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

by the hand," said Audrey, choosing her words queerly, as she sometimes did, to produce a dramatic effect.

"This morning?"

"Yes. Eight o'clock."

"What? Is there a strange man in the village?"

"You don't mean to say you haven't seen the yacht!"

"Yacht?" Miss Ingate showed some excitement.

"Come and look, Winnie," said Audrey, who occasionally thought fit to address Miss Ingate in the manner of the elder generation. She drew Miss Ingate to the window.

Between the brown curtains Mozewater, the broad, shallow estuary of the Moze, was spread out glittering in the sunshine which could not get into the chilly room. The tide was nearly at full, and the estuary looked like a mighty harbour for great ships; but in six hours it would be reduced to a narrow stream winding through mud flats of marvellous ochres, greens, and pinks. In the hazy distance a fitful white flash showed where ocean waves were breaking on a sand-bank. And in the foreground, against a disused Hard that was a couple of hundred yards lower down than the village Hard, a large white yacht was moored, probably the largest yacht that had ever threaded that ticklish navigation. She was a shallow-draft barge-yacht, rigged like a Thames barge, and her whiteness and the glint of her brass, and the flicker of her ensign at the stern were dazzling. Blue figures ran busily about on her, and a white-and-blue person in a peaked cap stood importantly at the wheel.

"She was on the mud last night," said Audrey eagerly, "opposite the Flank buoy, and she came up this morning at half-flood. I think they made fast at Lousey Hard, because they couldn't get any farther without waiting. They have a motor, and it must be their first trip this season. I was on the dyke. I wasn't even looking at them, but they called me, so I had to go. They only wanted to know if Lousey Hard was private. Of course I told them it wasn't. It was a very middle-aged man spoke to me. He must be the owner. As soon as they were tied up he wanted to jump ashore. It was rather awkward, and I just held out my hand to help him. Father saw me from here. I might have known he would."

"Why! It's going off!" exclaimed Miss Ingate.

The yacht swung slowly round, held by her stern to the Hard. Then the last hawser was cast off, and she floated away on the first of the ebb; and as she moved, her main-sail, unbrailed, spread itself out and became a vast pinion. Like a dream of happiness she lessened and faded, and Lousey Hard was as lonely and forlorn as ever.

"But didn't you explain to your father?" Miss Ingate demanded of Audrey.

"Of course I did. But he wouldn't listen. He never does. I might just as well have explained to the hall-clock. He raged. I think he enjoys losing his temper. He said I oughtn't to have been there at all, and it was just like me, and he couldn't understand it in a daughter of his, and it would be a great shock to my poor mother, and he'd talked enough--he should now proceed to action. All the usual things. He actually asked me who 'the man' was."

"And who was it?"

"How can I tell? For goodness' sake don't go imitating father, Winnie! ... Rather a dull man, I should say. Rather like father, only not so old. He had a beautiful necktie; I think it must have been made out of a strip of Joseph's coat."

Miss Ingate giggled at a high pitch, and Audrey responsively smiled.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" murmured Miss Ingate when her giggling was exhausted. "How queer it is that a girl like you can't keep your father in a good temper!"

"Father hates me to say funny things. If I say anything funny he turns as black as ink--and he takes care to keep gloomy all the rest of the day, too. He never laughs. Mother laughs now and then, but I never heard father laugh. Oh yes, I did. He laughed when the cat fell out of the bathroom window on to the lawn-roller. He went quite red in the face with laughing.... I say, Miss Ingate, do you think father's mad?"

"I shouldn't think he's what you call mad," replied Miss Ingate judicially, with admirable sang-froid. "I've known so many peculiar people in my time. And you must remember, Audrey, this is a peculiar part of the world."

"Well, I believe he's mad, anyway. I believe he's got men on the brain, especially young men. He's growing worse. Yesterday he told me I musn't have the punt out on Mozewater this season unless he's with me. Fancy skiffing about with father! He says I'm too old for that now. So there you are. The older I get the less I'm allowed to do. I can't go a walk, unless it's an errand. The pedal is off my bike, and father is much too cunning to have it repaired. I can't boat. I'm never given any money. He grumbles frightfully if I want any clothes, so I never want any. That's my latest dodge. I've read every book in the house except the silly liturgical and legal things he's always having from the London Library--and I've read even some of those. He won't buy any new music. Golf! Ye gods, Winnie, you should hear him talk about ladies and golf!"

"I have," said Miss Ingate. "But it doesn't ruffle me, because I don't play."

"But he plays with girls, and young girls, too, all the same. He's been caught in the act. Ethel told me. He little thinks I know. He'd let me play if he could be the only man on the course. He's mad about me and men. He never looks at me without thinking of all the boys in the district."

"But he's really very fond of you, Audrey."

"Yes, I know," said Audrey. "He ought to keep me in the china cupboard."

"Well, it's a great problem."

"He's invented a beautiful new trick for keeping me in when he's out. I have to copy his beastly Society letters for him."

"I see he's got a new box," observed Miss Ingate, glancing into the open cupboard in which stood the safe. On the top of the safe were two japanned boxes, each lettered in white: "The National Reformation Society." The uppermost box was freshly unpacked and shone with all the intact pride of virginity.

"You should read some of the letters. You really should, Winnie," said Audrey. "All the bigwigs of the Society love writing to each other. I bet you father will get a typewriting machine this year, and make me learn it. The chairman has a typewriter, and father means to be the next chairman. You'll see.... Oh! What's that? Listen!"

"What's what?"

A faint distant throbbing could be heard.

"It's the motor! He's coming back for something. Fly out of here, Winnie, fly!"

Audrey felt sick at the thought that if her father had returned only a few minutes earlier he might have trapped her at the safe itself. She still kept one hand behind her.

Miss Ingate, who with all her qualities was rather easily flustered, ran out of the dangerous room in Audrey's wake. They met Mr. Mathew Moze at the half-landing of the stairs.

He was a man of average size, somewhat past sixty years. He had plump cheeks, tinged with red; his hair, moustache and short, full beard, were quite grey. He wore a thick wide-spreading ulster, and between his coat and waistcoat a leather vest, and on his head a grey cap. Put him in the Strand in town clothes, and he might have been taken for a clerk, a civil servant, a club secretary, a retired military officer, a poet, an undertaker--for anything except the last of a long line of immovable squires who could not possibly conceive what it was not to be the owner of land. His face was preoccupied and overcast, but as soon as he realised that Miss Ingate was on the stairs it instantly brightened into a warm and rather wistful smile.

"Good morning, Miss Ingate," he greeted her with deferential cordiality. "I'm so glad to see you back."

"Good morning, good morning, Mr. Moze," responded Miss Ingate. "Vehy nice of you. Vehy nice of you."

Nobody would have guessed from their demeanour that they differed on every subject except their loyalty to that particular corner of Essex, that he regarded her and her political associates as deadly microbes in the national organism, and that she regarded him as a nincompoop crossed with a tyrant. Each of them had a magic glass to see in the other nothing but a local Effendi and familiar guardian angel of Moze. Moreover, Mr. Moze's public smile and public manner were irresistible--until he lost his temper. He might have had friends by the score, had it not been for his deep constitutional reserve--due partly to diffidence and partly to an immense hidden conceit. Mr. Moze's existence was actuated, though he knew it not, by the conviction that the historic traditions of England were committed to his keeping. Hence the conceit, which was that of a soul secretly self-dedicated.

Audrey, outraged by the hateful hypocrisy of persons over fifty, and terribly constrained and alarmed, turned vaguely back up the stairs. Miss Ingate, not quite knowing what she did, with an equal vagueness followed her.

"Come in. Do come in," urged Mr. Moze at the door of the study.

Audrey, who remained on the landing, heard her elders talk smoothly of grave Mozian things, while Mr. Moze unlocked the new tin box above the safe.

"I'd forgotten a most important paper," said he, as he relocked the box. "I have an appointment with the Bishop of Colchester at ten-forty-five, and I fear I may be late. Will you excuse me, Miss Ingate?"

She excused him.

Departing, he put the paper into his pocket with a careful and loving gesture that well symbolised his passionate affection for the Society of which he was already the vice-chairman. He had been a member of the National Reformation Society for eleven years. Despite the promise of its name, this wealthy association of idealists had no care for reforms in a sadly imperfect England. Its aim was anti-Romanist. The Reformation which it had in mind was Luther's, and it wished, by fighting an alleged insidious revival of Roman Catholicism, to make sure that so far as England was concerned Luther had not preached in vain.

Mr. Moze's connection with the Society had originated in a quarrel between himself and a Catholic priest from Ipswich who had instituted a boys' summer camp on the banks of Mozewater near the village of Moze. Until that quarrel, the exceeding noxiousness of the Papal doctrine had not clearly presented itself to Mr. Moze. In such strange ways may an ideal come to birth. As Mr. Moze, preoccupied and gloomy once more, steered himself rapidly out of Moze towards the episcopal presence, the image of the imperturbable and Jesuitical priest took shape in his mind, refreshing his determination to be even with Rome at any cost.


CHAPTER II


THE THIEF'S PLAN WRECKED

"The fact is," said Audrey, "father has another woman in the house now."

Mr. Moze had left Miss Ingate in the study and Audrey had cautiously rejoined her there.

"Another woman in the house!" repeated Miss Ingate, sitting down in happy expectation. "What on earth do you mean? Who on