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.