The Lion's Share. Arnold Bennett

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      “No!”

      “Yes, he does. He’s given me a week, you know, before. Now it’s a month.”

      Silence fell.

      Miss Ingate looked round at the shabby study, with its guns, cigar-boxes, prints, books neither old nor new, japanned boxes of documents, and general litter scattered over the voluted walnut furniture. Her own house was old-fashioned, and she realised it was old-fashioned; but when she came into Flank Hall, and particularly into Mr. Moze’s study, she felt as if she was stepping backwards into history—and this in spite of the fact that nothing in the place was really ancient, save the ceilings and the woodwork round the windows. It was Mr. Moze’s habit of mind that dominated and transmogrified the whole interior, giving it the quality of a mausoleum. The suffragette procession in which Miss Ingate had musically and discreetly taken part seemed to her as she stood in Mr. Moze’s changeless lair to be a phantasm. Then she looked at the young captive animal and perceived that two centuries may coincide on the same carpet and that time is merely a convention.

      “What you been doing?” she questioned, with delicacy.

      “I took a strange man by the hand,” said Audrey, choosing her words queerly, as she sometimes did, to produce a dramatic effect.

      “This morning?”

      “Yes. Eight o’clock.”

      “What? Is there a strange man in the village?”

      “You don’t mean to say you haven’t seen the yacht!”

      “Yacht?” Miss Ingate showed some excitement.

      “Come and look, Winnie,” said Audrey, who occasionally thought fit to address Miss Ingate in the manner of the elder generation. She drew Miss Ingate to the window.

      Between the brown curtains Mozewater, the broad, shallow estuary of the Moze, was spread out glittering in the sunshine which could not get into the chilly room. The tide was nearly at full, and the estuary looked like a mighty harbour for great ships; but in six hours it would be reduced to a narrow stream winding through mud flats of marvellous ochres, greens, and pinks. In the hazy distance a fitful white flash showed where ocean waves were breaking on a sand-bank. And in the foreground, against a disused Hard that was a couple of hundred yards lower down than the village Hard, a large white yacht was moored, probably the largest yacht that had ever threaded that ticklish navigation. She was a shallow-draft barge-yacht, rigged like a Thames barge, and her whiteness and the glint of her brass, and the flicker of her ensign at the stern were dazzling. Blue figures ran busily about on her, and a white-and-blue person in a peaked cap stood importantly at the wheel.

      “She was on the mud last night,” said Audrey eagerly, “opposite the Flank buoy, and she came up this morning at half-flood. I think they made fast at Lousey Hard, because they couldn’t get any farther without waiting. They have a motor, and it must be their first trip this season. I was on the dyke. I wasn’t even looking at them, but they called me, so I had to go. They only wanted to know if Lousey Hard was private. Of course I told them it wasn’t. It was a very middle-aged man spoke to me. He must be the owner. As soon as they were tied up he wanted to jump ashore. It was rather awkward, and I just held out my hand to help him. Father saw me from here. I might have known he would.”

      “Why! It’s going off!” exclaimed Miss Ingate.

      The yacht swung slowly round, held by her stern to the Hard. Then the last hawser was cast off, and she floated away on the first of the ebb; and as she moved, her main-sail, unbrailed, spread itself out and became a vast pinion. Like a dream of happiness she lessened and faded, and Lousey Hard was as lonely and forlorn as ever.

      “But didn’t you explain to your father?” Miss Ingate demanded of Audrey.

      “Of course I did. But he wouldn’t listen. He never does. I might just as well have explained to the hall-clock. He raged. I think he enjoys losing his temper. He said I oughtn’t to have been there at all, and it was just like me, and he couldn’t understand it in a daughter of his, and it would be a great shock to my poor mother, and he’d talked enough—he should now proceed to action. All the usual things. He actually asked me who ‘the man’ was.”

      “And who was it?”

      “How can I tell? For goodness’ sake don’t go imitating father, Winnie! … Rather a dull man, I should say. Rather like father, only not so old. He had a beautiful necktie; I think it must have been made out of a strip of Joseph’s coat.”

      Miss Ingate giggled at a high pitch, and Audrey responsively smiled.

      “Oh dear! Oh dear!” murmured Miss Ingate when her giggling was exhausted. “How queer it is that a girl like you can’t keep your father in a good temper!”

      “Father hates me to say funny things. If I say anything funny he turns as black as ink—and he takes care to keep gloomy all the rest of the day, too. He never laughs. Mother laughs now and then, but I never heard father laugh. Oh yes, I did. He laughed when the cat fell out of the bathroom window on to the lawn-roller. He went quite red in the face with laughing. … I say, Miss Ingate, do you think father’s mad?”

      “I shouldn’t think he’s what you call mad,” replied Miss Ingate judicially, with admirable sang-froid. “I’ve known so many peculiar people in my time. And you must remember, Audrey, this is a peculiar part of the world.”

      “Well, I believe he’s mad, anyway. I believe he’s got men on the brain, especially young men. He’s growing worse. Yesterday he told me I musn’t have the punt out on Mozewater this season unless he’s with me. Fancy skiffing about with father! He says I’m too old for that now. So there you are. The older I get the less I’m allowed to do. I can’t go a walk, unless it’s an errand. The pedal is off my bike, and father is much too cunning to have it repaired. I can’t boat. I’m never given any money. He grumbles frightfully if I want any clothes, so I never want any. That’s my latest dodge. I’ve read every book in the house except the silly liturgical and legal things he’s always having from the London Library—and I’ve read even some of those. He won’t buy any new music. Golf! Ye gods, Winnie, you should hear him talk about ladies and golf!”

      “I have,” said Miss Ingate. “But it doesn’t ruffle me, because I don’t play.”

      “But he plays with girls, and young girls, too, all the same. He’s been caught in the act. Ethel told me. He little thinks I know. He’d let me play if he could be the only man on the course. He’s mad about me and men. He never looks at me without thinking of all the boys in the district.”

      “But he’s really very fond of you, Audrey.”

      “Yes, I know,” said Audrey. “He ought to keep me in the china cupboard.”

      “Well, it’s a great problem.”

      “He’s invented a beautiful new trick for keeping me in when he’s out. I have to copy his beastly Society letters for him.”

      “I see he’s got a new box,” observed Miss Ingate, glancing into the open cupboard in which stood the safe. On the top of the safe were two japanned boxes, each lettered in white: “The National Reformation Society.” The uppermost box was freshly unpacked and shone with all the intact pride of virginity.

      “You should СКАЧАТЬ