't dream of asking anything of Mr. Frank Staines, he might treat me even worse than you are doing. But it's possible that I may put a few questions to your Harry. The fact is that if some one doesn't tell me something soon I shall simply burst with curiosity. I have never concealed from any one that curiosity's my ruling passion--it's the case with all literary persons, my dear! Meg!"--she went and put her arm about the girl's neck, and the tone of her voice was changed--"if anything horrid happened at that woman's, never mind; after all, horrid things don't really matter, they generally turn out much better than they seem. I once had thirteen MSS. rejected in one week, and yet I bore up, and I planted them all before I'd done with them. I've never seen you look like this before, and I don't half like it. I always make you the heroine of all my stories, because you're the best plucked girl I ever met; so buck up, and stop it as soon as you conveniently can."
Miss Johnson had not departed very long before Margaret had another visitor--Dr. Twelves. He found her much more talkative than Dollie had done.
So soon as the doctor appeared in the doorway Margaret ran to him with outstretched hands, in her voice a curious, eager note.
"I knew you'd come!--I knew it!"
The doctor took her soft hands in his well-worn ones, regarding her from under the pent-house of his overhanging brows with his keen hawk's eyes, which age had not perceptibly dimmed, as if he sought for something which he fancied might be hidden in some corner of her face.
"Did you? How did you know it?"
"I don't know; but I did--I was sure."
"Maybe you've the gift of second sight. I've heard it said it was in your father's family."
"I wish I had; it would be the most useful gift I could have just now."
"Would it? How's that? Maybe you knew I'd come because you wanted me."
"Wanted you! Doctor, don't you feel unduly flattered! But there's no one in the world I wanted half so much as you."
"Is that so? Then it's queer, because I just happen to be wanting you nearly as much. But before we fall to talking come to the light, and let me see your face. There's something there which puzzles me, which I've never seen on it before; it's sure I am it wasn't there the other day."
Taking her by the arm he would have led her to the window, but she placed her hand against his chest and stopped him.
"No, no, doctor, you mustn't take me to the light, and you mustn't look at my face either. I'd rather you turned right round and look at the wall. There's quite a pretty paper on the wall, and some drawings of mine which you'll find deserve your very closest attention. I just want to talk to you, and I want you to talk to me, and answer some questions which I'm going to ask--and that's all."
"And that's all? I see. And I'm not to look at your face? Good. It's prettier than the paper, and far more deserving of attention than the drawings, but far be it from me to quiz a lady when she'd rather I didn't. Yet before you start the talking--perhaps when you've started you'll be slow to finish--let me say a word. You remember what you told me about that visit you paid to Cuthbert Grahame--that last visit when they wouldn't let you in?"
"It's exactly about that I wish to speak to you."
"Then that's queerer still, because it's about that I've come to talk. You told me that it was Nannie Foreshaw who refused you admission, and that she poured some water on you; and I told you that I didn't see how she could have very well done that, since, at that very time, she was lying, with her leg broken, in bed. When I left I wrote and asked her what she had to say. I've had an answer from her, and here it is." He took an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope a letter, speaking all the time. "You'll bear in mind that Nannie's not so young as she was, and that, of late, things have fared ill with her, as they have a trick of doing when one grows old. She's had a broken leg, and that's no trifle when the marrow's getting dry in the bone; and her master--whom she'd had in her arms even before he'd lain in his mother's--had come to his death in a way that wasn't so plain as it might have been. She's never quite got the better of that broken leg; she walks with a stick, and she'll never walk without one; and she'll never be rid of the thought that, when Cuthbert Grahame died, though she was only just above, she couldn't get down to him, or shut his eyes, or see him before he was put in his coffin, or stand by his grave when he was buried. That thought troubles her more than the other. Between the one and the other, and the stress of advancing years, she's not so good a penwoman as she used to be. And so it comes about that this letter which I have here was not written by her own hand, though I have no doubt that they're just her own words which are set down in it."
Unfolding the sheet of paper he proceeded to read aloud.
"'Dear Mr. David'--she's called me that these forty years, and before that it was Master David, and it doesn't seem as if she could break herself of the habit, though, mind you, I'm an M.D. of Edinburgh University, and legally entitled to the prefix 'Doctor,' which is more than can be said for a good many that's called it. 'It's beyond my thinking'--it's very colloquially written is this letter, which makes me the more sure that it's just her words which are set down in it--'It's beyond my thinking how you could have supposed that I could ever have turned my darling away from the door?--I never supposed anything of the kind, but that's by the way--'and refuse to let her in? My dear Miss Margaret! Mr. David, if I were dying I'd open the door if I knew that she was there--ay, I believe I would climb out of my grave to do it.' You observe what exaggerated language the woman uses? That's her all over. 'And to think that it should have been her on the day of which you speak--that awful day! I'll never forgive myself now that I know it.' That's her again. 'And, Mr. David, I'll find it hard to forgive you either.' That's the woman to a T--logical. 'If you'd never brought the creature to the house none of it would ever have happened, and my darling would never have been denied the door. And hot water thrown on her sweet head! How slow is the judgment of God!' Observe how she flies off at a tangent. 'Now I'll tell you the whole story. That day as I was lying in my bed, where she had laid me, I heard a great clatter in the house. When, after it was over, she came up to see me, I asked her what it was about. She said that a strange man had come begging to the house, and had tried to force himself into it, but that she had had to imitate my voice, to make him think it was me that was talking to him, before he would go. The insolence of her, that she should try to imitate her betters, and tell me of it to my face. And now it seems that it was no strange man at all, but just my darling who had come begging to be let into her own home. That wicked woman! Tell my sweet, when you see her, Mr. David, just how it was. And tell her if I had known it was she I would have crawled down, if it had been on my hands and knees, to undo the door, and bid her welcome. And say to her that there's none dearer to me in all the world than she is, and well she ought to know it. There is one prayer I offer constantly, that I may be spared to see her sweet face again, and hold her in my arms, and listen to her dear, soft voice. There is much more that I would say, but it cannot be written; it is only for her and for me.' Then the old woman goes off rambling; there is more, but nothing to the point. Here is her letter; you may read it for yourself if you like; there are tender messages by the yard. You'll see that that is not the epistle of a woman who would drive you from her door."
"But I don't understand. Who does she mean imitated her voice?"
"The woman who called herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame."
"Who called herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame? I've heard something about some woman, but nothing that was at all plain. Tell me who she was, and how she came to call herself by his name."
The doctor told, as succinctly as he could, the story of the woman he had picked up by the wayside; how, though he had found her helpless, she had proved herself to be more than a match for them all. Margaret listened with eyes which grew wider and wider open. When he had finished she broke into exclamation.
"Then Nannie is right; it was through you that it all happened."
He resorted to his favourite trick--he stroked his bristly chin, as if the action assisted him in the search for an appropriate answer.
"In a measure, young lady--in a measure. My original intention was to perform an act of mercy. You would not have had me leave the creature there in the night to perish. The whole business is but an illustration of the truth of how great events from little causes spring."
"To give her assistance, shelter--that was right enough; but, according to your own statement, you were responsible for that mockery of marriage."
The rubbing of the bristles went on with redoubled energy.
"I might say something on that point, but I'll not; I'll just admit I'm guilty. And I'll do it the more willingly because there hasn't been a day on which I haven't told myself that if there's a creature on God's earth that needed well and regular hiding that creature's me, because of what I did that night. I did a great wrong, a great folly, and a great sin. Margaret, though I am old and you are young, I am ready, if you wish it--and you'll be right to wish it--to humble myself in the dust at your feet. My only consolation is that in His infinite mercy, ultimately, there may be forgiveness even for me." He paused, then added, with in his voice and manner a suggestion of utter self-abasement which was in itself pathetic, "And the worst I've still to add".
"The worst?"
She shrank from him, with what seemed to be a gesture of involuntary and almost unconscious repulsion.
"Ay, the very worst. Only don't draw yourself from me like that, lassie--for the love of Christ; for I'm but a poor old man that's sinned, and that's very near his end, and that would do all he can to repair his sin before death has him by the throat."
"I--I didn't mean to be unkind, but--what were you going to say?"
"One thing's about his money--Cuthbert Grahame's money. Several times he spoke to me about you--more than kindly. I believe he had it in his mind--as I had, and have it, in mine--to repair the wrong he'd done you. I have reason to think that it was his intention to leave you at least a large portion of his fortune, to re-make the will I had helped him break. I believe that, with one of his cranky notions to be revenged on her for the part she'd played, he communicated his intention to her; that he went so far as to instruct her to draw up such a form of will as he required. My own impression is that she either actually did do this, or pretended to, and that, when the time came for him to affix his signature, she performed some feat of jugglery, which, under the circumstances, was easy enough, and so got him to sign a document which expressed the exact opposite of his wishes."
"Do you mean that he thought he was leaving me his money when actually he was leaving it to her?"
"That's about the truth of it--I believe it strongly. I am persuaded that the will she produced she got from him by means of a trick. But that is not the worst."
"Doctor, you're--you're like the old fable, you pile Pelion on Ossa."
"I believe that when she had got the will into her possession, all signed and witnessed, she was confronted by the fact that exposure of its contents might render it invalid at any moment. That is probably what would have happened, and in a very short time, so that to make sure, she killed him then and there."
"Killed him!"
"I am convinced that Cuthbert Grahame was killed by the woman who called herself his wife, and that within ten minutes of the signing of his will. She propped him up with pillows, then, by suddenly withdrawing those which supported his head, she let it hang down, and so choked him. In order to avoid suffocation it was always necessary to keep his head well raised, a fact with which no doubt she had made herself acquainted."
"Doctor! But was there no inquest?"
"Certainly; and I gave evidence. But what could I say? I had no proof--not an iota. I could only express my conviction that it was impossible for him to have moved the pillows himself; and I did. I doubt if that bare statement had any effect upon the verdict. She was a very clever woman."
"Clever! you call her!--clever! If you are right she was an awful woman--you mustn't call her clever. That sort of thing's not cleverness."
"Isn't it? I don't know what it is then. If we had realised her cleverness from the first we might have been prepared for her; she might have met her match. It is only by fully recognising the fact that we have to deal with an uncommonly clever woman that we shall have the slightest chance of getting the better of her, and bringing her to book."
"Bringing her to book! Doctor! where is she? Is she at Pitmuir?"
"That's not the least strange part of the whole strange business--where she is. I've been wondering if it's a sign that God's finger has been slowly moving to set on her His brand. The young gentleman in whom, I presume, you take a certain amount of interest, since, one day, you design to honour him by allowing him to make of you his wife--Mr. Harry Talfourd--told me that he acts as secretary to a lady."
"I know."
"The lady's name is Lamb--Mrs. Gregory Lamb."
"Yes."
Margaret, as she uttered the word, was conscious of a catching in her breath; she herself did not know why.
"Mrs. Gregory Lamb is the woman I found by the roadside; who told me that her name was Isabel Burney; who called herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame; who juggled into existence the will under which she inherits; who murdered the man out of whom she got it by a trick."
Margaret was silent, curiously silent. Then she drew a long breath, and she said--
"Now I understand".
The doctor was struck by something in her intonation which was odd.
"Just what is it you understand?"
She repeated her own words.
"Now I understand. The veil which seemed to obscure my sight is being torn away; things are getting plainer and plainer. She was not mad, as we thought; it was we who were ignorant. Doctor, I believe that the finger of God, of which you spoke just now, has moved already."
"It is likely. It is some time since I looked for it to move, but He chooses His own time. As for what you say about your understanding, to me your words are cryptic--unriddle them, young lady, if you please."
Margaret, in her turn, told her tale: of her visit to Mrs. Gregory Lamb; of its abrupt and singular termination. The doctor listened with every sign of the liveliest interest.
"As you observe," he cried, when she had done, "it would seem that the finger of God has moved already. She knew you although you did not know her, and the sight of you was as though one had risen from the grave; it filled her with unescapable terror."
"It's difficult to explain--I've not been able to explain it to myself until this minute--but I did know her, that is, I felt as if I ought to know her. Directly Harry pointed her out to me, something struck at my heart and set me trembling. I don't often tremble, but I did then. It was as if I were confronted by some dreadful danger, which had threatened me before, and from which I had then only escaped by the skin of my teeth. And yet I don't know that the feeling which affected me most strongly was terror. No, I don't think it was. It was something else--something which I can't describe. I believe--doctor, I believe it was hatred. I hated that woman with a hatred which was altogether beyond anything of which I had dreamed as possible, of which I had supposed myself to be capable. I don't hate people as a rule; I don't remember ever having met any one whom I seriously disliked. I do think that in almost every one I have come across I have seen something which I liked. But--in her! I didn't want Harry to introduce me, to take me nearer, because I was filled with what seemed even to me an insane, indeed a demoniacal desire to kill her where she stood."
While the girl was speaking her appearance seemed to gradually change, till, when she stopped, she seemed to stand before the old man like some rhadamanthine, accusatory spirit, ready to pronounce judgment and to execute the judgment which she herself pronounced. The doctor watched her with a visage which remained immobile, almost expressionless.
"Your words suggest a kind of justice which has become extinct--in politer circles."
"Yet justice shall be done!--it shall be done! I will see to it. I never did her a harm, nor wished her one. Yet she has done me all the mischief that she could, for wickedness' sake. If she killed Cuthbert Grahame, she should have killed me also, for, if I live, I will bring her to the judgment-seat. You say she is in enjoyment of the money which she won from him by a trick, and whose safe possession she insured to herself by murder----"
"Pardon me; to her that's the fly in the ointment. It's precisely the money which she hasn't got--which is doubly hard, since, to gain it, she did all that she did."
"I thought you said that she had it."
"She has the will under which she inherits, but, so far, she has inherited comparatively little. Did Grahame ever talk to you about his money?"
"In those latter days, when I began to be a woman, there were only two things about which he would talk, one was his money, the other his desire that I should be his wife. I loved him dearly! No daughter ever loved her father better than I loved him, but not like that!--not like that! When I said no, he would talk of his money, holding it out as a bait."
"Did he ever tell you how much of it there was?"
"He was always saying all sorts of things; I cannot remember all he said. I know he told me again and again that he had been saving his money for years for my sake, for me to use when I became his wife--his wife! He said more than once that there were fifty thousand pounds a year waiting for me if--if I would only say the word."
"Fifty thousand pounds a year? A nice little bait with which to cover the hook. Some girls would have swallowed the bait and never minded the hook."
"Doctor!"
"Calm yourself, young lady; don't blast me with the lightning of your eyes. I'm but saying what's well known to all the world. And did he say where that snug little income came from?"
"From his investments. He was always boasting of the lucky investments he had made."
"Did he ever tell you in what?"
"He wanted to often, but I wouldn't listen. I daresay he did mention some of the names, but I paid no attention and have forgotten them if he did. I hated to hear of his money. I knew what it meant to him, and I couldn't get him to understand that it didn't--and never would!--mean the same to me. His talk about his money helped to poison my life."
"One knows that to a young girl money has a way of not meaning so much as to some of us older folk, so I humbly ask your pardon if I seem to dwell on it too long. Yet I would ask you to cast back in your mind and think if he ever dropped a hint as to where the securities, the documents which represented these investments, might be found?"
"Weren't they at the bank? or with his lawyers?"
"They were not. Cannot you recall a hint which he may at sometime have let fall as to their whereabouts?"
She put her hands up to her temples, either to ease her throbbing temples or to aid her memory in its task of looking back.
"I can't think! I can't think!--not now! There are so many things of which I have to think, that they seem to have left me no power to think of anything else. Some day something which he once said may come back; I haven't forgotten much he did say to me; it's all somewhere in my brain, only I can't tell you just where--not at this very moment. At this moment I can only think of her."
"Of whom?"
The voice which made the inquiry was Harry Talfourd's. He stood in the open doorway with his hat in his hand. Perceiving that his appearance seemed to have taken them by surprise he proceeded to explain.
"I did knock--twice; but I presume that you were so much engrossed by what you were saying to each other that my modest raps went unheeded. I heard you say, Meg, in tragic, not to say melodramatic tones, that you can only think of her. Shall I be impertinent if I venture to ask who is the lucky person who so fully occupies your thoughts?"
"The lucky person, as you call her, is Mrs. Gregory Lamb. Harry, they say that in England the duelling days are over. They may be--that is, so far as so-called 'affairs of honour' are concerned--but for duels of another sort the day is never over. I am going to engage in a duel with Mrs. Gregory Lamb. You and Dr. Twelves here will be my seconds. I shall need all the assistance that seconds may honourably give to their principal, for it will be a duel to the death."