Chapter XXV

The London newspapers had not given much of their space to Mrs. Lambert's doings while she was alive. She did not advertise in them. Besides, all their dramatic critics were on speaking terms with Lambert, and even dramatic critics have second-hand prejudices. But now that Mrs. Lambert was dead she was accorded the half-column of obituary notice to which actors and actresses seem to have a prescriptive right. Defunct millionaires and jam-makers get a little less: British officers who die for their country have to be satisfied with a couple of lines tucked away among the Military Intelligence.

The papers belauded the dead woman. They recorded her dramatic successes with much detail. They were fulsome concerning her virtues. Their readers were left to imagine the feelings of her bereaved and heart-broken husband, who at the moment was sorting an auction-bridge hand in the cardroom of a transatlantic liner. It was the sort of pretentious gush that had always sickened Mrs. Lambert when she read it about others.

The funeral was largely attended by members of the theatrical profession. Few of them knew the deceased personally, but as the occasion provided an opportunity for public exhibition and incidentally for getting their names into the papers they did not miss it.

Maggy was not of these. Woolf had made some engagement for her which he would not let her break. But she sent a wreath. It was quite unlike any of the others. Hers was composed of autumn-tinted leaves and the last homely flowers that one sees in cottage gardens. She purposely wished to avoid the conventional effect aimed at by the professional florist whose stiff made-to-order wreath implies such indifference to death.

Alexandra placed it at the head of the coffin. Mary Mantel had also sent one, ordered before she left for America with Lambert. But Alexandra refused to take it in. Lambert's card was inscribed "From your sorrowing husband." All the newspapers dragged in those words with a suitably unctuous comment.

Late on the afternoon of the funeral Maggy managed to evade Woolf and go to Albert Place, thinking to find Alexandra there. The blinds had not yet been drawn up, but the front door was open. Feeling an aversion from disturbing the silence of a house of mourning she went in without ringing and ascended to the room Alexandra had used. Finding it empty she came down and looked into the drawing room. It was in the green gloom of a closed jalousie and she thought it unoccupied. In that room she had spent such a pleasant half-hour with Lord Chalfont not so very long ago. Since then, disaster had befallen its owner, and she herself had been very near to death. The three events seemed associated in her mind.

She was about to draw back when a movement arrested her. At the far end she made out Chalfont. He was sitting at an escritoire with his head bent over it. After a moment of hesitation she went up to him and timidly touched him on the shoulder. Dazed by grief and with his thoughts far away he did not at first recognize her. Seeing how it was with him she gently said:

"I'm Maggy. I didn't mean to disturb you. I was looking for Lexie.... Now that I'm here I'd like to say how dreadfully sorry I am."

After he had thanked her there was a pause. His ease had temporarily left him. Maggy felt she was intruding.

"Do you know where she has gone? Lexie, I mean," she went on.

"She wrote down her address." Chalfont searched for and found it among the papers on the escritoire. "109, Sidey Street."

"Then she's gone back. That's where we used to live together."

There was another silence. Then Chalfont said:

"Will you let me know if there is anything I can do for her? Mrs. Lambert was very interested in her--and yourself. Indeed--" here he hesitated a little--"the last word she spoke was your name. That is why I--"

The color came into Maggy's face. She did not let him finish.

"Did she--did she say anything else?"

"No; only your name. She seemed to be concerned about you."

Maggy nodded.

"She knew all about me," she said in an explanatory tone. "She was worried because I had been ill, I expect. She was like that, I know.... And she knew I--I wasn't married."

Her meaning was quite plain, as plain as the wedding-ring on her ungloved hand. In her honesty she thought the admission was due to Chalfont after he had apprized her of Mrs. Lambert's interest in her. His manner of doing so had implied friendship. She did not want to accept that under false pretenses.

Chalfont was quick to appreciate her motive in making the confession. If possible it raised her in his estimation. But it filled him with a curious sense of disappointment. In spite of the absence of a legal bond between Mrs. Lambert and himself he had a strong distaste for free alliances. He had chafed against circumstances in his own case, and he was far from sitting in judgment on Maggy's. Still, he could not help the shock they had on his feelings.

"You didn't think I was that sort," she said, guessing at what was in his mind. "Lexie's not, but I'm different. I'm not a lady. It wasn't only because I wanted clothes and jewelry, or because I was hungry that--that it happened. I _did_ hate going without things. But it was because I met a man who made me feel--like jelly. If he'd had nothing a year I would have gone to the devil with him just the same.... I'm telling you all this to show you why we can't be friends, although I know you're ever so kind."

"Can we not? Mrs. Lambert was your friend."

"I can't think why." Tears came into her eyes. "There aren't many women like her.... You loved her, didn't you?"

"I loved her very dearly. More than she loved me. Though she loved me as much as I deserved," he added quickly.

"And she loved her husband. I know. I think he must be a pig! ... Why do we love things that are bad for us, and men that don't care for us? ... You would have married her, wouldn't you?"

"That was what I desired more than anything else," he rejoined in a voice full of regret.

This unreserved talk did not strike either of them as strange. Chalfont was usually sphynx-like about his innermost feelings, but with Maggy it seemed unnecessary to hide them. It did him good to unburden his heart to her. Maggy not only inspired confidence, she attracted it. It gave her a double hold on sympathy.

"She would have been 'my lady' then," she said thoughtfully. "What a draw that would be to a lot of women--the women who don't put love first. It's when we love that we don't think what we get by it.... If the Earl of the Scilly Isles came crawling all the way from Scotland and wanted me to marry him I wouldn't leave Woolf."

Chalfont lost sight of her amazing geography in the surprise he felt at the name she mentioned.

"Woolf! What Woolf?" he stared.

"Fred Woolf," she said with a touch of pride. "He owns the _Jockey's Weekly_ and Primus cars. You must have heard of Biretta, his racehorse."

"Oh!"

Chalfont was incapable of more than the exclamation. He knew all about Woolf. Sudden pity for Maggy took hold of him. He could not run the man down; he could not tell her that Woolf's name stank in the nostrils of decent-minded men; that even the men who fraternized with him took care to keep their womenfolk out of his reach. He could not tell her of Woolf's shady reputation on the turf, at the card table, and in the city. He saw that it would be useless to do so, and also cruel.

"You've met him, haven't you?" she asked.

"I've seen him at race-meetings and--and once at a club to which I belong."

She nodded. "Fred goes everywhere."

Chalfont did not pursue the subject.

"I must go now," said Maggy. "Good-by.... Oh, I forgot to thank you for the roses." She colored, remembering the fate they had suffered.

"I'm glad you liked them. They were Mrs. Lambert's favorites."

"Oh, were they? If I'd known that I would have got some instead of the wreath I sent."

"It was a beautiful wreath--so simple. She wouldn't have wished it altered if she could have seen it. It didn't remind one of a funeral."

"I didn't want it to. I felt I couldn't just go and give an order to a florist who grows flowers on purpose for graves. I was up ever so early this morning and motored into the country. The dew was all over the hedges. That's where I got the leaves from. And in the cottage gardens wherever I saw the sort of flowers I'd have liked some one to give me, whether I was dead or alive, I stopped and asked the woman to pick me a few for a wreath for a sweet lady. They were so pleased to give them. Not one would take payment. They were _given_ flowers, given for love, fresh and--"

She broke off, shy at having exhibited her feelings. It saddened Chalfont to think of her in association with such a man as Woolf. In spite of it she was still something of a child, with a child's pretty thoughts. But the next moment her womanliness showed itself.

"Are you going away?" she asked. "I would, if I were a man and had lost all I loved I should go away to places where I could kill something. Wild places, where there's solitude and danger, so that it would be quite sporting to keep alive.... You'd come back feeling different ... and perhaps marry some nice girl who would love you and make up for all that's happened.... I think Mrs. Lambert would wish that."

She spoke as if Mrs. Lambert were not so far away.

"What makes you say that?" he wondered.

"Because--because she told me things." Maggy hesitated. "May I draw up the blinds before I go?"

They pulled up the blinds together and let the autumn sunshine into the room. Maggy threw up one of the windows. They stood side by side looking at the movement in the street. Around a barrel organ a little way off children were dancing. A man and a girl, looking into each other's eyes, passed under the window. On the opposite side a woman was wheeling a perambulator, running every now and then so that the baby in it screamed with delight. The roar of London's traffic came from a distance. Maggy's eyes grew soft.

"Life goes on," she said.