The Lion's Share

JANE

“We’ve begun, ye see,” said Susan Foley.

It was two minutes past five, and Miss Ingate and Audrey, followed by Nick with her slung arm, entered the sheeted living-room. Tremendous feats had been performed. All the Moncreiff and Ingate luggage, less than two hours earlier lying at the Charing Cross Hotel, was now in two adjoining rooms on the third floor of the great house in Paget Gardens. Drivers and loiterers had assisted, under the strict and taciturn control of Susan Foley. Also Nick, Miss Ingate, and Audrey had had a most intimate conversation, and the two latter had changed their attire to suit the station of campers in a palace.

“It’s lovely to be quite free and independent,” Audrey had said, and the statement had been acclaimed.

Jane Foley was seated opposite her sister at the small table plainly set for five. She rose vivaciously, and came forward with outstretched hand. She wore a blue skirt and a white blouse and brown boots. She was twenty-eight, but her rather small proportions and her plentiful golden, fluffy hair made her seem about twenty. Her face was less homely than Susan’s, and more mobile. She smiled somewhat shyly, with an extraordinary radiant cheerfulness. It was impossible for her to conceal the fact that she was very good-natured and very happy. Finally, she limped.

“Susan will have the meals prompt,” she said, as they all sat down. “And as Susan left home on purpose to look after me, of course she’s the mistress. As far as that goes, she always was.”

Susan was spreading jam on a slice of bread-and-butter for the one-armed Nick.

“I dare say you don’t remember me playing the barrel organ all down Regent Street that day, do you?” said Miss Ingate.

“Oh, yes; quite well. You were magnificent!” answered Jane, with blue eyes sparkling.

“Well, though I only just saw you—I was so busy—I should remember you anywhere, Miss Foley,” said Miss Ingate.

“Do you notice any difference in her?” questioned Susan Foley harshly.

“N-o,” said Miss Ingate. “Except, perhaps, she looks even younger.”

“Didn’t you notice she’s lame?”

“Oh, well—yes, I did. But you didn’t expect me to mention that, did you? I thought your sister had just sprained her ankle, or something.”

“No,” said Susan. “It’s for life. Tell them about it, Jenny. They don’t know.”

Jane Foley laughed lightly.

“It was all in the day’s work,” she said. “It was at my last visit to Holloway.”

Audrey, gazing at her entranced, like a child, murmured with awe:

“Have you been to prison, then?”

“Three times,” said Jane pleasantly. “And I shall be going again soon. I’m only out while they’re trying to think of some new way of dealing with me, poor things! I’m generally watched. It must cost them a fearful lot of money. But what are they to do?”

“But how were you lamed? I can’t eat any tea if you don’t tell me—really I can’t!”

“Oh, all right!” Jane laughed. “It was after that Liberal mass meeting in Peel Park, at Bradford. I’d begun to ask questions, as usual, you know—questions they can’t answer—and then some Liberal stewards, with lovely rosettes in their buttonholes, came round me and started cutting my coat with their penknives. They cut it all to pieces. You see that was the best argument they could think of in the excitement of the moment. I believe they’d have cut up every stitch I had, only perhaps it began to dawn on them that it might be awkward for them. Then two of them lifted me up, one by the feet and the other by the shoulders, and carried me off. They wouldn’t let me walk. I told them they’d hurt my leg, but they were too busy to listen. As soon as they came across a policeman they said they had done it all to save me from being thrown into the lake by a brutal and infuriated mob. I just had enough breath left to thank them. Of course, the police weren’t going to stand that, so I was taken that night to London. Everything was thought of except my tea. But I expect they forgot that on purpose so that I should be properly hungry when I got to Holloway. However, I said to myself, ‘If I can’t eat and drink when I want, I won’t eat and drink when they want!’ And I didn’t.

“After I’d paid my respects at Bow Street, and was back at Holloway, I just stamped on everything they offered me, and wrote a petition to the Governor asking to be treated as a political prisoner. Instead of granting the petition he kept sending me more and more beautiful food, and I kept stamping on it. Then three magistrates arrived and sat on my case, and sentenced me to the punishment cells. They ran off as soon as they’d sentenced me. I said I wouldn’t go to their punishment cells. I told everybody again how lame I was. So five wardresses carried me there, but they dropped me twice on the way. It was a very interesting cell, the punishment cell was. If it had been in the Tower, everybody would go to look at it because of its quaintness. There were two pools of water near to the bed. I was three days in the cell, and those pools of water were always there; I could see them because from where I lay on the bed the light glinted on them. Just one gleam from the tiny cobwebby window high up. I hadn’t anything to read, of course, but even if I’d had something I couldn’t see to read. The bed was two planks, just raised an inch or two above the water, and the pillow was wooden. Never any trouble about making beds like that! The entire furniture of this cosy drawing-room was—you’ll never guess—a tree-stump, meant for a chair, I think. And on this tree-stump was an india-rubber cup. I could just see it across the cell.

“At night the wardresses were struck with pity, or perhaps it was the Governor. Anyhow, they brought me a mattress and a rug. They told me to get up off the bed, and I told them I couldn’t get up, couldn’t even turn over. So they said, ‘Very well, then; you can do without these things,’ and they took them away. The funny thing was that I really couldn’t get up. If I tried to move, my leg made me want to shriek.

“After three days they decided to take me to the prison hospital. I shrieked all the way—couldn’t help it. They laughed. So then I laughed. In the hospital, the doctor decided that my left ankle was sprained and my right thigh broken. So I had the best of them, after all. They had to admit they were wrong. It was most awkward for them. Then I thought I might as well begin to eat. But they had to be very careful what they gave me. I hadn’t had anything for nearly six days, you see. They were in a fearful stew. Doctor was there day and night. And it wasn’t his fault. I told him he had all my sympathies. He said he was very sorry I should be lame for life, but it couldn’t be helped, as the thigh had been left too long. I said, ‘Please don’t mention it.’”

“But did they keep you after that?”

“Keep me! They implored my friends to take me away. No man was ever more relieved that the poor dear Governor of Holloway Prison, and the Home Secretary himself, too, when I left in a motor ambulance. The Governor raised his hat to two of my friends. He would have eaten out of my hand if I’d had a few more days to tame him.”

Audrey’s childlike and intense gaze had become extremely noticeable. Jane Foley felt it upon herself, and grew a little self-conscious. Susan Foley noticed it with eager and grim pride, and she made a sharp movement instead of saying: “Yes, you do well to stare. You’ve got something worth staring at.”

Nick noticed it, with moisture in her glittering, hysteric eyes. Miss Ingate noticed it ironically. “You, pretending to be a widow, and so knowing and so superior! Why, you’re a schoolgirl!” said the expressive curve of Miss Ingate’s shut lips.

And, in fact, Audrey was now younger than she had ever been in Paris. She was the girl of six or seven years earlier, who, at night at school, used to insist upon hearing stories of real people, either from a sympathetic teacher or from the other member of the celebrated secret society. But she had never heard any tale to compare with Jane Foley’s. It was incredible that this straightforward, simple girl at the table should be the world-renowned Jane Foley. What most impressed Audrey in Jane was Jane’s happiness. Jane was happy, as Audrey had not imagined that anyone could be happy. She had within her a supply of happiness that was constantly bubbling up. The ridiculousness and the total futility of such matters as motor-cars, fine raiment, beautiful boudoirs and correctness smote Audrey severely. She saw that there was only one thing worth having, and that was the mysterious thing that Jane Foley had. This mysterious thing rendered innocuous cruelty, stupidity and injustice, and reduced them to rather pathetic trifles.

“But I never saw all this in the papers!” Audrey exclaimed.

“No paper—I mean no respectable paper—would print it. Of course, we printed it in our own weekly paper.”

“Why wouldn’t any respectable paper print it?”

“Because it’s not nice. Don’t you see that I ought to have been at home mending stockings instead of gallivanting round with Liberal stewards and policemen and prison governors?”

“And why aren’t you mending stockings?” asked Audrey, with a delicious quizzical smile that crept gradually through the wonder and admiration in her face.

“You pal!” cried Jane Foley impulsively. “I must hug you!” And she did. “I’ll tell you why I’m not mending stockings, and why Susan has had to leave off mending stockings in order to look after me. Susan and I worked in a mill when she was ten and I was eleven. We were ‘tenters.’ We used to get up at four or five in the morning and help with the housework, and then put on our clogs and shawls and be at the mill at six. We worked till twelve, and then in the afternoon we went to school. The next day we went to school in the morning and to the mill in the afternoon. When we were thirteen we left school altogether, and worked twelve hours a day in the mill. In the evenings we had to do housework. In fact, all our housework was done before half-past five in the morning and after half-past six in the evening. We had to work just as hard as the men and boys in the mill. We got a great deal less money and a great deal less decent treatment; but to make up we had to slave in the early morning and late at night, while the men either snored or smoked. I was all right. But Susan wasn’t. And a lot of women weren’t, especially young mothers with babies. So I learnt typewriting on the quiet, and left it all to try and find out whether something couldn’t be done. I soon found out—after I’d heard Rosamund speak. That’s the reason I’m not mending stockings. I’m not blaming anybody. It’s no one’s fault, really. It certainly isn’t men’s fault. Only something has to be altered, and most people detest alterations. Still, they do get done somehow in the end. And so there you are!”

“I should love to help,” said Audrey. “I expect I’m not much good, but I should love to.”

She dared not refer to her wealth, of which, in fact, she was rather ashamed.

“Well, you can help, all right,” said Jane Foley, rising. “Are you a member?”

“No. But I will be to-morrow.”

“They’ll give you something to do,” said Jane Foley.

“Oh yes!” remarked Miss Ingate. “They’ll keep you busy enough—and charge you for it.”

Susan Foley began to clear the table.

“Supper at nine,” said she curtly.

THE DETECTIVE

Audrey and Miss Ingate were writing letters to Paris. Jane Foley had gone forth again to a committee meeting, which was understood to be closely connected with a great Liberal demonstration shortly to be held in a Midland fortress of Liberalism. Miss Nickall, in accordance with medical instructions, had been put to bed. Susan Foley was in the basement, either clearing up tea or preparing supper.

Miss Ingate, putting her pen between her teeth and looking up from a blotting-pad, said to Audrey across the table:

“Are you writing to Musa?”

“Certainly not!” said Audrey, with fire. “Why should I write to Musa?” She added: “But you can write to him, if you like.”

“Oh! Can I?” observed Miss Ingate, grinning.

Audrey knew of no reason why she should blush before Miss Ingate, yet she began to blush. She resolved not to blush; she put all her individual force into the enterprise of resisting the tide of blood to her cheeks, but the tide absolutely ignored her, as the tide of ocean might have ignored her.

She rose from the table, and, going into a corner, fidgeted with the electric switches, turning certain additional lights off and on.

“All right,” said Miss Ingate; “I’ll write to him. I’m sure he’ll expect something. Have you finished your letters?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what’s this one on the table, then?”

“I shan’t go on with that one.”

“Any message for Musa?”

“You might tell him,” said Audrey, carefully examining the drawn curtains of the window, “that I happened to meet a French concert agent this morning who was very interested in him.”

“Did you?” cried Miss Ingate. “Where?”

“It was when I was out with Mr. Foulger. The agent asked me whether I’d heard a man named Musa play in Paris. Of course I said I had. He told me he meant to take him up and arrange a tour for him. So you might tell Musa he ought to be prepared for anything.”

“Wonders will never cease!” said Miss Ingate. “Have I got enough stamps?”

“I don’t see anything wonderful in it,” Audrey sharply replied. “Lots of people in Paris know he’s a great player, and those Jew concert agents are always awfully keen—at least, so I’m told. Well, perhaps, after all, you’d better not tell him. It might make him conceited.... Now, look here, Winnie, do hurry up, and let’s go out and post those letters. I can’t stand this huge house. I keep on imagining all the empty rooms in it. Hurry up and come along.”

Shortly afterwards Miss Ingate shouted downstairs into the earth:

“Miss Foley, we’re both just going out to post some letters.”

The faint reply came:

“Supper at nine.”

At the farther corner of Paget Square they discovered a pillar-box standing solitary in the chill night among the vast and threatening architecture.

“Do let’s go to a café,” suggested Audrey.

“A café?”

“Yes. I want to be jolly. I must break loose somewhere to-night. I can’t wait till to-morrow. I was feeling splendid till Jane Foley went. Then the house began to get on my nerves, not to mention Susan Foley, with her supper at nine. Do all people in London fix their meals hours and hours beforehand? I suppose they do. We used to at Moze. But I’d forgotten. Come along, Winnie.”

“But there are no cafés in London.”

“There must be some cafés somewhere.”

“Only public-houses and restaurants. Of course, we could go to a teashop, but they’re all shut up now.”

“Well, then, what do people do in London when they want to be jolly? I always thought London was a terrific town.”

“They never want to be jolly,” said Miss Ingate. “If they feel as if they couldn’t help being jolly, then they hire a private room somewhere and draw the blinds down.”

With no more words, Audrey seized Miss Ingate by the arm and they walked off, out of the square and into empty and silent streets where highly disciplined gas-lamps kept strict watch over the deportment of colossal houses. In their rapid stroll they seemed to cover miles, but they could not escape from the labyrinth of tremendous and correct houses, which in squares and in terraces and in crescents displayed the everlasting characteristics of comfort, propriety and self-satisfaction. Now and then a wayfarer passed them. Now and then a taxicab sped through the avenues of darkness like a criminal pursued by the impalpable. Now and then a red light flickered in a porch instead of a white one. But there was no surcease from the sinister spell until suddenly they emerged into a long, wide, illumined thoroughfare of shut shops that stretched to infinity on either hand. And a vermilion motor-bus meandered by, and this motor-bus was so sad, so inexpressibly wistful, in the solemn wilderness of the empty artery, that the two women fled from the strange scene and penetrated once more into the gigantic and fearful maze from which they had for an instant stood free. Soon they were quite lost. Till that day and night Audrey had had a notion that Miss Ingate, though bizarre, did indeed know every street in London. The delusion was destroyed.

“Never mind,” said Miss Ingate. “If we keep on we’re bound to come to a cabstand, and then we can take a taxi and go wherever we like—Regent Street, Piccadilly, anywhere. That’s the convenience of London. As soon as you come to a cabstand you’re all right.”

And then, in the distance, Audrey saw a man apparently tampering with a gate that led to an area.

“Why,” she said excitedly, “that’s the house we’re staying in!”

“Of course it isn’t!” said Miss Ingate. “This isn’t Paget Gardens, because there are houses on both sides of it and there’s a big wall on one side of Paget Gardens. I’m sure we’re at least two miles off our beds.”

“Well, then, how is it Nick’s hairbrushes are on the window-sill there, where she put them when she went to bed? I can see them quite plain. This is the side street—what’s-its-name? There’s the wall over there at the end. Don’t you remember—it’s a corner house. This is the side of it.”

“I believe you’re right,” admitted Miss Ingate. “What can that man be doing there?”

They plainly saw him open the gate and disappear down the area steps.

“It’s a burglar,” said Audrey. “This part must be a regular paradise for burglars.”

“More likely a detective,” Miss Ingate suggested.

Audrey was thrilled.

“I do hope it is!” she murmured. “How heavenly! Miss Foley said she was being watched, didn’t she?”

“What had we better do?” Miss Ingate faltered.

“Do, Winnie?” Audrey whispered, tugging at her arm. “We must run in at the front door and tell Supper-at-nine-o’clock.”

They kept cautiously on the far side of the street until the end of it, when they crossed over, nipped into the dark porch of the house and rang the bell.

Susan Foley opened for them. There was no light in the hall.

“Oh, is there?” said Susan Foley, very calmly, when she heard the news. “I think I know who it is. I’ve seen him hanging round my scullery door before. How did he climb over those railings?”

“He didn’t. He opened the gate.”

“Well, I locked the gate myself this afternoon. So he’s got a key. I shall manage him all right. We’ll get the fire-extinguishers. There’s about a dozen of ’em, I should think, in this house. They’re rather heavy, but we can do it.”

Turning on the light in the hall, she immediately lifted from its hook a red-coloured metal cone about twenty inches long and eight inches in diameter at the base. “In case of fire drive in knob by hard blow against floor, and let liquid play on flames,” she read the instructions on the side. “I know them things,” she said. “It spurts out like a fountain, and it’s a rather nasty chemistry sort of a fluid. I shall take one downstairs to the scullery, and the others we’ll have upstairs in the room over Miss Nickall’s. We can put ’em in the housemaid’s lift.... I shall open the scullery door and leave it a bit open like, and when he comes in I’ll be ready for him behind the door with this. If he thinks he can come spying after our Janey like this——”

“But——” Miss Ingate began.

“You aren’t feeling very well, are ye, miss?” Susan Foley demanded, as she put two extinguishers into the housemaid’s lift. “Better go and sit down in the parlour. You won’t be wanted. Mrs. Moncreiff and me can manage.”

“Yes, we can!” agreed Audrey enthusiastically. “Run along, Winnie.”

After about two minutes of hard labour Susan ran away and brought a key to Audrey.

“You sneak out,” she said, “and lock the gate on him. I lay he’ll want a new suit of clothes when I done with him!”

Ecstatically, joyfully, Audrey took the key and departed. Miss Ingate was sitting in the hall, staring about her like an undecided bird. Audrey crept round into the side street. Nobody was in sight. She could not see over the railings, but she could see between them into the abyss of the area. The man was there. She could distinguish his dark form against the inner wall. With every conspiratorial precaution, she pulled the gate to, inserted the key, and locked it.

A light went up in the scullery window, of which the blind was drawn. The man peeped at the sides of the blind. Then the scullery door was opened. The man started. A piece of wood was thrown out on to the floor of the area, and the door swung outwards. Then the light in the scullery was extinguished. The man waited a few moments. He had noticed that the door was not quite closed, and the interstice irresistibly fascinated him. He approached and put his hand against the door. It yielded. He entered. The next instant there was a bang and a cry, and a strong spray of white liquid appeared, in the middle of which was the man’s head. The door slammed and a bolt was shot. The man, spluttering, coughing, and swearing, rubbed his eyes and wiped water from his face with his hands. His hat was on the ground. At first he could not see at all, but presently he felt his way towards the steps and began to climb them. Audrey ran off towards the corner. She could see and hear him shaking the gate and then trying to get a key into it. But as Audrey had left her key in the other side of the lock, he failed in the attempt.

The next thing was that a window opened in the high wall-face of the house and an immense stream of liquid descended full on the man’s head. Susan Foley was at the window, but only the nozzle of the extinguisher could be seen. The man tried to climb over the railings; he did not succeed; they had been especially designed to prevent such feats. He ran down the steps. The shower faithfully followed him. In no corner of his hiding did the bountiful spray neglect him. As soon as one supply of liquid slackened another commenced. Sometimes there were two at once. The man ran up the steps again and made another effort to reach the safety of the street. Audrey could restrain herself no more. She came, palpitating with joyous vitality, towards the area gate with the innocent mien of a passer-by.

“Whatever is the matter?” she exclaimed, stopping as if thunderstruck. But in the gloom her eyes were dancing fires. She was elated as she had never been.

The man only coughed.

“You oughtn’t to take shower-baths like this in the street,” she said, veiling the laughter in her voice. “It’s not allowed. But I suppose you’re doing it for a bet or something.”

The downpour ceased.

“Here, miss,” said he, between coughs, “unlock this gate for me. Here’s the key.”

“I shall do no such thing,” Audrey replied. “I believe you’re a burglar. I shall fetch a policeman.”

And she turned back.

In the house, Miss Ingate was coming slowly down the stairs, a fire-extinguisher in her arms, like a red baby. She had a sardonic smile, but there was diffidence in it, which showed, perhaps, that it was directed within.

“I’ve saved one,” she said, pointing to an extinguisher, “in case there should be a fire in the night.”

A little later Susan Foley appeared at the door of the living-room.

“Nine o’clock,” she announced calmly. “Supper’s ready. We shan’t wait for Jane.”

When Jane Foley arrived, a reconnaissance proved that the martyrised detective had contrived to get away.

THE BLUE CITY

In the following month, on a Saturday afternoon, Audrey, Miss Ingate, and Jane Foley were seated at an open-air café in the Blue City.

The Blue City, now no more, was, as may be remembered, Birmingham’s reply to the White City of London, and the imitative White City of Manchester. Birmingham, in that year, was not imitative, and, with its chemical knowledge, it had discovered that certain shades of blue would resist the effects of smoke far more successfully than any shade of white. And experience even showed that these shades of blue were improved, made more delicate and romantic, by smoke. The total impression of the show—which it need hardly be said was situated in the polite Edgbaston district—was ethereal, especially when its minarets and towers, all in accordance with the taste of the period, were beheld from a distance. Nor was the exhibition entirely devoted to pleasure. It had a moral object, and that object was to demonstrate the progress of civilisation in our islands. Its official title, indeed, was “The National Progress Exhibition,” but the citizens of Birmingham and the vicinity never called it anything but the Blue City.

On that Saturday afternoon a Cabinet Minister historically hostile to the idols of Birmingham was about to address a mass meeting in the Imperial Hall of the Exhibition, which held seven thousand people, in order to prove to Birmingham that the Government of which he was a member had done far more for national progress than any other Government had done for national progress in the same length of time. The presence of the Cabinet Minister accounted for the presence of Jane Foley; the presence of Jane Foley accounted for the presence of Audrey; and the presence of Audrey accounted for the presence of Miss Ingate.

Although she was one of the chief organisers of victory, and perhaps—next to Rosamund and the family trio whose Christian names were three sweet symphonies—the principal asset of the Suffragette Union, Jane Foley had not taken an active part in the Union’s arrangements for suitably welcoming the Cabinet Minister; partly because of her lameness, partly because she was writing a book, and partly for secret reasons which it would be unfair to divulge. Nearly at the last moment, however, in consequence of news that all was not well in the Midlands, she had been sent to Birmingham, and, after evading the watch of the police, she had arrived on the previous day in Audrey’s motor-car, which at that moment was waiting in the automobile park outside the principal gates of the Blue City.

The motor-car had been chosen as a means of transit for the reason that the railway stations were being watched for notorious suffragettes by members of a police force whose reputations were at stake. Audrey owed her possession of a motor-car to the fact that the Union officials had seemed both startled and grieved when, in response to questions, she admitted that she had no car. It was communicated to her that members of the Union as rich as she reputedly was were expected to own cars for the general good. Audrey thereupon took measures to own a car. Having seen in many newspapers an advertisement in which a firm of middlemen implored the public thus: “Let us run your car for you. Let us take all the worry and responsibility,” she interviewed the firm, and by writing out a cheque disembarrassed herself at a stroke of every anxiety incident to defective magnetos, bad petrol, bad rubber, punctures, driving licences, bursts, collisions, damages, and human chauffeurs. She had all the satisfactions of owning a car without any of the cares. One of the evidences of progress in the Blue City was an exhibit of this very firm of middlemen.

From the pale blue tripod table at which sat the three women could be plainly seen the vast Imperial Hall, flanked on one side by the great American Dragon Slide, a side-show loudly demonstrating progress, and on the other by the unique Joy Wheel side-show. At the doorway of the latter a man was bawling proofs of progress through a megaphone.

Immense crowds had been gathering in the Imperial Hall, and the lines of political enthusiasts bound thither were now thinning. The Blue City was full of rumours, as that the Cabinet Minister was too afraid to come, as that he had been smuggled to the hall inside a tea-chest, and as that he had walked openly and unchallenged through the whole Exhibition. It was no rumour, but a sure fact, that two women had been caught hiding on the roof of the Imperial Hall, under natural shelters formed by the beams and boarding supporting the pediment of the eastern façade, and that they were ammunitioned with flags and leaflets and a silk ladder, and had made a hole in the roof exactly over the platform. These two women had been seen in charge of policemen at the Exhibition police-station. It was understood by many that they were the last hope of militancy that afternoon; many others, on the contrary, were convinced that they had been simply a feint.

“Well,” said Miss Ingate suddenly, glancing up at the Imperial clock, “I think I shall move outside and sit in the car. I think that’ll be the best place for me. I said that night in Paris that I’d get my arm broken, but I’ve changed my mind about that.” She rose.

“Winnie,” protested Audrey, “aren’t you going to see it out?”

“No,” said Miss Ingate.

“Are you afraid?”

“I don’t know that I’m afraid. I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street, and it was smashed to pieces. But I don’t want to go to prison. Really, I don’t want to. If me going to prison would bring the Vote a single year nearer, I should say: ‘Let it wait a year.’ If me not going to prison meant no Vote for ever and ever, I should say: ‘Well, struggle on without the Vote.’ I’ve no objection to other people going to prison, if it suits them, but it wouldn’t suit me. I know it wouldn’t. So I shall go outside and sit in the car. If you don’t come, I shall know what’s happened, and you needn’t worry about me.”

The dame duly departed, her lips and eyes equally ironic about her own prudence and about the rashness of others.

“Let’s have some more lemonade—shall we?” said Jane Foley.

“Oh, let’s!” agreed Audrey, with rapture. “And more sponge-cake, too! You do look lovely like that!”

“Do I?”

Jane Foley had her profuse hair tightly bound round her head and powdered grey. It was very advisable for her to be disguised, and her bright hair was usually the chief symptom of her in those disturbances which so harassed the police. She now had the appearance of a neat old lady kept miraculously young by a pure and cheerful nature. Audrey, with a plain blue frock and hat which had cost more than Jane Foley would spend on clothes in twelve months, had a face dazzling by its ingenuous excitement and expectation. Her little nose was extraordinarily pert; her forehead superb; and all her gestures had the same vivacious charm as was in her eyes. The white-aproned, streamered girl who took the order for lemonade and sponge-cakes to a covered bar ornamented by advertisements of whisky, determined to adopt a composite of the styles of both the customers on her next ceremonious Sunday. And a large proportion of the other sippers and nibblers and of the endless promenading crowds regarded the pair with pleasure and curiosity, never suspecting that one of them was the most dangerous woman in England.

The new refreshments, which had been delayed by reason of an altercation between the waitress and three extreme youths at a neighbouring table, at last arrived, and were plopped smartly down between Audrey and Miss Foley. Having received half a sovereign from Audrey, the girl returned to the bar for change. “None o’ your sauce!” she threw out, as she passed the youths, who had apparently discovered new arguments in support of their case. Audrey was fired by the vigorous independence of the girl against three males.

“I don’t care if we are caught!” she murmured low, looking for the future through the pellucid tumbler. She added, however: “But if we are, I shall pay my own fine. You know I promised that to Miss Ingate.”

“That’s all right, so long as you don’t pay mine, my dear,” said Jane Foley with an affectionate smile.

“Jenny!” Audrey protested, full of heroine-worship. “How could you think I would ever do such a mean thing!”

There came a dull, vague, voluminous sound from the direction of the Imperial Hall. It lasted for quite a number of seconds.

“He’s beginning,” said Jane Foley. “I do feel sorry for him.”

“Are we to start now?” Audrey asked deferentially.

“Oh, no!” Jane laughed. “The great thing is to let them think everything’s all right. And then, when they’re getting careless, let go at them full bang with a beautiful surprise. There’ll be a chance of getting away like that. I believe there are a hundred and fifty stewards in the meeting, and they’ll every one be quite useless.”

At intervals a muffled roar issued from the Imperial Hall, despite the fact that the windows were closely shut.

In due time Jane Foley quietly rose from the table, and Audrey did likewise. All around them stretched the imposing blue architecture of the Exhibition, forming vistas that ended dimly either in the smoke of Birmingham or the rustic haze of Worcestershire. And, although the Imperial Hall was crammed, every vista was thickly powdered with pleasure-seekers and probably pleasure-finders. Bands played. Flags waved. Brass glinted. Even the sun feebly shone at intervals through the eternal canopy of soot. It was a great day in the annals of the Blue City and of Liberalism.

And Jane Foley and Audrey turned their backs upon all that, and—Jane concealing her limp as much as possible—sauntered with affected nonchalance towards the precincts of the Joy Wheel enclosure. Audrey was inexpressibly uplifted. She felt as if she had stepped straight into romance. And she was right—she had stepped into the most vivid romance of the modern age, into a world of disguises, flights, pursuits, chicane, inconceivable adventures, ideals, martyrs and conquerors, which only the Renaissance or the twenty-first century could appreciate.

“Lend me that, will you?” said Jane persuasively to the man with the megaphone at the entrance to the enclosure.

He was, quite properly, a very loud man, with a loud thick voice, a loud purple face, and a loud grey suit. To Audrey’s astonishment, he smiled and winked, and gave up the megaphone at once.

Audrey paid sixpence at the turnstile, admittance for two persons, and they were within the temple, which had a roof like an umbrella over the central, revolving portion of it, but which was somewhat open to the skies around the rim. There were two concentric enclosing walls, the inner one was unscalable, and the outer one about five feet six inches high. A second loud man was calling out: “Couples please. Ladies and gentlemen. Couples if you please.” Obediently, numbers of the crowd disposed themselves in pairs in the attitudes of close affection on the circling floor which had just come to rest, while the remainder of the numerous gathering gazed upon them with sarcastic ecstasy. Then the wheel began slowly to turn, and girls to shriek in the plenitude of happiness. And progress was proved geometrically.

Jane, bearing the megaphone, slipped by an aperture into the space between the two walls, and Audrey followed. Nobody gave attention to them except the second loud man, who winked the wink of knowledge. The fact was that both the loud men, being unalterable Tories, had been very willing to connive at Jane Foley’s scheme for the affliction of a Radical Minister.

The two girls over the wall had an excellent and appetising view of the upper part of the side of the Imperial Hall, and of its high windows, the nearest of which was scarcely thirty feet away.

“Hold this, will you?” said Jane, handing the megaphone to Audrey.

Jane drew from its concealment in her dress a small piece of iron to which was attached a coloured streamer bearing certain words. She threw, with a strong movement of the left arm, because she was left-handed. She had practised throwing; throwing was one of her several specialties. The bit of iron, trailing its motto like a comet its tail, flew across space and plumped into the window with a pleasing crash and disappeared, having triumphed over uncounted police on the outskirts and a hundred and fifty stewards within. A roar from the interior of the hall supervened, and varied cries.

“Give me the meg,” said Jane gently.

The next instant she was shouting through the megaphone, an instrument which she had seriously studied:

“Votes for women. Why do you torture women? Votes for women. Why do you torture women?”

The uproar increased and subsided. A masterful voice resounded within the interior. Many people rushed out of the hall. And there was a great scurry of important and puzzled feet within a radius of a score of yards.

“I think I’ll try the next window,” said Jane, handing over the megaphone. “You shout while I throw.”

Audrey’s heart was violently beating. She took the megaphone and put it to her lips, but no sound would come. Then, as though it were breaking through an obstacle, the sound shot forth, and to Audrey it was a gigantic voice that functioned quite independently of her will. Tremendously excited by the noise, she bawled louder and still louder.

“I’ve missed,” said Jane calmly in her ear. “That’s enough, I think. Come along.”

“But they can’t possibly see us,” said Audrey, breathless, lowering the instrument.

“Come along, dear,” Jane Foley insisted.

People with open mouths were crowding at the aperture of the inner wall, but, Jane going first, both girls pushed safely through the throng. The wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and Audrey were the authoresses of the pother.

Jane still leading, they made for the exit. But the first loud man rushed chivalrously in.

“Perlice!” he cried. “Two bobbies a-coming.”

“Here!” said the second loud man. “Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They’ll never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back.” He jumped on to the wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in, and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran in.

“That’s them,” said the rosette. “I saw her with the grey hair from the gallery.”

The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was equally floored.

As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane Foley and clutching at Jane Foley’s skirts with her hands behind her—the locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the law—she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning. She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Madame Piriac’s prophecy. She was ready to wish the past year annihilated and herself back once more in parental captivity at Moze, the slave of an unalterable routine imposed by her father, without responsibility, without initiative and without joy. And she lived again through the scenes in which she had smiled at the customs official, fibbed to Rosamund, taken the wounded Musa home in the taxi, spoken privily with the ageing yacht-owner, and laughed at the drowned detective in the area of the palace in Paget Gardens.

Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at length to a second view of the sprawling policemen. Whereupon she thought queerly: “What do I care about the vote, really?” And finally she thought with anger and resentment: “What a shame it is that women haven’t got the vote!” And then she heard a gay, quiet sound. It was Jane Foley laughing gently behind her.

“Can you see the big one now, darling?” asked Jane roguishly. “Has he picked himself up again?”

Audrey laughed.

And at last the audience laughed also. It laughed because the big policeman, unconquerable, had made another intrepid dash for the centre of the wheel and fallen upon his stomach as upon a huge india-rubber ball. The audience did more than laugh—it shrieked, yelled, and guffawed. The performance to be witnessed was worth ten times the price of entry. Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement. And in describing the affair the next morning as “unique” the Birmingham Daily Post for once used that adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens—centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete. Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular two policemen would have known that they were seeking the impossible and fighting against that which was stronger than ten thousand policemen. But they would not give up. At each fresh attempt they hoped by guile to overcome their unseen enemy, as the gambler hopes at each fresh throw to outwit chance. The jeers of the audience pricked them to desperation, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public. But centrifugal force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with those whom ridicule has covered. The strange and side-splitting effects of centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the wheel. Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently from the tent. And then while her back was towards the entrance she was deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob. The two policemen had fled also—probably for reinforcements and appliances against centrifugal force. In their pardonable excitement they had, however, committed the imprudence of departing together. An elementary knowledge of strategy should have warned them against such a mistake. The wheel stopped immediately. The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him. Audrey at any rate was as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.

“Here’s th’ back way,” said the second loud man, pointing to a coarse curtain in the obscurity of the nether parts of the enclosure.

They ran, Jane Foley first, and vanished from the regions of the Joy Wheel amid terrific acclamations given in a strong Midland accent.

The next moment they found themselves in a part of the Blue City which nobody had taken the trouble to paint blue. The one blue object was a small patch of sky, amid clouds, overhead. On all sides were wooden flying buttresses, supporting the boundaries of the Joy Wheel enclosure to the south-east, of the Parade Restaurant and Bar to the south-west, and of a third establishment of good cheer to the north. Upon the ground were brick-ends, cinders, bits of wood, bits of corrugated iron, and all the litter and refuse cast out of sight of the eyes of visitors to the Exhibition of Progress.

With the fear of the police behind them they stumbled forward a few yards, and then saw a small ramshackle door swinging slightly to and fro on one hinge. Jane Foley pulled it open. They both went into a narrow passage. On the mildewed wall of the passage was pinned up a notice in red ink: “Any waitress taking away any apron or cap from the Parade Restaurant and Bar will be fined one shilling.” Farther on was another door, also ajar. Jane Foley pushed against it, and a tiny room of irregular shape was disclosed. In this room a stout woman in grey was counting a pile of newly laundered caps and aprons, and putting them out of one hamper into another. Audrey remembered seeing the woman at the counter of the restaurant and bar.

“The police are after us. They’ll be here in a minute,” said Jane Foley simply.

“Oh!” exclaimed the woman in grey, with the carelessness of fatigue. “Are you them stone-throwing lot? They’ve just been in to tell me about it. What d’ye do it for?”

“We do it for you—amongst others,” Jane Foley smiled.

“Nay! That ye don’t!” said the woman positively. “I’ve got a vote for the city council, and I want no more.”

“Well, you don’t want us to get caught, do you?”

“No, I don’t know as I do. Ye look a couple o’ bonny wenches.”

“Let’s have two caps and aprons, then,” said Jane Foley smoothly. “We’ll pay the shilling fine.” She laughed lightly. “And a bit more. If the police get in here we shall have to struggle, you know, and they’ll break the place up.”

Audrey produced another half-sovereign.

“But what shall ye do with yer hats and coats?” the woman demanded.

“Give them to you, of course.”

The woman regarded the hats and coats.

“I couldn’t get near them coats,” she said. “And if I put on one o’ them there hats my old man ’ud rise from the grave—that he would. Still, I don’t wish ye any harm.”

She shut and locked the door.

In about a minute two waitresses in aprons and streamered caps of immaculate purity emerged from the secret places of the Parade Restaurant and Bar, slipped round the end of the counter, and started with easy indifference to saunter away into the grounds after the manner of restaurant girls who have been gifted with half an hour off. The tabled expanse in front of the Parade erection was busy with people, some sitting at the tables and supporting the establishment, but many more merely taking advantage of the pitch to observe all possible exciting developments of the suffragette shindy.

And as the criminals were modestly getting clear, a loud and imperious voice called:

“Hey!”

Audrey, lacking experience, hesitated.

“Hey there!”

They both turned, for the voice would not be denied. It belonged to a man sitting with another man at a table on the outskirts of the group of tables. It was the voice of the rosetted steward, who beckoned in a not unfriendly style.

“Bring us two liqueur brandies, miss,” he cried. “And look slippy, if ye please.”

The sharp tone, so sure of obedience, gave Audrey a queer sensation of being in reality a waitress doomed to tolerate the rough bullying of gentlemen urgently desiring alcohol. And the fierce thought that women—especially restaurant waitresses—must and should possess the Vote surged through her mind more powerfully than ever.

“I’ll never have the chance again,” she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.

“Two liqueur brandies, please,” she said to the woman in grey, who had left her apron calculations. “That’s all right,” she murmured, as the woman stared a question at her. Then the woman smiled to herself, and poured out the liqueur brandies from a labelled bottle with startling adroitness, and dashed the full glasses on to a brass tray.

As Audrey walked across the gravel carefully balancing the tray, she speculated whether the public eye would notice the shape of her small handbag, which was attached by a safety pin to her dress beneath the apron, and whether her streamers were streaming out far behind her head.

Before she could put the tray down on the table, the rosetted steward, who looked pale, snatched one of the glasses and gulped down its entire contents.

“I wanted it!” said he, smacking his lips. “I wanted it bad. They’ll catch ’em all right. I should know the young ’un again anywhere. I’ll swear to identify her in any court. And I will. Tasty little piece o’ goods, too! ... But not so good-looking as you,” he added, gazing suddenly at Audrey.

“None o’ your sauce,” snapped Audrey, and walked off, leaving the tray behind.

The two men exploded into coarse but amiable laughter, and called to her to return, but she would not. “You can pay the other young lady,” she said over her shoulder, pointing vaguely to the counter where there was now a bevy of other young ladies.

Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock. Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.

That night they reached Northampton. At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram. And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey:

“It won’t be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow. And perhaps not to any of our places in London.”

“That won’t matter,” said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact. “We’ll go anywhere, won’t we, Winnie?”

And Miss Ingate assented.

“Well,” said Jane Foley. “I’ve just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton.”

“You don’t mean Frinton-on-Sea?” exclaimed Miss Ingate, suddenly excited.

“It is on the sea,” said Jane. “We have to go through Colchester. Do you know it?”

“Do I know it!” repeated Miss Ingate. “I know everybody in Frinton, except the Germans. When I’m at home I buy my bacon at Frinton. Are you going to an hotel there?”

“No,” said Jane. “To some people named Spatt.”

“There’s nobody that is anybody named Spatt living at Frinton,” said Miss Ingate.

“They haven’t been there long.”

“Oh!” murmured Miss Ingate. “Of course if that’s it...! I can’t guarantee what’s happened since I began my pilgrimages. But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester. This afternoon’s business has been too feverish for me. When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught. I shall just go home.”

“I don’t care much about going to Frinton, Jenny,” said Audrey.

Indeed, Moze lay within not many miles of Frinton-on-Sea.

Then Audrey and Miss Ingate observed a phenomenon that was both novel and extremely disturbing. Tears came into the eyes of Jane Foley.

“Don’t say it, Audrey, don’t say it!” she appealed in a wet voice. “I shall have to go myself. And you simply can’t imagine how I hate going all alone into these houses that we’re invited to. I’d much sooner be in lodgings, as we were last night. But these homes in quiet places here and there are very useful sometimes. They all belong to members of the Union, you know; and we have to use them. But I wish we hadn’t. I’ve met Mrs. Spatt once. I didn’t think you’d throw me over just at the worst part. The Spatts will take all of us and be glad.”

("They won’t take me,” said Miss Ingate under her breath.)

“I shall come with you,” said Audrey, caressing the recreant who, while equal to trifles such as policemen, magistrates, and prisons, was miserably afraid of a strange home. In fact Audrey now liked Jane much more than ever, liked her completely—and perhaps admired her rather less, though her admiration was still intense. And the thought in Audrey’s mind was: “Never will I desert this girl! I’m a militant, too, now, and I shall stick by her.” And she was full of a happiness which she could not understand and which she did not want to understand.

The next morning all the newspaper posters in Northhampton bore the words: “Policemen and suffragettes on Joy Wheel,” or some variation of these words. And they bore nothing else. And in all the towns and many of the villages through which they passed on the way to Colchester, the same legend greeted their flying eyes. Audrey and Miss Ingate, in the motor-car, read with great care all the papers. Audrey blushed at the descriptions of herself, which were flattering. It seemed that the Cabinet Minister’s political meeting had been seriously damaged by the episode, for the reason that rumours of the performance on the Joy Wheel had impaired the spell of eloquence and partially emptied the hall. And this was the more disappointing in that the police had been sure that nothing untoward would occur. It seemed also that the police were on the track of the criminals.

“Are they!” exclaimed Jane Foley with a beautiful smile.

Then the car approached a city of towers on a hill, and as it passed by the station, which was in the valley, Miss Ingate demanded a halt. She got out in the station yard and transferred her belongings to a cab.

“I shall drive home from here,” she said. “I’ve often done it before. After all, I did play the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street. Surely I can rest on the barrel organ, can’t I, Miss Foley—at my age? ... What a business I shall have when I do get home, and nobody expecting me!”

And when certain minor arrangements had been made, the car mounted the hill into Colchester and took the Frinton road, leaving Miss Ingate’s fly far behind.

THE SPATTS

The house of the Spatts was large, imposing and variegated. It had turrets, balconies, and architectural nooks in such quantity that the unaided individual eye could not embrace it all at once. It overlooked, from a height, the grounds of the Frinton Sports Club, and a new member of this club, upon first beholding the residence, had made the immortal remark: “It wants at least fourteen people to look at it.” The house stood in the middle of an unfinished garden, which promised ultimately to be as heterogeneous as itself, but which at present was merely an expanse of sorely wounded earth.

The time was early summer, and therefore the summer dining-room of the Spatts was in use. This dining-room consisted of one white, windowed wall, a tiled floor, and a roof of wood. The windows gave into the winter dining-room, which was a white apartment, sparsely curtained and cushioned with chintz, and containing very few pieces of furniture or pictures. The Spatts considered, rightly, that furniture and pictures were unhygienic and the secret lairs of noxious germs. Had the Spatts flourished twenty-five years earlier their dining-room would have been covered with brown paper upon which would have hung permanent photographs of European masterpieces of graphic art, and there would have been a multiplicity of draperies and specimens of battered antique furniture, with a warming-pan or so suspended here and there in place of sporting trophies. But the Spatts had not begun to flourish twenty-five years ago. They flourished very few years ago and they still flourish.

As the summer dining-room had only one wall, it follows that it was open to the powers of the air. This result had been foreseen by the Spatts—had indeed been expressly arranged, for they believed strongly in the powers of the air, as being beneficent powers. It is true that they generally had sniffling colds, but their argument was that these maladies had no connection whatever with the powers of the air, which, according to their theory, saved them from much worse.

They and their guests were now seated at dinner. Twilight was almost lost in night. The table was illuminated by four candles at the corners, and flames of these candles flickered in the healthful evening breeze, dropping pink wax on the candlesticks. They were surrounded by the mortal remains of tiny moths, but other tiny moths would not heed the warning and continually shot themselves into the flames. On the outskirts of the table moved with silent stealth the forms of two middle-aged and ugly servants.

Mrs. Spatt was very tall and very thin, and the simplicity of her pale green dress—sole reminder of the brown-paper past—was calculated to draw attention to these attributes. She had an important reddish nose, and a mysterious look of secret confidence, which never left her even in the most trying crises. Mr. Spatt also was very tall and very thin. His head was several sizes too small, and part of his insignificant face, which one was apt to miss altogether in contemplating his body, was hidden under a short grey beard. Siegfried Spatt, the sole child of the union, though but seventeen, was as tall and as thin as his father and his mother; he had a pale face and red hands.

The guests were Audrey, Jane Foley, and a young rubicund gentleman, beautifully clothed, and with fair curly locks, named Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was far more perfectly at ease than anybody else at the table, which indeed as a whole was rendered haggard and nervous by the precarious state of the conversation, expecting its total decease at any moment. At intervals someone lifted the limp dying body—it sank back—was lifted again—struggled feebly—relapsed. Young Siegfried was excessively tongue-tied and self-conscious, and his demeanour frankly admitted it. Jane Foley, acknowledged heroine in certain fields, sat like a schoolgirl at her first dinner-party. Audrey maintained her widowhood, but scarcely with credit. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were as usual too deeply concerned about the awful condition of the universe to display that elasticity of mood which continuous chatter about nothing in particular demands. And they were too worshipful of the best London conventions not to regard silence at table as appalling. In the part of the country from which Jane Foley sprang, hosts will sit mute through a meal and think naught of it. But Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were of different stuff. All these five appeared to be in serious need of conversation pills. Only Mr. Ziegler beheld his companions with a satisfied equanimity that was insensible to spiritual suffering. Happily at the most acute moments the gentle night wind, meandering slowly from the east across leagues of North Sea, would induce in one or another a sneeze which gave some semblance of vitality and vigour to the scene.

After one of these sneezes it was that Jane Foley, conscience-stricken, tried to stimulate the exchanges by an effort of her own.

“And what are the folks like in Frinton?” she demanded, blushing, and looking up. As she looked up young Siegfried looked down, lest he might encounter her glance and be utterly discountenanced.

Jane Foley’s question was unfortunate.

“We know nothing of them,” said Mrs. Spatt, pained. “Of course I have received and paid a few purely formal calls. But as regards friends and acquaintances, we prefer to import them from London. As for the holiday-makers, one sees them, naturally. They appear to lead an exclusively physical existence.”

“My dear,” put in Mr. Spatt stiffly. “The residents are no better. The women play golf all day on that appalling golf course, and then after tea they go into the town to change their library books. But I do not believe that they ever read their library books. The mentality of the town is truly remarkable. However, I am informed that there are many towns like it.”

“You bet!” murmured Siegfried Spatt, and then tried, vainly, to suck back the awful remark whence it had come.

Mr. Ziegler, speaking without passion or sorrow, added his views about Frinton. He asserted that it was the worst example of stupid waste of opportunities he had ever encountered, even in England. He pointed out that there was no band, no pier, no casino, no shelters—and not even a tree; and that there were no rules to govern the place. He finished by remarking that no German state would tolerate such a pleasure resort. In this judgment he employed an excellent English accent, with a scarcely perceptible thickening of the t’s and thinning of the d’s.

Mr. Ziegler left nothing to be said.

Then the conversation sighed and really did expire. It might have survived had not the Spatts had a rule, explained previously to those whom it concerned, against talking shop. Their attachment to this rule was heroic. In the present instance shop was suffragism. The Spatts had developed into supporters of militancy in a very curious way. Mrs. Spatt’s sister, a widow, had been mixed up with the Union for years. One day she was fined forty shillings or a week’s imprisonment for a political peccadillo involving a hatpin and a policeman. It was useless for her to remind the magistrate that she, like Mrs. Spatt, was the daughter of the celebrated statesman B——, who in the fifties had done so much for Britain. (Lo! The source of that mysterious confidence that always supported Mrs. Spatt!) The magistrate had no historic sense. She went to prison. At least she was on the way thither when Mr. Spatt paid the fine in spite of her. The same night Mr. Spatt wrote to his favourite evening paper to point out the despicable ingratitude of a country which would have imprisoned a daughter of the celebrated B——, and announced that henceforward he would be an active supporter of suffragism, which hitherto had interested him only academically. He was a wealthy man, and his money and his house and his pen were at the service of the Union—but always with discretion.

Audrey and Jane Foley had learnt all this privately from Mrs. Spatt on their arrival, after they had told such part of their tale as Jane Foley had deemed suitable, and they had further learnt that suffragism would not be a welcome topic at their table, partly on account of the servants and partly on account of Mr. Ziegler, whose opinions were quite clearly opposed to the movement, but whom they admired for true and rare culture. He was a cousin of German residents in First Avenue and, visiting them often, had been discovered by Mr. Spatt in the afternoon-tea train.

And just as the ices came to compete with the night wind, the postman arrived like a deliverer. The postman had to pass the dining-room en route by the circuitous drive to the front door, and when dinner was afoot he would hand the letters to the parlourmaid, who would divide them into two portions, and, putting both on a salver, offer the salver first to Mrs. and then to Mr. Spatt, while Mr. or Mrs. Spatt begged guests, if there were any, to excuse the quaint and indeed unusual custom, pardonable only on the plea that any tidings from London ought to be savoured instantly in such a place as Frinton.

After leaving his little pile untouched for some time, Mr. Spatt took advantage of the diversion caused by the brushing of the cloth and the distribution of finger-bowls to glance at the topmost letter, which was addressed in a woman’s hand.

“She’s coming!” he exclaimed, forgetting to apologise in the sudden excitement of news, “Good heavens!” He looked at his watch. “She’s here. I heard the train several minutes ago! She must be here! The letter’s been delayed.”

“Who, Alroy?” demanded Mrs. Spatt earnestly. “Not that Miss Nickall you mentioned?”

“Yes, my dove.” And then in a grave tone to the parlourmaid: “Give this letter to your mistress.”

Mr. Spatt, cheered by the new opportunity for conversation, and in his eagerness abrogating all rules, explained how he had been in London on the previous day for a performance of Strauss’s Elektra, and according to his custom had called at the offices of the Suffragette Union to see whether he could in any manner aid the cause. He had been told that a house in Paget Gardens lent to the Union had been basely withdrawn from service by its owner on account of some embroilment with the supreme police authorities at Scotland Yard, and that one of the inmates, a Miss Nickall, the poor young lady who had had her arm broken and was scarcely convalescent, had need of quietude and sea air. Mr. Spatt had instantly offered the hospitality of his home to Miss Nickall, whom he had seen in a cab and who was very sweet. Miss Nickall had said that she must consult her companion. It now appeared that the companion was gone to the Midlands. This episode had occurred immediately before the receipt of the telegram from head-quarters asking for shelter for Miss Jane Foley and Mrs. Moncreiff.

Mr. Spatt’s excitement had now communicated itself to everybody except Mr. Ziegler and Siegfried Spatt. Jane Foley almost recovered her presence of mind, and Mrs. Spatt was extraordinarily interested to learn that Miss Nickall was an American painter who had lived long in Paris, and that Audrey had first made her acquaintance in Paris, and knew Paris well. Audrey’s motor-car had produced a considerable impression on Aurora Spatt, and this impression was deepened by the touch about Paris. After breathing mysterious orders into the ear of the parlourmaid Mrs. Spatt began to talk at large about music in Paris, and Mr. Spatt made comparisons between the principal opera houses in Europe. He proclaimed for the Scala at Milan; but Mr. Ziegler, who had methodically according to a fixed plan lived in all European capitals except Paris—whither he was soon going, said that Mr. Spatt was quite wrong, and that Milan could not hold a candle to Munich. Mrs. Spatt inquired whether Audrey had heard Strauss’s Elektra at the Paris Opera House. Audrey replied that Strauss’s Elektra had not been given at the Paris Opera House.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Spatt. “This prejudice against the greatest modern masterpieces because they are German is a very sad sign in Paris. I have noticed it for a long time.”

Audrey, who most irrationally had begun to be annoyed by the blandness of Mr. Ziegler’s smile, answered with a rival blandness:

“In Paris they do not reproach Strauss because he is German, but because he is vulgar.”

Mrs. Spatt had a martyrised expression. In her heart she felt a sick trembling of her religious belief that Elektra was the greatest opera ever composed. For Audrey had the prestige of Paris and of the automobile. Mrs. Spatt, however, said not a word. Mr. Ziegler, on the other hand, after shuffling some seconds for utterance, ejaculated with sublime anger:

“Vulgar!”

His rubicundity had increased and his blandness was dissolved. A terrible sequel might have occurred, had not the crunch of wheels on the drive been heard at that very instant. The huge, dim form of a coach drawn by a ghostly horse passed along towards the front door, just below the diners. Almost simultaneously the electric light above the front door was turned on, casting a glare across a section of the inchoate garden, where no flower grew save the dandelion. Everybody sprang up. Host and hostess, urged by hospitality, spun first into the drive, and came level with the vehicle precisely as the vehicle opened its invisible interior. Jane Foley and Audrey saw Miss Nickall emerge from it rather slowly and cautiously, with her white kind face and her arm all swathed in white.

“Well, Mr. Spatt,” came the American benevolent voice of Nick. “How glad I am to see you. And this is Mrs. Spatt? Mrs. Spatt! Delighted. Your husband is the kindest, sweetest man, Mrs. Spatt, that I’ve met in years. It is perfectly sweet of you to have me. I shouldn’t have inflicted myself on you—no, I shouldn’t—only you know we have to obey orders. I was told to come here, and here I’ve come, with a glad heart.”

Audrey was touched by the sight and voice of grey-haired Nick, with her trick of seeing nothing but the best in everybody, transforming everybody into saints, angels, and geniuses. Her smiles and her tones were irresistible. They were like the wand of some magical princess come to break a sinister thrall. They nearly humanised the gaunt parlourmaid, who stood grimly and primly waiting until these tedious sentimental preliminaries should cease from interfering with her duties in regard to the luggage.

“We have friends of yours here, Miss Nickall,” simpered Mrs. Spatt, after she had given a welcome. She had seen Jane Foley and Audrey standing expectant just behind Mr. Spatt, and outside the field of the electric beam.

Nick glanced round, hesitated, and then with a sudden change of all her features rushed at the girls regardless of her arm. Her joy was enchanting.

“I was afraid—I was afraid——” she murmured as she kissed them. Her eyes softly glistened.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, after a moment. “And I have got a surprise for you! I have just! You may say it’s some surprise.” She turned towards the cab. “Musa, now do come out of that wagon.”