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

His mien pleased her; his wounding words, each of which she clearly remembered, were a source of delight. She had never admired him so much. She had now no resentment against him. He had proved that her hopes of him were, after all, well justified. He would succeed. Only some silly and improbable accident could stop him from succeeding. She was not nervous about his success. She was nervous for him. She became him. She tuned his fiddle, gathered herself together and walked on to the platform, bowed to the dim multitudinous heads in front of him, looked at the conductor, waited for the opening bars, drew his bow across his strings at precisely the correct second, and heard the resulting sound under her ear. And all that before the conductor had appeared! Such were the manifestations of her purely personal desire for the achievement of a neat, clean job.

"See!" said Miss Ingate. "Mr. Gilman is bowing to us. He does look splendid, and isn't Madame Piriac lovely? I must say I don't care so much for these French husbands."

Audrey had to turn and join Miss Ingate in acknowledging the elaborate bow. At any rate, then, Mr. Gilman had not been utterly estranged by her capricious abandonment of him. And why should he be? He was a man of sense; he would understand perfectly when she explained to-morrow. Further, he was her slave. She was sure of him. She would apologise to him. She would richly recompense him by smiles and honey and charming persuasive simplicity. And he would see that with all her innocent and modest ingenuousness she was capable of acting seriously and effectively in a sudden crisis. She would rise higher in his esteem. As for the foreseen proposal, well----

A sporadic clapping wakened her out of those reflections. The conductor was approaching his desk. The orchestra applauded him. He tapped the desk and raised his stick. And there was a loud noise, the thumping of her heart. The concert had begun. Musa was still invisible--what was he doing at that instant, somewhere behind?--but the concert had begun. Stars do not take part in the first item of an orchestral concert. There is a convention that they shall be preluded; and Musa was preluded by the overture to _Die Meistersinger_. In the soft second section of the overture, a most noticeable babble came from a stage-box. "Oh! It's the Foas," muttered Miss Ingate. "What a lot of people are fussing around them!" "Hsh!" frowned Audrey, outraged by the interruption. Madame Foa took about fifty bars in which to settle herself, and Monsieur Foa chattered to people behind him as freely as if he had been in a cafe Nobody seemed to mind.

The overture was applauded, but Madame Foa, instead of applauding, leaned gracefully back, smiling, and waved somebody to the seat beside her.

Violent demonstrations from the gallery!... He was there, tripping down the stepped pathway between the drums. The demonstrations grew general. The orchestra applauded after its own fashion. He reached the conductor, smiled at the conductor and bowed very admirably. He seemed to be absolutely at his ease. Then there was a delay. The conductor's scores had got themselves mixed up. It was dreadful. It was enough to make a woman shriek.

"I say!" said a voice in Audrey's ear. She turned as if shot. Mr. Cowl's round face was close to hers. "I suppose you saw the _New York Herald_ this morning."

"No," answered Audrey impatiently.

The orchestra started the Beethoven violin Concerto. But Mr. Cowl kept his course.

"Didn't you?" he said. "About the Zacatecas Oil Corporation? It's under a receivership. It's gone smash. I've had an idea for some time it would. All due to these Mexican revolutions. I thought you might like to know."

Musa's bow hung firmly over the strings.


CHAPTER XLII


INTERVAL

The most sinister feature of entertainments organised by Xavier was the intervals. Xavier laid stress on intervals; they gave repose, and in many cases they saved money. All Paris managers are inclined to give to the interval the importance of a star turn, and Xavier in this respect surpassed his rivals, though he perhaps regarded his cloak-rooms, which were organised to cause the largest possible amount of inconvenience to the largest possible number of people, as his surest financial buttress. Xavier could or would never see the close resemblance of intervals to wet blankets, extinguishers, palls and hostile critics. The Allegro movement of the Concerto was a real success, and the audience as a whole would have applauded even more if the gallery in particular had not applauded so much. The second or Larghetto movement was also a success, but to a less degree. As for the third and last movement, it put the gallery into an ecstasy while leaving the floor in possession of full critical faculties. Musa retired and had to return, and when he returned the floor good-humouredly joined the vociferous gallery in laudations, and he had to return again. Then the interminable interval. Silence! Murmurings! Silence! Creepings towards exits! And in many, very many hearts the secret trouble question: "Why are we here? What have we come for? What is all this pother about art and genius? Honestly, shall we not be glad and relieved when the solemn old thing is over?"... And the desolating, cynical indifference of the conductor and the orchestra! Often there is a clearer vision of the truth during the intervals of a classical concert than on a deathbed.

Audrey was extremely depressed in the interval after the Beethoven Concerto and before the Lalo. But she was not depressed by the news of the accident to the Zacatecas Oil Corporation in which was the major part of her wealth. The tidings had stunned rather than injured that part of her which was capable of being affected by finance. She had not felt the blow. Moreover she was protected by the knowledge that she had thousands of pounds in hand and also the Moze property intact, and further she was already reconsidering her newly-acquired respect for money. No! What depressed her was a doubt as to the genius of Musa. In the long dreadful pause it seemed impossible that he should have genius. The entire concert presented itself as a grotesque farce, of which she as its creator ought to be ashamed. She was ready to kill Xavier or his responsible representative.

Then she saw the tall and calm Rosamund, with her grey hair and black attire and her subduing self-complacency, making a way between the rows of stalls towards her.

"I wanted to see you," said Rosamund, after the formal greetings. "Very much." Her voice was as kind and as unrelenting as the grave.

At this point Miss Ingate ought to have yielded her seat to the terrific Rosamund, but she failed to do so, doubtless by inadvertence.

"Will you come into the foyer for a moment?" Rosamund inflexibly suggested.

"Isn't the interval nearly over?" said Audrey.

"Oh, no!"

And as a fact there was not the slightest sign of the interval being nearly over. Audrey obediently rose. But the invitation had been so conspicuously addressed to herself that Miss Ingate, gathering her wits, remained in her chair.

The foyer--decorated in the Cracovian taste--was dotted with cigarette smokers and with those who had fled from the interval. Rosamund did not sit down; she did not try for seclusion in a corner. She stepped well into the foyer, and then stood still, and absently lighted a cigarette, omitting to offer a cigarette to Audrey. Rosamund's air of a deaconess made the cigarette extremely remarkable.

"I wanted to tell you about Jane Foley," began Rosamund quietly. "Have you heard?"

"No! What?"

"Of course you haven't. I alone knew. She has run away to England."

"Run away! But she'll be caught!"

"She may be. But that is not all. She has run away to get married. She dared not tell me. She wrote me. She put the letter in the manuscript of the last chapter but one of her book, which I am revising for her. She will almost certainly be caught if she tries to get married in her own name. Therefore she will get married in a false name. All this, however, is not what I wanted to tell you about."

"Then you shouldn't have begun to talk about it," said Audrey suddenly. "Did you expect me to let you leave it in the middle! Jane getting married! I do think she might have told me.... What next, I wonder! I suppose you've--er--lost her now?"

"Not entirely, I believe," said Rosamund. "Certainly not entirely. But of course I could never trust her again. This is the worst blow I have ever had. She says--but why go into that? Well, she does say she will work as hard as ever, nearly; and that her future husband strongly supports us--and so on." Rosamund smiled with complete detachment.

"And who's he?" Audrey demanded.

"His name is Aguilar," said Rosamund. "So she says."

"Aguilar?"

"Yes. I gather--I say I gather--that he belongs to the industrial class. But of course that is precisely the class that Jane springs from. Odd! Is it not? Heredity, I presume." She raised her shoulders.

Audrey said nothing. She was too shocked to speak--not pained or outraged, but simply shaken. What in the name of Juno could Jane see in Aguilar? Jane, to whom every man was the hereditary enemy! Aguilar, who had no use for either man or woman! Aguilar, a man without a Christian name, one of those men in connection with whom a Christian name is impossibly ridiculous. How should she, Audrey, address Aguilar in future? Would he have to be asked to tea? These vital questions naturally transcended all others in Audrey's mind.... Still (she veered round), it was perhaps after all just the union that might have been expected.

"And now," said Rosamund at length, "I have a question to put to you."

"Well?"

"I don't want a definite answer here and now." She looked round disdainfully at the foyer. "But I do want to set your mind on the right track at the earliest possible moment--before any accidents occur." She smiled satirically. "You see how frank I am with you. I'll be more frank still, and tell you that I came to this concert to-night specially to see you."

"Did you?" Audrey murmured. "Well!"

The older woman looked down upon her from a superior height. Her eyes were those of an autocrat. It was quite possible to see in them the born leader who had dominated thousands of women and played a drawn game with the British Government itself. But Audrey, at the very moment when she was feeling the overbearing magic of that gaze, happened to remember the scene in Madame Piriac's automobile on the night of her first arrival in Paris, when she herself was asleep and Rosamund, not knowing that she was asleep, had been solemnly addressing her. Miss Ingate's often repeated account of the scene always made her laugh, and the memory of it now caused her to smile faintly.

"I want to suggest to you," Rosamund proceeded, "that you begin to work for me."

"For the suffrage--or for you?"

"It is the same thing," said Rosamund coldly. "I am the suffrage. Without me the cause would not have existed to-day."

"Well," said Audrey, "of course I will. I have done a bit already, you know."

"Yes, I know," Rosamund admitted. "You did very well at the Blue City. That's why I'm approaching you. That's why I've chosen you."

"Chosen me for what?"

"You know