The Lion's Share Part 18

The car was closed.

"Will Madame have the carriage open or closed?"

"Closed."

Having paid the taxi-driver, Audrey entered the car, and as she did so, she threw over her shoulder:

"Hotel du Danube."

While the chauffeur started the engine, the shopman with brilliant smiles delivered the music and the bag. The door clicked. Audrey noticed the clock, the rug, the powder-box, the speaking-tube, and the mirror. She gazed, and saw a face triumphant and delicious in the mirror. The car began to glide forward. She leaned back against the pale grey upholstery, but in her soul she was standing and crying with a wild wave of the hand, to the whole street:

"It is a miracle!"

In a moment the gigantic car stopped in front of the Hotel du Danube. Two attendants rushed out in uniforms of delicate blue. They did not touch their hats--they raised them. Audrey descended and penetrated into the portico, where a tall dandy saluted and inquired her will. She wanted rooms; she wanted a flat? Certainly. They had nothing but flats. A large flat on the ground-floor was at her disposal absolutely. Two bedrooms, sitting-room, bathroom. It had its own private entrance in the courtyard.

She inspected it. The suite was furnished in the Empire style. Herself and maid? No. A friend! Well, the maids could sleep upstairs. It could arrange itself. She had no maid? Her friend had no maid? Ah! So much the better.

Sixty francs a day.

"Where is the dining-room?" demanded Audrey.

"Madame," said the dandy, shocked. "We have no dining-room. All meals are specially cooked to order and served in the private rooms. We have the reputation...." He opened his arms and bowed.

Good! Good! She would return with her friend in one hour or so.

"106 Rue Delambre," she bade the chauffeur, after being followed to the pavement by the dandy and a suite.

"Rue de Londres?" said the chauffeur.

"No. Rue Delambre."

It had to be looked out on the map, but the chauffeur, trained to the hour, did not blench. However, when he found the Rue Delambre, the success with which he repudiated it was complete.

"Winnie!" began Audrey in the studio, with a.s.sumed indifference. Miss Ingate was at tea.

"Oh! You are a swell. Where you been?"

"Winnie! What do you say to going and living on the right bank for a bit?"

"Well, well!" said Miss Ingate. "So that's it, is it? I've been ready to go for a long time. Of course you want to go first thing to-morrow morning.

I know you."

"No, I don't," said Audrey. "I want to go to-night. Now! Pack the trunks quick. I've got the finest auto you ever saw waiting at the door."

CHAPTER XVI

ROBES

On the second following Friday evening, Audrey's suite of rooms at the Hotel du Danube glowed in every corner with pink-shaded electricity.

According to what Audrey had everywhere observed to be the French custom, there was in this flat the minimum of corridor and the maximum of doors.

Each room communicated directly with all the other rooms. The doors were open, and three women continually in a feverish elation pa.s.sed to and fro.

Empire chairs and sofas were covered with rich garments of every colour and form and material, from the transparent blue silk _matinee_ to the dark heavy cloak of velvet ornamented with fur. The place was in fact very like the showrooms of a cosmopolitan dressmaker after a vast trying-on. Sundry cosmopolitan dressmakers had contributed to the rich confusion. None had hesitated for an instant to execute Audrey's commands. They had all been waiting, apparently since the beginning of time, to serve her. All that district of Paris had been thus waiting. The flat had been waiting, the automobile had been waiting, the chauffeur had been waiting, and purveyors of every sort. A word from her seemed to have released them from an enchantment. For the most part they were strange people, these magical attendants, never mentioning money, but rather deprecating the sound of it, and content to supply nothing but the finest productions of their unquestionable genius. Still, Audrey reckoned that she owed about twenty-five thousand francs to Paris.

The third woman was the maid, Elise. The hotel had invented and delivered Elise, and thereafter seemed easier in its mind. Elise was thirty years of age and not repellent of aspect. On a black dress she wore the smallest white muslin ap.r.o.n that either Audrey or Miss Ingate had ever seen. She kept pins in her mouth, but in other respects showed few eccentricities beyond an extreme excitability. When at eight o'clock Mademoiselle's new gown, promised for seven, had not arrived, Elise begged permission to use Madame's salts. When the bell rang at eight-thirty, and a lackey brought in an oval-shaped box with a long loop to it of leathern strap, she only just managed not to kiss the lackey. The rapid movement of Mademoiselle and Elise with the contents of the box from the drawing-room into Mademoiselle's bedroom was the last rushing and swishing that preceded a considerable peace.

Madame was absolutely ready, in her bedroom. In the large mirror of the dark wardrobe she surveyed her victoriously young face, the magnificent grey dress, the coiffure, the jewels, the spangled shoes, the fan; and the ensemble satisfied her. She was intensely and calmly happy. No thought of the past nor of the future, nor of what was going on in other parts of the earth's surface could in the slightest degree impair her happiness. She had done nothing herself, she had neither earned money nor created any of the objects which adorned her; nor was she capable of doing the one or the other. Yet she felt proud as well as happy, because she was young and superbly healthy, and not unattractive. These were her high virtues. And her att.i.tude was so right that n.o.body would have disagreed with her.

Her left ear was listening for the sound, through the unlatched window, of the arrival of the automobile with Musa and his fiddle inside it.

Then the door leading from Mademoiselle's bedroom opened sharply, and Mademoiselle appeared, with her grey hair, her pale shining forehead, her sardonic grin, and the new dress of those Empire colours, magenta and green. Elise stood behind, trembling with satisfaction.

"Well----" Audrey began. But she heard the automobile, and told Elise to run and be ready to open the front door of the flat.

"Rather showy, isn't it? Rather daring?" said Miss Ingate, advancing self-consciously and self-deprecating.

"Winnie," answered Audrey. "It's a nice question between you and the Queen of Sheba."

Suddenly Miss Ingate beheld in the mirror the masterpiece of an ill.u.s.trious male dressmaker-a masterpiece in which no touch of the last fashion was abated-and little Ess.e.x Winnie grinning from within it.

She screamed. And forthwith putting her hands behind her neck she began to unhook the corsage.

"What are you doing, Winnie?"

"I'm taking it off."

"But why?"

"Because I'm not going to wear it."

"But you've nothing else to wear."

"I can't help that."

"But you can't come. What on earth shall you do?"

"I dare say I shall go to bed. Or I might shoot myself. But if you think that I'm going outside this room in this dress, you're a perfect simpleton, Audrey. I don't mind being a fool, but I won't look one."

Audrey heard Musa enter the drawing-room.

She pulled the door to, keeping her hand on the k.n.o.b.

"Very well, Winnie," she said coldly, and swept into the drawing-room.

As she and Musa left the pink rose-shaded flat, she heard a burst of tears from Elise in the bedroom.

"21 Rue d'Aumale," she curtly ordered the chauffeur, who sat like a G.o.d obscurely in front of the illuminated interior of the carriage. Musa's violin case lay amid the cushions therein.

The chauffeur approvingly touched his hat. The Rue d'Aumale was a good street.