“Xingu, of course!” exclaimed the latter with her accustomed promptness, while Miss Van Vluyck and Laura Glyde seemed to be plumbing the depths of memory, and Mrs. Leveret, feeling apprehensively for Appropriate Allusions, was somehow reassured by the uncomfortable pressure of its bulk against her person.
Osric Dane’s change of countenance was no less striking than that of her entertainers. She too put down her coffee-cup, but with a look of distinct annoyance: she too wore, for a brief moment, what Mrs. Roby afterward described as the look of feeling for something in the back of her head; and before she could dissemble these momentary signs of weakness, Mrs. Roby, turning to her with a deferential smile, had said: “And we’ve been so hoping that to-day you would tell us just what you think of it.”
Osric Dane received the homage of the smile as a matter of course; but the accompanying question obviously embarrassed her, and it became clear to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused to obey her orders.
“Xingu—” she murmured, as if seeking in her turn to gain time.
Mrs. Roby continued to press her. “Knowing how engrossing the subject is, you will understand how it happens that the Club has let everything else go to the wall for the moment. Since we took up Xingu I might almost say—were it not for your books—that nothing else seems to us worth remembering.”
Osric Dane’s stern features were darkened rather than lit up by an uneasy smile. “I am glad to hear there is one exception,” she gave out between narrowed lips.
“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Roby said prettily; “but as you have shown us that—so very naturally!—you don’t care to talk about your own things, we really can’t let you off from telling us exactly what you think about Xingu; especially,” she added, with a persuasive smile, “as some people say that one of your last books was simply saturated with it.”
It was an IT, then—the assurance sped like fire through the parched minds of the other members. In their eagerness to gain the least little clue to Xingu they almost forgot the joy of assisting at the discomfiture of Mrs. Dane.
The latter reddened nervously under her antagonist’s direct assault. “May I ask,” she faltered out in an embarrassed tone, “to which of my books you refer?”
Mrs. Roby did not falter. “That’s just what I want you to tell us; because, though I was present, I didn’t actually take part.”
“Present at what?” Mrs. Dane took her up; and for an instant the trembling members of the Lunch Club thought that the champion Providence had raised up for them had lost a point. But Mrs. Roby explained herself gaily: “At the discussion, of course. And so we’re dreadfully anxious to know just how it was that you went into the Xingu.”
There was a portentous pause, a silence so big with incalculable dangers that the members with one accord checked the words on their lips, like soldiers dropping their arms to watch a single combat between their leaders. Then Mrs. Dane gave expression to their inmost dread by saying sharply: “Ah—you say THE Xingu, do you?”
Mrs. Roby smiled undauntedly. “It IS a shade pedantic, isn’t it? Personally, I always drop the article; but I don’t know how the other members feel about it.”
The other members looked as though they would willingly have dispensed with this deferential appeal to their opinion, and Mrs. Roby, after a bright glance about the group, went on: “They probably think, as I do, that nothing really matters except the thing itself—except Xingu.”
No immediate reply seemed to occur to Mrs. Dane, and Mrs. Ballinger gathered courage to say: “Surely every one must feel that about Xingu.”
Mrs. Plinth came to her support with a heavy murmur of assent, and Laura Glyde breathed emotionally: “I have known cases where it has changed a whole life.”
“It has done me worlds of good,” Mrs. Leveret interjected, seeming to herself to remember that she had either taken it or read it in the winter before.
“Of course,” Mrs. Roby admitted, “the difficulty is that one must give up so much time to it. It’s very long.”
“I can’t imagine,” said Miss Van Vluyck tartly, “grudging the time given to such a subject.”
“And deep in places,” Mrs. Roby pursued; (so then it was a book!) “And it isn’t easy to skip.”
“I never skip,” said Mrs. Plinth dogmatically.
“Ah, it’s dangerous to, in Xingu. Even at the start there are places where one can’t. One must just wade through.”
“I should hardly call it WADING,” said Mrs. Ballinger sarcastically.
Mrs. Roby sent her a look of interest. “Ah—you always found it went swimmingly?”
Mrs. Ballinger hesitated. “Of course there are difficult passages,” she conceded modestly.
“Yes; some are not at all clear—even,” Mrs. Roby added, “if one is familiar with the original.”
“As I suppose you are?” Osric Dane interposed, suddenly fixing her with a look of challenge.
Mrs. Roby met it by a deprecating smile. “Oh, it’s really not difficult up to a certain point; though some of the branches are very little known, and it’s almost impossible to get at the source.”
“Have you ever tried?” Mrs. Plinth enquired, still distrustful of Mrs. Roby’s thoroughness.
Mrs. Roby was silent for a moment; then she replied with lowered lids: “No—but a friend of mine did; a very brilliant man; and he told me it was best for women—not to…”
A shudder ran around the room. Mrs. Leveret coughed so that the parlour-maid, who was handing the cigarettes, should not hear; Miss Van Vluyck’s face took on a nauseated expression, and Mrs. Plinth looked as if she were passing some one she did not care to bow to. But the most remarkable result of Mrs. Roby’s words was the effect they produced on the Lunch Club’s distinguished guest. Osric Dane’s impassive features suddenly melted to an expression of the warmest human sympathy, and edging her chair toward Mrs. Roby’s she asked: “Did he really? And—did you find he was right?”
Mrs. Ballinger, in whom annoyance at Mrs. Roby’s unwonted assumption of prominence was beginning to displace gratitude for the aid she had rendered, could not consent to her being allowed, by such dubious means, to monopolise the attention of their guest. If Osric Dane had not enough self-respect to resent Mrs. Roby’s flippancy, at least the Lunch Club would do so in the person of its President.
Mrs. Ballinger laid her hand on Mrs. Roby’s arm. “We must not forget,” she said with a frigid amiability, “that absorbing as Xingu is to US, it may be less interesting to—”
“Oh, no, on the contrary, I assure you,” Osric Dane energetically intervened.
“—to others,” Mrs. Ballinger finished firmly; “and we must not allow our little meeting to end without persuading Mrs. Dane to say a few words to us on a subject which, to-day, is much more present in all our thoughts. I refer, of course, to ‘The Wings of Death.’”
The other members, animated by various degrees of the same sentiment, and encouraged by the humanised mien of their redoubtable guest, repeated after Mrs. Ballinger: “Oh, yes, you really MUST talk to us a little about your book.”
Osric Dane’s expression became as bored, though not as haughty, as when her work had been previously mentioned. But before she could respond to Mrs. Ballinger’s request, Mrs. Roby had risen from her seat, and was pulling her veil down over her frivolous nose.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, advancing toward her hostess with outstretched hand, “but before Mrs. Dane begins I think I’d better run away. Unluckily, as you know, I haven’t read her books, so I should be at a terrible disadvantage among you all; and besides, I’ve an engagement to play bridge.”