On the way to the neighbourly Athenaeum, the novelist talked endlessly
about the disadvantages of not being born, which is a very safe subject.
Talking still, he piloted Lennox to the dining-room where, the
advantages of sedatives occurring to him, he ordered a bottle of
Pommard, which is mother's milk.
But when it was brought Lennox would not touch it. He wanted brandy and
soda and told Johnson, a captain, to see to it.
In the great high-ceiled room, other members were dining. From one of
the tables Ogston sauntered over and, noting that Jones and Lennox had
not dressed, which he had, and very beautifully, remarked brilliantly:
"You fellers aren't going to the opera, are you? It's the last night."
It was another safe subject and Jones smiled falsely at him. "But you
are, eh? Sit down."
Ogston put a hand on the novelist's chair. "No. I'm off to a
theatre-party. But I have a ticket for the Metropolitan. You don't
either of you want it, do you?"
"Let me see, what is it, to-night?" Jones, with that same false smile,
enquired. "And where is the seat?"
"In Paliser's box. He's to be alone and left it here with a note asking
me to join him."
Deeply, beneath his breath, Jones swore, but with the same smile, he
tried to shift the subject. "You're quite a belle, aren't you?"
"See here, Ogston," Lennox put in, "let me have it."
Ogston, fumbling in his white waistcoat, extracted the ticket and handed
it over.
"By the way, Lennox, do you mind my doing a little touting for
Cantillon? He's with Dunwoodie. Give him your law business--some of it,
anyhow."
"I'll give him some, when I have it," answered Lennox, who was to have
some, and sooner and far more monumentally, than either he, or even
Jones, suspected.
"Good for you, Lennox. Good-night, Jones." The brilliant and beautifully
dressed young man nodded and passed on.
But now the captain was bearing down on them.
Jones looked at Lennox. "You will have to come back to my shop after
dinner. There is a phrase in your will that I omitted. I forgot the
'seized and possessed.'"
Lennox drank before he spoke. Then he said: "After dinner, I shall do
for Paliser."
Jones, waiting until the captain had gone, looked at Lennox again. "The
greatest revenge is the disdain of any."
Lennox made no reply. A waiter put a plate before him and another before
Jones. Members passed, going to their tables or leaving them.
Occasionally one of them stopped, exchanged the time of day and then
passed on. In each exchange Jones collaborated. Lennox said nothing. The
food before him he tormented, poking at it with a fork, but not eating
it.
Presently he asked for coffee, drank a cup and got up.
Jones, too, got up and, to stay him, put out a hand.
Lennox, treating it, and him, like a cobweb, went on.
Afterward, Jones thought of the Wild Women of whom AEschylus tells, the
terrible Daughters of Hazard that lurk in the shadows of coming events
which, it may be, they have marshalled.
Afterward he thought of them. But at the moment, believing that Lennox
would do nothing and realising that, in any case, nothing can be more
futile than an attempt to avert the inevitable, he was about to resume
his seat, when something on the floor attracted him. He bent over, took
it, looked at it and tucked it in a pocket.
Then, sitting down again, mentally he followed Lennox, whom later he was
to follow farther, whom he was to follow deep in the depths where the
Wild Women, lurking in wait, had thrown him.