It was repeated, with such additions as may be fairly made behind a man's back.
"A dashed good fellow, who writes dashed bad novels," was one of these.
"You forget!" said another. "He is the 'well-known novelist' who is going the rounds as a neighbor and friend of Mrs.—"
Looks from Venn and the doctor cut short the speech, but not before its import had come home to the young Italian, whose hollow cheeks flushed a dusky brown, while his sunken eyes caught fire. In an instant he was on his feet, with no attempt to hide his excitement, and still less to mask the emotion that was its real name.
"He knows her, do you tell me? He knows Mrs. Minchin—"
"Or whatever her name is now; yes; so he says."
"And what is her name?"
"He won't say."
"Nor where she lives?"
"No."
"Then where does he live?"
"None of us know that either; he's the darkest horse in the club."
Venn agreed with this speaker, some little bitterness in his tone. Another stood up for Langholm.
"We should be as dark," said he, "if we had married Gayety choristers, and they had left us, and we went in dread of their return!"
They sum up the life tragedies pretty pithily, in these clubs.
"He was always a silly ass about women," rejoined Langholm's critic, summing up the man. "So it's Mrs. Minchin now!"
The name acted like magic upon young Severino. His attention had wandered. In an instant it was more eager than before.
"If you don't know where he lives in the country," he burst out, "where is he staying in town?"
"We don't know that either."
"Then I mean to find out!"
And the pale musician rushed from the room, in pursuit of the man who had been all day pursuing him.
Chapter XXII
The Darkest Hour
The amateur detective walked slowly up to Piccadilly, and climbed on top of a Chelsea omnibus, a dejected figure even to the casual eye. He was more than disappointed at the upshot of his wild speculations, and in himself for the false start that he had made. His feeling was one of positive shame. It was so easy now to see the glaring improbability of the conclusion to which he had jumped in his haste, at the first promptings of a too facile fancy. And what an obvious idea it had been at last! As if his were the only brain to which it could have occurred!
Langholm could have laughed at his late theory if it had only entailed the loss of one day, but it had also cost him that self-confidence which was the more valuable in his case through not being a common characteristic of the man. He now realized the difficulties of his quest, and the absolutely wrong way in which he had set about it. His imagination had run away with him. It was no case for the imagination. It was a case for patient investigation, close reasoning, logical deduction, all arts in which the imaginative man is almost inevitably deficient.
Langholm, however, had enough lightness of temperament to abandon an idea as readily as he formed one, and his late suspicion was already driven to the four winds. He only hoped he had not shown what was in his mind at the club. Langholm was a just man, and he honestly regretted the injustice that he had done, even in his own heart, and for ever so few hours, to a thoroughly innocent man.
And all up Piccadilly this man was sitting within a few inches of him, watching his face with a passionate envy, and plucking up courage to speak; he only did so at Hyde Park Corner, where an intervening passenger got down.
Langholm was sufficiently startled at the sound of his own name, breaking in upon the reflections indicated, but to find at his elbow the very face which was in his mind was to lose all power of immediate reply.
"My name is Severino," explained the other. "I was introduced to you an hour or two ago at the club."
"Ah, to be sure!" cried Langholm, recovering. "Odd thing, though, for we must have left about the same time, and I never saw you till this moment."
Severino took the vacant place by Langholm's side. "Mr. Langholm," said he, a tremor in his soft voice, "I have a confession to make to you. I followed you from the club!"
"You followed me?"
Langholm could not help the double emphasis; to him it seemed a grotesque turning of the tables, a too poetically just ending to that misspent day. It was all he could do to repress a smile.
"Yes, I followed you," the young Italian repeated, with his taking accent, in his touching voice; "and I beg your pardon for doing so—though I would do the same again—I will tell you why. I thought that you were talking about me while I was strumming to them at the club. It is possible, of course, that I was quite mistaken; but when you went out I stopped at once and asked questions. And they told me you were a friend of—a great friend of mine—of Mrs. Minchin!"
"It is true enough," said Langholm, after a pause. "Well?"
"She was a very great friend of mine," repeated Severino. "That was all."
And he sighed.
"So I have heard," said Langholm, with sympathy. "I can well believe it, for I might almost say the same of her myself."
The 'bus toiled on beside the park. The two long lines of lights rose gently ahead until they almost met, and the two men watched them as they spoke.
"Until to-day," continued Severino, "I did not know whether she was dead or alive."
"She is both alive and well."
"And married again?"
"And married again."
There was a long pause. The park ended first.
"I want you to do me a great favor," said Severino in Knightsbridge. "She was so good to me! I shall never forget it, and yet I have never been able to thank her. I nearly died—it was at that time—and when I remembered, she had disappeared. I beg and beseech you, Mr. Langholm, to tell me her name, and where she is living now!"
Langholm looked at his companion in the confluence of lights at the Sloane Street corner. The pale face was alight with passion, the sunken eyes ablaze. "I cannot tell you," he answered, shortly.
"Is it your own name?"
"Good God, no!"
And Langholm laughed harshly.
"Will you not even tell me where she lives?"
"I cannot, without her leave; but if you like I will tell her about you."
There was no answer as they drove on. Then of a sudden Langholm's arm was seized and crushed by bony fingers.
"I am dying," the low voice whispered hoarsely in his ear. "Can't you see it for yourself? I shall never get better; it might be a year or two, it may be weeks. But I want to see her again and make sure. Yes, I love her! There is no sense in denying it. But it is all on my side, and I am dying, and she has married again! What harm can it do anybody if I see her once more?"
The sunken eyes were filled with tears. There were more tears in the hollow voice. Langholm was deeply touched.
"My dear fellow," he said, "I will let her know. No, no, not that, of course! But I will write to her at once—to-night! Will that not do?"
Severino thanked him, with a heavy sigh. "Oh, don't get down," he added, as Langholm rose. "I won't talk about her any more."