“Silence! Shut up there in front! Can’t the gentleman in the stalls go outside if he wants to talk to his young lady?”
In desperation, I endeavoured to induce him to respect their most reasonable wishes.
“Mr Hammond,” I whispered, “can’t you keep still? You prevent the people from enjoying the performance.”
“Hang the performance!” was his answer. “And hang the people, too! Say yes, Miss Norah—only say yes!—and I’ll be silent as the grave.”
He reached out—in the stalls!—for my hand. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping it from him. If I had allowed him to get it into his, what he would have tried to do next, I do not dare to think. Had I had the vaguest conception of what kind of person he really was, nothing would have induced me to have any connection with him whatever. I pitied Eveleen, from the bottom of my heart, if she ever allowed her path in life to become associated with his.
The same attendant who had brought Mr Carter’s card—or, at least, what I believed to have been Mr Carter’s card—re-appeared. All round us people were smiling, some of them giggling outright. They were whispering among themselves. I saw that we were targets for everybody’s eyes. I had a horrid feeling that we were even attracting the attention of the actors and actresses on the stage. There was no doubt as to our being observed by the band. One of the clarionet players was grinning with such intense enjoyment that it was a miracle how it was that he managed to blow. The reappearance of that attendant was a distinct relief. She held out an envelope, which Mr Hammond snatched at with an air of resentment. She drew it back, saying, beneath her breath:
“It’s for the lady, sir.”
I took it, with trembling fingers. I managed, after a deal of ridiculous fumbling, to get it open. Inside were no less than four visiting cards. There was no need to refer to their fronts to understand from whom they came; I felt those four men glaring at me from the box above. On the back of one of them something was written. I did not look to see whose it was, but I knew it was Basil Carter’s. It was written so very badly, apparently with a blunt lead pencil, and I myself was in such a state of fluster, that I had difficulty in making out what it was.
“My dear Miss Norah,—I implore you to come up to my box at once! Mr Hammond undertook to conduct you to it, but, with monstrous perfidy, he enticed you to his own stall instead. This is not the time, and I have not the space, to give you my candid opinion of his behaviour, but I appeal to your sense of justice——”
That was all I could read. Several more words—or what I supposed were words—were crammed into the corner, which were beyond my powers of deciphering. But I had deciphered enough. What an awful character Mr Hammond appeared to be, to have played such a trick upon his friends—and upon me!—with the seemingly express intention of making a laughing-stock of me in front of all the theatre. I stood up on the instant, trembling—at least, partly—with rage. He stood up, too.