A Duel

"You old croaker!"

"Let me make a suggestion."

"Your suggestions!"

She brought her fist down on the back of an armchair with an emphasis which almost suggested that she would have liked that chair to have been some portion of his body.

"Let me lay the whole case before a friend of mine, and, after he has given it careful consideration, it is possible that he may make you a proposition."

"What sort of proposition?"

"That I cannot tell you-the best he can."

"You understand that I must have ten thousand pounds within a week?"

"I hear you say so. If my friend can see his way no doubt he will let you have them."

"Mind he does see his way!"

"As to that-"

Mr. Gregory Lamb's sudden appearance in the doorway perhaps allowed to serve as an excuse for his sentence to remain unfinished.

"You here!" exclaimed Mr. Lamb, as if he were not too well pleased to see him. "I didn't know."

Mr. Luker's greeting, although well meant, was a little peculiar.

"My dear Mr. Lamb, how well you are always looking! – and always so beautifully dressed. What a lovely pin you have in your pretty necktie! Now I know a friend who would give you-"

"I don't want to know what your friend would give me! Confound it, Luker, I never see you but you tell me what some one you know would give me for something I have on. You might be a marine store-dealer."

"There are worse trades, Mr. Lamb-there are worse trades. Now with regard to that exquisite pair of trousers-"

"Look here, Luker, if you're going to tell me what some one you know will give me for my trousers, I'll throw something at you."

"You mustn't do that, Mr. Lamb, it might be something worth money-everything in the room is so very beautiful. Mrs. Lamb, I wish you good-morning."

"Now, no nonsense, Luker. I want that within a week-and you've got to see I have it-if you don't want trouble!"

"I understand perfectly, and will bear what you have said well in mind. You shall hear from me again very shortly."

"I will see I do!"

"I have had clients, Mr. Lamb, who would have conveyed that pin without paying for it-it presents such temptations to an honest man. I do hope it's properly secured. Good-morning!"

When Mr. Luker had retired Mr. Lamb turned to his wife, with knitted brows.

"Isabel, it's beyond my comprehension why you have anything to do with that animal. He's got scoundrel written large all over him."

"I shouldn't have thought that would have prejudiced him in your eyes."

"I suppose you think that's smart. I know there was a time when we both of us had to sail pretty close to the wind, but I thought that time had gone for ever. You've told me so over and over again. You're a woman of large fortune, of assured position, a person of importance. I should have thought that from the point of view of policy alone it would have been worth your while to have dealings with solicitors of standing only, and to have nothing to do with such a brute as that. Aren't you ashamed to have him seen going in and out of the house, or to have the servants know that he is here?"

"I'm not easily ashamed-you ought to know that. Is that all you've come for? – to tell me what you think about what is no concern of yours?"

"What's this I hear about your bringing out a play, and acting in it yourself?"

"Who told you that?"

"Winton-to my amazement!"

"What did he tell you?"

"Something about your producing a play of Talfourd's-Talfourd's, of all people in the world! My hat! he said that you proposed to act one of the principal parts in it yourself. Isabel, that's going too far; I won't stand it."

"You won't what?"

There was something in the lady's tone and in her attitude before which he obviously quailed.

"I don't think that it's becoming in a woman of your position, as-as my wife."

"It's not my fault that I'm your wife."

"Still the fact remains that you are. By the way, has Talfourd been saying anything to you about me?"

"What should he say? – except to advise me to sew you in a sack and drop you into the river."

"That's just what he'd like-he's that sort of man."

"Is he? He's what you never were, never will be, never could be-a gentleman. Why you don't even begin to understand what a gentleman is."

"'Pon my word, I wonder that I let you talk to me like this. I don't want to quarrel with you-I hate quarrelling! – I really do. You couldn't treat me worse if I were a shoeblack."

"I never met any one yet whose shoes you were worthy to black. Why, Luker's a man compared to you. He doesn't sponge upon a woman."

"It's not fair of you to speak to me like this-it is not! I know you're not fond of me-"

"Fond of you! – fond!"

The lady flung out her arm, as if the idea of her entertaining any feeling of that kind for her husband was a grotesque one, and she laughed. As he continued his tone suggested a snarl.

"I don't know that I'm particularly fond of you. You don't go out of your way to make yourself agreeable to a fellow. You've only got to say the word to be rid of me for-well, at any rate, a good long time."

"What's the word? L.S.D.?"

Mr. Lamb coughed.

"A fellow can't go away with empty pockets."

"I thought so. Out with it! What are you at?"

"The truth is, Isabel, I'm not feeling very well."

"If you were feeling as I'd like you to feel you'd be feeling very much worse."

"That's frank! A nice thing for a wife to say to her husband! I believe you're capable of anything."

"I am-I always have been-and I always shall be, you bear that constantly in mind. Why can't you say what you want? If it is prussic acid to use upon yourself I'll give you money enough to buy a barrelful."

The expression of Mr. Lamb's countenance was sullen, so also was the tone of his voice, which perhaps on the whole was not to be wondered at.

"I want to go to the Riviera."

"That means Monte Carlo. Well go-at once-and never come back again."

"If you'll give me the coin I'll start in a jiffy."

"How much do you want?"

"I daresay I could manage with a thousand. I've hit upon a system."

"You've hit upon a system!"

"If you'll only keep still for a moment I'll tell you what it is, and then you'll see for yourself it's an absolute cert. I'll turn the thou. into fifty in less than no time. I can't help doing it! – you see! – and then I'll give you half."

"You'll give me half! Then am I to understand that you won't go unless I give you a thousand pounds?"

"I couldn't do it on less-the system I mean. I've worked out all the details and I really couldn't. I'll show you if you like. It's want of capital that wrecks a man in a thing like this. If you haven't got the proper amount-the lowest possible amount that's absolutely necessary-you might as well throw your money into the sea."

"Then you'll never go at all, because I haven't a thousand pounds to give you."

"What do you mean?"

"It's simple. I don't think I've fifty pounds at my bankers, and I'm pretty sure that they won't honour my cheque if I overdraw."

"Isabel!"

"You owe money, don't you?"

"I daresay I owe a bit here and there."

"So I've been given to understand. I also owe a bit. And my creditors, like yours, won't wait."

"Mine will have to."

"Will they? I thought that was just what they wouldn't do."

"Who's been telling you tales about me?"

"A little bird. So you see, Gregory, I'm more in want of a thousand pounds, because you can't carry on a house like this for long on fifty pounds, even if I have so much at the bank, which, as I say, I doubt."

"Fifty pounds! You're playing the fool with me-it's a favourite game of yours. What's become of the quarter of a million you told me that man Grahame had left you?"

"That's what I should like to know."

"You don't mean you've spent it? You can't have done-not in the time."

"I've never had it to spend."

"What rot are you talking? What game are you playing? Have you all along been telling me nothing but lies?"

"Cuthbert Grahame told me himself that he was worth more than a quarter of a million; soon after he died I told you that only a small portion of the money could be found."

"You told me nothing of the kind-you've never told me anything. Whenever I asked you a question you've always shut me up. You've kept me all along in the dark."

"Then I tell you now. Only a small sum was ever found, and that's been spent-and more than spent."

"Then am I to understand that he was fooling you when he talked about his quarter of a million?"

"I don't believe that he was. I believe he was telling the truth; that he was worth what he said; only it's never been found, and no one seems to know where it is." She held out her clenched fists in front of her, shaking them, as if she were endeavouring, by the exercise of sheer physical force, to assist her mental process. "Sometimes I feel that I know-that I am very near to knowing-that if I could do something I should know quite. It's as if I'd been told something in a dream, and, on waking, had forgotten what it was. I don't like to think of the time he died-I can't." She looked about her, as if unconscious of his presence, with something on her face, in her eyes, which startled him. "Yet if I could-if I could! I believe it would all come back to me what I have forgotten, and I should know where the money is. But I can't! I can't! Since-since the pillow slipped from under him, I-I've never been the same."

She dropped into a chair, looking straight in front of her, with her hands dangling at her sides, as if she saw-she alone knew what. This was such a new mood for her that its very novelty scared Mr. Lamb.

"Don't look like that, Belle! What are you looking at?"

"God knows! God knows!"

Mr. Lamb squirmed.

"Don't! I say, drop it! You're a cheerful sort of person, upon my word! I come here to get a pound or two, and you go on like this! Do you mean to tell me straight that we're hard up?"

"There are three things that can save us, and three things only. If I could think I might find the money."

"Then, for the Lord's sake, think! Only don't think like that; it gives me the creeps to hear you."

"I can't think, anyhow, about that; I've tried, and I can't. If I could get the money out of McTavish & Brown, that would be something."

"Get it out of any one, but please remember that sharp's the word."

"Then there's the play-Harry Talfourd's play-I believe there's fame and fortune in that-and safety. Do you know what that means-safety?"

"Gracious, Isabel! don't shout at me like that! My nerves were all mops and brooms when I came; you've made them ever so much worse. I'm all of a twitter. I'll talk to you when you're in a more reasonable mood; you'll upset me altogether if I stay much longer." Mr. Lamb withdrew, to return immediately, at least so far as his head and shoulders were concerned, the rest of his body he kept on the other side of the door. "Deal fairly with a chap-do! I must have cash from somewhere, or I shall be in a deuce of a hole. Can you let me have fifty?"

"I can't."

"Can you make it twenty-five?"

"I can't. I can't let you have anything. Do you want me to yell at you? I-can't-let-you-have-anything! Do you hear that?"

"All right! don't shout at a man like that! I should think you must be going off your head. I never saw you in such a cranky mood before."

Mr. Lamb beat a precipitate retreat, this time finally. His wife, left alone, remained seated on her chair in that very curious attitude, with that very curious look upon her face.

"It must be imagination-what they call an optical delusion. Perhaps, as he says, I'm going off my head. One thing's certain, it can't be real. This is not his room; that's not his bed; that's not-" She veiled her eyes with the palms of her hands. "No! no! – I'm too much alone. I shall go mad if I'm so much alone-mad!"

She sat silent for some moments, with her features all contorted, as if she were wrestling with actual physical pain. Then, rising, she took out of a small cupboard in an ormolu cabinet a decanter containing some colourless liquid. Pouring some of it into a wineglass she swallowed it at a draught.

It was pure ether. She resorted to it to minister to a mind diseased.

When, later, she descended to the apartment which was called, as it almost seemed ironically, Mr. Talfourd's workroom, that gentleman rose to greet her with a smile. She also smiled. To all outward seeming she was herself again-self-possessed, satisfied with herself and with the world, at peace with every one. They exchanged a few banal sentences, both remaining on their feet, she looking at him with eyes which, to phrase it diplomatically, flattered, he meeting her glance with an appearance of serene unconsciousness that there was anything in it which was singular. Presently she touched on the topic which was to the front in both their minds.

"About the play-have you thought it over? Am I to play Lady Glover?"

He still was diplomatic.

"You will understand that I, being a conceited and self-centred author, the matter of my play bulges out until it assumes for me what you will probably, and correctly, consider exaggerated proportions. Will you let me think it over a little longer? In the first place, I have settled nothing with Mr. Winton, and, in the second, I want to ask you to do me a favour."

"You are aware that between you and me for you it is but to ask and to have-anything, everything, I have to give."

If her words were significant, the manner in which they were spoken underlined them. Neither the manner nor the matter of his reply could be termed sympathetic.

"I don't know if you are aware that I am engaged to be married."

If something flickered across her face which was not there a moment before, it went as quickly as it came.

"No, I wasn't. Are you?"

"I, of course, don't expect you to be interested in the trivialities of my life, and I only mention it as a mere detail, but-the lady would very much like to know you. May she?"

"My dear Mr. Talfourd! hadn't you better put it the other way? May I know her? and when? May I call on her? or will she pay me the great compliment of coming to see me?"

"You're very kind. With your permission she will come and see you to-night."

"To-night? I'm at home-of course! Do you know I'd almost forgotten it. Bring her by all means. Tell her she's to come early, before the people, and that she's to stop late, after the crowd has gone."

Of such clay are we constituted. She had not the dimmest notion that in giving that very warm invitation she was hanging up over her own head a sword of Damocles, which, in this case, was suspended by something which was almost less than a single hair.

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 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 the rôle 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 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-