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

you know; that's how I feel."

"You do?" Mr. Gilman exclaimed and gazed at her for a moment with a sort of ecstasy. Audrey instinctively checked herself. "There's a freemasonry among those who like yachting." His eyes returned to the compass. "I've kept your secret. I've kept it like something precious. I've enjoyed keeping it. It's been a comfort to me. Now I wonder if you'll do the same for me, Mrs. Moncreiff?"

"Do what?" Audrey asked weakly, intimidated.

"Keep a secret. I shouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac. Will you? May I tell you?"

"Yes, if you think you can trust me," said Audrey, concealing, with amazing ease and skill, her excitement and her mighty pleasure in the scene.... "He wouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac." ...It is doubtful whether she had ever enjoyed anything so much, and yet she was as prim as a nun.

"I'm not a happy man, Mrs. Moncreiff. Materially, I've everything a man can want, I suppose. But I'm not happy. You may laugh and say it's my liver. But it isn't. You're a woman of the world; you know what life is; and yet experience hasn't spoilt you. I could say anything to you; anything! And you wouldn't be shocked, would you?"

"No," said Audrey, hoping, nevertheless, that he would not say "anything, anything," but somehow simultaneously hoping that he would. It was a disconcerting sensation.

"I want you always to remember that I'm unhappy and never to tell anybody," Mr. Gilman resumed.

"But why?"

"It will be a kindness to me."

"I mean, why are you unhappy?"

"My opinions have all changed. I used to think I could be independent of women. Not that I didn't like women! I did. But when I'd left them I was quite happy. You know what the facts of life are, Mrs. Moncreiff. Young as you are you are older than me in some respects, though I have a long life before me. It's just because I have a long life before me--dyspeptics are always long-lived--that I'm afraid for the future. It wouldn't matter so much if I was an old man."

"But," asked Audrey adventurously, "why should you be unhappy because your opinions have changed? What opinions?" She endeavoured to be perfectly judicial and indifferent, and yet kind.

"What opinions? Well, about Woman Suffrage, for instance. You remember that night at the Foas', and what I remarked afterwards about what you all said?"

"Yes, I remember," said Audrey. "But can _you_ remember it? Fancy you remembering a thing like that!"

"I remember every word that was said. It changed me.... Not at first. Oh, no! Not for several days, perhaps weeks. I fought against it. Then I said to myself, 'How absurd to fight against it!' ... Well, I've come to believe in women having the vote. You've no more stanch supporter than I am. I _want_ women to have the vote. And you're the first person I've ever said that to. I want _you_ to have the vote."

He smiled at her, and she saw scores and scores of excellent qualities in his smile; she could not believe that he had any defect whatever. His secret was precious to her. She considered that he had confided it to her in a manner both distinguished and poetical. He had shown a quality which no youth could have shown. Youths were inferior, crude, incomplete. Not that Mr. Gilman was not young! Emphatically he was young, but her conception of the number of years comprised in youthfulness had been enlarged. She saw, as in a magical enlightenment, that forty was young, fifty was young, any age was young provided it had the right gestures. As for herself, she was without age. The obvious fact that Mr. Gilman was her slave touched her; it saddened her, but sweetly; it gave her a new sense of responsibility.

She said:

"I still don't see why this change of view should make you unhappy. I should have thought it would have just the opposite effect."

"It has altered all my desires," he replied. "Do you know, I'm not really interested in this new yacht now! And that's the truth."

"Mr. Gilman!" she checked him. "How can you say such a thing?"

It now appeared that she was not a nice girl. If she had been a nice girl she would not have comprehended what Mr. Gilman was ultimately driving at. The word "marriage" would never have sounded in her brain. And she would have been startled and shocked had Mr. Gilman even hinted that there was such a word in the dictionary. But not being, after all, a nice girl, she actually dwelt on the notion of marriage with somebody exactly like Mr. Gilman. She imagined how fine and comfortable and final it would be. She admitted that despite her riches and her independence she would be and could be simply naught until she possessed a man and could show him to the world as her own. Strange attitude for a wealthy feminist, but she had the attitude! And, moreover, she enjoyed having it; she revelled in it. She desired, impatiently, that Mr. Gilman should proceed further. She thirsted for his next remark. And her extremely deceptive features displayed only a blend of simplicity and soft pity. Those features did not actually lie, for she was ingenuous without being aware of it and her pity for the fellow-creature whose lot she could assuage with a glance was real enough. But they did suppress about nine-tenths of the truth.

"I tell you," said Mr. Gilman, "there is nothing I could not say to you. And--and--of course, you'll say I scarcely know you--yet----"

Clearly he was proceeding further. She waited as in a theatre one waits for a gun to go off on the stage. And then the gun did go off, but not the gun she was expecting.

Skipper Wyatt's head popped up like a cannon shot out of a hole in the forward deck, and it gazed sharply and apprehensively around the calm, moonlit sea. Mr. Gilman was, beyond question, perturbed by the movements of that head, though he could not see the expression of the eyes. This was the first phenomenon. The second phenomenon was a swirling of water round the after part of the ship, and this swirling went on until the water was white with a thin foam.

"Reverse those d----d engines!" shouted Captain Wyatt, quite regardless of the proximity of refined women. He had now sprung clear of the hole and was running aft. The whole world of the yacht could not but see that he was coatless and that his white shirtsleeves, being rather long, were kept in position by red elastic rings round his arms. "Is that blithering engineer asleep?" continued Captain Wyatt, ignoring the whole system of yacht etiquette. "She's getting harder on every second!"

"Ay, ay, skipper!" came a muffled voice from the engine-room.

"And not too soon either!" snapped the captain.

The yacht throbbed more violently; the swirling increased furiously. The captain stared over the rail. Then, after an interval, he stamped on the deck in disgust.

"Shut off!" he yelled. "It's no good."

The yacht ceased to throb. The swirling came to an end, and the thin white foam faded into flat sombre water. Whereupon Captain Wyatt turned back to the wheel, which, in his extreme haste, he had passed by.

"You've run her on to the sand, sir," said he to Mr. Gilman, respectfully but still accusingly.

"Oh, no! Impossible!" Mr. Gilman defended himself, pained by the charge.

"She's hard on, anyhow, sir. And many a good yacht's left her bones on this Buxey."

"But you gave me the course," protested Mr. Gilman, with haughtiness.

Captain Wyatt bent down and looked at the binnacle. He was contentedly aware that the compass of a yacht hard aground cannot lie and cannot be made to lie. The camera can lie; the speedometer of an automobile after an accident can lie--or can conceal the truth and often does, but the compass of a yacht aground is insusceptible to any blandishment; it shows the course at the moment of striking and nothing will persuade it to alter its evidence.

"What course did I give you, sir?" asked Captain Wyatt.

And as Mr. Gilman hesitated in his reply, the skipper pointed silently to the compass.

"Where's the chart? Let me see the chart," said Mr. Gilman with sudden majesty.

The chart in its little brass frame was handy. Mr. Gilman examined it in a hostile manner; one might say that he cross-examined it, and with it the horizon. "Ah!" he muttered at length, peering at the print under the chart, "'Corrected 1906.' Out of date. Pity they don't re-issue these charts oftener."

His observations had no relation whatever to the matter in hand; considered as a contribution to the unravelling of the matter in hand they were merely idiotic. Nevertheless, such were the exact words he uttered, and he appeared to get great benefit and solace from them. They somehow enabled him to meet, quite satisfactorily, the gaze of his guests who had now gathered in the vicinity of the wheel.

Audrey alone showed a desire to move away from the wheel. The fact was that the skipper had glanced at her in a peculiar way and his eyes had seemed to say, with disdain: "Women! Women again!" Nothing but that! The implications, however, were plain. Audrey may have been discountenanced by the look in the captain's eyes, but at the same time she had an inward pride, because it was undeniable that Mr. Gilman, owing to his extreme and agitated interest in herself, had put the yacht off the course and was thereby imperilling numerous lives. Audrey liked that. And she exonerated Mr. Gilman, and she hated the captain for daring to accuse him, and she mysteriously nursed the wounded dignity of Mr. Gilman far better than he could nurse it himself.

Her feelings were assuredly complex, and they grew more complex when the sense of danger began to dominate them. The sense of danger came to her out of the demeanour of her companions and out of the swift appearance on deck of every member of the crew, including the parlourmaid, and including three men who were incompletely clothed. The yacht was no longer a floating hotel, automobile and dancing-saloon; it was a stranded wreck. Not a passenger on board knew whether the tide was making or ebbing, but, secretly, all were convinced that it was ebbing and that they would be left on the treacherous sand and ultimately swallowed up therein, even if a storm did not supervene and smash the craft to bits in the classical manner. The skipper's words about the bones of many a good yacht had escaped no ear.

Further, not a passenger knew where the yacht was or whither, exactly, she was bound or whether the glass was rising or falling, for guests on yachts seldom concern themselves about details. Of course, signals might be made to passing ships, but signals were often, according to maritime history, unheeded, and the ocean was very large and empty, though it was only the German Ocean.... Musa was nervous and angry. Audrey knew from her intimate knowledge of him that he was angry and she wondered why he should be angry. Madame Piriac, on the other hand, was entirely calm. Her calmness seemed to say to those responsible, and even to the not-responsible passenger: "You got me into this and it is inconceivable that you should not get me out of it. I have always been looked after and protected, and