CHAPTER XVIII.

BEFORE THE CURTAIN

There is more depth in a man than one might imagine. I am not sure that that is exactly what I mean, but then I do not know how to describe just what I do mean; it sometimes is so difficult. One thing is certain, that a man does keep his presence of mind, and that not always in a manner which he has any reason to consider creditable. I am not able to state what happened with so much clearness as I should wish, or, indeed, with any clearness at all. Under the circumstances, to expect lucidity from me is out of the question. I know that I lost my presence of mind. I have a vague impression that during the time I was wholly without it, I was hurried somewhere, by some one, in a manner which was beyond my comprehension. When I regained it, at least in part--for I never did altogether during the entire remainder of that evening; that I do most solemnly assert--I was in a seat, with a stage in front of me, on which something was going on, and people all round me, who were apparently in a state of dissatisfaction with someone, about something. Voices were saying behind me:

“Sit down in front!”

I looked, and there, actually, was Walter Hammond settling himself in a seat at my side. A gentleman on the other side of him leant forward and said:

“I don’t know if you’re aware that you’ve trodden on my hat, sir.”

Mr Hammond’s manner did not betray the mental disturbance which his reply suggested.

“Frightfully sorry! Delighted to provide you with another, sir!”

I was lost in amazement as to how I had come to be where I was; above all, how he had come to be there too. Where were the four? How was it that they had calmly acquiesced in my being whipped off from underneath their very noses? Where was the brown man, and everything? Some observations from Mr Hammond threw a little light upon the matter, but not much.

“Very neatly done--the riding did it--bad starters--left them at the post--romped in before they knew we’d begun to make the running.”

“Where,” I inquired, “are the others? And how is it that, after what I have just now been saying, I find myself here?”

“Question of jockeyship, Miss Norah. Good seat in the saddle--quick hands--made up my mind you and I should be snug together.”

“I wish to understand,” I began.

“Will you pardon my pointing out to you, madam, that a lady is singing on the stage?”

Hardly had I opened my mouth than this remark, or question, or whatever it was intended for, was addressed to me by a woman who occupied the seat upon my left. There was not much of her, but she made up in acidity--or it seemed as if she did--what she lacked in size. The undressed portion of her--which was disproportionately large--was covered with jewels. She looked to me to be about fifty, though, I daresay, she would have given her age as thirty-five. Being spoken to in such a fashion by a perfect stranger, and such a shrimp of a thing, precipitated me back into the condition of mental confusion from which I had just been emerging. When I myself get to a theatre early, and am enjoying the performance, I hate people to come in late. And when to that offence they add the capital crime of talking out loud, or even in an audible whisper--and there is a certain sort of whisper which is almost more audible than a shout--I sometimes ask myself why they were not drowned when they were young. In a mazy sort of mist I was disposed to wonder if other people could possibly be asking themselves the same question about me. I became hazily conscious that I was an object of general attention. People were murmuring among themselves. I even suspected the performers on the stage of regarding me with a malevolent eye.

It was a painful situation. I could not stand up and explain to the audience that it was not my fault I had entered in such a whirlwind fashion, apparently in the very middle of a song. I could not tell them that if I had had my way I should not have been there at all. Still less could I rise up, then and there, and march straight out again. All I could do was sit still, and burn.

On the other hand, Mr Hammond showed not the slightest sign of discomfiture. I was not only aware that he was smiling in a most significant manner, but he went so far as to allow himself to touch me with the point of his elbow, nudged me, in fact, with it in the side. And he said:

“Gay old kicker.”

I do not pretend to be versed in stable slang, but it was impossible to suppose that the phrase conveyed a compliment, especially as a reference from a gentleman to a lady of ripened years--I should not have been surprised if she had been more than fifty. Unfortunately, the reference was as obvious as it was audible. I felt my next-door neighbour draw herself up in a way which made a creepy-crawly feeling go all over me. I looked at her with what was intended to be an air of deprecation, and an intimation that I was in no way to be confounded with that dreadful Walter Hammond. And as I did so I became conscious that on the other side of her was a man--an old man, a very old man, and, also, I am afraid, a wicked old man. He was big and bald, with a red face, a weedy, white moustache, and an expression which I should describe as a mixture of ferocity, depravity, and--though I am reluctant to write it--drink. Picture my sensations when--as I turned to the little woman, who, I fear, poor thing, was his wife; before I really realised his presence, or how he was staring at me with his great eyes: and, emphatically, before I had the dimmest suspicion of what he was about to do--he winked at me--positively winked, not once, nor twice, but thrice--ostentatiously, without the least attempt at concealment. The little woman did not catch him in the act; goodness only knows what would have happened if she had. What he meant by it, or what he took me for, I have not the faintest notion. I was beginning to wonder what everyone took me for. Although I know my face became as red as fire, I went cold all over. Just then the singing on the stage ceased, people broke into applause. In the midst of their clapping I became aware that Walter Hammond was addressing me in a strain which as nearly as possible deprived me of the small remainder of my breath.

Whether, under any circumstances, a reasonable being would have supposed that that was a proper place, or a fitting moment, to enter on a subject of the kind, I cannot say, but, considering that, to all intents and purposes, we were strangers, and how he had treated me in the days gone by--not to speak of the way in which he had behaved to Eveleen--his doing so, then and there, was--well, beyond anything. I was so bewildered, and the people made such a noise, and he had such a queer way of expressing himself, that at first I did not understand what he was after.

“Don’t believe in entering a filly unless you mean running her to win.” I repeat that I have no pretension whatever to an acquaintance with the language of the turf; so that if there is anything muddled about his metaphors as I repeat them, I presume that the fault is mine. “If I had my way should always penalise entries which weren’t on the job. Whenever I’m in I’m there to win. That’s me, Miss Norah, straight. I’m no mole--always do what I do do out in the open--no burrowing for me. When I go for a mark, I aim for all I’m worth. Same with a girl. Mayn’t seem like a marrying man--have been told I’m like a cock, hard to bag. As girls go, small wonder they only bag crocks. But when I’m in for marriage, I mean getting there--there’s no stopping me--foul riding couldn’t do it--and there’s no fear of foul riding from you, because you’re different from any girl I ever met. Miss Norah, I love you!”

As ill luck would have it the applause died away just as he uttered those words--and just as I was approaching the dumfounded stage. An encore had been conceded; the singer was preparing to re-commence, when Mr Hammond delivered himself of that paralysing piece of information in a tone of voice which had been designed to reach my ears in spite of the din, and which rose above the sudden silence in a sort of roar. In consequence, those fatal words--“Miss Norah, I love you!”--must have been heard all over the stalls, by nearly everyone in the pit, and by goodness knows who else besides. It was delightful for me. I should have liked to have sunk into the ground. A voice came from somewhere at the back--a vulgar voice.

“You’re quite right, sir; and so say all of us; we all love Norah.”

Giggles came from every side. Regardless of what I felt, that extraordinary man did not seem to care in the least what anybody thought of him. Merely dropping his voice a tone or two, he actually went straight on:

“Never mind those beggars--time’s precious--must make the running while you can. I say, Miss Norah, that I love you.”

A gentleman in the row of stalls behind us leant forward, thrusting his head between Mr Hammond’s and mine, and observed--think of it!--

“We have heard you say so once already, sir. Would you mind postponing the repetition of the statement till after the singer has finished. We are waiting to hear the song?”

So far from being nonplussed, or disconcerted, or ashamed, or anything he ought to have been, all that Mr Hammond did do was to adjust his monocle more securely in his eye, and to look at the stage. Seeing that the fact was as stated, and that somebody was about to sing, he apparently appreciated the reasonableness of the stranger’s request, and held his peace; and the singer sang.

What she sang about--she was one of those lovely ladies whom you do find at the Gaiety--I have not an idea. All my ideas were gone. I was more than speechless. There was Walter Hammond, sitting all at once as if he had been carved out of stone, glaring at the stage as if he took not the slightest interest in what was taking place on it. The man behind, when making that unutterably impertinent remark, had slipped a scrap of paper over my shoulder, unnoticed, I presume, by Mr Hammond, and, I hope, by everyone else. It had slid down my bare neck, and had lodged in the top of my bodice. That wicked old person who sat on the other side of the little woman kept his beetroot-coloured face turned almost constantly in my direction; when I moved so much as an eyelash in his, he winked. Short of provoking a scandalous scene, I did not see what I could do to stop it, even if I had had my senses sufficiently about me to do anything, which I really had not. For, endeavouring to avoid his winks, my glances reached a box which was, so to speak, on the other side of the top of his bald head. In it was the brown man. He was standing up in the centre of it, well to the front. Although he shared the box with a lady, he did not allow her presence to deter him in the least. So soon as he caught my eye, he inclined his head in my direction in the most noticeable way, as if we had been quite old friends. The lady, who was young and pretty, and most beautifully dressed, was sitting down on his right, an opera-glass before her eyes, pointed straight at me. When he presumed to bestow on me that movement of recognition, she put down her glass and smiled, and, unless I was mistaken, nodded at me. I was convinced that I had never seen her in my life before. What did she mean? and what did he mean? and what should I do?

Of course, noticing his impertinence was out of the question, though he did look so distinguished standing up there in his beautiful white waistcoat, really my ideal of a handsome man. To avoid him, and to mark my sense of his misconduct, I turned my head right round, so that my glance lighted on the box which was exactly opposite the one in which he was.

It was occupied by the four men.

They were standing up, all in a row. At one end, a little back, was Mr Rumford. He had his hands in his pockets. On his face was an expression which hardly betokened enjoyment of the actors’ and actresses’ efforts to amuse. Next to him was Basil Carter, to whom, from what I had understood, the box belonged. He was apparently not in the best of tempers. Resting his hands on the edge of the box, he glared, first at Mr Hammond, then at me, then at the brown man over the way. I could not honestly assert that he looked pleasantly at either of us. I had learned a good deal about his temper since leaving home. I wondered if Audrey had an inkling of what sort of one he really had. Beside him was Jack Purchase. His arms were crossed upon his chest in what I imagine that he perhaps supposed was a tragic attitude. It reminded me of the pictures in the novelettes which I used to read when I was little--“Lady Lucy’s Lingering Love,” and that sort of thing. They were rather fond of giving illustrations of gentlemen with their arms folded across their chests; and there was something in his face which was a good deal like what used to be on theirs. He looked alternately at the brown man and Mr Hammond as if he would have liked to eat them, though, I daresay, that that was not the impression which the look was intended to convey. With the fingers of one hand he held the brim of his crush hat. Personally, I should not have been a bit surprised if it had come spinning down at Mr Hammond at my side, or if it had gone whirling through the air at the brown man opposite. If he could have used it as a boomerang, and flung it at both, it is my private impression that, in spite of the scandal it would have occasioned, he would have done it. I never saw two men in worse tempers than he and Mr Carter seemed to be just then.

At the further end of the row, completing the quartette, was little Major Tibbet. He was really a pitiable figure. What, I suspect, was his partial consciousness of the fact made it more obvious still. He kept fidgeting from foot to foot, touching himself furtively here and there, as if he doubted if everything was right. And it was not. He seemed to have been in the wars. His wig was on one side, one eyebrow was not only smudgy, but distinctly higher than the other, and something dreadful had happened to his complexion. An earthquake, or some similar cataclysm, seemed to have cracked it, so that on one side of his face quite a large patch of it was missing.

I could not but feel that mamma would not have liked to have seen him in his then condition. She is so particular about men’s appearance, especially those whom she honours with her acquaintance. And if she has the faintest suspicion that her own transformation is in the very slightest degree out of the straight, she nearly worries herself into a fit. What would she have felt if she had seen the singular angle at which the Major’s wig was poised?