A Duel

"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.

CHAPTER XXII

MARGARET SETTLES THE QUESTION

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.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARGARET RESOLVES TO FIGHT

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."