Peggy made an effort to bring back her thoughts into their more usual channels, for at this point she became aware again that she was driving down Pall Mall and wasting her time terribly in thinking about Hugh instead of devouring the crowded pavements, and she turned her attention to them. There was an elderly man exactly like a rabbit, talking with a curious nibbling movement of the mouth to a middle-aged woman whose face was like a chest of drawers, square, obviously useful, with knobs on it. Then she passed a hansom in which was sitting Arthur Crowfoot, one of those red-hot faddists who spend their whole time in pursuing health-giving practices. He had spent all April in deep-breathing, and one was liable to come across him even in the streets, or sitting on a little green chair in the Park, looking rather apoplectic because he was holding his breath for ten seconds previous to expelling it slowly through his left nostril while his right was firmly closed by his finger. Then he gave up deep-breathing, and devoted May to the open-air cure, being quite well already, with the result that he caught a dreadful cold. That, however, he had remedied by giving up eating flesh and living on a curious gray paste made of nuts and drinking water in sips for an hour or two every day. At this moment he was observing his tongue rather anxiously in the looking-glass of his hansom, and so did not see Peggy. She registered the premonition that nut-paste would probably be soon abandoned. How heavenly people were!
Then—she was really in luck—she found all sorts of enchanting things. A circus was going somewhere, and the elephant at this colossal moment did not want to go. Instead he wanted buns, and with a view to getting them had taken his stand, kindly but extremely firmly on the pavement opposite the Guards’ Club and had inserted his trunk through the open window of the smoking-room; he picked up a Pall Mall, waved it hysterically in the air, and then ate it. A little further on two intensely English-looking men, appearing to be rather annoyed with each other, wanted to pass, the one going east, the other west. But, with aggrieved and offended faces, they danced a sort of sideways minuet in front of each other, choosing the same side simultaneously. Then a man on a bicycle approached, with a tied-up look about his face. Peggy could not imagine why he looked so tied-up, until a hideous convulsion seized him and he sneezed. The pavement had been lately watered, his bicycle skidded, and he fell off. And how she longed to go back and see whether the elephant had any more beautiful plans!
Mrs. Allbutt was staying while in London with her sister and brother-in-law, in the huge chocolate-coloured house in Piccadilly which Hugh had called the Clapham Junction of good works. Half a dozen families could easily have been accommodated there without coming into the contact too close for perfect liberty of action; and, as a matter of fact, friends and relations were encouraged to and did treat it rather like a hotel without bills. “For what,” as Peggy said, “is the use of dwelling in marble halls in this very central situation unless one’s friends will come and dwell there too?” So they came and dwelt, since Peggy with true hospitality besought everybody to make any arrangements they chose, to ask anybody to dinner or to go out to dinner, or to have high tea exactly as they wished without consultation or notice given to her provided only that one motor-car should be considered—as indeed it was—her private property, and not to be used without reference to her. Similarly, on days of big dinner parties she asked that the intentions of any of those staying with her should be notified as soon as convenient, so that the servants should not go mad; but in the ordinary routine, when one person was going to the opera, and another to the theatre, and a third dining quietly at home at eight, people simply went to the dining-room at the time they had appointed, and there, as by a miracle, always found that something was ready for them.
Thursday evening, in fact, the night when Andrew Robb was going to make his bow before the dramatic world, was a typical instance of an ordinary night. Lord Rye was going to the opera with his sister, and had ordered dinner for half-past seven. Peggy, Mrs. Allbutt, and Hugh were going to dine at seven, in order to be in time for the first fatal and excruciating rise of the curtain; while Frank Adams and his a week of whirl had been down to Ascot all day, and preferred to dine at home, and go to a ball afterward. Peggy herself had been delayed in a manner which it had been impossible to foresee over some charitable visit to the East End, and returned at exactly seven, meeting Edith as she came downstairs dressed on the way to her room.
“Darling, I am late,” she said, “and it wasn’t my fault. You look perfectly beautiful, and how you can be so calm! Go in with Hugh as soon as he comes, won’t you, and don’t wait for me, because we must be there in time.”
She whirled on to her room, and Edith, finding a letter or two for her on the table by the hall door, stopped to read them, and witnessed Hugh’s arrival, who, like Peggy, seemed somehow to be going faster than usual, and on dismounting instantly became involved in a dispute with the cabman.
“But as I haven’t got any money, I can’t pay you,” he said rather shrilly. “I forgot, as I tell you, to bring any, though I’m frightfully rich. But if you’ll call at Dover Street to-morrow——”
The cabman’s contribution to the dispute was to say “Cheating a pore cabby!” at intervals. He said it now.
“But you are so unreasonable,” continued Hugh. “No, I won’t give you my watch. Oh, there’s a footman! I dare say I can borrow some. Would you give me eighteen pence, please? No, a shilling.”
Hugh handed him the shilling.
“And if you hadn’t been so rude,” he said, “you should have had eighteenpence, so I hope it will be a lesson to you. Oh, there you are, Mrs. Allbutt! Aren’t cabmen ridiculous? Am I late?”
“Peggy is later,” she said. “She has only just come in. We are to begin without her.”
They went into the dining-room, in which were several small tables, and took their seats at one laid for three.
“I am never quite sure if I enjoy first nights,” said Hugh; “which sounds polite as I am going with you to one, but I am so agitated on behalf of the actors. And how the author can bear it at all is a thing that passes comprehension. I don’t see how he can bear to be present, and of course it would be beyond human power for him to stop away.”
“Ah, but the name of Andrew Robb inspires me with confidence!” said she. “The name doesn’t sound as if he was likely to be nervous.”
Hugh looked at her with deep interest.
“You don’t suppose there is an Andrew Robb, do you?” he asked. “I feel certain there isn’t. Nobody ever really was called that, do you think?”
“I don’t see any inherent impossibility in it.”
“Oh, surely it can’t happen! Do you often go to first nights?”
“Hardly ever,” said she. “Until this last fortnight, I don’t suppose I have slept in town half a dozen times in the last three years.”
“How wise.”
“Yet Peggy tells me that you are the most confirmed of Cockneys, and are in town nine months out of the twelve.”
“Yes; but then I like it,” said Hugh, eating fish very fast. “So that is wise also. How few people know what they like!”
“Yes, but does that surprise you? I think it is rather difficult to know what one likes. Anyhow, most people only see the world through the eyes of others. In consequence they only like, or think they like, what other people like.”