The Lion's Share Part 16

Instead of admiring the secret charity of Tommy and Nick, which she had never suspected, Audrey was very annoyed by it. She detested it and resented it. And especially the charity of Miss Thompkins. She considered that from a woman with eyes and innuendoes like Tommy's charity amounted to a sneer.

"It is extremely unsatisfactory," she said, dropping on to Miss Ingate's sofa.

Not another word was spoken. Audrey tapped her foot. Musa creaked in the basket chair. He avoided her eyes, but occasionally she glared at him like a schoolmistress. Then her gaze softened--he looked so ill, so helpless, so hopeless. She wanted to light a cigarette for him, but she was somehow bound to the sofa. She wanted him to go--she hated the prospect of his going. He could not possibly go, alone, to his solitary room. Who would tend him, soothe him, put him to bed? He was an infant....

Then, after a long while, Miss Ingate entered sharply. Audrey coughed and sprang up.

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Ingate.

"I--I think I shall just change my boots," said Audrey, smoothing out the short white skirt. And she disappeared into the dressing-room that gave on to the studio.

As soon as she was gone, Miss Ingate went close up to Musa's chair. He had not moved.

She said, smiling, with the corners of her mouth well down:

"Do you see that door, young man?"

And she indicated the door.

When Audrey came back into the studio.

"Audrey," cried Miss Ingate shrilly. "What you been doing to Musa? As soon as you went out he up vehy quickly and ran away."

At this information Audrey was more obviously troubled and dashed than Miss Ingate had ever seen her, in Paris. She made no answer at all.

Fortunately, lying on the table in front of the mirror was a letter for Miss Ingate which had arrived by the evening post. Audrey went for it, pretending to search, and then handed it over with a casual gesture.

"It looks as if it was from Nick," she murmured.

Miss Ingate, as she was putting on her spectacles, remarked:

"I hope you weren't hurt--me not coming with you and Musa in the taxi from the gardens this afternoon, dear."

"Me? Oh no!"

"It wasn't that I was so vehy interested in my sketch. But to my mind there's nothing more ridiculous than several women all looking after one man. Miss Thompkins thought so, too."

"Oh! Did she?... What does Nick say?"

Miss Ingate had put the letter flat on the table in the full glare of the lamp, and was leaning over it, her grey hair brilliantly illuminated.

Audrey kept in the shadow and in the distance. Miss Ingate had a habit of reading to herself under her breath. She read slowly, and turned pages over with a deliberate movement.

"Well," said Miss Ingate twisting her head sideways so as to see Audrey standing like a ghost afar off. "Well, she _has_ been going it! She's broken a window in Oxford Street with a hammer; she had one night in the cells for that. And she'd have had to go to prison altogether only some unknown body paid the fine for her. She says: 'There are some mean persons in the world, and he was one. I feel sure it was a man, and an American, too. The owners of the shops are going to bring a law action against me for the value of the plate-gla.s.s. It is such fun. And our leaders are splendid and so in earnest. They say we are doing a great historical work, and we are. The London correspondent of the _New York Times_ interviewed me because I am American. I did not want to be interviewed, but our instructions are--never to avoid publicity. There is to be no more window breaking for the present. Something new is being arranged. The hammer is so heavy, and sometimes the first blow does not break the window. The situation is _very_ serious, and the Government is at its wits' end. This we _know_. We have our agents everywhere. All the most thoughtful people are strongly in favour of votes for women; but of course some of them are afraid of our methods. This only shows that they have not learnt the lessons of history. I wonder that you and dear Mrs. Moncreiff do not come and help. Many women ask after you, and everybody at Kingsway is very curious to know Mrs. Moncreiff. Since Mrs. Burke's death, Betty has taken rooms in this house, but perhaps Tommy has told you this already. If so, excuse. Betty's health is very bad since they let her out last. With regard to the rent, will you pay the next quarter direct to the concierge yourselves? It will save so much trouble. I must tell you----'"

Slowly Audrey moved up to the table and leaned over the letter by Miss Ingate's side.

"So you see!" said Miss Ingate. "Well, we must show it to Tommy in the morning. 'Not learnt the lessons of history,' eh? I know who's been talking to Nick. _I_ know as well as if I could hear them speaking."

"Do you think we ought to go to London?" Audrey demanded bluntly.

"Well," Miss Ingate answered, with impartial irony on her long upper lip.

"I don't know. Of course I played the organ all the way down Regent Street.

I feel very strongly about votes for women, and once when I was helping in the night and day vigil at the House of Commons and some Ministers came out smoking their _cigahs_ and asked us how we liked it, I was vehy, vehy angry. However, the next morning I had a cigarette myself and felt better.

But I'm not a professional reformer, like a lot of them are at Kingsway.

It isn't my meat and drink. And I don't think it matters much whether we get the vote next year or in ten years. I'm Winifred Ingate before I'm anything else. And so long as I'm pretty comfortable no one's going to make me believe that the world's coming to an end. I know one thing--if we did get the vote it would take me all my time to keep most of the women I know from, voting for something silly."

"Winnie," said Audrey. "You're very sensible sometimes."

"I'm always very sensible," Winnie retorted, "until I get nervous. Then I'm apt to skid."

Without more words they transformed the studio, by a few magical strokes, from a drawing-room into a bedroom. Audrey, the last to retire, extinguished the lamp, and tripped to her bed behind her screen. Only a few slight movements disturbed the silence.

"Winnie," said Audrey suddenly. "I do believe you're one of those awful people who compromise. You're always right in the middle of the raft."

But Miss Ingate, being fast asleep, offered no answer.

CHAPTER XV

THE RIGHT BANK

The next day, after a studio lunch which contained too much starch and was deficient in nitrogen, Miss Ingate, putting on her hat and jacket, said with a caustic gesture:

"Well, I must be off to my life cla.s.s. And much good may it do me!"

The astonishing creature had apparently begun existence again, and begun it on the plane of art, but this did not prevent the observer within her from taking the same att.i.tude towards her second career as she had taken towards her first. Nothing seemed more meet for Miss Ingate's ironic contemplation than the daily struggle for style and beauty in the academies of the Quarter.

Audrey made no reply. The morning had been unusually silent, giving considerable scope for Miss Ingate's faculty for leaving well alone.

"I suppose you aren't coming out?" added Miss Ingate.

"No. I went out a bit this morning. You know I have my French lesson in twenty minutes."

"Of course."

Miss Ingate seized her apparatus and departed. The instant she was alone Audrey began in haste to change into all her best clothes, which were black, and which the Quarter seldom saw. Fashionably arrayed, she sat down and wrote a note to Madame Schmitt, her French instructress, to say that she had been suddenly called away on urgent business, and asking her nevertheless to count the time as a lesson given. This done, she put her credit notes and her cheque-book into her handbag, and, leaving the note with the concierge's wife, who bristled with interesting suspicions, she vanished into Paris.

The weather was even more superb than on the previous day. Paris glittered around her as she drove, slowly, in a horse-taxi, to the Place de l'Opera on the right bank, where the _grand boulevard_ meets the Avenue de l'Opera and the Rue de la Paix. Here was the very centre of the fashionable and pleasure-ridden district which the Quarter held in n.o.ble scorn. She had seen it before, because she had started a banking account (under advice from Mr. Foulger), and the establishment of her bankers was situate at the corner of the Avenue de l'Opera and the Rue de la Paix. But she knew little of the district, and such trifling information as she had acquired was tinged by the natural hostility of a young woman who for over six months, with no compulsion to do so, had toiled regularly and fiercely in the pursuit of knowledge. She paid off the cab, and went to test the soundness of her bankers. The place was full of tourists, and in one department of it young men in cages, who knew not the Quarter, were counting, and ladling, and pinning together, and engorging, and dealing forth, the currency and notes of all the great nations of the earth. The spectacle was inspiring.

In half a year the restive but finally obedient Mr. Foulger had sent three thousand pounds to Paris in the unpoetic form of small oblong pieces of paper signed with his own dull signature. Audrey desired to experience the thrill of authentic money. She waited some time in front of a cage, with her cheque-book open on the counter, until a young man glanced at her interrogatively through the bars.

"How much money have I got here, please?" she asked. She ought to have said: "What is my balance, please?" But n.o.body had taught her the sacred formula.

"What name?" said the clerk.

"Moze--Audrey Moze," she answered, for she had not dared to acquaint Mr.

Foulger with her widowhood, and his cheques were made out to herself.