The Lion's Share. Arnold Bennett

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      Then it was that Miss Ingate, who since Charing Cross had been a little excited by a glimpsed newspaper contents-bill indicating suffragette riots that morning, perceived, through the open door of the cabin, a most beautiful and most elegant girl, attired impeccably in that ritualistic garb of travel which the truly cosmopolitan wear on combined rail-and-ocean journeys and on no other occasions. It was at once apparent that the celestial creature had put on that special hat, that special veil, that special cloak, and those special gloves because she was deeply aware of what was correct, and that she would not put them on again until destiny took her again across the sea, and that if destiny never did take her again across the sea never again would she show herself in the vestments, whose correctness was only equalled by their expensiveness.

      The young woman, however, took no thought of her impressive clothes. She was existing upon quite another plane. Miss Ingate, preoccupied by the wrongs and perils of her sex, and momentarily softened out of her sardonic irony, suspected that they might be in the presence of a victim of oppression or neglect. The victim lay Half-prone upon the hard wooden seat against the ship’s rail. Her dark eyes opened piteously at times, and her exquisite profile, surmounted by the priceless hat all askew, made a silhouette now against the sea and now against the distant white cliffs of Albion, according to the fearful heaving of the ship. Spray occasionally dashed over her. She heeded it not. A few feet farther off she would have been sheltered by a weather-awning, but, clinging fiercely to the rail, she would not move.

      Then a sharp squall of rain broke, but she entirely ignored the rain.

      The next moment Miss Ingate and Audrey, rushing forth, had gently seized her and drawn her into their cabin. They might have succoured other martyrs to the modern passion for moving about, for there were many; but they chose this particular martyr because she was so wondrously dressed, and also perhaps a little because she was so young. As she lay on the cabin sofa she looked still younger; she looked a child. Yet when Miss Ingate removed her gloves in order to rub those chill, fragile, and miraculously manicured hands, a wedding ring was revealed. The wedding ring rendered her intensely romantic in the eyes of Audrey and Miss Ingate, who both thought, in private:

      “She must be the wife of one of those lords!”

      Every detail of her raiment, as she was put at her ease, showed her to be clothed in precisely the manner which Audrey and Miss Ingate thought peeresses always were clothed. Hence, being English, they mingled respect with their solacing pity. Nevertheless, their respect was tempered by a peculiar pride, for both of them, in taking lemonade on the Pullman, had taken therewith a certain preventive or remedy which made them loftily indifferent to the heaving of ships and the eccentricities of the sea. The specific had done all that was claimed for it—which was a great deal—so much so that they felt themselves superwomen among a cargo of flaccid and feeble sub-females. And they grew charmingly conceited.

      “Am I in my cabin?” murmured the martyr, about a quarter of an hour after Miss Ingate, having obtained soda water, had administered to her a dose of the miraculous specific.

      Her delicious cheeks were now a delicate crimson. But they had been of a delicate crimson throughout.

      “No,” said Audrey. “You’re in ours. Which is yours?”

      “It’s on the other side of the ship, then. I came out for a little air. But I couldn’t get back. I’d just as lief have died as shift from that seat out there by the railings.”

      Something in the accent, something in those fine English words “lief” and “shift,” destroyed in the minds of Audrey and Miss Ingate the agreeable notion that they had a peeress on their hands.

      “Is your husband on board?” asked Audrey.

      “He just is,” was the answer. “He’s in our cabin.”

      “Shall I fetch him?” Miss Ingate suggested. The corners of her lips had begun to fall once more.

      “Will you?” said the young woman. “It’s Lord Southminster. I’m Lady Southminster.”

      The two saviours were thrilled. Each felt that she had misinterpreted the accent, and that probably peeresses did habitually use such words as “lief” and “shift.” The corners of Miss Ingate’s lips rose to their proper position.

      “I’ll look for the number on the cabin list,” said she hastily, and went forth with trembling to summon the peer.

      As Audrey, alone in the cabin with Lady Southminster, bent curiously over the prostrate form, Lady Southminster exclaimed with an air of childlike admiration:

      “You’re real ladies, you are!”

      And Audrey felt old and experienced. She decided that Lady Southminster could not be more than seventeen, and it seemed to be about half a century since Audrey was seventeen.

      “He can’t come,” announced Miss Ingate breathlessly, returning to the cabin, and supporting herself against the door as the solid teak sank under her feet. “Oh yes! He’s there all right. It was Number 12. I’ve seen him. I told him, but I don’t think he heard me—to understand, that is. If you ask me, he couldn’t come if forty wives sent for him.”

      “Oh, couldn’t he!” observed Lady Southminster, sitting up. “Couldn’t he!”

      When the boat was within ten minutes of France, the remedy had had such an effect upon her that she could walk about. Accompanied by Audrey she managed to work her way round the cabin-deck to No. 12. It was empty, save for hand-luggage! The two girls searched, as well as they could, the whole crowded ship for Lord Southminster, and found him not. Lady Southminster neither fainted nor wept. She merely said:

      “Oh! All right! If that’s it. … !”

      Hand-luggage was being collected. But Lady Southminster would not collect hers, nor allow it to be collected. She agreed with Miss Ingate and Audrey that her husband must ultimately reappear either on the quay or in the train. While they were all standing huddled together in the throng waiting for the gangway to put ashore, she said in a low casual tone, à propos of nothing:

      “I only married him the day before yesterday. I don’t know whether you know, but I used to make cigarettes in Constantinopoulos’s window in Piccadilly. I don’t see why I should be ashamed of it, d’you?”

      “Certainly not,” said Miss Ingate. “But it is rather romantic, isn’t it, Audrey?”

      Despite the terrific interest of the adventure of the cigarette girl, disappointment began immediately after landing. This France, of which Audrey had heard so much and dreamed so much, was a very ramshackle and untidy and one-horse affair. The custom-house was rather like a battlefield without any rules of warfare; the scene in the refreshment-room was rather like a sack after a battle; the station was a desert with odd files of people here and there; the platforms were ridiculous, and you wanted a pair of steps to get up into the train. Whatever romance there might be in France had been brought by Audrey in her secret heart and by Lady Southminster.

      Audrey had come to France, and she was going to Paris, solely because of a vision which had been created in her by the letters and by the photographs of Madame Piriac. Although Madame Piriac and she had absolutely no tie of blood, Madame Piriac being the daughter by a first husband of the French widow who became the first Mrs. Moze—and speedily died, Audrey persisted privately in regarding Madame Piriac as a kind of elder sister. She felt a very considerable esteem for Madame Piriac, upon whom she had never СКАЧАТЬ