The Lion's Share Part 45

The man sprang out of the dinghy.

"One instant!" Mr. Gilman begged her, standing up in the sternsheets, and popping his head through a porthole of the saloon. "Mr. Price!"

"Sir?" From the interior.

"Will you be good enough to play that air with thirty-six variations, of Beethoven's? We shall hear splendidly from the dinghy."

"Certainly, sir."

And Audrey said to herself: "You don't want him to flirt with Tommy while you're away, so you've given him something to keep him busy."

Mr. Gilman remarked under his breath to Audrey: "I think there is nothing finer than to hear Beethoven on the water."

"Oh! There isn't!" she eagerly concurred.

Ignoring the thirty-six variations of Beethoven, Audrey rowed slowly away, and after about a hundred yards the boat had rounded a little knoll which marked the beginning of a narrow channel known as the Lander Creek. The thirty-six variations, however, would not be denied; they softly impregnated the whole beautiful watery scene.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Gilman suddenly, "perhaps your ladyship was not quite pleased at me rowing-about with Miss Thompkins--especially after I had taken her for a walk." He smiled, but his voice was rather wistful. Audrey liked him prodigiously in that moment.

"Foolish man!" she replied, with a smile far surpa.s.sing his, and she rested on her oars, taking care to keep the boat in the middle of the channel. "Do you know why I asked you to come out? I wanted to talk to you quite privately. It is easier here."

"I'm so glad!" he said simply and sincerely. And Audrey thought: "Is it possible to give so much pleasure to an important and wealthy man with so little trouble?"

"Yes," she said. "Of course you know who I really am, don't you, Mr.

Gilman?"

"I only know you're Mrs. Moncreiff," he answered.

"But I'm not! Surely you've heard something? Surely it's been hinted in front of you?"

"Never!" said he.

"But haven't you asked--about my marriage, for instance?"

"To ask might have been to endanger your secret," he said.

"I see!" she murmured. "How frightfully loyal you are, Mr. Gilman! I do admire loyalty. Well, I dare say very, very few people do know. So I'll tell you. That's my home over there." And she pointed to Flank Hall, whose chimneys could just be seen over the bank.

"I admit that I had thought so," said Mr. Gilman.

"But naturally that was your home as a girl, before your marriage."

"I've never been married, Mr. Gilman," she said. "I'm only what the French call a _jeune fille_."

His face changed; he seemed to be withdrawing alarmed into himself.

"Never--been married?"

"Oh! You _must_ understand me!" she went on, with an appealing vivacity. "I was all alone. I was in mourning for my father and mother. I wanted to see the world. I just had to see it! I expect I was very foolish, but it was so easy to put a ring on my finger and call myself Mrs. And it gave me such advantages. And Miss Ingate agreed. She was my mother's oldest friend.... You're vexed with me."

"You always seemed so wise," Mr. Gilman faltered.

"Ah! That's only the effect of my forehead!"

"And yet, you know, I always thought there was something very innocent about you, too."

"I don't know what _that_ was," said Audrey. "But honestly I acted for the best. You see I'm rather rich. Supposing I'd only gone about as a young marriageable girl--what frightful risks I should have run, shouldn't I?

Somebody would be bound to have married me for my money. And look at all I should have missed--without this ring! I should never have met you in Paris, for instance, and we should never have had those talks.... And--and there's a lot more reasons--I shall tell you another time--about Madame Piriac and so on. Now do say you aren't vexed!"

"I think you've been splendid," he said, with enthusiasm. "I think the girls of to-day _are_ splendid! I've been a regular old fogey, that's what it is."

"Now there's one thing I want you not to do," Audrey proceeded. "I want you not to alter the way you talk to me. Because I'm really just the same girl I was last night. And I couldn't bear you to change."

"I won't! I won't! But of course----"

"No, no! No buts. I won't have it. Do you know why I told you just this afternoon? Well, partly because you were so perfectly sweet last night. And partly because I've got a favour to ask you, and I wouldn't ask it until I'd told you."

"You can't ask me a favour," he replied, "because it wouldn't be a favour.

It would be my privilege."

"But if you put it like that I can't ask you."

"You must!" he said firmly.

Then she told him something of the predicament of Jane Foley. He listened with an expression of trouble. Audrey finished bluntly: "She's my friend.

And I want you to take her on the yacht to-night after it's dark. n.o.body but you can save her. There! I've asked you!"

"Jane Foley!" he murmured.

She could see that he was aghast. The syllables of that name were notorious throughout Britain. They stood for revolt, damage to property, defiance of law, injured policemen, forcible feeding, and all sorts of phenomena that horrified respectable pillars of society.

"She's the dearest thing!" said Audrey. "You've no idea. You'd love her.

And she's done as much for Women's Suffrage as anybody in the world. She's a real heroine, if you like. You couldn't help the cause better than by helping her. And I know how keen you are to help." And Audrey said to herself: "He's as timid as a girl about it. How queer men are, after all!"

"But what are we to do with her afterwards?" asked Mr. Gilman. There was perspiration on his brow.

"Sail straight to France, of course. They couldn't touch her there, you see, because it's political. It _is_ political, you know," Audrey insisted proudly.

"And give up all our cruise?"

Audrey bent forward, as she had seen Tommy do. She smiled enchantingly. "I quite understand," she said, with a sort of tenderness. "You don't want to do it. And it was a shame of me even to suggest it."

"But I do want to do it," he protested with splendid despairful resolve. "I was only thinking of you--and the cruise. I do want to do it. I'm absolutely at your disposal. When you ask me to do a thing, I'm only too proud. To do it is the greatest happiness I could have."

Audrey replied softly:

"You deserve the Victoria Cross."