Transcribed from 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition by DavidPrice, . Proofed by Nina Hall, MohuaSen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David.
Coming in to dress for dinner, Ifound a telegram: “Mrs. Stormer dying; can you give us halfa column for to-morrow evening? Let her off easy, but nottoo easy.” I was late; I was in a hurry; I had verylittle time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply:“Will do what I can.” It was not till I haddressed and was rolling away to dinner that, in the hansom, Ibethought myself of the difficulty of the conditionattached. The difficulty was not of course in letting heroff easy but in qualifying that indulgence. “I simplywon’t qualify it,” I said to myself. Ididn’t admire her, but I liked her, and I had known her solong that I almost felt heartless in sitting down at such an hourto a feast of indifference. I must have seemed abstracted,for the early years of my acquaintance with her came back tome. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down, but thelady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. Itried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books “toovile.” I had never thought them very good, but Ishould let her off easier than that.
I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to askabout her. The journey took time, for she lived in thenorth-west district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension that I should be too late was justified in afuller sense than I had attached to it—I had only fearedthat the house would be shut up. There were lights in thewindows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell brought a servantimmediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormer had passed into astate in which the resonance of no earthly knocker was to befeared. A lady, in the hall, hovering behind the servant,came forward when she heard my voice. I recognised LadyLuard, but she had mistaken me for the doctor.
“Excuse my appearing at such an hour,” I said;“it was the first possible moment after I heard.”
“It’s all over,” Lady Luard replied. “Dearest mamma!”
She stood there under the lamp with her eyes on me; she wasvery tall, very stiff, very cold, and always looked as if thesethings, and some others beside, in her dress, her manner and evenher name, were an implication that she was very admirable. I had never been able to follow the argument, but that is adetail. I expressed briefly and frankly what I felt, whilethe little mottled maidservant flattened herself against the wallof the narrow passage and tried to look detached without lookingindifferent. It was not a moment to make a visit, and I wason the point of retreating when Lady Luard arrested me with aqueer, casual, drawling “Would you—a—would you,perhaps, be writing something?” I felt for theinstant like an interviewer, which I was not. But I pleadedguilty to this intention, on which she rejoined: “I’mso very glad—but I think my brother would like to seeyou.” I detested her brother, but it wasn’t anoccasion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be inducted, tomy surprise, into a small back room which I immediatelyrecognised as the scene, during the later years, of Mrs.Stormer’s imperturbable industry. Her table wasthere, the battered and blotted accessory to innumerable literarylapses, with its contracted space for the arms (she wrote onlyfrom the elbow down) and the confusion of scrappy, scribbledsheets which had already become literary remains. Leolinwas also there, smoking a cigarette before the fire and lookingimpudent even in his grief, sincere as it well might havebeen.
To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; forthe air that he wore to me as he stood before me was quite thatof his mother’s murderer. She lay silent for everupstairs—as dead as