Lucinda shrugged. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault, it was I who insisted
on coming here."
Her gaze veered to the floor; but the dancers had already swarmed over
and abolished the break in their ranks, and though she looked beyond the
sea of bobbing heads, to right and left, reviewing all she could see of
the room, Bellamy was nowhere in sight.
"I presume we couldn't have been mistaken...." Dobbin ventured
half-heartedly.
"No: it was Bel."
"Hoped we might have been misled by a resemblance. Somehow the poor
devil didn't look quite like Bellamy."
"He's apt to look not quite like himself when he is--as the pretty lady
with him so delicately put it--'pickled.'"
"Think he knew you?"
"Oh, yes; I saw him look directly at me just before we turned away."
Lucinda took up her wrap. "If you'll help me with this, Dobbin, I think
I'd like to go."
"Afraid I'll have to ask you to wait a minute or two. I've got these to
pay for...." Daubeney indicated the untasted glasses of lemonade they
had ordered. "I've sent for our waiter."
"Then if you don't mind, I'll go ahead. Let me have the carriage check,
and I'll wait in the car."
Daubeney surrendered the pasteboard slip, and Lucinda went out. The
passageway behind the boxes enabled her to gain the entrance without
running the gauntlet of the floor, and she descended the stairs with her
head slightly lowered, in panic hope that she might thereby escape
recognition if bad luck would have it that she must meet Julie
Allingham. But she was spared that misfortune.
At the street door she gave the attendant the carriage-check together
with a coin. "And hurry, please!" The man saluted respectfully and
vanished.
She waited restlessly just inside the glass doors till the reflection
that every second was making an encounter with the Allingham woman more
certain drove her out to the street; a move which she found immediate
reason to repent. Only a few feet away Bellamy stood with an
affectionate arm round the shoulder of the door-porter, greatly to the
seeming embarrassment of that monumental personage and the amusement of
the street. A knot of grinning bystanders had already begun to gather.
Bel's derby was perilously perched, his overcoat, donned in haste, was
poorly settled on his shoulders, though he had contrived to worry two
buttons through the wrong buttonholes, and he was explaining,
unconsciously to everybody within a wide radius, the personal service he
required in return for the ten-dollar bill which he was waving beneath
the porter's nose.
"Now, lishn, Jim.... Do' mind my callin' you Jim, do you, ol' scout?...
Get thish straight: M'wife's here t'night 'nd I don' want her know I
wash here, shee? If she don' know I wash here, she's got nothin' on me,
nothin' 'tall, shee? So you don' know me, you never heard of me, shee?"
"Yes, Mr. Druce."
"'Caush it's this way: if she's got nothin' on me, I'm all right, 'nd I
got somethin' on her. Believe me, Jim, I got good 'nd plenty on her
t'night. She's here with man I know and don' like, man I got no ush for
at all--shee?--no ush whatever. Ain't that limit, jush like woman?
Insist you gotta walk chalk-mark, but minute your back'sh turned, what
they do? Go off on private lil parties all their own, that'sh sort of
thing they do!..."
Panting and sick with mortification, Lucinda turned from the sound of
that babbling voice of a fool--and heard her own name pronounced.
"The car is here, Mrs. Druce."
In a wild stare she identified the face of her chauffeur, saw that he
understood the situation and was anxious to be helpful.
"Wait," she quavered.
And then by a miracle of will-power she managed to master her nerves
and, putting aside her horror and humiliation, took thought quickly and
clearly.
"All I wan' you to do ish remember, if Mishish Druce asks if you've seen
me, you never heard of me, don' know me 'tall--shee, Jim, shee what I
mean?"
As Lucinda drew near the porter must have guessed who she was, for he
spoke to Bellamy in a low voice, and the latter swung round with
startled eyes and a dropping jaw. She closed her fingers on his wrist
and put all her strength into their grasp.
"Come, Bel," she said clearly and not unkindly. "Please don't keep me
waiting. The car is here, we're going home."
For a moment the balance wavered, then Bel's eyes fell, and she knew she
had won.
"Oh, a'right," he mumbled with strange docility. "Didn' know you were
waitin', Linda. Get ri' in the car--be with you in jush a minute."
"No," she said firmly--"you're coming with me now."
She drew him away. He yielded without remonstrance, permitted her to
lead him to the door of the car, stumbled in on his knees, and crawled
up to the seat. Lucinda followed, the door closed behind her with a clap
sweeter than music in her hearing, and with purring gears the car shot
out of range of those leering faces.
Lucinda had forgotten Dobbin as utterly as if she had never known him.
Bellamy lay in a loose slouch, breathing heavily. The passing lights
revealed the stupidity of his congested features. His eyes were
half-closed, he seemed to be asleep.
Cringing as far away from him as she could, Lucinda dug nails into her
palms to keep from giving over body and mind to the dominion of
hysteria. She saw nothing of the streets through which they passed, knew
no thought other than to preserve her self-control.
When at length the car stopped, she jumped out and, leaving Bellamy to
the care of the chauffeur and footman, ran up to her room. The maid
waiting there she dismissed for the night in half a dozen words whose
decision sent the woman from her in astonishment.
Alone, her first move was to secure the door communicating with Bel's
rooms. Then she threw herself upon the bed and lay listening to the
noise on the stairway of voices and stumbling feet. The door between the
hall and Bel's rooms banged. She heard him maundering incoherently to
his valet for a time, a long time; the valet seemed to be trying to make
him listen to reason and failing in the end. The neck of a decanter
chattered against the rim of a glass, there was a lull in the murmur of
voices, then a thick cry and the thud of a fall. After that the quiet
was little disturbed by the valet's labours with the body of the
drunkard. Eventually the man went out and closed the door. In the
subsequent silence the clock downstairs chimed twelve.
Lucinda rose then, and changed to her simplest street suit.
For half an hour or so she was busy at desk and dressing-table, packing
a checque book and her jewels with other belongings in a small handbag.
She did not falter once or waste a single move through indecision.
Indeed, it did not once occur to her that there was anything to be done
but what she meant to do.
Shortly after one o'clock she left Bel snoring, crept down the stairs
and with infinite stealth let herself out to the street.
Nobody saw her go, neither did she hesitate as she turned her back upon
the home that had till then held for her every precious thing in life.