The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett (booksvooks TXT) 📕

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 class. 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 attitude 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 noble 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 nobody 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.

The clerk vanished, and in a moment reappeared, silently wrote something on a little form, and pushed it to her under the grille. She read:

"73,065 frs. 50c."

The fact was that in six months she had spent little more than the amount which she had brought with her from London. Having begun in simplicity, in simplicity she had continued, partly because she had been too industrious and too earnest for luxurious caprices, partly because she had never been accustomed to anything else but simplicity, and partly from wilfulness. It had pleased her to think that she was piling tens of thousands upon tens of thousands--in francs.

But in the night she had decided that the moment had arrived for a change in the great campaign of seeing life and tasting it.

She timorously drew a cheque for eleven thousand francs, and asked for ten thousand in notes and a thousand in gold. The clerk showed no trace of either astonishment or alarm; but he insisted on her endorsing the cheque. When she saw the gold, she changed half of it for ten notes of fifty francs each.

Emerging with false but fairly plausible nonchalance from the crowded establishment, where other clerks were selling tickets to Palestine, Timbuctoo, Bagdad, Berlin, and all the abodes of happiness in the world, she saw at the newspaper kiosk opposite the little blue poster of an English daily. It said: "More Suffragette Riots." She had a qualm, for her conscience was apt to be tyrannic, and its empire over her had been strengthened by the long, steady course of hard work which she had accomplished. Miss Ingate's arguments had not placated that conscience. It had said to her in the night: "If ever there was a girl who ought to assist heartily in the emancipation of women, that girl is you, Audrey Moze."

"Pooh!" she replied to her conscience, for she could always confute it with a sharp word--for a time.

And she crossed to the _grand boulevard_, and turned westward along the splendid, humming, roaring thoroughfare gay with flags and gleaming with such plate-glass as Nick the militant would have loved to shatter. Certainly there was nothing like this street in the Quarter. The Quarter could equal it neither in shops, nor in cafes, nor in vehicles, nor in crowds. It was an exultant thoroughfare, and Audrey caught its buoyancy, which could be distinctly seen in the feather on her hat. At the end of it she passed into the cool shade of a music-shop with the name "Durand" on its facade. She had found the address, and another one, in the telephone book at the Cafe de Versailles that morning. It was an immense shop containing millions of pieces of music for all instruments and all tastes. Yet when she modestly asked for the Caprice for violin of Roussel, the _morceau_ was brought to her without the slightest hesitation, together with the pianoforte accompaniment. The price was twelve francs.

Her gloved hand closed round the slim roll with the delicate firmness which was actuating all her proceedings on that magnificent afternoon. She was determined to save Musa not merely from himself, but from Miss Thompkins and everybody. It was not that she was specially interested in Musa. No! She was interested in a clean, neat job--that was all. She had begun to take charge of Musa, and she intended to carry the affair through. He had the ability to succeed, and he should succeed. It would be ridiculous for him not to succeed. From certain hints, and from a deeply sagacious instinct, she had divined that money and management were the only ingredients lacking to Musa's triumph. She could supply both these elements; and she would. And her reward would be the pride of the workman in his job.

Now her firmness hesitated. She retraced the boulevard to the Place de l'Opera, and then took the Rue de la Paix. In the first shop on the left-hand side, next to her bankers, she saw amid a dazzling collection of jewelled articles for travellers and letter-writers and diary-keepers, a sublime gold handbag, or, as the French say, hand-sack. Its clasp was set with a sapphire. Impulse sent her gliding right into the shop, with the words already on her lips: "How much is that gold hand-sack in the window?" But when she reached the hushed and shadowed interior, which was furnished like a drawing-room with soft carpets and tapestried chairs, she beheld dozens of gold hand-sacks glinting like secret treasure in a cave; and she was embarrassed by the number and variety of them. A well-dressed and affable lady and gentleman, with a quite remarkable similarity of prominent noses, welcomed her in general terms, and seemed surprised, and even a little pained, when she talked about buying and selling. She came out of the shop with a gold hand-sack which had cost twelve hundred francs, and all her money was in it.

Fortified by the impressive bauble, she walked along the street to the Place Vendome, where she descried in the distance the glittering signs and arms of the Hotel du Danube. Then she walked up the opposite pavement of the Rue de la Paix, and down again and up again until she had grasped its significance.

It was a street of jewellery, perfumes, antiques, gloves, hats, frocks, and furs. It was a street wherein the lily was painted and gold was gilded. Every window was a miracle of taste, refinement, and costliness. Every article in every window was so dear that no article was ticketed with its price, save a few wafer-like watches and jewelled rings that bore tiny figures, such as 12,500 francs, 40,000 francs. Despite her wealth, Audrey felt poor. The upper windows of nearly all the great buildings were arrayed with plants in full bloom. The roadway was covered with superb automobiles, some of them nearly as long as trains. About half of them stood in repose at the kerb, and Audrey as she strolled could see through their panes of bevelled glass the complex luxury within of toy dogs, clocks, writing-pads, mirrors, powder boxes, parasols, and the lounging arrogance of uniformed menials. At close intervals women passed rapidly across the pavements to or from these automobiles. If they were leaving a shop, the automobile sprang into life, dogs, menials, and all, the door was opened, the woman slipped in like a mechanical toy, the door banged, the menial jumped, and with trumpet tones the entire machine curved and swept away. The aspect of these women made Audrey feel glad that she was wearing her best clothes, and simultaneously made her feel that her best clothes were worse than useless.

She saw an automobile shop with a card at the door: "Town and touring cars for hire by day, week, or month." A