Chapter XXIII

Alexandra said nothing to Mrs. Lambert of her impending errand. Discretion counseled silence about it. From what she had heard of Hugh Lambert, and judging also by Chalfont's doubts, unexpressed though they were, whether he would respond to the obligation imposed on him, she was dreadfully afraid that she might not be successful. Still, she could do nothing by remaining in the hotel, and in going she was avoiding the purgatory of having to sit in an adjoining room while the woman who had been so good to her was in the toils of death.

It was half-past six when Chalfont saw her off after bidding the chauffeur use the best speed the car was capable of. The man, who was devoted to his mistress, needed little incentive. Once informed of her perilous condition his one thought was to do his best for her by getting to his destination without the loss of a moment.

Once out of the town he let his engine out. Alexandra found herself leaning forward in the car, involuntarily actuated by a desire to urge it on still faster. At first her troubled mind could not think coherently, but as the Panhard tore along over the smooth tarred road northwards, the monotony of its motion tended to abate her nervous tension. She found herself reviewing the incidents that had culminated in the present crisis. They passed through her mind like a set of moving pictures, the hum of the engine accentuating the illusion.

She saw herself at home, alone, bereft of the mother with whom she had happily spent so many years in the small and placid provincial town that was like a harbor of refuge to superannuated Anglo-Indians; her departure from it under the eyes of a sceptical circle of friends, suspect because she had elected to choose so unconventional a way of life as the stage; flitting shadows of herself in London looking for employment; the unpleasant picture of a boarding-house; the still more unpleasant incident that had caused her to leave it; then the somber picture of the Pall Mall stage and Maggy. The screen of her mind threw things up clearly now. The perspective of time robbed the little room in Sidey Street of its uninviting aspect, and her life there of its straitened circumstances. Maggy's desertion of her was the one sad feature of that picture. The reel of experience became vivid again as it showed her in happy companionship with the actress. Pleasant scenes and cheerful incidents characterized it, obliterating from her mind the troublous past. Then, close on the heels of this state of content came the unexpected shock of present happenings. From being a spectator of the introspective drama she came to herself, startled by the abrupt consciousness of personal participation in it.

The pale face and luminous eyes of the sick woman filled her thoughts; the odor of drugs that permeated the room in which she had left her seemed to fill her nostrils. She thought too of Chalfont and the self-denying motives that had prompted him to send for the one man he could least wish to see.

It was dark inside the car now, but the lit streets and the turmoil of traffic through which it was threading its way meant that she had reached London.

London again! She no longer felt about it as she had in the days when she was new to it. The novelty of it had worn off. She had seen its seamy side, lived on the verge of its submerged life, been up against the brunt of it. Repugnance to it filled her when she remembered, as she suddenly did, that before many days had elapsed she would probably have to return to it. She found herself shrinking at the prospect of going back to the conditions that wore one down and sapped one's power of resistance in the unequal fight for a living there, from having to resume the weary round once more among the agencies; the interminable suspense in stuffy waiting rooms among the loquacious crowd of out-of-works. It all came back so vividly: her soul sickened of it.

She knew that if Mrs. Lambert should recover she would stand by her. She had said as much. But if she died.... The unhappy speculation was not induced by selfishness. The next moment Alexandra's thoughts were solely concerned with Mrs. Lambert's personal peril. They made her forget her own fears. She tried to pray for her. It seemed incongruous to pray in Piccadilly, where the car was slowly threading its way among the traffic. Still, surely God could and would hear her in spite of the din made by the motor-buses!

They were close to Lambert's theater now.... Another few minutes.... The piece would be half over.... The car turned down a side street and stopped at the stage door. Alexandra got out. There was the usual difficulty with the stage-door keeper about admittance. He did not know her. She mentioned Mrs. Lambert's name. That stirred him even less. His attitude toward the last-named was that of the hireling inspired by the master. No _Mrs._ Lambert existed for him. Indeed, the importation of her name struck him as the ruse of a stage-struck damsel. They were always inventing dodges to get past him and make him lose his job. Ten precious minutes passed in futile argument. Even in an urgent case like this, vital to Lambert himself, the absurd inaccessibility of the successful actor toward any one of the outside world was borne in on Alexandra with exaggerated force.

"I'll wait here until Mr. Lambert leaves the theater," she said at last. "And I think I can promise you that you'll lose your place when he hears that you refused to take up my card."

Her indignation and her threat were too real to be ignored. They influenced the man's manner.

"Oh, well, chuck it over," he said grudgingly.

She handed it to him. In addition to her name it bore the words "Mrs. Hugh Lambert's Company." She had already penciled on it a line meant for Lambert's own eye. The man went off grumbling. When he returned his arrogance had entirely disappeared.

"The governor will see you," he said. "Up the stairs and the first door on the right." Then he added insinuatingly: "Sorry to keep you waiting, miss; but I get it that hot if I let anybody pass who's wanting an engagement."

She was indifferent to his regrets. All she wanted was to see Lambert and take him back with her. She passed in, hurried up the stairs, where at the top his dressing-room door stood open.

Lambert was playing in a costume piece, a mid-Georgian comedy that owed a great deal of its inspiration to Sheridan. In it he appeared as a beau of that elegant period, and as Alexandra on entering saw him she could but admit that he looked the part. Dressed in gorgeous brocade through which a dainty sword-hilt protruded, immaculately bewigged, lace-ruffled and overpoweringly scented, as she discovered on nearing him, he gave her the impression of extreme elegance, tempered by foppishness and effeminacy. He was sitting before the mirror on his dressing-table, leaning toward it, adding a deeper pencil mark to his eyebrows. When he had done that to his satisfaction he picked up a stick of carmine and deliberately touched up the curve of his lips before turning round to face his visitor. Alexandra had always felt an instinctive dislike of make-up on a man's face, though she recognized it as essential to the stage. But Lambert's attitude before the mirror was so affected, so vain that he instantly inspired her with contempt.

"You come from my wife?" he asked, and she thought she detected a note of dismay in his fine-toned voice. "Did she send you?"

"No," she answered. "But I want you to come down to her at once. She is very ill. I motored up so as not to lose a minute."

He gave a slightly startled movement at her news. It was as though he shrank from hearing it.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Where is she?"

"At Eastbourne."

"Is--is it serious?"

"Very serious. They--" the words stuck in her throat--"they are operating now. She wished to see you. She was talking of you to me this morning--"

She was interrupted by the entrance of a third person, a woman who came in without knocking, a woman, pretty beneath her paint, with curiously hard blue eyes. She stared at Alexandra with open hostility and then looked interrogatively at Lambert.

"This lady has come up from Eastbourne," he hesitated. "My wife is ill and wants to see me."

After a momentary silence the newcomer allowed herself a trifling shrug of the shoulders.

"She has been ill before," she said a little contemptuously, and turned to Alexandra. "What is it this time? A bilious attack?"

Alexandra looked at her steadily, perhaps disdainfully. She guessed she had to do with Mary Mantel, the woman who had displaced Mrs. Lambert in her husband's affections.

"We fear she is dying," was her rejoinder.

The other woman laughed.

"Oh, I see! Advertising her 'farewell to the stage.' I daresay she will take her time over it."

Lambert turned on her.

"Be quiet!" he exclaimed irritably.

Again she shrugged. "It's our call directly."

"I can't help that. MacBride must go on for me."

He picked up a towel and was about to remove the grease paint from his face, but stopped at the ejaculation that broke from her.

"You can't possibly go to-night," she burst out. "Evidently these people"--she made an impatient gesture that indicated Alexandra--"don't know that it's the last night of your season, and that you're booked to leave for America in three days' time. Or probably they don't care. To think of throwing up your part at a moment's notice and letting the curtain come down in your absence is madness. You must stop for your speech. If you want to you can go first thing to-morrow, though you'll probably have a wire by then to say your wife's better and won't see you for worlds!"

A boy put his head in at the door.

"Your call, sir," he announced.

Lambert got up, the towel still in his hand, the paint still on his face. Alexandra watched the indecision in it. Had he enough strength of mind to come? Or would he let self-interest prevail?

"Hugh, do be guided by me," begged Miss Mantel. "Think of your career. There will be call on call for you at the end of the show. The house is full of pressmen. Are you going to throw away hundreds of pounds' worth of gratuitous advertisement?"

That last argument decided him. Publicity, the acclamation of the crowd, the opportunity to pose before it, to deliver the carefully-prepared speech, egotistical yet full of sham humility, were temptations he was unable to resist. With a quiver of his painted lips that owed nothing to solicitude for a wife who lay between life and death, he said:

"I'll come in the morning;" and without looking at Alexandra, made for the stage.

She heard the thunder of applause that greeted him. To the little tin gods the plaudits of the multitude are as the music of the spheres.