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

satchel--it would be so easy to replace the satchel with all its contents.

Then a small brougham came very deliberately up the drive. It was the vehicle in which Miss Ingate went her ways; in accordance with Miss Ingate's immemorial command, it travelled at a walking pace up all the hills to save the horse, and at a walking pace down all hills lest the horse should stumble and Miss Ingate be destroyed. It was now followed by a luggage-cart on which was a large trunk.

At the same moment Aguilar, the gardener, appeared from somewhere--he who had been robbed of a legacy of ten pounds, but who by his ruthless and incontestable integrity had secured the job of caretaker of Flank Hall.

The drivers touched their hats to Audrey and jumped down, and Miss Ingate, with a blue veil tied like a handkerchief round her bonnet and chin--sign that she was a traveller--emerged from the brougham, sardonically smiling at her own and everybody's expense, and too excited to be able to give greetings. The three men started to move the trunks, and the two women whispered together in the back-hall.

"Audrey," demanded Miss Ingate, with a start, "what are those rings on your finger?"

Audrey replied:

"One's a wedding ring and the other's a mourning ring. I bought them yesterday at Colchester.... Hsh!" She stilled further exclamations from Miss Ingate until the men were out of the hall.

"Look here! Quick!" she whispered, hastily unlocking a large hat-case that was left. And Miss Ingate looked and saw a block toque, entirely unsuitable for a young girl, and a widow's veil.

"I look bewitching in them," said Audrey, relocking the case.

"But, my child, what does it mean?"

"It means that I'm not silly enough to go to Paris as a girl. I've had more than enough of being a girl. I'm determined to arrive in Paris as a young widow. It will be much better in every way, and far easier for you. In fact, you'll have no chaperoning to do at all. I shall be the chaperon. Now don't say you won't go, because you will."

"You ought to have told me before."

"No, I oughtn't. Nothing could have been more foolish."

"But who are you the widow of?"

"Hurrah!" cried Audrey. "You are a sport, Winnie! I'll tell you all the interesting details in the train."

In another minute Aguilar, gloomy and unbending, had received the keys of Flank Hall, and the procession crunched down the drive on its way to the station.


CHAPTER VII


THE CIGARETTE GIRL

Audrey did not deem that she had begun truly to live until the next morning, when they left London, after having passed a night in the Charing Cross Hotel. During several visits to London in the course of the summer Audrey had learnt something about the valuelessness of money in a metropolis chiefly inhabited by people who were positively embarrassed by their riches. She knew, for example, that money being very plentiful and stylish hats very rare, large quantities of money had to be given for infinitesimal quantities of hats. The big and glittering shops were full of people whose pockets bulged with money which they were obviously anxious to part with in order to obtain goods, while the proud shop-assistants, secure in the knowledge that money was naught and goods were everything, did their utmost, by hauteur and steely negatives, to render any transaction possible. It was the result of a mysterious "Law of Exchange." She was aware of this. She had lost her childhood's naive illusions about the sovereignty of money.

Nevertheless she received one or two shocks on the journey, which was planned upon the most luxurious scale that the imagination of Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son could conceive. There was four pounds and ninepence to pay for excess luggage at Charing Cross. Half a year earlier four pounds would have bought all the luggage she could have got together. She very nearly said to the clerk at the window: "Don't you mean shillings?" But in spite of nervousness, blushings, and all manner of sensitive reactions to new experiences, her natural sang-froid and instinctive knowledge of the world saved her from such a terrible lapse, and she put down a bank-note without the slightest hint that she was wondering whether it would not be more advantageous to throw the luggage away.

The boat was crowded, and the sea and wind full of menace. Fighting their way along the deck after laden porters, Audrey and Miss Ingate simultaneously espied the private cabin list hung in a conspicuous spot. They perused it as eagerly as if it had been the account of a _cause celebre._ Among the list were two English lords, an Honourable Mrs., a baroness with a Hungarian name, several Teutonic names, and Mrs. Moncreiff.

Audrey blushed deeply at the sign of Mrs. Moncreiff, for she was Mrs. Moncreiff. Behind the veil, and with the touch of white in her toque, she might have been any age up to twenty-eight or so. It would have been impossible to say that she was a young girl, that she was not versed in the world, that she had not the whole catechism of men at her finger-ends. All who glanced at her glanced again--with sympathy and curiosity; and the second glance pricked Audrey's conscience, making her feel like a thief. But her moods were capricious. At one moment she was a thief, a clumsy fraud, an ignorant ninny, and a suitable prey for the secret police; and at the next she was very clever, self-confident, equal to the situation, and enjoying the situation more than she had ever enjoyed anything, and determined to prolong the situation indefinitely.

The cabin was very spacious, yet not more so than was proper, considering that the rent of it came to about sixpence a minute. There was room, even after all the packages were stowed, for both of them to lie down. But instead of lying down they eagerly inspected the little abode. They found a lavatory basin with hot and cold water taps, but no hot water and no cold water, no soap and no towels. And they found a crystal water-bottle, but it was empty. Then a steward came and asked them if they wanted anything, and because they were miserable poltroons they smiled and said "No." They were secretly convinced that all the other private cabins, inhabited by titled persons and by financiers, were superior to their cabin, and that the captain of the steamer had fobbed them off with an imitation of a real cabin.

Then it was that Miss Ingate, who since Charing Cross had been a little excited by a glimpsed newspaper contents-bill indicating suffragette riots that morning, perceived, through the open door of the cabin, a most beautiful and most elegant girl, attired impeccably in that ritualistic garb of travel which the truly cosmopolitan wear on combined rail-and-ocean journeys and on no other occasions. It was at once apparent that the celestial creature had put on that special hat, that special veil, that special cloak, and those special gloves because she was deeply aware of what was correct, and that she would not put them on again until destiny took her again across the sea, and that if destiny never did take her again across the sea never again would she show herself in the vestments, whose correctness was only equalled by their expensiveness.

The young woman, however, took no thought of her impressive clothes. She was existing upon quite another plane. Miss Ingate, preoccupied by the wrongs and perils of her sex, and momentarily softened out of her sardonic irony, suspected that they might be in the presence of a victim of oppression or neglect. The victim lay Half-prone upon the hard wooden seat against the ship's rail. Her dark eyes opened piteously at times, and her exquisite profile, surmounted by the priceless hat all askew, made a silhouette now against the sea and now against the distant white cliffs of Albion, according to the fearful heaving of the ship. Spray occasionally dashed over her. She heeded it not. A few feet farther off she would have been sheltered by a weather-awning, but, clinging fiercely to the rail, she would not move.

Then a sharp squall of rain broke, but she entirely ignored the rain.

The next moment Miss Ingate and Audrey, rushing forth, had gently seized her and drawn her into their cabin. They might have succoured other martyrs to the modern passion for moving about, for there were many; but they chose this particular martyr because she was so wondrously dressed, and also perhaps a little because she was so young. As she lay on the cabin sofa she looked still younger; she looked a child. Yet when Miss Ingate removed her gloves in order to rub those chill, fragile, and miraculously manicured hands, a wedding ring was revealed. The wedding ring rendered her intensely romantic in the eyes of Audrey and Miss Ingate, who both thought, in private:

"She must be the wife of one of those lords!"

Every detail of her raiment, as she was put at her ease, showed her to be clothed in precisely the manner which Audrey and Miss Ingate thought peeresses always were clothed. Hence, being English, they mingled respect with their solacing pity. Nevertheless, their respect was tempered by a peculiar pride, for both of them, in taking lemonade on the Pullman, had taken therewith a certain preventive or remedy which made them loftily indifferent to the heaving of ships and the eccentricities of the sea. The specific had done all that was claimed for it--which was a great deal--so much so that they felt themselves superwomen among a cargo of flaccid and feeble sub-females. And they grew charmingly conceited.

"Am I in my cabin?" murmured the martyr, about a quarter of an hour after Miss Ingate, having obtained soda water, had administered to her a dose of the miraculous specific.

Her delicious cheeks were now a delicate crimson. But they had been of a delicate crimson throughout.

"No," said Audrey. "You're in ours. Which is yours?"

"It's on the other side of the ship, then. I came out for a little air. But I couldn't get back. I'd just as lief have died as shift from that seat out there by the railings."

Something in the accent, something in those fine English words "lief" and "shift," destroyed in the minds of Audrey and Miss Ingate the agreeable notion that they had a peeress on their hands.

"Is your husband on board?" asked Audrey.

"He just is," was the answer. "He's in our cabin."

"Shall I fetch him?" Miss Ingate suggested. The corners of her lips had begun to fall once more.

"Will you?" said the young woman. "It's Lord Southminster. I'm Lady Southminster."

The two saviours were thrilled. Each felt that she had misinterpreted the accent, and that probably peeresses did habitually use such words as "lief" and "shift." The corners of Miss Ingate's lips rose to their proper position.

"I'll look for the number on the cabin list," said she hastily, and went forth with trembling to summon the peer.

As Audrey, alone in the cabin with Lady Southminster, bent curiously over the prostrate form, Lady Southminster exclaimed with an air of childlike admiration:

"You're real ladies, you are!"

And Audrey felt old and experienced. She decided that Lady Southminster could not be more than seventeen, and it seemed to be about half a century since Audrey was seventeen.

"He can't come," announced Miss Ingate breathlessly, returning to the cabin, and supporting herself against the door