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

steal to the yacht. Audrey turned back towards the stairs, and the vast intimidating emptiness of the gloomy house, lit by a single flickering candle, assaulted her. She had to fight it before she could descend. The garden door was latched, but not locked. Extinguishing the candle, she went forth. The gusty breeze from the estuary was now damp on her cheek with the presage of rain. She hurried, fumbling as it were, through the garden. When she achieved the hedge the spectacle of the yacht, gleaming from stem to stern with electricity, burst upon her; it shone like something desired and unattainable. Carefully she issued from the grounds by the little gate and crossed the intervening space to the dyke. A dark figure moved in front of her, and her heart violently jumped.

"Is that you, madam?"

It was the cold, imperturbable voice of Aguilar. At once she felt reassured.

"Where is Miss Foley?" she demanded in a whisper.

"I've got her down here, ma'am," said Aguilar. "I presume as you've been to the house. We had to leave it."

"But the door of the tank-room was locked!"

"Yes, ma'am. I locked it a-purpose.... I thought as it would keep the police employed a bit when they come. I seen my cousin Sarah when I went to tell Miss Ingate as you instructed me. My cousin Sarah seen Keeble. They been to Frinton to Mrs. Spatt's, and they found out about _that_. And now the 'tec's back, or nearly. I reckon it was the warrant as was delaying him. So I out with Miss Foley. I thought I could take her across to the yacht from here. It wouldn't hardly be safe for her to walk round by the dyke. Hurley may have several of his chaps about by this time."

"But there's not water enough, Aguilar."

"Yes, madam. I dragged the old punt down. She don't draw three inches. She's afloat now, and Miss Foley's in her. I was just a-going off. If you don't mind wetting your feet----"

In one minute Audrey had splashed into the punt. Jane Foley took her hand in silence, and she heard Jane's low, happy laugh.

"Isn't it funny?" Jane whispered.

Audrey squeezed her hand.

Aguilar pushed off with an oar, and he continued to use the oar as a punt-pole, so that no sound of their movement should reach the bank. Water was pouring into the old sieve, and they touched ground once. But Aguilar knew precisely what he was about and got her off again. They approached the yacht with the slow, sure inexorability of Aguilar's character. A beam from the portholes of the saloon caught Aguilar's erect figure. He sat down, poling as well as he could from the new position. When they were a little nearer he stopped dead, holding the punt firm by means of the pole fixed in the mud.

"He's there afore us!" he murmured, pointing.

Under the Maltese cross of electric lights at the inner end of the gangway could clearly be seen the form of Mr. Hurley, engaged in conversation with Mr. Gilman. Mr. Hurley was fairly on board.


CHAPTER XXXVIII


IN THE UNIVERSE

When Audrey, having been put ashore in execution of a plan arranged with those naturally endowed strategists, Aguilar and Jane Foley, arrived at the Hard by way of the sea-wall, Mr. Hurley was still in parley with Mr. Gilman under the Maltese cross of electric lights. From the distance Mr. Gilman had an air of being somewhat intimidated by the Irishman, but as soon as he distinguished the figure of Audrey at the shore end of the gangway his muscles became mysteriously taut, and his voice charged with defiance.

"I have already told you, sir," Audrey heard him say, "there is no such person aboard the yacht. And I most certainly will not allow you to search. You have no right whatever to search, and you know it. You have my word. My name is Gilman. You may have heard of me. I'm chairman of the Board of Foodstuffs, Limited. Gilman, sir. And I shall feel obliged if you will leave my decks."

"Are you sailing to-night?" asked Mr. Hurley placidly.

"What the devil has that got to do with you, sir?" replied Mr. Gilman gloriously.

Audrey, standing behind the detective and unseen by him, observed the gloriousness of Mr. Gilman's demeanour and also Mr. Gilman's desire that she should note the same and appreciate it. She nodded violently several times to Mr. Gilman, to urge him to answer the detective in the affirmative.

"Ye-es, sir. Since you are so confoundedly inquisitive, I am sailing to-night. I shall sail as soon as the tide serves," said Mr. Gilman hurriedly and fiercely, and then glanced again at Audrey for further approval.

"Where for?" Mr. Hurley demanded.

"Where I please, sir," Mr. Gilman snorted. By this time he evidently imagined that he was furious, and was taking pleasure in his fury.

Mr. Hurley, having given a little ironic bow, turned to leave and found himself fronting Audrey, who stiffly ignored his salute. The detective gone, Mr. Gilman walked to and fro, breathing more loudly than ever, and unsuccessfully pretending to a scattered audience, which consisted of the skipper, Mr. Price, Dr. Cromarty, and sundry deck-hands, that he had done nothing in particular and was not a hero. As Audrey approached him he seemed to lay all his glory with humble pride at her feet.

"Well, he brought that on himself!" said Audrey, smiling.

"He did," Mr. Gilman concurred, gazing at the Hard with inimical scorn.

"She can't come--now," said Audrey. "It wouldn't be safe. He means to stay on the Hard till we're gone. He's a very suspicious man."

Mr. Hurley was indeed lingering just beyond the immediate range of the _Ariadne's_ lamps.

"Can't come! What a pity! What a pity!" murmured Mr. Gilman, with an accent that was not a bit sincere. The news was the best he had heard for hours. "But I suppose," he added, "we'd better sail just the same, as I've said we should?" He did not want to run the risk of getting Jane Foley after all.

"Oh! Do!" Audrey exclaimed. "It will be lovely! If it doesn't rain--and even if it does rain! We all like sailing at night.... Are the others in the saloon? I'll run down."

"Mr. Wyatt," the owner sternly accosted the captain. "When can we get off?"

"Oh! About midnight," Audrey answered quickly, before Mr. Wyatt could compose his lips.

The men gazed at each other surprised by this show of technical knowledge in a young widow. By the time Mr. Wyatt had replied, Audrey was descending into the saloon. It was Aguilar who, having ascertained the _Ariadne's_ draught, had made the calculation as to the earliest possible hour of departure.

And in the saloon Musa was, as it were, being enveloped and kept comfortable in the admiring sympathy of Madame Piriac and Miss Thompkins. Mr. Gilman's violin lay across his knees--perhaps he had been tuning it--and the women inclined towards him, one on either side. It was a sight that somewhat annoyed Audrey, who told herself that she considered it silly. Admitting that Musa had genius, she could not understand this soft flattery of genius. She never flattered genius herself, and she did not approve of others doing so. Certainly Musa was now being treated on the yacht as a celebrity of the first order, and Audrey could find no explanation of the steady growth in the height and splendour of his throne. Her arrival dissolved the spectacle. Within one minute, somehow, the saloon was empty and everybody on deck again.

And then, drawing her away, Musa murmured to Audrey in a disconcerting tone that he must speak to her on a matter of urgency, and that in order that he might do so, they must go ashore and walk seawards, far from interruption. She consented, for she was determined to prove to him at close quarters that she was a different creature from the other two. They moved to the gangway amid discreet manifestations from the doctor and the secretary--manifestations directed chiefly to Musa and indicative of his importance as a notability. Audrey was puzzled. For her, Musa was more than ever just Musa, and less than ever a personage.

"I shall not return to the yacht," he said, with an excited bitterness, after they had walked some distance along one of the paths leading past low bushes into the wilderness of the marsh land that bounded the estuary to the south. The sky was still invisible, but there was now a certain amount of diffused light, and the pale path could easily be distinguished amid the sombreness of green. The yacht was hidden behind one of the knolls. No sound could be heard. The breeze had died. That which was around them--on either hand, above, below--was the universe. They knew that they stood still in the universe, and this idea gave their youth the sensation of being very important.

"What is that which you say?" Audrey demanded sharply in French, as Musa had begun in French. She was aware, not for the first time with Musa, of the sudden possibilities of drama in a human being. She could scarcely make out his face, but she knew that he was in a mood for high follies; she knew that danger was gathering; she knew that the shape of the future was immediately to be moulded by her and him, and chiefly by herself. She liked it. The sensation of her importance was reinforced.

"I say I shall never return to the yacht," he repeated.

She thought compassionately:

"Poor foolish thing!"

She was incalculably older and wiser than this irrational boy. She was the essence of wisdom.

She said, with acid detachment:

"But your luggage, your belongings? What an idea to leave in this manner! It is so polite, so sensible!"

"I shall not return."

"Of course," she said, "I do not at all understand why you are going. But what does that matter? You are going." Her indifference was superb. It was so superb that it might have driven some men to destroy her on the spot.

"Yes, you understand! I told you last night," said Musa, overflowing with emotion.

"Oh! You told me? I forget."

"Naturally Monsieur Gilman is rich. I am not rich, though I shall be. But you can't wait," Musa sneered.

"I do not know what you mean," said Audrey.

"Ah!" said Musa. "Once I told you that Tommy and Nick lent me the money with which to live. For me, since then, you have never been the same being. How stupid I was to tell you! You could not comprehend such a thing. Your soul is too low to comprehend it. Permit me to say that I have already repaid Nick. And at the first moment I shall repay Tommy. My position is secure. I have only to wait. But you will not wait. You are a bourgeoise of the most terrible sort. Opulence fascinates you. Mr. Gilman has opulence. He has nothing else. But he has opulence, and for you that is all."

In an instant her indifference, self-control, wisdom vanished. It was a sad exhibition of frailty; but she enjoyed it, she revelled in it, giving play to everything in herself that was barbaric. The marsh around them was probably as it had been before the vikings had sailed into it, and Audrey rushed back with inconceivable speed into the past and became the primeval woman of twenty centuries earlier. Like almost all women she possessed