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

order to make sure that it was there. Once she had tasted absinthe. She had had to take the same precaution then.

"Stop! I entreat thee!" said Musa suddenly, just as, all arrayed in her finery, she was opening the door for the walk.

"What is it?"

He kissed her, and with his lips almost on hers he murmured:

"Thou shalt not go out without avowing. And if thou art angry--well, I adore thy anger. The concerts were ... thy enterprise? I guessed well?"

"You see," she replied like a shot, "you weren't sure, although you pretended you were."

In the Rue de Rivoli, and in the resplendent Champs Elysees they passed column after column of entertainment posters. But the name of Musa had been mysteriously removed from all of them.


CHAPTER XLVI


AN EPILOGUE

Audrey was walking along Piccadilly when she overtook Miss Ingate, who had been arrested by a shop window, the window of one of the shops recently included in the vast edifice of the Hotel Majestic.

Miss Ingate gave a little squeal of surprise. The two kissed very heartily in the street, which was full of spring and of the posters of evening papers bearing melodramatic tidings of the latest nocturnal development of the terrible suffragette campaign.

"You said eleven, Audrey. It isn't eleven yet."

"Well, I'm behind time. I meant to be all spruced up and receive you in state at the hotel. But the boat was three hours late at Harwich. I jumped into a cab at Liverpool Street, but I got out at Piccadilly Circus because the streets looked so fine and I felt I really must walk a bit."

"And where's your husband?"

"He's at Liverpool Street trying to look after the luggage. He lost some of it at Hamburg. He likes looking after luggage, so I just left him at it."

Miss Ingate's lower lip dropped at the corners.

"You've had a tiff."

"Winnie, we haven't."

"Did you go to all his concerts?"

"All. I heard all his practising, and I sat in the stalls at all his concerts. Quite contrary to my principles, of course. But, Winnie, it's very queer, I _wanted_ to do it. So naturally I did it. We've never been apart--until now."

"And it's not exaggerated, what you've written me about his success?"

"Not a bit. I've been most careful not to exaggerate. In fact, I've tried to be gloomy. No use, however! It was a triumph.... And how's all this business?" Audrey demanded, in a new key, indicating an orange-tinted newspaper bill that was being flaunted in front of her.

"Oh! I believe it's dreadful. Of course, you know Rosamund's in prison. But they'll have to let her out soon. Jane Foley--she still calls herself Foley--hasn't been caught. And that's funny. I doubled my subscription. We had to, you see. But that's all I've done. They don't have processions and things now, and barrel organs are _quite_ out of fashion. What with that, and my rheumatism!... I used to think I should live to vote myself. I feel I shan't now. So I've gone back into water-colours. They're very soothing, if you let the paper dry after each wash and don't take them seriously.... Now, I'm a very common-sense woman, Audrey, as you must have noticed, and I'm not subject to fancies. Will you just look at the girl on the left hand in this window here, and tell me whether I'm dreaming or not?"

Miss Ingate indicated the shop window which had arrested her. The establishment was that of a hair specialist, and the window was mainly occupied by two girls who sat in arm-chairs with their backs to the glass, and all their magnificent hair spread out at length over the backs of the chairs for the inspection of the public; the implication being that the magnificent hair was due to the specific of the hair specialist. Passers-by continually stopped to gaze at the spectacle, but they never stopped long, because the spectacle was monotonous.

"Well, what about her?" said Audrey, staring.

"Isn't it Lady Southminster?"

"Good heavens!" Audrey's mind went back to the Channel packet and the rain squall and the scenes on the Paris train. "So it is! Whatever can have happened to her? Let's go in."

And in they went, Audrey leading, and demanding at once a bottle of the specific; Audrey had scarcely spoken when the left-hand girl in the window, who, of course, from her vantage had a full view of the shop, screamed lightly and jumped down from the window.

"Don't give me away!" she whispered appealingly in Audrey's ear. The next moment, not heeding the excitement of the shop manager, she had drawn Audrey and Miss Ingate through another door which led into the entrance-hall of the Majestic Hotel. The shop was thus contrived to catch two publics at once.

"If they knew I was Lady Southminster in there," said Lady Southminster in a feverish murmur--she seemed not averse to the sensation caused by her hair in the twilight of the hotel--"I expect I should lose my place, and I don't want to lose it. _He'll_ be coming by presently, and he'll see me, and it'll be a lesson to him. We're always together. Race meetings, dances, golf, restaurants, bridge. Twenty-four hours every day. He won't lose sight of me. He's that fond of me, you know. I couldn't stand it. I'd as lief be in prison--only I'm that fond of him, you know. But I was so homesick, and I felt if I didn't have a change I should burst. This is Constantinopoulos's old shop, you know, where I used to make cigarettes in the window. He's dead, Constantinopoulos is. I don't know what _he'd_ have said to hair restorers. I asked for the place, and I showed 'em my hair, and I got it. And me sitting there--it's quite like old times. Only before, you know, I used to have my face to the street. I don't know which I like best. But, anyhow, you can see my profile from the side window. And _he_ will. He always looks at that sort of thing. He'll be furious. But it will do him no end of good. Well, good-bye. But come back in and buy a bottle, or I shall be let in for a shindy. In fact, you might buy two bottles."

"So that's love!" said Audrey when the transaction was over and they were in the entrance-hall again.

"No," said Miss Ingate. "That's marriage. And don't you forget it.... Hallo, Tommy!"

"You'd better not let Mr. Gilman hear me called Tommy in this hotel," laughed Miss Thompkins, who was attired with an unusual richness, as she advanced towards Miss Ingate and Audrey. "And what are you doing here?" she questioned Audrey.

"I'm staying here," said Audrey. "But I've only just arrived. I'm advance agent for my husband. How are you? And what are _you_ doing here? I thought you hated London."

"I came the day before yesterday," Tommy replied. "And I'm very fit. You see, Mr. Gilman preferred us to be married in London. And I'd no objection. So here I am. The wedding's to-morrow. You aren't very startled, are you? Had you heard?"

"Well," said Audrey, "not what you'd call 'heard.' But I'd a sort of a kind of a--"

"You come right over here, young woman."

"But I want to get my number."

"You come right over here right now," Tommy insisted. And in another corner of the entrance-hall she spoke thus, and there was both seriousness and fun in her voice: "Don't you run away with the idea that I'm taking your leavings, young woman. Because I'm not. We all knew you'd lost your head about Musa, and it was quite right of you. But you never had a chance with Ernest, though you thought you had, after I'd met him. Admit I'm much better suited for him than you'd have been. I'd only one difficulty, and that was the nice boy Price, who wanted to drown himself for my beautiful freckled face. That's all. Now you can go and get your number."

The incident might not have ended there had not Madame Piriac appeared in the entrance-hall out of the interior of the hotel.

"He exacted my coming," said Madame Piriac privately to Audrey. "You know how he is strange. He asks for a quiet wedding, but at the same time it must be all that is most correct. There are things, he says, which demand a woman.... I know four times nothing of the English etiquette. I have abandoned my husband. And here I am. _Voila_! Listen. She has great skill with him, _cette Tommy_. Nevertheless, I have the intention to counsel her about her complexion. Impossible to keep any man with a complexion like hers!"

They saw Mr. Gilman himself enter the hotel. He was very nervous and very important. As soon as he caught sight of Miss Thompkins he said to the door-keeper:

"Tell my chauffeur to wait."

He was punctiliously attentive to Miss Thompkins, and held her hand for two seconds after he had practically finished with it.

"Are you ready, dear?" he said. "You'll be sorry to hear that my liver is all wrong again. I knew it was because I slept so heavily."

These words were distinctly heard by Audrey herself.

"I think I'll slip upstairs now," she murmured to Madame Piriac. And vanished, before Mr. Gilman had observed her presence.

She thought:

"How he has aged!"

Scarcely ten minutes later, when Audrey was upstairs in her sitting-room, waiting idly for the luggage and her husband to arrive, and thinking upon the case of Lady Southminster, the telephone bell rang out startlingly.

"Mr. Shinner to see you."

"Mr. Shinner? Oh! Mr. Shinner. Send him up, please."

This Mr. Shinner was the concert agent with connections in Paris whom Audrey had first consulted in the enterprise of launching Musa upon the French public. He was a large, dark man, black moustached and bearded, with heavy limbs and features, and an opaque, pimpled skin. In spite of these characteristics, he entered the room soft-footed as a fairy, ingratiating as a dog aware of his own iniquity, reassuring as applause.

"Well, Mr. Shinner. But how did you know we were here? As a matter of fact we aren't here. My husband has not arrived yet."

"Madam," said Mr. Shinner, "I happened to hear that you had telegraphed for rooms, and as I was in the neighbourhood I thought I would venture to call."

"But who told you we had telegraphed for rooms?"

"The manager is a good friend of mine, and as you are now famous----" Ah! I have heard all about the German tour. I mean I have read about it. I subscribe to the German musical papers. One must, in my profession. Also I have had direct news from my correspondents in Germany. It was a triumph there, was it not?"

"Yes," said Audrey. "After Dusseldorf. My husband did not make much money----"

"That will not trouble you," Mr. Shinner smiled easily.

"But somebody did--the agents did."

"Perhaps not so much as you think, madam, if I may say so. Perhaps not so much as you think. And we must all live--unfortunately. Has your husband made any arrangements yet for London or for a provincial tour? I have reason to think that the season will be particularly brilliant. And I can now offer advantages----"

"But, Mr. Shinner, when I last saw you, and it isn't so very long ago, you told