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

this wondrous and affrighting faculty.

"You are telling a wicked untruth!" she exploded in English. "And what's more, you know you are. You disgust me. You know as well as I do I don't care anything for money--anything. Only you're a horrid, spoilt beast. You think you can upset me, but you can't. I won't have it, either from you or from anybody else. It's a shame, that's what it is. Now you've got to apologise to me. I absolutely insist on it. You aren't going to bully me, even if you think you are. I'll soon show you the sort of girl I am, and you make no mistake! Are you going to apologise or aren't you?"

The indecorous creature was breathing as loudly as Mr. Gilman himself.

"I admit it," said Musa yielding.

"Ah!"

"I demand your pardon. I knew that what I said was not true. I am outside myself. But what would you? It is stronger than I. This existence is terrible, on the yacht. I cannot support it. I shall become mad. I am ruined. My jealousy is intolerable."

"It is!" said Audrey, using French again, more calmly, having returned to the twentieth century.

"It is intolerable to me." Then Musa's voice changed and grew persuasive, rather like a child's. "I cannot live without you. That is the truth. I am an artist, and you are necessary to me and to my career." He lifted his head. "And I can offer you everything that is most brilliant."

"And what about my career?" Audrey questioned inimically.

"Your career?" He seemed at a loss.

"Yes. My career. It has possibly not occurred to you that I also may have a career."

Musa became appealing.

"You understand me," he said. "I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything. It is that which enrages me. You have had experience. You know what men are. You could teach me so much. I hate young girls. I have always hated them. They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent. I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you. It would be absurd. Now as to my career--what I said----"

"Musa," she interrupted him, with a sinister quietude, "I want to tell you something. But you must promise to keep it secret. Will you?"

He assented, impatient.

"It is not possible!" he exclaimed, when she had told him that she belonged to precisely the category of human beings whom he hated and despised.

"Isn't it?" said she. "Now I hope you see how little you know, really, about women." She laughed.

"It is not possible!" he repeated. And then he said with deliberate ingenuousness: "I am so content. I am so happy. I could not have hoped for it. It is overwhelming. I am everything you like of the most idiotic, blind, stupid. But now I am happy. Could I ever have borne that you had loved before I knew you? I doubt if I could have borne it. Your innocence is exquisite. It is intoxicating to me."

"Musa," she remarked dryly; "I wish you would remember that you are in England. People do not talk in that way in England. It simply is not done. And I will not listen to it." Her voice grew a little tender. "Why can we not just be friends?"

"It is folly," said he, with sudden disgust. "And it would kill me."

"Well, then," she replied, receding. "You're entitled to die."

He advanced towards her. She kept him away with a gesture.

"You want me to marry you?" she questioned.

"It is essential," he said, very seriously. "I adore you. I can't do anything because of you. I can't think of anything but you. You are more marvellous than anyone can be. You cannot appreciate what you are to me!"

"And suppose you are nothing to me?"

"But it is necessary that you should love me!"

"Why? I see no necessity. You want me--because you want me. That's all. I can't help it if you're mad. Your attitude is insulting. You have not given one thought to my feelings. And if I said 'yes' to you, you'd marry me whatever my feelings were. You think only of yourself. It is the old attitude. And when I offer you my friendship, you instantly decline it. That shows how horribly French you are. Frenchmen can't understand the idea of friendship between a man and a girl. They sneer at it. It shows what brutes you all are. Why should I marry you? I should have nothing to gain by it. You'll be famous. Well, what do I care? Do you think it would be very amusing for me to be the wife of a famous man that was run after by every silly creature in Paris or London or New York? Not quite! And I don't see myself. You don't like young girls. I don't like young men. They're rude and selfish and conceited. They're like babies."

"The fact is," Musa broke in, "you are in love with the old Gilman."

"He is not old!" cried Audrey. "In some ways he is much less worn out than you are. And supposing I am in love with Mr. Gilman? Does it regard you? Do not be rude. Mr. Gilman is at any rate polite. He is not capricious. He is reliable. You aren't reliable. You want someone upon whom you can rely. How nice for your wife! You play the violin. True. You are a genius. But you cannot always be on the platform. And when you are not on the platform...! Heavens! If I wish to hear you play I can buy a seat and come and hear you and go away again. But your wife, responsible for your career--she will never be free. Her life will be unbearable. What anxiety! Misery, I should say rather! You would have the lion's share of everything. Now for myself I intend to have the lion's share. And why shouldn't I? Isn't it about time some woman had it? You can't have the lion's share if you are not free. I mean to be free. If I marry I shall want a husband that is not a prison.... Thank goodness I've got money.... Without that----!"

"Then," said Musa, "you have no feeling for me."

"Love?" she laughed exasperatingly.

"Yes," he said.

"Not that much!" She snapped her fingers. "But"--in a changed tone--"I _should_ like to like you. I shall be very disgusted if your concerts are not a tremendous success. And they will not be if you don't keep control over yourself and practise properly. And it will be your fault."

"Then, good-bye!" he said, coldly ignoring all her maternal suggestions. And turned away.

"Where are you going to?"

He stopped.

"I do not know. But if I do not deceive myself I have already informed you that in certain circumstances I should not return to the yacht."

"You are worse than a schoolboy."

"It is possible."

"Anyway, _I_ shan't explain on the yacht. I shall tell them that I know nothing about it."

"But no one will believe you," he retorted maliciously over his shoulder. And then he was gone.

She at any rate was no longer surrounded by the largeness of the universe. He might still be, but she was not. She was in mind already on the yacht trying to act a surprise equal to the surprise of the others when Musa failed to reappear. She was very angry with him, not because he had been a rude schoolboy and was entirely impossible as a human being, but because she had allowed herself to leave the yacht with him and would therefore be compelled sooner or later to answer questions about him. She seriously feared that Mr. Gilman might refuse to sail unless she confessed to him her positive knowledge that Musa would not be seen again, and that thus she might have to choose between the failure of her plans for Jane Foley and her own personal discomfiture.

Instead of being in the mighty universe she was struggling amid the tiresome littleness of society on a yacht. She hated yachts for their very cosiness and their quality of keeping people close together who wanted to be far apart. And as she watched the figure of Musa growing fainter she was more than ever impressed by the queerness of men. Women seemed to be so logical, so realistic, so understandable, so calculable, whereas men were enigmas of waywardness and unreason. At just that moment her feet reminded her that they had been wetted by the adventure in the punt, and she said to herself sagely that she must take precautions against a chill.

And then she thought she detected some unusual phenomenon behind a clump of bushes to the right which hid a plank-bridge across a waterway. She would have been frightened if she had not been very excited. And in her excitement she marched straight up to the clump, and found Mr. Hurley in a crouching posture. She started, and recovered.

"I might have known!" she said disdainfully.

"We all make mistakes," said Mr. Hurley defensively. "We all make mistakes. I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I got here, but I couldn't get away quietly enough. And you talked so loud. Ye'll admit I had just cause for suspicion. And being a very agreeable lady ye'll pardon me."

She blushed, and then ceased blushing because it was too dark for him to perceive the blush, and she passed on without a word. When, across the waste, she had come within sight of the yacht again, she heard footsteps behind her, and turned to withstand the detective. But the overtaker was Musa.

"It is necessary that I should return to the yacht," he said savagely. "The thought of you and Monsieur Gilman together, without me.... No! I did not know myself. ... I did not know myself.... It is impossible for me to leave."

She made no answer. They boarded the yacht as though they had been for a stroll. Few could have guessed that they had come back from the universe terribly scathed. Accepting deferential greetings as a right, Musa vanished rapidly to his cabin.

Several hours later Audrey and Mr. Gilman, alone among the passengers, were standing together, both tarpaulined, on the starboard bow, gazing seaward as the yacht cautiously felt her way down Mozewater. Captain Wyatt, and not Mr. Gilman, was at the binnacle. A little rain was falling and the night was rather thick but not impenetrable.

"There's the light!" said Audrey excitedly.

"What sharp eyes you have!" said Mr. Gilman. "I can see it, too." He spoke a word to the skipper, and the skipper spoke, and then the engine went still more slowly.

The yacht approached the Flank buoy dead slow, scarcely stemming the tide. The Moze punt was tied up to the buoy, and Aguilar held a lantern on a boathook, while Jane Foley, very wet, was doing a spell of baling. Aguilar dropped the boathook and, casting off, brought the punt alongside the yacht. The steps were lowered and Jane Foley, with laughing, rain-sprinkled face, climbed up. Aguilar handed her bag which contained nearly everything she possessed on earth. She and Audrey kissed calmly, and Audrey presented Mr. Gilman to a suddenly shy Jane. In the punt Miss Foley had been seen to take an affectionate leave of Aguilar. She now leaned over the rail.

"Good-bye!" she said, with warmth. "Thanks ever so much. It's been splendid. I do hope you won't be too wet.