The Lion's Share - Arnold Bennett (room on the broom read aloud .TXT) 📗

and managed to convey the general idea that he had a keen interest in life, and that the keenest part of that interest was due to a profound instinctive desire to serve these two beautiful benefactors of mankind--the idea apparently being that the charming creatures had conferred a favour on the human race by consenting to exist. He cooed round them, he offered them cushions, he inquired after their physical condition, he expressed his fear lest the cabins had not contained every convenience that caprice might expect. He was excited; surely he was happy! Audrey persuaded herself that this must, after all, be his true normal condition while aboard the yacht, and that the ennui visible on his features a moment earlier could only have been transient and accidental.

"I am sure the piano is as wonderful as all else on board," said Madame Piriac.

"Do play!" he entreated. "I love to hear music here. My secretary plays for me when I am alone."

"I, who do not adore music!" Madame Piriac protested against the invitation. But she sat down on the clamped music stool and began a waltz.

"Ah!" said Mr. Gilman, dropping into a seat by Audrey. "I wish I danced!"

"But you don't mean to say you don't," said Audrey, with fascination. She felt that she could fascinate him, and that it was her duty to fascinate him.

Mr. Gilman responded to the challenge.

"I suppose I do," he said modestly. "We must have a dance on deck one night. I'll tell my secretary to get the gramophone into order. I have a pretty good one."

"How lovely!" Audrey agreed. "I do think the _Ariadne's_ the most heavenly thing, Mr. Gilman! I'd no idea what a yacht was! I hope you'll tell me the proper names for all the various parts--you know what I mean. I hate to use the wrong words. It's not polite on a yacht, is it?"

His smile was entranced.

"You and I will go round by ourselves to-morrow morning, Mrs. Moncreiff," he said.

Just then the steward appeared with the whisky and soda, but Mr. Gilman dismissed him with a sharp gesture, and he vanished back into the unexplored parts of the vessel. The implication was that the society of Audrey made whisky and soda a superfluity for Mr. Gilman. Although she was so young, he treated her with exactly the same deference as he lavished on Madame Piriac, indeed with perhaps a little more. If Madame Piriac was for him the incarnation of sweetness and balm and majesty, so also was Audrey, and Audrey had the advantage of novelty. She was growing, morally, every minute. The confession of Musa had filled her with a good notion of herself. The impulsive flattery of Madame Piriac in the joint cabin, and now the sincere, grave homage of Mr. Gilman, caused her to brim over with consciousness that she was at last somebody.

An automobile hooted on the quay, and at the disturbing sound Madame Piriac ceased to play and swung round on the stool.

"That--that must be our other lady guest," said Mr. Gilman, who had developed nervousness; his cheeks flushed darkly.

"Ah?" cautiously smiled Madame Piriac, who was plainly taken aback.

"Yes," said Mr. Gilman. "Miss Thompkins. Before I knew for certain that Mrs. Moncreiff could come with you, Hortense, I asked Miss Thompkins if she would care to come. I only got her answer this morning--it was delayed. I meant to tell you.... You are a friend of Miss Thompkins, aren't you?" He turned to Audrey.

Audrey replied gaily that she knew Tommy very well.

"I'd better go up," said Mr. Gilman, and he departed, and his back, though a nervous back, seemed to be defying Madame Piriac and Audrey to question in the slightest degree his absolute right to choose his own guests on his own yacht.

"Strange man!" muttered Madame Piriac. It was a confidence to Audrey, who eagerly accepted it as such. "Imagine him inviting Mees Thompkins without a word to us, without a word! But, you know, my dear uncle was always bizarre, mysterious. Yet--is he mysterious, or is he ingenuous?"

"But how did he come to know Miss Thompkins?" Audrey demanded.

"Ah! You have not heard that? Miss Thompkins gave a--a musical tea in her studio, to celebrate these concerts which are to occur. Musa asked the Foas to come. They consented. It was understood they should bring friends. Thus I went also, and Monsieur Gilman being at my orders that afternoon, he went too. Never have I seen so strange a multitude! But it was amusing. And all Paris has begun to talk of Musa. Miss Thompkins and my uncle became friends on the instant. I assume that it was her eyes. Also those Americans have vivacity, if not always distinction. Do you not think so?"

"Oh, yes! And do you mean to say that on the strength of that he asked her to go yachting?"

"Well, he had called several times."

"Aren't you surprised she accepted?" asked Audrey.

"No," said Madame Piriac. "It is another code, that is all. It is a surprise, but she will be amusing."

"I'm sure she will," Audrey concurred. "I'm frightfully fond of her myself."

They glanced at each other very intimately, like long-established allies who fear an aggression--and are ready for it.

Then steps were heard. Miss Thompkins entered.

"Well," drawled Miss Thompkins, gazing first at Audrey and then at Madame Piriac. "Of all the loveliest shocks----Say, Musa----"

Behind her stood Musa. It appeared that he had been able to get away by the same train as Tommy.


CHAPTER XXXI


THE NOSTRUM

The hemisphere of heaven was drenched in moonlight, and--rare happening either on British earth or on the waters surrounding it, in mid-summer--the night was warm. In the midst of the glittering sea the yacht moved without the appearance of motion; only by leaning over the rail and watching the bubbles glide away from her could you detect her progress. There were no waves, no ripples, nothing but a scarcely perceptible swell. The gentle breeze, unnoticeable on deck, was abaft; all the sails had been lowered and stowed except the large square sail bent on a yard to the mainmast and never used except with such a wind. The _Ariadne_ had a strong flood tide under her, and her 200-h.p. twin motors were stopped. Hence there was no tremor in the ship and no odour of paraffin in the nostrils of those who chanced to wander aft of the engine-room. The deck awning had been rolled up to the centre, and at the four corners of its frame had been hung four temporary electric lights within Chinese lanterns. A radiance ascended from the saloon skylight; the windows of the deck-house blazed as usual, but the deck-house was empty; a very subdued glow indicated where the binnacle was. And, answering these signs of existence, could be distinguished the red and green lights of steamers, the firm rays of lighthouses, and the red or white warnings of gas-buoys run by clockwork.

The figures of men and women--the women in pale gowns, the men in blue-and-white--lounged or strolled on the spotless deck which unseen hands swabbed and stoned every morning at 6 o'clock; and among these figures passed the figure of a steward with a salver, staying them with flagons, comforting them with the finest exotic fruit. Occasionally the huge square sail gave an idle flap. "Get that lead out, 'Orace," commanded a grim voice from the wheel. A splash followed, as a man straddled himself over the starboard bow, swung a weighted line to and fro and threw it from him. "Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash. "Three-half." Another splash. "Three-half." Another splash. "Three." Another splash. "Two-half." Another splash. "Three." Another splash. "Five." "That'll do, 'Orace," came the voice from the wheel. Then an entranced silence.

The scene had the air of being ideal. And yet it was not. Something lacked. That something was the owner. The owner lay indisposed in the sacred owner's cabin. And this was a pity because a dance had been planned for that night. It might have taken place without the owner, but the strains of the gramophone and especially the shuffling of feet on the deck would have disturbed him. True, he had sent up word by Doctor Cromarty that he was not to be considered. But the doctor had delivered the message without any conviction, and the unanimous decision was that the owner must, at all costs, be considered.

It was Ostend, on top of the owner's original offer to Audrey, that had brought about the suggestion of a dance. They had coasted up round Gris-Nez from Boulogne to Ostend, and had reached the harbour there barely in time to escape from the worst of a tempest that had already begun to produce in the minds of sundry passengers a grave doubt whether yachting was, after all, the most delightful of pursuits. Some miles before the white dome of the Kursaal was sighted the process of moral decadence had set in, and passengers were lying freely to each other, and boastfully lying, just as though somebody had been accusing them of some dreadful crime of cowardice or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever. The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht's bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rectitude. Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the passengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing a yacht, and to visit the neighbourhood. The one was as wondrous as the other. They found letters and British and French newspapers on their plates at breakfast. And the first object they had seen on the quay, and the last object they saw there, was the identical large limousine which they had left on the quay at Boulogne. It would have taken them to Ghent but for the owner's powerful objection to their eating any meal off the yacht. Seemingly he had a great and sincere horror of local viands and particularly of local water. He was their slave; they might demand anything from him; he was the very symbol of hospitality and chivalry, but somehow they could not compass a meal away from the yacht. Similarly, he would have them leave the Kursaal not later than ten o'clock, when the evening had not veritably begun. They did not clearly understand by what means he imposed his will, but he imposed it.

The departure from Ostend was accomplished after the glass had begun to rise, but before it had finished rising, and there were apprehensions in the saloon and out of it, when the spectacle of the open sea, and the feel of it under the feet, showed that, as of old, water was still unstable. The process of moral decadence would have set in once more but for the prudence and presence of mind of Audrey, who had laid in a large stock of the specific which had been of such notable use to herself and Miss Ingate on previous occasions. Praising openly its virtues, confessing frankly her own weakness and preaching persuasively her own faith, she had distributed the nostrum, and in about a quarter of an hour had established a justifiable confidence. Mr. Gilman alone would not partake, and indeed she had hardly dared to offer the thing to so experienced a sailor. The day had favoured her. The sea grew steadily more tranquil, and after skirting the Belgian and French coasts for some