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

met at the Foas', strolled nonchalantly by, and, perceiving Miss Ingate, described a huge and perfect curve in the air with his glossy silk hat, which had been tipped at the back of his head. Mr. Gilman had come close to Audrey.

"The Foas started down with me," said Mr. Gilman mildly. "But they always meet such crowds of acquaintances at these affairs that they seldom get anywhere. Hortense would not leave the box. She never will."

"Oh! I'm so glad I've seen you," Audrey began excitedly, but with simplicity and compelling sweetness. "You've no idea how sorry I am about this afternoon! I'm frightfully sorry, really! But I was so upset. I didn't know what to do. You know how anxious everybody was about Musa for to-night. He's the pet of the Quarter, and, of course, I belong to the Quarter. At least--I did. I thought he might be ill, or something. However, it was all right in the end. I was looking forward tremendously to that drive. Are you going to forgive me?"

"Please, please!" he eagerly entreated, with a faint blush. "Of course, I quite understand. There's nothing whatever to forgive."

"Oh! but there is," she insisted. "Only you're so good-natured."

She was being magnanimous. She was pretending that she had no mysterious power. But her motive was quite pure. If he was good-natured, so was she. She honestly wanted to recompense him, and to recompense him richly. And she did. Her demeanour was enchanting in its ingenuous flattery. She felt happy despite all her anxieties, for he was living up to her ideal of him. She felt happy, and her resolve to make him happy to the very limit of his dreams was intense. She had a vision of her future existence stretching out in front of her, and there was not a shadow on it. She thought he was going to offer her the box of chocolates, but he did not.

"I rather wanted to ask your advice," she said.

"I wish you would," he replied.

Just then the Foas arrived, and with them Dauphin, the great and fashionable painter and the original discoverer of Musa. And as they all began to speak at once Audrey heard the Oriental musical critic say slowly to an inquiring Miss Ingate:

"It is not a concert talent that he has."

"You hear! You hear!" exclaimed Monsieur Foa to Monsieur Dauphin and Madame Foa, with an impressed air. "You hear what Miquette says. He has not a concert talent. He has everything that you like, but not a concert talent."

Foa seemed to be exhibiting the majestic Oriental, nicknamed Miquette, as the final arbiter, whose word settled problems like a sword, and Miquette seemed to be trying to bear the high role with negligent modesty.

"But, yes, he has! But, yes, he has!" Dauphin protested, sweeping all Miquettes politely away. And then there was an urbane riot of greetings, salutes, bowings, smilings, cooings and compliments.

Dauphin was magnificent, playing the part of the opulent painter _a la mode_ with the most finished skill, the most splendid richness of detail. It was notorious that in the evenings he wore the finest silk shirts in Paris, and his waistcoat was designed to give scope to these shirts. He might have come--he probably had come--straight from the bower of archduchesses; but he produced in Audrey the illusion that archduchesses were a trifle compared to herself. He had not seen her for a long time. Gazing at her, he breathed relief; all his features indicated the sudden, unexpected assuaging of eternal and intense desires. He might have been travelling through the desert for many days and she might have been the oasis--the pool of living water and the palm.

"Now--like that! Just like that!" he said, holding her hand and, as it were, hypnotising her in the pose in which she happened to be. He looked hard at her. "It is unique. Madame, where did you find that dress?"

"Callot," answered Audrey submissively.

"I thought so. Well, Madame, I can wait no more. I will wait no more. It is Dauphin who implores you to come to his studio. To come--it is your duty. Madame Foa, you will bring her. I count on you absolutely to bring her. Even if it is only to be a sketch--the merest hint. But I must do it."

"Oh, yes, Madame," said Madame Foa with all the Italian charm. "Dauphin must paint you. The contrary is unthinkable. My husband and I have often said so."

"To-morrow?" Dauphin suggested.

"Ah! To-morrow, my little Dauphin, I cannot," said Madame Foa.

"Nor I," said Audrey.

"The day after to-morrow, then. I will send my auto. What address? Half-past eleven. That goes? In any case, I insist. Be kind! Be kind!"

Audrey blushed. Half the foyer was staring at the group. She was flattered. She saw herself remarkable. She thought she would look more particularly, with perfect detachment, at the mirror that night, in order to decide whether her appearance was as striking, as original, as distinguished, as Dauphin's attitude implied. There must surely be something in it.

"About that advice--may I call to-morrow?" It was Mr. Gilman's voice at her elbow.

"Advice?" She had forgotten her announced intention of asking his advice. (The subject was to be Zacatecas.) "Oh, yes. How nice of you! Please do call. Come for tea." She was delightful to him, but at the same time there was in her tone a little of the condescending casualness proper to the tone of a girl openly admired by the confidant and painter of princesses and archduchesses, the man who treated all plain women and women past the prime with a desolating indifference.

She thought:

"I am a rotten little snob."

Mr. Gilman gave thanksgivings and departed, explaining that he must return to Madame Piriac.

Foa and Dauphin and the Oriental resumed the argument about Musa's talent and the concert. Miquette would say nothing as to the success of the concert. Foa asserted that the concert was not and would not be a success. Dauphin pooh-poohed and insisted vehemently that the success was unmistakable and increasing. Moreover, he criticised the hall, the choice of programme, the orchestra, the conductor. "I discovered Musa," said he. "I have always said that he is a great concert player, and that he is destined for a great world-success, and to-night I am more sure of it than ever." Whereupon Madame Foa said with much sympathy that she hoped it was so, and Foa said: "You create illusions for yourself, on purpose." Dauphin bore him down with wavy gestures and warm cries of "No! No! No!" And he appealed to Audrey as-a woman incapable of illusions. And Audrey agreed with Dauphin. And while she was agreeing she kept saying to herself: "Why do I pretend to agree with him? He is not sincere. He knows he is not sincere. We all know--except perhaps Winnie Ingate. The concert is a failure. If it were not a failure, Madame Foa would not be so sympathetic. She is more subtle even than Madame Piriac. I shall never be subtle like that. I wish I could be. I wish I was at Moze. I am too Essex for all this. And Winnie here is too comic for words."

An aged and repellent Jew came into sight. He raised Madame Foa's hand to his odious lips and kissed it, and Audrey wondered how Madame Foa could tolerate the formality.

"Well, Monsieur Xavier?"

Xavier shrugged his round shoulders.

"Do not say," said he, in a hoarse voice to the company, "do not say that I have not done my best on this occasion." He lifted his eyes heavenward, and as he did so his passing glance embraced Audrey, and she violently hated him.

"Winnie," said she, "I think we ought to be getting back to our seats."

"But," cried Madame Foa, "we are going round with Dauphin to the artists' room. You do not come with us, Madame Moncreiff?"

"In your place ..." muttered Xavier discouragingly, with a look at Dauphin, and another shrug of the shoulders. "I have been ..."

"Ah!" said Dauphin, in a strange new tone. And then very brightly to Audrey: "Now, as to Saturday, dear lady----"

Xavier engaged in private converse with Foa, and his demeanour to Foa was extremely deferential, whereas he almost ignored the Oriental critic. And Audrey puzzled her head once again to discover why the Foas should exert such influence upon the fate of music in Paris. The enigma was only one among many.


CHAPTER XLIV


END OF THE CONCERT

The first item after the true interval was the Chaconne of Bach, which Musa had played upon a memorable occasion in Frinton. He stood upon the platform utterly alone, against a background of empty chairs, double-basses and drums. He seemed to be unfriended and forlorn. It appeared to Audrey that he was playing with despair. She wished, as she looked from Musa to the deserted places in the body of the hall, that the piece was over, and that the entire concert was over. How could anyone enjoy such an arid maze of sounds? The whole theory of classical composition and its vogue was hollow and ridiculous. People did not like the classics; they could not and they never would. Now a waltz ... after a jolly dinner and wine! ... But the Chaconne! But Bach! But culture! The audience was visibly and audibly restless. For about two hundred years the attempt to force this Chaconne upon the public had been continuous, and it was still boring them. Of course it was! The thing was unnatural.

And she herself was a fool; she was a ninny. And the alleged power of money was an immense fraud. She had thought to perform miracles by means of a banking account. For a moment she had imagined that the miracles had come to pass. But they had not come to pass. The public was too old, too tired, and too wary. It could not thus be tricked into making a reputation. The forces that made reputations were far less amenable than she had fancied. The world was too clever and too experienced for her ingenuous self. Geniuses were not lying about and waiting to be picked up. Musa was not a genius. She had been a simpleton, and the sacred Quarter had been a simpleton. She was rather angry with Musa for not being a genius. And the confidence which he had displayed a few hours earlier was just grotesque conceit! And men and women who were supposed to be friendly human hearts were not so in truth. They were merely indifferent and callous spectators. The Foas, for example, were chattering in their box, apparently oblivious of the tragedy that was enacting under their eyes. But then, it was perhaps not a tragedy; it was perhaps a farce.

And what would these self-absorbed spectators of existence say and do, if and when it was known that she was no longer a young woman of enormous wealth? Would Dauphin have sought to compel her to enter his studio had he been aware that her fortune had gone tip in smoke? She was not in a real world. She was in a world of shams. And she was a sham in the world of shams. She wanted to be back again in the honest realities of Moze, where in the churchyard she could see the tombs of her great-great-grandfathers. Only one extraneous interest drew her thoughts away from Moze. That interest was Mr. Gilman. Mr. Gilman was her conquest and her slave. She adored him