The Lion's Share

THE MUTE

It was upon this evening that Audrey began alarmingly to develop the quality of being incomprehensible—even to herself. Like most young women and men, she had been convinced from an early age that she was mysteriously unlike all other created beings, and—again like most young men and women—she could find, in the secrecy of her own heart, plenty of proof of a unique strangeness. But now her unreason became formidable. There she sat with her striking forehead and her quite unimportant nose, in the large austere drawing-room of the Spatts, which was so pervaded by artistic chintz that the slightest movement in it produced a crackle—and wondered why she was so much queerer than other girls could possibly be.

Neither the crackling of chintz nor the aspect of the faces in the drawing-room was conducive to clear psychological analysis. Mr. Ziegler, with a glass of Pilsener by his side on a small table and a cigar in his richly jewelled hand, reposed with crossed legs in an easy chair. He had utterly recovered from the momentary irritation caused by Audrey’s attack on Strauss, and his perfect beaming satisfaction with himself made a spectacle which would have distracted an Indian saint from the contemplation of eternity and nothingness. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt, seated as far as was convenient from one another on a long sofa, their emaciated bodies very upright and alert, gazed with intense expectation at Musa. Musa stood in the middle of the room, tuning his violin with little twangs and listening to the twangs as to a secret message.

Miss Nickall, being an invalid, had excusably gone to bed, and Jane Foley, sharer of her bedroom, had followed. The happy relief on Jane’s face as she said good night to her hosts had testified to the severity of the ordeal of hospitality through which she had so heroically passed. She might have been going out of prison instead of going out of the most intellectual drawing-room in Frinton.

Audrey, too, would have liked to retire, for automobiles and sensations had exhausted her; but just at this point her unreason had begun to operate. She would not leave Musa alone, because Miss Nickall was leaving him alone. Yet she did not feel at all benevolent towards Musa. She was angry with him for having quitted Paris. She was angry with him for having said to her, in such a peculiar tone: “It’s you I came to London to see.” She was angry with him for not having found an opportunity, during the picnic meal provided for the two new-comers after the regular dinner, to explain why he had come to London to see her. She was angry with him for that dark hostility which he had at once displayed towards Mr. Ziegler, though she herself hated the innocent Mr. Ziegler with the ferocity of a woman of the Revolution. And further, she was glad, ridiculously glad, that Musa had come to London to see her. Lastly she was aware of a most irrational objection to the manner in which Miss Nickall and Musa said good night to one another, and the obvious fact that Musa in less than an hour had reached terms of familiarity with Jane Foley.

She thought:

“I haven’t the faintest idea why he has given up his practising in Paris to come to see me. But if it is what I feel sure it is, there will be trouble.... Why do I stay in this ghastly drawing-room? I am dying to go to sleep, and I simply detest everybody in the room. I detest Musa more than all, because as usual he has been acting like a child.... Why can’t you smile at him, Audrey Moze? Why frown and pretend you’re cross when you know you aren’t, Audrey Moze? ... I am cross, and he shall suffer. Was this a time to leave his practising—and the concerts soon coming on? I positively prefer this Ziegler man to him. Yes, I do.” So ran her reflections, and they annoyed her.

“What would you wish me to play?” asked Musa, when he had definitely finished twanging. Audrey noticed that his English accent was getting a little less French. She had to admit that, though his appearance was extravagantly un-British, it was distinguished. The immensity of his black silk cravat made the black cravat of Mr. Spatt seem like a bootlace round his thin neck.

“Whatever you like, Mr. Musa,” replied Aurora Spatt. “Please!”

And as a fact the excellent woman, majestic now in spite of her red nose and her excessive thinness, did not care what Musa played. He had merely to play. She had decided for herself, from the conversation, that he was a very celebrated performer, and she had ascertained, by direct questioning, that he had never performed in England. She was determined to be able to say to all comers till death took her that “Musa—the great Musa, you know—first played in England in my own humble drawing-room.” The thing itself was actually about to occur; nothing could stop it from occurring; and the thought of the immediate realisation of her desire and ambition gave Mrs. Spatt greater and more real pleasure than she had had for years; it even fortified her against the possible resentment of her cherished Mr. Ziegler.

“French music—would you wish?” Musa suggested.

“Is there any French music? That is to say, of artistic importance?” asked Mr. Ziegler calmly. “I have never heard of it.”

He was not consciously being rude. Nor was he trying to be funny. His question implied an honest belief. His assertion was sincere. He glanced, blinking slightly, round the room, with a self-confidence that was either terrible or pathetic, according to the degree of your own self-confidence.

Audrey said to herself.

“I’m glad this isn’t my drawing-room.” And she was almost frightened by the thought that that skull opposite to her was absolutely impenetrable, and that it would go down to the grave unpierced with all its collection of ideas intact and braggart.

As for Mr. and Mrs. Spatt they were both in the state of not knowing where to look. Immediately their gaze met another gaze it leapt away as from something dangerous or obscene.

“I will play Debussy’s Toccata for violin solo,” Musa announced tersely. He had blushed; his great eyes were sparkling. And he began to play.

And as soon as he had played a few bars, Audrey gave a start, fortunately not a physical start, and she blushed also. Musa sternly winked at her. Frenchmen do not make a practice of winking, but he had learnt the accomplishment for fun from Miss Thompkins in Paris. The wink caused Audrey surreptitiously to observe Mr. and Mrs. Spatt. It was no relief to her to perceive that these two were listening to Debussy’s Toccata for solo violin with the trained and appreciative attention of people who had heard it often before in the various capitals of Europe, who knew it by heart, and who knew at just what passages to raise the head, to give a nod of recognition or a gesture of ecstasy. The bare room was filled with the sound of Musa’s fiddle and with the high musical culture of Mr. and Mrs. Spatt. When the piece was over they clapped discreetly, and looked with soft intensity at Audrey, as if murmuring: “You, too, are a cultured cosmopolitan. You share our emotion.” And across the face of Mrs. Spatt spread a glow triumphant, for Musa now positively had played for the first time in England in her drawing-room, and she foresaw hundreds of occasions on which she could refer to the matter with a fitting air of casualness. The glow triumphant, however, paled somewhat as she felt upon herself the eye of Mr. Ziegler.

“Where is Siegfried, Alroy?” she demanded, after having thanked Musa. “I wouldn’t have had him miss that Debussy for anything, but I hadn’t noticed that he was gone. He adores Debussy.”

“I think it is like bad Bach,” Mr. Ziegler put in suddenly. Then he raised his glass and imbibed a good portion of the beer specially obtained and provided for him by his hostess and admirer, Mrs. Spatt.

“Do you really?” murmured Mrs. Spatt, with deprecation.

“There’s something in the comparison,” Mr. Spatt admitted thoughtfully.

“Why not like good Bach?” Musa asked, glaring in a very strange manner at Mr. Ziegler.

“Bosh!” ejaculated Mr. Ziegler with a most notable imperturbability. “Only Bach himself could com-pose good Bach.”

Musa’s breathing could be heard across the drawing-room.

“Eh bien!“ said Musa. “Now I will play for you Debussy’s Toccata. I was not playing it before. I was playing the Chaconne of Bach, the most famous composition for the violin in the world.”

He did not embroider the statement. He left it in its nakedness. Nor did he permit anybody else to embroider it. Before a word of any kind could be uttered he had begun to play again. Probably in all the annals of artistic snobbery, no cultured cosmopolitan had ever been made to suffer a more exquisite moral torture of humiliation than Musa had contrived to inflict upon Mr. and Mrs. Spatt in return for their hospitality. Their sneaped squirmings upon the sofa were terrible to witness. But Mr. Ziegler’s sensibility was apparently quite unaffected. He continued to smile, to drink, and to smoke. He seemed to be saying to himself: “What does it matter to me that this miserable Frenchman has caught me in a mistake? I could eat him, and one day I shall eat him.”

After a little while Musa snatched out of his right-hand lower waistcoat pocket the tiny wooden “mute” which all violinists carry without fail upon all occasions in all their waistcoats; and, sticking it with marvellous rapidity upon the bridge of the violin, he entered upon a pianissimo, but still lively, episode of the Toccata. And simultaneously another melody faint and clear could be heard in the room. It was Mr. Ziegler humming “The Watch on the Rhine” against the Toccata of Debussy. Thus did it occur to Mr. Ziegler to take revenge on Musa for having attempted to humiliate him. Not unsurprisingly, Musa detected at once the competitive air. He continued to play, gazing hard at his violin and apparently entranced, but edging little by little towards Mr. Ziegler. Audrey desired either to give a cry or to run out of the room. She did neither, being held to inaction by the spell of Mr. Ziegler’s perfect unconcern as, with the beer glass lifted towards his mouth, he proceeded steadily to work through “The Watch on the Rhine,” while Musa lilted out the delicate, gay phrases of Debussy. The enchantment upon the whole room was sinister and painful. Musa got closer to Mr. Ziegler, who did not blench nor cease from his humming. Then suddenly Musa, lowering his fiddle and interrupting the scene, snatched the mute from the bridge of the violin.

“I have put it on the wrong instrument,” he said thickly, with a very French intonation, and simultaneously he shoved the mute with violence into the mouth of Mr. Ziegler. In doing so, he jerked up Mr. Ziegler’s elbow, and the remains of the beer flew up and baptised Mr. Ziegler’s face and vesture. Then he jammed the violin into its case, and ran out of the room.

“Barbare! Imbécile! Sauvage!“ he muttered ferociously on the threshold.

The enchantment was broken. Everybody rose, and not the least precipitately the streaming Mr. Ziegler, who, ejecting the mute with much spluttering, and pitching away his empty glass, sprang towards the door, with justifiable homicide in every movement.

“Mr. Ziegler!” Audrey appealed to him, snatching at his dress-coat and sticking to it.

He turned, furious, his face still dripping the finest Pilsener beer.

“If your dress-coat is not wiped instantly, it will be ruined,” said Audrey.

“Ach! Meiner Frack!“ exclaimed Mr. Ziegler, forgetting his deep knowledge of English. His economic instincts had been swiftly aroused, and they dominated all the other instincts. “Meiner Frack! Vill you vipe it?” His glance was imploring.

“Oh! Mrs. Spatt will attend to it,” said Audrey with solemnity, and walked out of the room into the hall. There was not a sign of Musa; the disappearance of the violinist was disquieting; and yet it made her glad—so much so that she laughed aloud. A few moments later Mr. Ziegler stalked forth from the house which he was never to enter again, and his silent scorn and the grandeur of his displeasure were terrific. He entirely ignored Audrey, who had nevertheless been the means of saving his Frack for him.

NOCTURNE

Soon afterwards Audrey, who had put on a hat, went out with Mr. Spatt to look for Musa. Not until shortly before the musical performance had the Spatts succeeded in persuading Musa to “accept their hospitality for the night.” (The phrase was their own. They were incapable of saying “Let us put you up.") Meanwhile his bag had been left in the hall. This bag had now vanished. The parlourmaid, questioned, said frigidly that she had not touched it because she had received no orders to touch it. Musa himself must therefore have removed it. With bag in one hand and fiddle case in the other, he must have fled, relinquishing nothing but the mute in his flight. He knew naught of England, naught of Frinton, and he was the least practical creature alive. Hence Audrey, who was in essence his mother, and who knew Frinton as some people know London, had said that she would go and look for him. Mr. Spatt, ever chivalrous, had impulsively offered to accompany her. He could indeed do no less. Mrs. Spatt, overwhelmed by the tragic sequel to her innocent triumphant, had retired to the first floor.

The wind blew, and it was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of the daughters of an arch-deacon. Nobody was abroad. Absurd thoughts ran through Audrey’s head. A letter from Mr. Foulger had followed her to Birmingham, and in the letter Mr. Foulger had acquainted her with the fact that Great Mexican Oil shares had just risen to £2 3s. apiece. She knew that she had 180,000 of them, and now under the thin protection of Mr. Spatt she tried to reckon 180,000 times £2 3s. She could not do the sum. At any rate she could not be sure that she did it correctly. However, she was fairly well convinced beneath the dark, impenetrable sky that the answer totalled nearly £400,000, that was, ten million francs. And the ridiculousness of an heiress who owned over ten million francs wandering about a place like Frinton with a man like Mr. Spatt, searching for another man like Musa, struck her as exceeding the bounds of the permissible. She considered that she ought to have been in a magnificent drawing-room of her own in Park Lane or the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, welcoming counts, princes, duchesses, diplomats and self-possessed geniuses of finished manners, with witty phrase that displayed familiarity with all that was profoundest and most brilliant in European civilisation. Life seemed to be disappointing her, and assuredly money was not the thing that she had imagined it to be.

She thought:

“If this walking lamp-post does not say something soon I shall scream.”

Mr. Spatt said:

“It seems to be blowing up for rain.”

She screamed in the silent solitude of Frinton.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologised quickly. “I thought I saw something move.”

“One does,” faltered Mr. Spatt.

They were now in the shopping street, where in the mornings the elect encounter each other on expeditions to purchase bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes and tennis balls. It was a black and empty canyon through which the wind raced.

“He may be down—down on the shore,” Mr. Spatt timidly suggested. He seemed to be suggesting suicide.

They turned and descended across the Greensward to the shore, which was lined with hundreds of bathing huts, each christened with a name, and each deserted, for the by-laws of the Frinton Urban District Council judiciously forbade that the huts should be used as sleeping-chambers. The tide was very low. They walked over the wide flat sands, and came at length to the sea’s roar, the white tumbling of foamy breakers, and the full force of the south-east wind. Across the invisible expanse of water could be discerned the beam of a lightship. And Audrey was aware of mysterious sensations such as she had not had since she inhabited Flank Hall and used to steal out at nights to watch the estuary. And she thought solemnly: “Musa is somewhere near, existing.” And then she thought: “What a silly thought! Of course he is!”

“I see somebody coming!” Mr. Spatt burst out in a dramatic whisper. But the precaution of whispering was useless, because the next instant, in spite of himself, he loudly sneezed.

And about two hundred yards off on the sands Audrey made out a moving figure, which at that distance did in fact seem to have vague appendages that might have resembled a bag and a fiddle case. But the atmosphere of the night was deceptive, and the figure as it approached resolved itself into three figures—a black one in the middle of two white ones. A girl’s coarse laugh came down the wind. It could not conceivably have been the laugh of any girl who went into the shopping street to buy bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes or tennis balls. But it might have been—it not improbably was—the laugh of some girl whose mission was to sell such things. The trio meandered past, heedless. Mr. Spatt said no word, but he appreciably winced. The black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy. As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament.

“I’m afraid it’s not much use looking any longer,” said Mr. Spatt weakly. “He—he may have gone back to the house. Let us hope so.”

At the chief garden gate of the Spatt residence they came upon Miss Nickall, trying to open it. The sling round her arm made her unmistakable. And Miss Nickall having allowed them to recover from a pardonable astonishment at the sight of her who was supposed to be exhausted and in bed, said cheerfully:

“I’ve found him, and I’ve put him up at the Excelsior Hotel.”

Mrs. Spatt had related the terrible episode to her guest, who had wilfully risen at once. Miss Nickall had had luck, but Audrey had to admit that these American girls were stupendously equal to an emergency. And she hated the angelic Nick for having found Musa.

“We tried first to find a café,” said Nick. “But there aren’t any in this city. What do you call them in England—public-houses, isn’t it?”

“No,” agreed Mr. Spatt in a shaking voice. “Public-houses are not permitted in Frinton, I am glad to say.” And he began to form an intention, subject to Aurora’s approval, to withdraw altogether from the suffrage movement, which appeared to him to be getting out of hand.

As they were all separating for the night Audrey and Nick hesitated for a moment in front of each other, and then they kissed with a quite unusual effusiveness.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really liked her,” said Audrey to herself.

What Nick said to herself is lost to history.

IN THE GARDEN

The next morning, after a night spent chiefly in thought, Audrey issued forth rather early. Indeed she was probably the first person afoot in the house of the Spatts, the parlour-maid entering the hall just as Audrey had managed to open the front door. As the parlour-maid was obviously not yet in that fullness and spruceness of attire which parlour-maids affect when performing their mission in life, Audrey decided to offer no remark, explanatory or otherwise, and passed into the garden with nonchalance as though her invariable habit when staying in strange houses was to get up before anybody else and spy out the whole property while the helpless hosts were yet in bed and asleep.

Now it was a magnificent morning: no wind, no cloud, and the sun rising over the sea; not a trace of the previous evening’s weather. Audrey had not been in the leafy street more than a moment when she forgot that she was tired and short of sleep, and also very worried by affairs both private and public. Her body responded to the sun, and her mind also. She felt almost magically healthy, strong and mettlesome, and, further, she began to feel happy; she rather blamed herself for this tendency to feel happy, calling herself heedless and indifferent. She did not understand what it is to be young. She had risen partly because of the futility of bed, but more because of a desire to inspect again her own part of the world after the unprecedented absence from it.

Frinton was within the borders of her own part of the world, and, though she now regarded it with the condescending eyes of a Parisian and Londoner, she found pleasure in looking upon it and in recognising old landmarks and recent innovations. She saw, on the Greensward separating the promenade from the beach, that a rustic seat had been elaborately built by the Council round the great trunk of the only tree in Frinton; and she decided that there had been questionable changes since her time. And in this way she went on. However, the splendour and reality of the sun, making such an overwhelming contrast with the insubstantial phenomena of the gloomy night, prevented undue cerebral activity. She reflected that Frinton on a dark night and Frinton on a bright morning were not like the same place, and she left it at that, and gazed at the façade of the Excelsior Hotel, wondering for an instant why she should be interested in it, and then looking swiftly away.

She had to glance at all the shops, though none of them was open except the dairy-shop; and in the shopping street, which had a sunrise at one end and the railway station at the other, she lit on the new palatial garage.

“My car may be in there,” she thought.

After the manner of most car-owners on tour, she had allowed the chauffeur to disappear with the car in the evening where he listed, confident that the next morning he and it would reappear cleansed and in good running order.

The car was in the garage, almost solitary on a floor of asphalt under a glass roof. An untidy youth, with the end of a cigarette clinging to his upper lip in a way to suggest that it had clung there throughout the night and was the last vestige of a jollification, seemed to be dragging a length of hose from a hydrant towards the car, the while his eyes rested on a large notice: “Smoking absolutely prohibited. By order.”

Then from the other extremity of the garage came a jaunty, dapper, quasi-martial figure, in a new grey uniform, with a peaked grey cap, bright brown leggings, and bright brown boots to match—the whole highly brushed, polished, smooth and glittering. This being pulled out of his pocket a superb pair of kid gloves, then a silver cigarette-case, and then a silver match-box, and he ignited a cigarette—the unrivalled, wondrous first cigarette of the day—casting down the match with a large, free gesture. At sight of him the untidy youth grew more active.

“Look ’ere,” said the being to the youth, “what the ’ell time did I tell you to have that car cleaned by, and you not begun it!”

Pointing to the clock, he lounged magnificently to and fro, spreading smoke around the intimidated and now industrious youth. The next second he caught sight of Audrey, and transformed himself instantaneously into what she had hitherto imagined a chauffeur always was; but in those few moments she had learnt that the essence of a chauffeur is godlike, and that he toils not, neither does he swab.

“Good morning, madam,” in a soft, courtly voice.

“Good morning.”

“Were you wanting the car, madam?”

She was not, but the suggestion gave her an idea.

“Can we take it as it is?”

“Yes, madam. I’ll just look at the petrol gauge ... But ... I haven’t had my breakfast, madam.”

“What time do you have it?”

“Well, madam, when you have yours.”

“That’s all right, then. You’ve got hours yet. I want you to take me to Flank Hall.”

“Flank Hall, madam?” His tone expressed the fact that his mind was a blank as to Flank Hall.

As soon as Audrey had comprehended that the situation of Flank Hall was not necessarily known to every chauffeur in England, and that a stay of one night in Frinton might not have been enough to familiarise this particular one with the geography of the entire district, she replied that she would direct him.

They were held up by a train at the railway crossing, and a milk-cart and a young pedestrian were also held up. When Audrey identified the pedestrian she wished momentarily that she had not set out on the expedition. Then she said to herself that really it did not matter, and why should she be afraid ... etc., etc. The pedestrian was Musa. In French they greeted each other stiffly, like distant acquaintances, and the train thundered past.

“I was taking the air, simply, Madame,” said Musa, with his ingenuous shy smile.

“Take it in my car,” said Audrey with a sudden resolve. “In one hour at the latest we shall have returned.”

She had a great deal to say to him and a great deal to listen to, and there could not possibly be any occasion equal to the present, which was ideal.

He got in; the chauffeur manoeuvred to oust the milk-cart from its rightful precedence, the gates opened, and the car swung at gathering speed into the well-remembered road to Moze. And the two passengers said nothing to each other of the slightest import. Musa’s escape from Paris was between them; the unimaginable episode at the Spatts was between them; the sleepless night was between them. (And had she not saved him by her presence of mind from the murderous hand of Mr. Ziegler?) They had a million things to impart. And yet naught was uttered save a few banalities about the weather and about the healthfulness of being up early. They were bashful, constrained, altogether too young and inexperienced. They wanted to behave in the grand, social, easeful manner of a celebrated public performer and an heiress worth ten million francs. And they could only succeed in being a boy and a girl. The chauffeur alone, at from thirty to forty miles an hour, was worthy of himself and his high vocation. Both the passengers regretted that they had left their beds. Happily the car laughed at the alleged distance between Frinton and Moze. In a few minutes, as it seemed, with but one false turning, due to the impetuosity of the chauffeur, the vehicle drew up before the gates of Flank Hall. Audrey had avoided the village of Moze. The passengers descended.

“This is my house,” Audrey murmured.

The gates were shut but not locked. They creaked as Audrey pushed against them. The drive was covered with a soft film of green, as though it were gradually being entombed in the past. The young roses, however, belonged emphatically to the present. Dewdrops hung from them like jewels, and their odour filled the air. Audrey turned off the main drive towards the garden front of the house, which had always been the aspect that she preferred, and at the same moment she saw the house windows and the thrilling perspective of Mozewater. One of the windows was open. She was glad, because this proved that the perfect Aguilar, gardener and caretaker, was after all imperfect. It was his crusty perfection that had ever set Audrey, and others, against Aguilar. But he had gone to bed and forgotten a window—and it was the French window. While, in her suddenly revived character of a harsh Essex inhabitant, she was thinking of some sarcastic word to say to Aguilar about the window, another window slowly opened from within, and Aguilar’s head became visible. Once more he had exasperatingly proved his perfection. He had not gone to bed and forgotten a window. But he had risen with exemplary earliness to give air to the house.

“’d mornin’, miss,” mumbled the unsmiling Aguilar, impassively, as though Audrey had never been away from Moze.

“Well, Aguilar.”

“I didn’t expect ye so early, miss.”

“But how could you be expecting me at all?”

“Miss Ingate come home yesterday. She said you couldn’t be far off, miss.”

“Not Miss ... Mrs.—Moncreiff,” said Audrey firmly.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” Aguilar responded with absolute imperturbability. “She never said nothing about that.”

And he proceeded mechanically to the next window.

The yard-dog began to bark. Audrey, ignoring Musa, went round the shrubbery towards the kennel. The chained dog continued to bark, furiously, until Audrey was within six feet of him, and then he crouched and squirmed and gave low whines and his tail wagged with extreme rapidity. Audrey bent down, trembling.... She could scarcely see.... There was something about the green film on the drive, about the look of the house, about the sheeted drawing-room glimpsed through the open window, about the view of Mozewater...! She felt acutely and painfully sorry for, and yet envious of, the young girl in a plain blue frock who used to haunt the house and the garden, and who had somehow made the house and the garden holy for evermore by her unhappiness and her longings.... Audrey was crying.... She heard a step and stood upright. It was Musa’s step.

“I have never seen you so exquisite,” said Musa in a murmur subdued and yet enthusiastic. All his faculties seemed to be dwelling reflectively upon her with passionate appreciation.

They had at last begun to talk, really—he in French, and she partly in French and partly in English. It was her tears, or perhaps her gesture in trying to master them, that had loosed their tongues. The ancient dog was forgotten, and could not understand why. Audrey was excusably startled by Musa’s words and tone, and by the sudden change in his attitude. She thought that his personal distinction at the moment was different from and superior to any other in her experience. She had a comfortable feeling of condescension towards Nick and towards Jane Foley. And at the same time she blamed Musa, perceiving that as usual he was behaving like a child who cannot grasp the great fact that life is very serious.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s all very fine, that is. You pretend this, that, and the other. But why are you here? Why aren’t you at work in Paris? You’ve got the chance of a lifetime, and instead of staying at home and practising hard and preparing yourself, you come gadding over to England simply because there’s a bit of money in your pocket!”

She was very young, and in the splendour of the magnificent morning she looked the emblem of simplicity; but in her heart she was his mother, his sole fount of wisdom and energy and shrewdness.

Pain showed in his sensitive features, and then appeal, and then a hot determination.

“I came because I could not work,” he said.

“Because you couldn’t work? Why couldn’t you work?” There was no yielding in her hard voice.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I suppose it is because you are not there, because you have made yourself necessary to me; or,” he corrected quickly, “because I have made you necessary to myself. Oh! I can practise for so many hours per day. But it is useless. It is not authentic practice. I think not of the music. It is as if some other person was playing, with my arm, on my violin. I am not there. I am with you, where you are. It is the same day after day, every day, every day. I am done for. I am convinced that I am done for. These concerts will infallibly be my ruin, and I shall be shamed before all Paris.”

“And did you come to England to tell me this?”

“Yes.”

She was relieved, for she had thought of another explanation of his escapade, and had that explanation proved to be the true one, she was very ready to make unpleasantness to the best of her ability. Nevertheless, though relieved in one direction, she was gravely worried in another. She had undertaken the job of setting Musa grandiosely on his artistic career, and the difficulties of it were growing more and more complex and redoubtable.

She said:

“But you seemed so jolly when you arrived last night. Nobody would have guessed you had a care in the world.”

“I had not,” he replied eagerly, “as soon as I saw you. The surprise of seeing you—it was that.... And you left Paris without saying good-bye! Why did you leave Paris without saying good-bye? Never since the moment when I learnt that you had gone have I had the soul to practise. My violin became a wooden box; my fingers, too, were of wood.”

He stopped. The dog sniffed round.

Audrey was melting in bliss. She could feel herself dissolving. Her pleasure was terrible. It was true that she had left Paris without saying good-bye to Musa. She had done it on purpose. Why? She did not know. Perhaps out of naughtiness, perhaps.... She was aware that she could be hard, like her father. But she was glad, intensely glad, that she had left Paris so, because the result had been this avowal. She, Audrey, little Audrey, scarcely yet convinced that she was grown up, was necessary to the genius whom all the Quarter worshipped! Miss Thompkins was not necessary to him, Miss Nickall was not necessary to him, though both had helped to provide the means to keep him alive. She herself alone was necessary to him. And she had not guessed it. She had not even hoped for it. The effect of her personality upon Musa was mysterious—she did not affect to understand it—but it was obviously real and it was vital. If anything in the world could surpass the pleasure, her pride surpassed it. All tears were forgotten. She was the proudest young woman in the world; and she was the wisest, and the most harassed, too. But the anxieties were delicious to her.

“I am essential to him,” she thought ecstatically. “I stand between him and disaster. When he has succeeded his success will be my work and nobody else’s. I have a mission. I must live for it.... If anyone had told me a year ago that a great French genius would be absolutely dependent upon me, and that I meant for him all the difference between failure and triumph, I should have laughed.... And yet!...” She looked at him surreptitiously. “He’s an angel. But he’s also a baby.” The feelings of motherhood were as naught compared to hers.

Then she remarked harshly, icily:

“Well, I shall be much obliged if you will go back to Paris at once—to-day. Somebody must have a little sense.”

Just at this point Aguilar interrupted. He came slouching round the corner of the clipped bushes, untidy, shabby, implacable, with some set purpose in his hard blue eyes. She could have annihilated him with satisfaction, but the fellow was indestructible as well as implacable.

“Could I have a word with ye, madam?” he mumbled, putting on his well-known air of chicane.

With the unexplained Musa close by her she could not answer: “Wait a little. I’m engaged.” She had to be careful. She had to make out especially that she and the young man were up to nothing in particular, nothing that had the slightest importance.

“What is it, Aguilar?” she questioned, inimically.

“It’s down here,” said Aguilar, who recked not of the implications of a tone. And by the mere force of his glance he drew his mistress away, out of sight of Musa and the dog.

“Is that your motor-car at the gates, madam?” he demanded gloomily and confidentially, his gaze now fixed on the ground or on his patched boots.

“Of course it is,” said Audrey. “Why, what’s the matter?”

“That’s all right then,” said he. “But I thought it might belong to another person, and I had to make sure. Now if ye’ll just step along a bit farther, I’ve a little thing as I want to point out to ye, madam. It’s my duty to point it out, let others say what they will.”

He walked ahead doggedly, and Audrey crossly came after, until they arrived nearly at the end of the hedge which, separating the upper from the lower garden, hid from those immediately behind it all view of the estuary. Here, still sheltered by the hedge, he stopped and Audrey stopped, and Aguilar absently plucked up a young plantain from the turf and dropped it into his pocket.

“There’s been a man a-hanging round this place since yesterday mornin’,” said Aguilar intimately. “I call him a suspicious character—at least, I did, till last night. He ain’t slept in the village, that I do know, but he’s about again this morning.”

“Well,” said Audrey with impatience. “Why don’t you tell Inspector Keeble? Or have you quarrelled with Inspector Keeble again?”

“It’s not that as would ha’ stopped me from acquainting Inspector Keeble with the circumstances if I thought it my duty so to do,” replied Aguilar. “But the fact is I saw the chap talking to Inspector Keeble yesterday evening. He don’t know as I saw him. It was that as made me think; now is he a suspicious character or ain’t he? Of course Keeble’s a rare simple-minded ’un, as we all know.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“I thought you might like to have a look at him yeself, madam. And if you’ll just peep round the end of this hedge casual-like, ye’ll see him walking across the salting from Lousey Hard. He’s a-comin’ this way. Casual-like now—and he won’t see ye.”

Audrey had to obey. She peeped casual-like, and she did in fact see a man on the salting, and this man was getting nearer. She could see him very plainly in the brilliant clearness of the summer morning. After the shortest instant of hesitation she recognised him beyond any doubt. It was the detective who had been so plenteously baptised by Susan Foley in the area of the house at Paget Gardens. Aguilar looked at Audrey, and Audrey annoyed herself somewhat by blushing. However, an agreeable elation quickly overcame the blush.

ENCOUNTER

“Good morning,” Audrey cried, very gaily, to the still advancing detective, who, after the slightest hesitation in the world, responded gaily:

“Good morning.”

The man’s accent struck her. She said to herself, with amusement:

“He’s Irish!”

Audrey had left the astonished but dispassionate gardener at the hedge, and was now emerging from the scanty and dishevelled plantation close to the boundary wall of the estate. She supposed that the police must have been on her track and on the track of Jane Foley, and that by some mysterious skill they had hunted her down. But she did not care. She was not in the least afraid. The sudden vision of a jail did not affright her. On the contrary her chief sensation was one of joyous self-confidence, which sensation had been produced in her by the remarks and the attitude of Musa. She had always known that she was both shy and adventurous, and that the two qualities were mutually contradictory; but now it appeared to her that diffidence had been destroyed, and that that change which she had ever longed for in her constitution had at least really come to pass.

“You don’t seem very surprised to see me,” said Audrey.

“Well, madam,” said the detective, “I’m not paid to be surprised—in my business.”

He had raised his hat. He was standing on the dyke, and from that height he looked somewhat down upon Audrey leaning against the wall. The watercourse and the strip of eternally emerald-green grass separated them. Though neither tall nor particularly handsome, he was a personable man, with a ready smile and alert, agile movements. Audrey was too far off to judge of his eyes, but she was quite sure that they twinkled. The contrast between this smart, cheerful fellow and the half-drowned victim in the area of the house in Paget Gardens was quite acute.

“Now I’ve a good mind to hold a meeting for your benefit,” said Audrey, striving to recall the proper phrases of propaganda which she had heard in the proper quarters in London during her brief connection with the cause. However, she could not recall them, “But there’s no need to,” she added. “A gentleman of your intelligence must be of our way of thinking.”

“About what?”

“About the vote, of course. And so your conduct is all the more shocking.”

“Why!” he exclaimed, laughing. “If it comes to that, your own sex is against you.”

Audrey had heard this argument before, and it had the same effect on her as on most other stalwarts of the new political creed. It annoyed her, because there was something in it.

“The vast majority of women are with us,” said she.

“My wife isn’t.”

“But your wife isn’t the vast majority of women,” Audrey protested.

“Oh yes, she is,” said the detective, “so far as I’m concerned. Every wife is, so far as her husband is concerned. Sure, you ought to know that!” In his Irish way he doubled the “r” of the word “sure,” and somehow this trick made Audrey like him still more. “My wife believes,” he concluded, “that woman’s sphere is the home.”

("His wife is stout,” Audrey decided within herself, on no grounds whatever. “If she wasn’t, she couldn’t be a vast majority.")

Aloud she said:

“Well, then, why can’t you leave them alone in their sphere, instead of worrying them and spying on them down areas?”

“D’ye mean at Paget Gardens?”

“Of course.”

“Oh!” he laughed. “That wasn’t professional—if you’ll excuse me being so frank. That was just due to human admiration. It’s not illegal to admire a young woman, I suppose, even if she is a suffragette.”

“What young woman are you talking about?”

“Miss Susan Foley, of course. I won’t tell you what I think of her, in spite of all she did, because I’ve learnt that it’s a mistake to praise one woman to another. But I don’t mind admitting that her going off to the north has made me life a blank. If I’d thought she’d go, I should never have reported the affair at the Yard. But I was annoyed, and I’m rather hasty.” He paused, and ended reflectively: “I committed follies to get a word with the young lady, and I didn’t get it, but I’d do the same again.”

“And you a married man!” Audrey burst out, startled, and diverted, at the explanation, but at the same time outraged by a confession so cynical.

The detective pulled a silky moustache.

“When a wife is very strongly convinced that her sphere is the home,” he retorted slowly and seriously, “you’re tempted at times to let her have the sphere all to herself. That’s the universal experience of married men, and ye may believe me, miss—madam.”

Audrey said:

“And now Miss Foley’s gone north, you’ve decided to come and admire me in my home!”

“So it is your home!” murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey’s old suspicions afresh—and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. “I assure you I came here to recover; I’d heard it was the finest climate in England.”

“Recover?”

“Yes, from fire-extinguishers. D’ye know I coughed for twenty-four hours after that reception?... And you should have seen my clothes! The doctor says my lungs may never get over it.... That’s what comes of admiration.”

“It’s what comes of behaving as no married man ought to behave.”

“Did I say I was married?” asked the detective with an ingenuous air. “Well, I may be. But I dare say I’m only married just about as much as you are yourself, madam.”

Upon this remark he raised his hat and departed along the grassy summit of the sea-wall.

Audrey flushed for the second time that morning, and more strikingly than before. She was extremely discontented with, and ashamed of, herself, for she had meant to be the equal of the detective, and she had not been. It was blazingly clear that he had indeed played with her—or, as she put it in her own mind: “He just stuffed me up all through.”

She tried to think logically. Had he been pursuing the motor-car all the way from Birmingham? Obviously he had not, since according to Aguilar he had been in the vicinity of Moze since the previous morning. Hence he did not know that Audrey was involved in the Blue City affair, and he did not know that Jane Foley was at Frinton. How he had learnt that Audrey belonged to Moze, and why and what he had come to investigate at Moze, she could not guess. Nor did these problems appear to her to have an importance at all equal to the importance of hiding from the detective that she had been staying at Frinton. If he followed her to Frinton he would inevitably discover that Jane Foley was at Frinton, and the sequel would be more imprisonment for Jane. Therefore Audrey must not return to Frinton. Having by a masterly process of ratiocination reached this conclusion, she began to think rather better of herself, and ceased blushing.

“Aguilar,” she demanded excitedly, having gone back through the plantation. “Did Miss Ingate happen to say where I was staying last night?”

“No, madam.”

“I must run into the house and write a note to her, and you must take it down instantly.” In her mind she framed the note, which was to condemn Miss Ingate to the torture of complete and everlasting silence about the episode at the Blue City and the flight eastwards.

FLIGHT

”Fast, madam, did you say?” asked the chauffeur, bending his head back from the wheel as the car left the gates of Flank Hall.

“Fast.”

“The Colchester road?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really just as quick to take the Frinton road for Colchester—it’s so much straighter.”

“No, no, no! On no account. Don’t go near Frinton.”

Audrey leaned back in the car. And as speed increased the magnificence of the morning again had its effect on her. The adventure pleased her far more than the perils of it, either for herself or for other people, frightened her. She knew that she was doing a very strange thing in thus leaving the Spatts and her luggage without a word of explanation before breakfast; but she did not care. She knew that for some reason which she did not comprehend the police were after her, as they had been after nearly all the great ones of the movement; but she did not care. She was alive in the rushing car amid the magnificence of the morning. Musa sat next to her. She had more or less incompletely explained the situation to him—it was not necessary to tell everything to a boy who depended upon you absolutely for his highest welfare—such boys must accept, thankfully, what they received. And Musa had indeed done so. He appeared to be quite happy and without anxieties. That was the worst He had wanted to be with her, and he was with her, and he cared for nothing else. He had no interest in what might happen next. He yielded himself utterly to the enjoyment of her presence and of the magnificent morning.

And yet Musa, whom Audrey considered that she understood as profoundly as any mother had ever understood any child—even Musa could surprise.

He said, without any preparation:

“I calculate that I shall have 3,040 francs in hand after the concerts, assuming that I receive only the minimum. That is, after paying the expenses of my living.”

“But do you know how much it costs you to live?” Audrey demanded, with careless superiority.

“Assuredly. I write all my payments down in a little book. I have done so since some years.”

“Every sou?”

“Yes. Every sou.”

“But do you save, Musa?”

“Save!” he repeated the word ingenuously. “Till now to save has been impossible for me. But I have always kept in hand one month’s subsistence. I could not do more. Now I shall save. You reproached me with having spent money in order to come to see you in England. But I regarded the money so spent as part of the finance of the concerts. Without seeing you I could not practise. Without practice I could not play. Without playing I could not earn money. Therefore I spent money in order to get money. Such, Madame, was the commercial side. What a beautiful lawn for tennis you have in your garden!”

Audrey was more than surprised, she was staggered by the revelation of the attitude of genius towards money. She had not suspected it. Then she remembered the simple natural tome in which Musa had once told her that both Tommy and Nick contributed to his income. She ought to have comprehended from that avowal more than she, in fact, had comprehended. And now the first hopes of worldly success were strongly developing that unsuspected trait in the young man’s character. Audrey was aware of a great fear. Could he be a genius, after all? Was it conceivable that an authentic musical genius should enter up daily in a little book every sou he spent?

A rapid, spitting, explosive sound, close behind the car and a little to the right, took her mind away from Musa and back to the adventure. She looked round, half expecting what she should see—and she saw it, namely, the detective on a motor-cycle. It was an “Indian” machine and painted red. And as she looked, the car, after taking a corner, got into a straight bit of the splendid road and the motor-bicycle dropped away from it.

“Can’t you shake off that motor-bicycle thing?” Audrey rather superciliously asked the chauffeur.

Having first looked at his mirror, the chauffeur, who, like a horse, could see in two directions at once, gazed cautiously at the road in front and at the motor-bicycle behind, simultaneously.

“I doubt it, madam,” he said. And yet his tone and glance expressed deep scorn of the motor-bicycle. “As a general rule you can’t.”

“I should have thought you could beat a little thing like that,” said Audrey.

“Them things can do sixty when they’ve a mind to,” said the chauffeur, with finality, and gave all his attention to the road.

At intervals he looked at his mirror. The motor-bicycle had vanished into the past, and as it failed to reappear he gradually grew confident and disdainful. But just as the car was going down the short hill into the outskirts of Colchester the motor-bicycle came into view once more.

“Where to, madam?” inquired the chauffeur.

“This is Colchester, isn’t it?” she demanded nervously, though she knew perfectly well that it was Colchester.

“Yes, madam.”

“Straight through! Straight through!”

“The London road?”

“Yes. The London road,” she agreed. London was, of course, the only possible destination.

“But breakfast, madam?”

“Oh! The usual thing,” said Audrey. “You’ll have yours when I have mine.”

“But we shall run out of petrol, madam.”

“Never mind,” said Audrey sublimely.

The chauffeur, with characteristic skill, arranged that the car should run out of petrol precisely in front of the best hotel in Chelmsford, which was about half-way to London. The motor-bicycle had not been seen for several miles. But scarcely had they resumed the journey, by the Epping road, when it came again into view—in front of them. How had the fellow guessed that they would take the longer Epping road instead of the shorter Romford road?

“When shall we be arriving in Frinton?” Musa inquired, beatific.

“We shan’t be arriving in Frinton any more,” said Audrey. “We must go straight to London.”

“It is like a dream,” Musa murmured, as it were in ecstasy. Then his features changed and he almost screamed: “But my violin! My violin! We must go back for it.”

“Violin!” said Audrey. “That’s nothing! I’ve even come without gloves.” And she had.

She reassured Musa as to the violin, and the chauffeur as to the abandoned Gladstone bag containing the chauffeur’s personal effects, and herself as to many things. An hour and twenty minutes later the car, with three people in it, thickly dusted even to the eyebrows, drew up in the courtyard of Charing Cross railway station, and the motor-cycle was visible, its glaring red somewhat paled, in the Strand outside. The time was ten-fifteen.

“We shall take the eleven o’clock boat train for Paris,” she said to Musa.

“You also?”

She nodded. He was in heaven. He could even do without his violin.

“How nice it is not to be bothered with luggage,” she said.

The chauffeur was pacified with money, of which Audrey had a sufficiency.

And all the time Audrey kept saying to herself:

“I’m not going to Paris to please Musa, so don’t let him think it! I’m only going so as to put the detective off and keep Jane Foley out of his clutches, because if I stay in London he’ll be bound to find everything out.”

While Musa kept watch for the detective at the door of the telegraph office Audrey telegraphed, as laconically as possible, to Frinton concerning clothes and the violin, and then they descended to subterranean marble chambers in order to get rid of dust, and they came up to earth again, each out of a separate cellar, renewed. And, lastly, Audrey slipped into the Strand and bought a pair of gloves, and thereafter felt herself to be completely equipped against the world’s gaze.

ARIADNE

A few days later an automobile—not Audrey’s but a large limousine—bumped, with slow and soft dignity, across the railway lines which diversify the quays of Boulogne harbour and, having hooted in a peculiar manner, came to a stop opposite nothing in particular.

“Here we are,” said Mr. Gilman, reaching to open the door. “You can see her masthead light.”

It was getting dark. Behind, over the station, a very faint flush lightened the west, and in front, across the water, and reflected in the water, the thousand lamps of the town rose in tiers to the lofty church which stood out a dark mass against the summer sky. On the quays the forms of men moved vaguely among crates and packages, and on the water, tugs and boats flitted about, puffing, or with the plash of oars, or with no sound whatever. And from the distance arrived the reverberation of electric trams running their courses in the maze of the town.

Madame Piriac and Audrey descended, after Mr. Gilman, from the car and Mr. Gilman turned off the electric light in the interior and shut the door.

“Do not trouble about the luggage, I beg you,” said Mr. Gilman, breathing, as usual, rather noticeably. “Bon soir, Leroux. Don’t forget to meet the nine-thirty-five.” This last to the white-clad chauffeur, who saluted sharply.

At the same moment two sailors appeared over the edge of the quay, and a Maltese cross of light burst into radiance at the end of a sloping gangway, whose summit was just perched on the solid masonry of the port. The sailors were clothed in blue, with white caps, and on their breasts they bore the white-embroidered sign: “Ariadne, R.T.Y.C.“

“Look lively, lads, with the luggage,” said Mr. Gilman.

“Yes, sir.”

Then another figure appeared under the Maltese cross. It was clad in white ducks, with a blue reefer ornamented in gold, and a yachting cap crowned in white: a stoutish and middle-aged figure, much like Mr. Gilman himself in bearing and costume, except that Mr. Gilman had no gold on his jacket.

“Well, skipper!” greeted Mr. Gilman, jauntily and spryly. In one moment, in one second, Mr. Gilman had grown at least twenty years younger.

“Captain Wyatt,” he presented the skipper to the ladies. “And this is Mr. Price, my secretary, and Doctor Cromarty,” as two youths, clothed exactly to match Mr. Gilman, followed the skipper up the steep incline of the gangway.

And now Audrey could see the Ariadne lying below, for it was only just past low water and the tide was scarcely making. At the next berth higher up, with lights gleaming at her innumerable portholes and two cranes hard at work producing a mighty racket on her, lay a Channel steamer, which, by comparison with the yacht, loomed enormous, like an Atlantic liner. Indeed, the yacht seemed a very little and a very lowly and a very flimsy flotation on the dark water, and her illuminated deck-house was no better than a toy. On the other hand, her two masts rose out of the deep high overhead and had a certain impressiveness, though not quite enough.

Audrey thought:

“Is this what we’re going on? I thought it was a big yacht.” And she had a qualm.

And then a bell rang twice, extremely sweet and mellow, somewhere on the yacht. And Audrey was touched by the beauty of its tone.

“Two bells. Nine o’clock,” said Mr. Gilman. “Will you come aboard? I’ll show you the way.” He tripped down the gangway like a boy. Behind could be heard the sailors giving one another directions about the true method of handling luggage.

Audrey had met Madame Piriac by sheer hazard in a corset shop in the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin. The fugitive from justice had been obliged, in the matter of wardrobe, to begin life again on her arrival trunkless in Paris, and the business of doing so was not disagreeable. Madame Piriac had greeted her with most affectionate warmth. One of her first suggestions had been that Audrey should accompany her on a short yachting trip projected by Mr. Gilman. She had said that though the excellent Gilman was her uncle, and her adored uncle, he was not her real uncle, and that therefore, of course, she was incapable of going unaccompanied, though she would hate to disappoint the dear man. As for Monsieur Piriac, the destiny of France was in his hands, and the moment being somewhat critical, he would not quit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without leaving a fixed telegraphic address.

On the next day Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac had called on Audrey at the Hôtel du Danube, and the invitation became formal. It was pressing and flattering. Why refuse it? Mr. Gilman was obviously prepared to be her slave. She accepted, with enthusiasm. And she said to herself that in doing so she was putting yet another spoke in the wheel of the British police. Immediately afterwards she learnt that Musa also had been asked. Madame Piriac informed her, in reply to a sort of protest, that Musa’s first concert was postponed by the concert agency until the autumn. “I never heard of that!” Audrey had cried. “And why should you have heard of it? Have you not been in England?” Madame Piriac had answered, a little surprised at Audrey’s tone. Whereupon Audrey had said naught. The chief point was that Musa could take a holiday without detriment to his career. Moreover, Mr. Gilman, who possessed everything, possessed a marvellous violin, which he would put at the disposal of Musa on the yacht if Musa’s own violin had not been found in the meantime. The official story was that Musa’s violin had been mislaid or lost on the Métropolitain Railway, and the fact that he had been to England somehow did not transpire at all.

Mr. Gilman had gone forward in advance to make sure that his yacht was in a state worthy to receive two such ladies, and he had insisted on meeting them in his car at Abbeville on the way to Boulogne. He had not insisted on meeting Musa similarly. He was a peculiar and in some respects a stiff-necked man. He had decided, in his own mind, that he would have the two women to himself in the car, and so indeed it fell out. Nevertheless his attitude to Musa, and Madame Piriac’s attitude to Musa, and everybody’s attitude to Musa, had shown that the mere prospect of star-concerts in a first-class hall had very quickly transformed Musa into a genuine Parisian lion. He was positively courted. His presence on the yacht was deemed an honour, and that was why Mr. Gilman had asked him. Audrey both resented the remarkable change and was proud of it—as a mother perhaps naturally would do and be. The admitted genius was to arrive the next morning.

On boarding the Ariadne in the wake of Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac, the first thing that impressed Audrey was the long gangway itself. It was made of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing that impressed her was that immediately she got down on deck the yacht, in a very mysterious manner, had grown larger, and much larger. At the forward extremity of the deck certain blue figures lounging about seemed to be quite a long way off, indeed in another world. Here and there on the deck were circles of yellow or white rope, coiled as precisely and perfectly as Audrey could coil her own hair. Mr. Gilman led them to the door of the deck-house and they gazed within. The sight of the interior drew out of the ravished Audrey an ecstatic exclamation: “What a darling!” And at the words she saw that Mr. Gilman, for all his assumed nonchalant spryness, almost trembled with pleasure. The deck-house was a drawing-room whose walls were of carved and inlaid wood. Orange-shaded electric bulbs hung on short, silk cords from the ceiling, and flowers in sconces showed brilliantly between the windows, which were draped with curtains of silk matching the thick carpet. Several lounge chairs and a table of bird’s-eye maple completed the place, and over the table were scattered newspapers and illustrated weeklies. Everything, except the literature, was somewhat diminished in size, but the smallness of the scale only intensified the pleasure derived from the spectacle.

Then they went “downstairs,” as Audrey said; but Mr. Gilman corrected her and said “below,” whereupon Audrey retorted that she should call it the “ground floor,” and Mr. Gilman laughed as she had never heard a man of his age laugh. The sight of the ground floor still further increased Audrey’s notion of the dimensions of the yacht, whose corridors and compartments appeared to stretch away endlessly in two directions. At the foot of the curving staircase Mr. Gilman, pulling aside a curtain, announced: “This is the saloon.” When she heard the word Audrey expected a poky cubicle, but found a vast drawing-room with more books than she had ever seen in any other drawing-room, many pictures, an open piano, with music on it; sofas in every quarter, and about a thousand cupboards and drawers, each with a silver knob or handle. Above all was a dome of multi-coloured glass, and exactly beneath the dome a table set for supper, with the finest napery, cutlery and crystal. The apartment was dazzlingly lighted, and yet not a single lamp could be detected in the act of illumination. A real parlourmaid suddenly appeared at the far end of the room, and behind her two stewards in gilt-buttoned white Eton jackets and black trousers. Mr. Gilman, with seriousness, bade the parlourmaid take charge of the ladies and show them the sleeping-cabins.

“Choose any cabins you like,” said he, as Madame Piriac and Audrey rustled off.

There might have been hundreds of sleeping-cabins. And there did, in fact, appear to be quite a number of them, to say nothing of two bathrooms. They inspected all of them save one, which was locked. In an awed voice the parlourmaid said, “That is the owner’s cabin.” At another door she said, in a different, disdainful voice, “That only leads to the galley and the crew’s quarters.” Audrey wondered what a galley could be, and the mystery of that name, and the mystery of the two closed doors, merely made the whole yacht perfect. The sleeping-cabins surpassed all else—they were so compact, so complex, so utterly complete. No large bedchamber, within Audrey’s knowledge, held so much apparatus, and offered so much comfort and so much wardrobe room as even the least of these cabins. It was impossible, to be sure, that in one’s amused researches one had not missed a cupboard ingeniously disguised somewhere. And the multiplicity of mirrors, and the message of the laconic monosyllable “Hot” on silver taps, and the discretion of the lighting, all indicated that the architect and creator of these marvellous microcosms had “understood.” The cosy virtue of littleness, and the entire absurdity of space for the sake of space, were strikingly proved, and the demonstration amounted, in Audrey’s mind, to a new and delicious discovery.

The largest of the cabins had two berths at right angles to one another, each a lovely little bed with a running screen of cashmere. Having admired it once, they returned to it.

“Do you know, my dear,” said Madame Piriac in French, “I have an idea. You will tell me if it is not good.... If we shared this cabin ...! In this so curious machine one feels a satisfaction, somehow, in being very near the one to the other. The ceiling is so low.... That gives you sensations—human sensations.... I know not if you experience the same....”

“Oh! Let’s!” Audrey exclaimed impulsively in English. “Do let’s!”

When the parlourmaid had gone, and before the luggage had come down, Madame Piriac caught Audrey to her and kissed her fervently on both cheeks, amid the glinting confusion of polished woods and draperies and silver mountings and bevelled glass.

“I am so content that you came, my little one!” murmured Madame Piriac.

The next minute the cabin and the corridor outside were full of open trunks and bags, over which bent the forms of Madame Piriac, Audrey and the parlourmaid. And all the drawers were gaping, and the doors of all the cupboards swinging, and the narrow beds were hidden under piles of variegated garments. And while they were engaged in the breathless business of installing themselves in the celestial domain, strange new thoughts flitted about like mice in Audrey’s head. She felt as though she were in a refuge from the world, and as though her conscience was being narcotised. In that cabin, firm as solid land and yet floating on the water, with Mr. Gilman at hand her absolute slave—in that cabin the propaganda of women’s suffrage presented itself as a very odd and very remote phenomenon, a phenomenon scarcely real. She had positively everything she wanted without fighting for it. The lion’s share of life was hers. Comfort and luxury were desirable and beautiful things, not to be cast aside nor scorned. Madame Piriac was a wise woman and a good woman. She was a happy woman.... There was a great deal of ugliness in sitting on Joy Wheels and being chased by policemen. True, as she had heard, a crew of nineteen human beings was necessary to the existence of Mr. Gilman and his guests on board the yacht. Well, what then? The nineteen were undoubtedly well treated and in clover. And the world was the world; you had to take it as you found it.... And then in her mind she had a glimpse of the blissful face of Jane Foley—blissful in a different way from any other face she had met in all her life. Disconcerting, this glimpse, for an instant, but only for an instant! She, Audrey, was blissful, too. The intense desire for joy and pleasure surged up in her.... The bell which she had previously heard struck three; its delicate note vibrated long through the yacht, unwilling to expire. Half-past nine, and supper and the chivalry of Mr. Gilman waiting for them in the elegance of the saloon!

As the two women approached the portière which screened the forward entrance to the saloon, they heard Mr. Gilman say, in a weary and resigned voice:

“Well, I suppose there’s nothing better than a whisky and soda.”