As she spoke, the door was flung open, and Helen burst in in a state of extreme excitement.
"Oh, my dears, what do you think? You"ll never guess. A woman"s been here asking me for her husband. Her WHAT?" (Helen was fond of supplying her own surprise.) "Yes, for her husband, and it really is so."
"Not anything to do with Bracknell?" cried Margaret, who had lately taken on an unemployed of that name to clean the knives and boots.
"I offered Bracknell, and he was rejected. So was Tibby. (Cheer up, Tibby!) It"s no one we know. I said, "Hunt, my good woman; have a good look round, hunt under the tables, poke up the chimney, shake out the antimaca.s.sars. Husband? husband?" Oh, and she so magnificently dressed and tinkling like a chandelier."
"Now, Helen, what did really happen?"
"What I say. I was, as it were, orating my speech. Annie opens the door like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open.
Then we began--very civilly. "I want my husband, what I have reason to believe is here." No--how unjust one is. She said "whom," not "what."
She got it perfectly. So I said, "Name, please?" and she said, "Lan, Miss," and there we were.
"Lan?"
"Lan or Len. We were not nice about our vowels. Lanoline."
"But what an extraordinary--"
"I said, "My good Mrs. Lanoline, we have some grave misunderstanding here. Beautiful as I am, my modesty is even more remarkable than my beauty, and never, never has Mr. Lanoline rested his eyes on mine.""
"I hope you were pleased," said Tibby.
"Of course," Helen squeaked. "A perfectly delightful experience.
Oh, Mrs. Lanoline"s a dear--she asked for a husband as if he were an umbrella. She mislaid him Sat.u.r.day afternoon--and for a long time suffered no inconvenience. But all night, and all this morning her apprehensions grew. Breakfast didn"t seem the same--no, no more did lunch, and so she strolled up to 2 Wickham Place as being the most likely place for the missing article."
"But how on earth--"
"Don"t begin how on earthing. "I know what I know," she kept repeating, not uncivilly, but with extreme gloom. In vain I asked her what she did know. Some knew what others knew, and others didn"t, and then others again had better be careful. Oh dear, she was incompetent! She had a face like a silkworm, and the dining-room reeks of orris-root. We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She thanked me. We agreed that Mr. Lanoline"s a notty, notty man, and hasn"t no business to go on the lardy-da. But I think she suspected me up to the last. Bags I writing to Aunt Juley about this. Now, Meg, remember--bags I."
"Bag it by all means," murmured Margaret, putting down her work. "I"m not sure that this is so funny, Helen. It means some horrible volcano smoking somewhere, doesn"t it?"
"I don"t think so--she doesn"t really mind. The admirable creature isn"t capable of tragedy."
"Her husband may be, though," said Margaret, moving to the window.
"Oh no, not likely. No one capable of tragedy could have married Mrs.
Lanoline."
"Was she pretty?"
"Her figure may have been good once."
The flats, their only outlook, hung like an ornate curtain between Margaret and the welter of London. Her thoughts turned sadly to house-hunting. Wickham Place had been so safe. She feared, fantastically, that her own little flock might be moving into turmoil and squalor, into nearer contact with such episodes as these.
"Tibby and I have again been wondering where we"ll live next September,"
she said at last.
"Tibby had better first wonder what he"ll do," retorted Helen; and that topic was resumed, but with acrimony. Then tea came, and after tea Helen went on preparing her speech, and Margaret prepared one, too, for they were going out to a discussion society on the morrow. But her thoughts were poisoned. Mrs. Lanoline had risen out of the abyss, like a faint smell, a goblin football, telling of a life where love and hatred had both decayed.
CHAPTER XIV
The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a clerk in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus much from his card. He had come "about the lady yesterday." Thus much from Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.
"Cheers, children!" cried Helen. "It"s Mrs. Lanoline."
Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so common in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the shepherd or ploughboy whom civilisation had sucked into the town; as one of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to reach the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanised the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well--the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books. She knew the very tones in which he would address her. She was only unprepared for an example of her own visiting-card.
"You wouldn"t remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?" said he, uneasily familiar.
"No; I can"t say I do."
"Well, that was how it happened, you see."
"Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For the minute I don"t remember."
"It was a concert at the Queen"s Hall. I think you will recollect," he added pretentiously, "when I tell you that it included a performance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven."
"We hear the Fifth practically every time it"s done, so I"m not sure--do you remember, Helen?"
"Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the bal.u.s.trade?"
He thought not.
"Then I don"t remember. That"s the only Beethoven I ever remember specially."
"And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of course."
"Likely enough," Helen laughed, "for I steal umbrellas even oftener than I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?"
"Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel."
"The mistake arose out of my card, did it?" interposed Margaret.
"Yes, the mistake arose--it was a mistake."
"The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too, and that she could find you?" she continued, pushing him forward, for, though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.
"That"s so, calling too--a mistake."
"Then why--?" began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.
"I said to my wife," he continued more rapidly "I said to Mrs. Bast, "I have to pay a call on some friends," and Mrs. Bast said to me, "Do go."
While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused you."
"No inconvenience," said Helen; "but I still don"t understand."