The Meeting
Whenever in London my practice for years had been to put up at
my friend Dixon Hubbard's rooms in Bruton Street. We had been
schoolfellows. He was one of the most fortunate and unfortunate
creatures in the world. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he
had inherited from some cross-grained ancestor a biting tongue and
a gloomy disposition. He was an incurable misanthrope and unpopular
beyond words. At college he had been detested. Being a sickly lad,
his tongue had earned him many a thrashing which he had had to endure
without other reprisal than sarcasm. Yet he had never spared that. His
spirit was unconquerable. I believe that he would have taunted his
executioners while they burned him at the stake. I used to hate him
myself once. But one day after giving him a fairly good hammering I
fell so in love with the manly way in which he immediately thereafter
gave me a sound excuse for wringing his neck that I begged his pardon
for being a hulking bully in having lifted hand against a weaker
body but a keener brain and more untamable spirit than my own. That
conquered him. From that moment we were inseparable chums, and on an
average the privilege cost me at least two hard fights a week, for my
code was--hit my chum and you hit me. His gratitude lay in jibing at
me if I lost the fight, and if I won informing me that I was a fool
for my pains. But we understood each other, and our friendship bravely
withstood the test of time and circumstance. I found him nursing an
attack of splenitic rheumatism before a fire in his study, and we were
still only in the middle of July. His man, Miller, had just broken
a Sévres vase, and Hubbard was telling Miller in a gentle, measured
way his views of clumsiness in serving-men. Miller--a meek, dog-like
creature usually--stood before his master glowing but inarticulate
with rage. His fists were clenched and his lips were drawn back from
his teeth. Hubbard was evidently enjoying himself. He watched the
effect of his placid exhortation with a sweet smile--and he applied
his mordant softly uttered gibes with the pride of a sculptor at work
upon an image. Each one produced some trifling but significant change
in Miller's expression. Probably Hubbard was experimenting--seeking
to discover either how far he could go with safety or exactly what it
would be necessary to say in order to make Miller spring at his throat.
They were both so engrossed that I entered without disturbing them. I
listened for a moment and then created a diversion. Miller's tension
was positively dangerous. I walked over, took him by the collar and
propelled him from the room. "You'll find my bag downstairs," I said.
"I've come to stay."
Miller gave me the look of a dog that wants but does not dare to lick
your hand. His gratitude was pathetic. I shut the door in his face.
Hubbard did not rise. He did not even offer to shake hands. He half
closed his eyes and murmured in a tired voice: "The bad penny is back
again, and uglier than ever."
I crossed the room and threw open a window. Then I marched into his
bedroom, seized a water jug, returned and put out the fire.
"You've been coddling yourself too long," I remarked. "Get up and
put on your hat. It's almost one. You are going to lunch with me at
Verrey's."
"I have a stiff leg," he remonstrated.
"Fancy! Mere fancy," I returned.
The room was full of steam and smoke. Hubbard said a wicked thing and
got afoot, coughing. I found his hat, crammed it on his skull and
crooked my arm in his. He declined to budge and wagged a blistering
tongue, but I laughed and, picking him up, I carried him bodily
downstairs to a cab. He called me forty sorts of cowardly bully in his
gentle sweetly courteous tones, but before two blocks were passed his
ill-humour had evaporated. He remembered he had news to give me. We
had not met for eighteen months. Of a sudden he stopped beshrewing me
and leaned back in the cushions. I knew his ways and talked about the
weather. He endured it until we were seated within the grill-room. Then
he begged me very civilly to let God manage His own affairs.
"I am very willing," I said.
He impaled an oyster on a fork and sniffed at it with brutal
indifference to the waiter's feelings. Satisfied it was a good oyster,
he swallowed it.
"I am no longer a bachelor," said he. "I have taken unto myself a wife."
"The deuce!" I cried.
"Exactly," he said. "But the prettiest imp imaginable."
"My dear Hubbard, I assure you----"
"My dear Pinsent, you have blundered on the truth."
"But----"
He held up a warning finger. "It occurred a year ago. We lived together
for six weeks. Then we compromised. I gave her my house in Park Lane
and returned myself to Bruton Street. Pish! man, don't look so shocked.
Helen and I are friends--I see her once a week now at least, sometimes
more often. I assure you I enjoy her conversation. She has a natural
genius for gossip and uses all her opportunities. She has already
become a fixed star in the firmament of society's smartest set and
aspires to found a new solar system. I allow her fifteen thousand
pounds a year. She spends twenty. My compensation is that I am never
at a loss for a subject of reflection. We shall call on her this
afternoon. A devil, but diverting. You will be amused."
"Do I know her, Hubbard?"
"No; you are merely acquainted. Her maiden name was Arbuthnot."
"Lady Helen Arbuthnot!" I cried.
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "You will find her changed.
Marriage has developed her. I remember before you went away--was it to
Egypt?--she tried her blandishments on you. But then she was a mere
apprentice. Heaven help you now--if she marks you for her victim."
"Poor wretch!" I commented. "I suppose you can't help it. But you ought
to make an effort, Hubbard, really."
"An effort. What for?"
"To conceal how crudely in love with your wife you are."
He bit his lips and frowned. "Children and fools speak the truth,"
he murmured. Then he set to work on the champagne and drank much
more than was good for him. The wine, however, only affected his
appearance. It brought a flush to his pallid cheeks and made his dull
eyes sparkle. He deluged me with politics till three o'clock. Then we
drove to Park Lane. Lady Helen kept us waiting for twenty minutes.
In the meantime, two other callers joined us. Men. In order to show
himself at home Hubbard smoked a cigarette. The men looked pensively
appalled. They were poets. They wore long hair and exotic gardens in
their buttonholes. And they rolled their eyes. They must have been
poets. Also they carried bouquets. Certainly they were poets. When Lady
Helen entered they surged up to her, uttering little artistic foreign
cries. And they kissed her hand. She gave their bouquets to the footman
with an air of fascinating disdain. Their dejection was delightful.
But she consoled them with a smile and advanced to us. Certainly she
had changed. I had known her as a somewhat unconventional and piquant
débutante. She was now a brilliant siren, an accomplished coquette and
a woman of the world. Her tiny stature made her attractive, for she
was perfectly proportioned and her costume ravishingly emphasised the
petite and dainty grace of her figure. Her face was reminiscent of one
of those wild flowers of torrid regions which resemble nothing grown in
an English garden, but which, nevertheless, arrest attention and charm
by their bizarrerie. It was full of eerie wisdom, subtle wilfulness
and quaint, half-humorous diablerie. In one word, she was a sprite.
She greeted her husband with an unctuous affectation of interest which
would have made me, in his place, wish to box her ears. Hubbard,
however, was as good an actor as herself. He protested he was grateful
for the audience and claimed credit for introducing me. Lady Helen
looked me up and down and remembered that I had owed her a letter for
nearly thirty-seven months. She gave me the tips of her fingers and
then rushed away to kiss on both cheeks a lady who had just entered.
"Oh, you darling!" she twittered. "This is just too lovely of you. I
have longed for you to come."
It was May Ottley. She did not see me at once. Lady Helen utterly
engrossed her. I had, therefore, time to recover from the unexpected
shock of her appearance. I was ridiculously agitated. I slipped into an
alcove and picked up a book of plates. At first my hands shook so that
I could hardly turn the pages. Hubbard glided to my side. I felt his
smile without seeing it. "I smell a brother idiot," he whispered.
I met his eyes and nodded.
"In Egypt, of course?"
"Yes."
"She marries a guardsman next month, I hear."
"Indeed."
"The poor man," murmured Hubbard. "Come out and let us drink his
health."
"No, thank you."
"You'd rather stay and singe your wings, poor moth."
"And you?"
"Mine," said he, "were amputated in St. James Church. She is a lovely
creature, Pinsent."
"Which?"
He chuckled without replying. A footman pompously announced: "Mrs.
Carr--Lord Edward Dutton."
"Bring the tea, please," said Lady Helen's voice.
"She is staring this way at you," murmured Hubbard. "She recognises
your back. No, not quite, she is puzzled."
"She has never seen me in civilised apparel," I explained.
"Are you afraid of her, my boy?"
"Yes."
"Well, you are honest."
I began to listen for her voice. The air was filled with scraps of
conversation.
"Three thousand, I tell you. He cannot go on like that. Shouldn't
wonder if he went abroad. Like father, like son. Old Ranger had the
same passion for bridge."
"You can say what you like, names tell one nothing. In my opinion the
man is a Jew. What if he does call himself Fortescue? Consider his
nose. I am tired of these rich colonials. I have no time for them.
Heaven knows what they are after."
"She will spoil her lower register completely if she keeps on. Her
voice is a mezzo and nothing else. You should have seen the way old
Delman sneered when he listened to her last night."
"My test of a really fine soprano is the creepy feeling the high C
gives one in the small of the back. Delicious. She never thrills me at
all."
"Oh! Lord Edward, how malicious. What has the poor man done to you?"
"He plays billiards too well to have been anything but a marker in his
youth. I believe he kept a saloon somewhere in the States."
"They say it will end in the divorce court. That is what comes of
marrying a milkmaid. And, after all, she did not present him with a
son. Ah, well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Young
Carnarvon is his heir still, and his chances of succeeding grow rosier
every day."
"My dear Mrs. Belvigne, if it was not for her red hair, she would be as
commonplace as--as my dear friend Mrs. Sorenson. What you men see in
red hair----"
"Conscience, Lady Helen, is a composition of indulgences. It is a
marriage de convenance between the conventional instinct and the
appetite."
"Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "is it really you?"
I turned and looked into her eyes. They were all aglow and her cheeks
were suffused with colour. She gave me both her hands. The room
was already crowded. People entered every minute. Hubbard pointed
significantly at the tea-cups. Miss Ottley and I drifted to the divan.
We watched the crowd through the parted curtains, sipping our tea. We
might as well have been in a box at the theatre watching the play.
"I knew you would escape," she murmured, presently. "The others
believe you to have perished in the desert."
"They consoled themselves, no doubt?"
"My father especially."
"Did he recover his Arab?"
"What Arab?"
"The creature he had imprisoned in the sarcophagus."
"The mummy, you mean. The body of Pthames? Oh, yes, that was safe
enough, but he was in a fearful state until we found the punt. He
feared that you would either steal or destroy the mummy, I believe."
"Miss Ottley!" I cried.
"You must not blame him too much," she murmured; "you know how he had
set heart----"
"Look here!" I interrupted. "Do you mean to tell me that you found the
mummy in the sarcophagus?"
"Certainly. Why?"
"Did you see it?"
"Yes."
"The mummy?"
"Why, of course."
"A dead body, a mummy?"
"Dr. Pinsent, how strangely you insist."
"I'll tell you the reason. When I opened the sarcophagus----"
"Yes."
"It contained not a mummy, but a living man."
"Impossible."
"You think so? The Arab was the very man who frightened you so often in
the temple at the Hill of Rakh."
"Dr. Pinsent!"
"When I removed the lid he leaped out of the sarcophagus, sprang ashore
and fled to the desert. I followed him for several miles. But I could
not catch him. I was compelled to give up the chase. And now you tell
me that you afterwards found a mummy in the coffin which I had left
empty."
"One of us is dreaming," said the girl.
"What was this mummy like?"
"A tall man--with a curious conical-shaped head--and eyes set hideously
far apart in its skull--but you have seen the Arab who frightened
me--and indeed he attacked you at your camp. His mummified counterpart."
"And some of his ribs were broken?"
"I do not know."
"But his body was bandaged. Otherwise he was almost nude."
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. She put down her cup. "You make me very
unhappy. You force me to recall my horror--in the cave temple. The
wretched uncanny sense of the supernatural that oppressed me there. You
make me remember that I was tortured into a fancy that the mummy was a
ghost--that we were haunted--that--oh! oh! And father has been so kind
to me lately, kinder than ever before."
"He is in London?"
"Yes."
"And the mummy?"
"Yes."
"And Dr. Belleville?"
"He is staying with us."
"Captain Weldon?"
She turned aside her head. "He is in London, too."
"You are shortly to be married, I am informed."
She stood up. "I must really be going," she observed constrainedly;
then she held out her hand. I watched her pick her way through the
crowd to our hostess. It was a well-bred crowd, but it stared at her.
She was worth looking at. She walked just as a woman should and she
bore herself with the proper touch of pride that is at the same time a
personal protection and a provocative of curiosity. Some people call
it dignity. Hubbard materialised from the shadow of a neighbouring
curtain. "My wife has invited me to dinner," he announced. "You, too.
I have made her your excuses because I have a money matter to discuss
that should not be postponed."
"You have my deepest sympathy," I answered, and left him as puzzled to
know what I meant as I was. Something was whispering over and over
in my ear--"Work! work! work!" and whispering in the imperative mood.
I determined to call upon Captain Weldon and procure from him my
manuscript, at once. I remembered he lived in Jermyn Street. I walked
thither as fast as I was able.