"But there are no cafes in London."

"There must be some cafes somewhere."

"Only public-houses and restaurants. Of course, we could go to a teashop, but they're all shut up now."

"Well, then, what do people do in London when they want to be jolly? I always thought London was a terrific town."

"They never want to be jolly," said Miss Ingate. "If they feel as if they couldn't help being jolly, then they hire a private room somewhere and draw the blinds down."

With no more words, Audrey seized Miss Ingate by the arm and they walked off, out of the square and into empty and silent streets where highly disciplined gas-lamps kept strict watch over the deportment of colossal houses. In their rapid stroll they seemed to cover miles, but they could not escape from the labyrinth of tremendous and correct houses, which in squares and in terraces and in crescents displayed the everlasting characteristics of comfort, propriety and self-satisfaction. Now and then a wayfarer passed them. Now and then a taxicab sped through the avenues of darkness like a criminal pursued by the impalpable. Now and then a red light flickered in a porch instead of a white one. But there was no surcease from the sinister spell until suddenly they emerged into a long, wide, illumined thoroughfare of shut shops that stretched to infinity on either hand. And a vermilion motor-bus meandered by, and this motor-bus was so sad, so inexpressibly wistful, in the solemn wilderness of the empty artery, that the two women fled from the strange scene and penetrated once more into the gigantic and fearful maze from which they had for an instant stood free. Soon they were quite lost. Till that day and night Audrey had had a notion that Miss Ingate, though bizarre, did indeed know every street in London. The delusion was destroyed.

"Never mind," said Miss Ingate. "If we keep on we're bound to come to a cabstand, and then we can take a taxi and go wherever we like—Regent Street, Piccadilly, anywhere. That's the convenience of London. As soon as you come to a cabstand you're all right."

And then, in the distance, Audrey saw a man apparently tampering with a gate that led to an area.

"Why," she said excitedly, "that's the house we're staying in!"

"Of course it isn't!" said Miss Ingate. "This isn't Paget Gardens, because there are houses on both sides of it and there's a big wall on one side of Paget Gardens. I'm sure we're at least two miles off our beds."

"Well, then, how is it Nick's hairbrushes are on the window-sill there, where she put them when she went to bed? I can see them quite plain. This is the side street—what's-its-name? There's the wall over there at the end. Don't you remember—it's a corner house. This is the side of it."

"I believe you're right," admitted Miss Ingate. "What can that man be doing there?"

They plainly saw him open the gate and disappear down the area steps.

"It's a burglar," said Audrey. "This part must be a regular paradise for burglars."

"More likely a detective," Miss Ingate suggested.

Audrey was thrilled.

"I do hope it is!" she murmured. "How heavenly! Miss Foley said she was being watched, didn't she?"

"What had we better do?" Miss Ingate faltered.

"Do, Winnie?" Audrey whispered, tugging at her arm. "We must run in at the front door and tell Supper-at-nine-o'clock."

They kept cautiously on the far side of the street until the end of it, when they crossed over, nipped into the dark porch of the house and rang the bell.

Susan Foley opened for them. There was no light in the hall.

"Oh, is there?" said Susan Foley, very calmly, when she heard the news. "I think I know who it is. I've seen him hanging round my scullery door before. How did he climb over those railings?"

"He didn't. He opened the gate."

"Well, I locked the gate myself this afternoon. So he's got a key. I shall manage him all right. We'll get the fire-extinguishers. There's about a dozen of 'em, I should think, in this house. They're rather heavy, but we can do it."

Turning on the light in the hall, she immediately lifted from its hook a red-coloured metal cone about twenty inches long and eight inches in diameter at the base. "In case of fire drive in knob by hard blow against floor, and let liquid play on flames," she read the instructions on the side. "I know them things," she said. "It spurts out like a fountain, and it's a rather nasty chemistry sort of a fluid. I shall take one downstairs to the scullery, and the others we'll have upstairs in the room over Miss Nickall's. We can put 'em in the housemaid's lift.... I shall open the scullery door and leave it a bit open like, and when he comes in I'll be ready for him behind the door with this. If he thinks he can come spying after our Janey like this——"

"But——" Miss Ingate began.

"You aren't feeling very well, are ye, miss?" Susan Foley demanded, as she put two extinguishers into the housemaid's lift. "Better go and sit down in the parlour. You won't be wanted. Mrs. Moncreiff and me can manage."

"Yes, we can!" agreed Audrey enthusiastically. "Run along, Winnie."

After about two minutes of hard labour Susan ran away and brought a key to Audrey.

"You sneak out," she said, "and lock the gate on him. I lay he'll want a new suit of clothes when I done with him!"

Ecstatically, joyfully, Audrey took the key and departed. Miss Ingate was sitting in the hall, staring about her like an undecided bird. Audrey crept round into the side street. Nobody was in sight. She could not see over the railings, but she could see between them into the abyss of the area. The man was there. She could distinguish his dark form against the inner wall. With every conspiratorial precaution, she pulled the gate to, inserted the key, and locked it.

A light went up in the scullery window, of which the blind was drawn. The man peeped at the sides of the blind. Then the scullery door was opened. The man started. A piece of wood was thrown out on to the floor of the area, and the door swung outwards. Then the light in the scullery was extinguished. The man waited a few moments. He had noticed that the door was not quite closed, and the interstice irresistibly fascinated him. He approached and put his hand against the door. It yielded. He entered. The next instant there was a bang and a cry, and a strong spray of white liquid appeared, in the middle of which was the man's head. The door slammed and a bolt was shot. The man, spluttering, coughing, and swearing, rubbed his eyes and wiped water from his face with his hands. His hat was on the ground. At first he could not see at all, but presently he felt his way towards the steps and began to climb them. Audrey ran off towards the corner. She could see and hear him shaking the gate and then trying to get a key into it. But as Audrey had left her key in the other side of the lock, he failed in the attempt.

The next thing was that a window opened in the high wall-face of the house and an immense stream of liquid descended full on the man's head. Susan Foley was at the window, but only the nozzle of the extinguisher could be seen. The man tried to climb over the railings; he did not succeed; they had been especially designed to prevent such feats. He ran down the steps. The shower faithfully followed him. In no corner of his hiding did the bountiful spray neglect him. As soon as one supply of liquid slackened another commenced. Sometimes there were two at once. The man ran up the steps again and made another effort to reach the safety of the street. Audrey could restrain herself no more. She came, palpitating with joyous vitality, towards the area gate with the innocent mien of a passer-by.

"Whatever is the matter?" she exclaimed, stopping as if thunderstruck. But in the gloom her eyes were dancing fires. She was elated as she had never been.

The man only coughed.

"You oughtn't to take shower-baths like this in the street," she said, veiling the laughter in her voice. "It's not allowed. But I suppose you're doing it for a bet or something."

The downpour ceased.

"Here, miss," said he, between coughs, "unlock this gate for me. Here's the key."

"I shall do no such thing," Audrey replied. "I believe you're a burglar. I shall fetch a policeman."

And she turned back.

In the house, Miss Ingate was coming slowly down the stairs, a fire-extinguisher in her arms, like a red baby. She had a sardonic smile, but there was diffidence in it, which showed, perhaps, that it was directed within.

"I've saved one," she said, pointing to an extinguisher, "in case there should be a fire in the night."

A little later Susan Foley appeared at the door of the living-room.

"Nine o'clock," she announced calmly. "Supper's ready. We shan't wait for Jane."

When Jane Foley arrived, a reconnaissance proved that the martyrised detective had contrived to get away.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE BLUE CITY

In the following month, on a Saturday afternoon, Audrey, Miss Ingate, and Jane Foley were seated at an open-air cafe in the Blue City.

The Blue City, now no more, was, as may be remembered, Birmingham's reply to the White City of London, and the imitative White City of Manchester. Birmingham, in that year, was not imitative, and, with its chemical knowledge, it had discovered that certain shades of blue would resist the effects of smoke far more successfully than any shade of white. And experience even showed that these shades of blue were improved, made more delicate and romantic, by smoke. The total impression of the show—which it need hardly be said was situated in the polite Edgbaston district—was ethereal, especially when its minarets and towers, all in accordance with the taste of the period, were beheld from a distance. Nor was the exhibition entirely devoted to pleasure. It had a moral object, and that object was to demonstrate the progress of civilisation in our islands. Its official title, indeed, was "The National Progress Exhibition," but the citizens of Birmingham and the vicinity never called it anything but the Blue City.

On that Saturday afternoon a Cabinet Minister historically hostile to the idols of Birmingham was about to address a mass meeting in the Imperial Hall of the Exhibition, which held seven thousand people, in order to prove to Birmingham that the Government of which he was a member had done far more for national progress than any other Government had done for national progress in the same length of time. The presence of the Cabinet Minister accounted for the presence of Jane Foley; the presence of Jane Foley accounted for the presence of Audrey; and the presence of Audrey accounted for the presence of Miss Ingate.

Although she was one of the chief organisers of victory, and perhaps—next to Rosamund and the family trio whose Christian names were three sweet symphonies—the principal asset of the Suffragette Union, Jane Foley had not taken an active part in the Union's arrangements for suitably welcoming the Cabinet Minister; partly because of her lameness, partly because she was writing a book, and partly for secret reasons which it would be unfair to divulge. Nearly at the last moment, however, in consequence of news that all was not well in the Midlands, she had been sent to Birmingham, and, after evading the watch of the police, she had arrived on the previous day in Audrey's motor-car, which at that moment was waiting in the automobile park outside the principal gates of the Blue City.

The motor-car had been chosen as a means of transit for the reason that the railway stations were being watched for notorious suffragettes by members of a police force whose reputations were at stake. Audrey owed her possession of a motor-car to the fact that the Union officials had seemed both startled and grieved when, in response to questions, she admitted that she had no car. It was communicated to her that members of the Union as rich as she reputedly was were expected to own cars for the general good. Audrey thereupon took measures to own a car. Having seen in many newspapers an advertisement in which a firm of middlemen implored the public thus: "Let us run your car for you. Let us take all the worry and responsibility," she interviewed the firm, and by writing out a cheque disembarrassed herself at a stroke of every anxiety incident to defective magnetos, bad petrol, bad rubber, punctures, driving licences, bursts, collisions, damages, and human chauffeurs. She had all the satisfactions of owning a car without any of the cares. One of the evidences of progress in the Blue City was an exhibit of this very firm of middlemen.

From the pale blue tripod table at which sat the three women could be plainly seen the vast Imperial Hall, flanked on one side by the great American Dragon Slide, a side-show loudly demonstrating progress, and on the other by the unique Joy Wheel side-show. At the doorway of the latter a man was bawling proofs of progress through a megaphone.

Immense crowds had been gathering in the Imperial Hall, and the lines of political enthusiasts bound thither were now thinning. The Blue City was full of rumours, as that the Cabinet Minister was too afraid to come, as that he had been smuggled to the hall inside a tea-chest, and as that he had walked openly and unchallenged through the whole Exhibition. It was no rumour, but a sure fact, that two women had been caught hiding on the roof of the Imperial Hall, under natural shelters formed by the beams and boarding supporting the pediment of the eastern facade, and that they were ammunitioned with flags and leaflets and a silk ladder, and had made a hole in the roof exactly over the platform. These two women had been seen in charge of policemen at the Exhibition police-station. It was understood by many that they were the last hope of militancy that afternoon; many others, on the contrary, were convinced that they had been simply a feint.

"Well," said Miss Ingate suddenly, glancing up at the Imperial clock, "I think I shall move outside and sit in the car. I think that'll be the best place for me. I said that night in Paris that I'd get my arm broken, but I've changed my mind about that." She rose.

"Winnie," protested Audrey, "aren't you going to see it out?"

"No," said Miss Ingate.

"Are you afraid?"

"I don't know that I'm afraid. I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street, and it was smashed to pieces. But I don't want to go to prison. Really, I don't want to. If me going to prison would bring the Vote a single year nearer, I should say: 'Let it wait a year.' If me not going to prison meant no Vote for ever and ever, I should say: 'Well, struggle on without the Vote.' I've no objection to other people going to prison, if it suits them, but it wouldn't suit me. I know it wouldn't. So I shall go outside and sit in the car. If you don't come, I shall know what's happened, and you needn't worry about me."

The dame duly departed, her lips and eyes equally ironic about her own prudence and about the rashness of others.

"Let's have some more lemonade—shall we?" said Jane Foley.

"Oh, let's!" agreed Audrey, with rapture. "And more sponge-cake, too! You do look lovely like that!"

"Do I?"

Jane Foley had her profuse hair tightly bound round her head and powdered grey. It was very advisable for her to be disguised, and her bright hair was usually the chief symptom of her in those disturbances which so harassed the police. She now had the appearance of a neat old lady kept miraculously young by a pure and cheerful nature. Audrey, with a plain blue frock and hat which had cost more than Jane Foley would spend on clothes in twelve months, had a face dazzling by its ingenuous excitement and expectation. Her little nose was extraordinarily pert; her forehead superb; and all her gestures had the same vivacious charm as was in her eyes. The white-aproned, streamered girl who took the order for lemonade and sponge-cakes to a covered bar ornamented by advertisements of whisky, determined to adopt a composite of the styles of both the customers on her next ceremonious Sunday. And a large proportion of the other sippers and nibblers and of the endless promenading crowds regarded the pair with pleasure and curiosity, never suspecting that one of them was the most dangerous woman in England.

The new refreshments, which had been delayed by reason of an altercation between the waitress and three extreme youths at a neighbouring table, at last arrived, and were plopped smartly down between Audrey and Miss Foley. Having received half a sovereign from Audrey, the girl returned to the bar for change. "None o' your sauce!" she threw out, as she passed the youths, who had apparently discovered new arguments in support of their case. Audrey was fired by the vigorous independence of the girl against three males.

"I don't care if we are caught!" she murmured low, looking for the future through the pellucid tumbler. She added, however: "But if we are, I shall pay my own fine. You know I promised that to Miss Ingate."

"That's all right, so long as you don't pay mine, my dear," said Jane Foley with an affectionate smile.

"Jenny!" Audrey protested, full of heroine-worship. "How could you think I would ever do such a mean thing!"

There came a dull, vague, voluminous sound from the direction of the Imperial Hall. It lasted for quite a number of seconds.

"He's beginning," said Jane Foley. "I do feel sorry for him."

"Are we to start now?" Audrey asked deferentially.

"Oh, no!" Jane laughed. "The great thing is to let them think everything's all right. And then, when they're getting careless, let go at them full bang with a beautiful surprise. There'll be a chance of getting away like that. I believe there are a hundred and fifty stewards in the meeting, and they'll every one be quite useless."

At intervals a muffled roar issued from the Imperial Hall, despite the fact that the windows were closely shut.

In due time Jane Foley quietly rose from the table, and Audrey did likewise. All around them stretched the imposing blue architecture of the Exhibition, forming vistas that ended dimly either in the smoke of Birmingham or the rustic haze of Worcestershire. And, although the Imperial Hall was crammed, every vista was thickly powdered with pleasure-seekers and probably pleasure-finders. Bands played. Flags waved. Brass glinted. Even the sun feebly shone at intervals through the eternal canopy of soot. It was a great day in the annals of the Blue City and of Liberalism.

And Jane Foley and Audrey turned their backs upon all that, and—Jane concealing her limp as much as possible—sauntered with affected nonchalance towards the precincts of the Joy Wheel enclosure. Audrey was inexpressibly uplifted. She felt as if she had stepped straight into romance. And she was right—she had stepped into the most vivid romance of the modern age, into a world of disguises, flights, pursuits, chicane, inconceivable adventures, ideals, martyrs and conquerors, which only the Renaissance or the twenty-first century could appreciate.

"Lend me that, will you?" said Jane persuasively to the man with the megaphone at the entrance to the enclosure.

He was, quite properly, a very loud man, with a loud thick voice, a loud purple face, and a loud grey suit. To Audrey's astonishment, he smiled and winked, and gave up the megaphone at once.

Audrey paid sixpence at the turnstile, admittance for two persons, and they were within the temple, which had a roof like an umbrella over the central, revolving portion of it, but which was somewhat open to the skies around the rim. There were two concentric enclosing walls, the inner one was unscalable, and the outer one about five feet six inches high. A second loud man was calling out: "Couples please. Ladies and gentlemen. Couples if you please." Obediently, numbers of the crowd disposed themselves in pairs in the attitudes of close affection on the circling floor which had just come to rest, while the remainder of the numerous gathering gazed upon them with sarcastic ecstasy. Then the wheel began slowly to turn, and girls to shriek in the plenitude of happiness. And progress was proved geometrically.

Jane, bearing the megaphone, slipped by an aperture into the space between the two walls, and Audrey followed. Nobody gave attention to them except the second loud man, who winked the wink of knowledge. The fact was that both the loud men, being unalterable Tories, had been very willing to connive at Jane Foley's scheme for the affliction of a Radical Minister.

The two girls over the wall had an excellent and appetising view of the upper part of the side of the Imperial Hall, and of its high windows, the nearest of which was scarcely thirty feet away.

"Hold this, will you?" said Jane, handing the megaphone to Audrey.

Jane drew from its concealment in her dress a small piece of iron to which was attached a coloured streamer bearing certain words. She threw, with a strong movement of the left arm, because she was left-handed. She had practised throwing; throwing was one of her several specialties. The bit of iron, trailing its motto like a comet its tail, flew across space and plumped into the window with a pleasing crash and disappeared, having triumphed over uncounted police on the outskirts and a hundred and fifty stewards within. A roar from the interior of the hall supervened, and varied cries.

"Give me the meg," said Jane gently.

The next instant she was shouting through the megaphone, an instrument which she had seriously studied:

"Votes for women. Why do you torture women? Votes for women. Why do you torture women?"

The uproar increased and subsided. A masterful voice resounded within the interior. Many people rushed out of the hall. And there was a great scurry of important and puzzled feet within a radius of a score of yards.

"I think I'll try the next window," said Jane, handing over the megaphone. "You shout while I throw."

Audrey's heart was violently beating. She took the megaphone and put it to her lips, but no sound would come. Then, as though it were breaking through an obstacle, the sound shot forth, and to Audrey it was a gigantic voice that functioned quite independently of her will. Tremendously excited by the noise, she bawled louder and still louder.

"I've missed," said Jane calmly in her ear. "That's enough, I think. Come along."

"But they can't possibly see us," said Audrey, breathless, lowering the instrument.

"Come along, dear," Jane Foley insisted.

People with open mouths were crowding at the aperture of the inner wall, but, Jane going first, both girls pushed safely through the throng. The wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and Audrey were the authoresses of the pother.

Jane still leading, they made for the exit. But the first loud man rushed chivalrously in.

"Perlice!" he cried. "Two bobbies a-coming."

"Here!" said the second loud man. "Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They'll never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back." He jumped on to the wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in, and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran in.

"That's them," said the rosette. "I saw her with the grey hair from the gallery."

The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was equally floored.

As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane Foley and clutching at Jane Foley's skirts with her hands behind her—the locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the law—she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning. She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Madame Piriac's prophecy. She was ready to wish the past year annihilated and herself back once more in parental captivity at Moze, the slave of an unalterable routine imposed by her father, without responsibility, without initiative and without joy. And she lived again through the scenes in which she had smiled at the customs official, fibbed to Rosamund, taken the wounded Musa home in the taxi, spoken privily with the ageing yacht-owner, and laughed at the drowned detective in the area of the palace in Paget Gardens.

Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at length to a second view of the sprawling policemen. Whereupon she thought queerly: "What do I care about the vote, really?" And finally she thought with anger and resentment: "What a shame it is that women haven't got the vote!" And then she heard a gay, quiet sound. It was Jane Foley laughing gently behind her.

"Can you see the big one now, darling?" asked Jane roguishly. "Has he picked himself up again?"

Audrey laughed.

And at last the audience laughed also. It laughed because the big policeman, unconquerable, had made another intrepid dash for the centre of the wheel and fallen upon his stomach as upon a huge india-rubber ball. The audience did more than laugh—it shrieked, yelled, and guffawed. The performance to be witnessed was worth ten times the price of entry. Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement. And in describing the affair the next morning as "unique" the Birmingham Daily Post for once used that adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens—centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete. Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular two policemen would have known that they were seeking the impossible and fighting against that which was stronger than ten thousand policemen. But they would not give up. At each fresh attempt they hoped by guile to overcome their unseen enemy, as the gambler hopes at each fresh throw to outwit chance. The jeers of the audience pricked them to desperation, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public. But centrifugal force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with those whom ridicule has covered. The strange and side-splitting effects of centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the wheel. Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently from the tent. And then while her back was towards the entrance she was deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob. The two policemen had fled also—probably for reinforcements and appliances against centrifugal force. In their pardonable excitement they had, however, committed the imprudence of departing together. An elementary knowledge of strategy should have warned them against such a mistake. The wheel stopped immediately. The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him. Audrey at any rate was as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.

"Here's th' back way," said the second loud man, pointing to a coarse curtain in the obscurity of the nether parts of the enclosure.

They ran, Jane Foley first, and vanished from the regions of the Joy Wheel amid terrific acclamations given in a strong Midland accent.

The next moment they found themselves in a part of the Blue City which nobody had taken the trouble to paint blue. The one blue object was a small patch of sky, amid clouds, overhead. On all sides were wooden flying buttresses, supporting the boundaries of the Joy Wheel enclosure to the south-east, of the Parade Restaurant and Bar to the south-west, and of a third establishment of good cheer to the north. Upon the ground were brick-ends, cinders, bits of wood, bits of corrugated iron, and all the litter and refuse cast out of sight of the eyes of visitors to the Exhibition of Progress.

With the fear of the police behind them they stumbled forward a few yards, and then saw a small ramshackle door swinging slightly to and fro on one hinge. Jane Foley pulled it open. They both went into a narrow passage. On the mildewed wall of the passage was pinned up a notice in red ink: "Any waitress taking away any apron or cap from the Parade Restaurant and Bar will be fined one shilling." Farther on was another door, also ajar. Jane Foley pushed against it, and a tiny room of irregular shape was disclosed. In this room a stout woman in grey was counting a pile of newly laundered caps and aprons, and putting them out of one hamper into another. Audrey remembered seeing the woman at the counter of the restaurant and bar.

"The police are after us. They'll be here in a minute," said Jane Foley simply.

"Oh!" exclaimed the woman in grey, with the carelessness of fatigue. "Are you them stone-throwing lot? They've just been in to tell me about it. What d'ye do it for?"

"We do it for you—amongst others," Jane Foley smiled.

"Nay! That ye don't!" said the woman positively. "I've got a vote for the city council, and I want no more."

"Well, you don't want us to get caught, do you?"

"No, I don't know as I do. Ye look a couple o' bonny wenches."

"Let's have two caps and aprons, then," said Jane Foley smoothly. "We'll pay the shilling fine." She laughed lightly. "And a bit more. If the police get in here we shall have to struggle, you know, and they'll break the place up."

Audrey produced another half-sovereign.

"But what shall ye do with yer hats and coats?" the woman demanded.

"Give them to you, of course."

The woman regarded the hats and coats.

"I couldn't get near them coats," she said. "And if I put on one o' them there hats my old man 'ud rise from the grave—that he would. Still, I don't wish ye any harm."

She shut and locked the door.

In about a minute two waitresses in aprons and streamered caps of immaculate purity emerged from the secret places of the Parade Restaurant and Bar, slipped round the end of the counter, and started with easy indifference to saunter away into the grounds after the manner of restaurant girls who have been gifted with half an hour off. The tabled expanse in front of the Parade erection was busy with people, some sitting at the tables and supporting the establishment, but many more merely taking advantage of the pitch to observe all possible exciting developments of the suffragette shindy.

And as the criminals were modestly getting clear, a loud and imperious voice called:

"Hey!"

Audrey, lacking experience, hesitated.

"Hey there!"

They both turned, for the voice would not be denied. It belonged to a man sitting with another man at a table on the outskirts of the group of tables. It was the voice of the rosetted steward, who beckoned in a not unfriendly style.

"Bring us two liqueur brandies, miss," he cried. "And look slippy, if ye please."

The sharp tone, so sure of obedience, gave Audrey a queer sensation of being in reality a waitress doomed to tolerate the rough bullying of gentlemen urgently desiring alcohol. And the fierce thought that women—especially restaurant waitresses—must and should possess the Vote surged through her mind more powerfully than ever.

"I'll never have the chance again," she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.

"Two liqueur brandies, please," she said to the woman in grey, who had left her apron calculations. "That's all right," she murmured, as the woman stared a question at her. Then the woman smiled to herself, and poured out the liqueur brandies from a labelled bottle with startling adroitness, and dashed the full glasses on to a brass tray.

As Audrey walked across the gravel carefully balancing the tray, she speculated whether the public eye would notice the shape of her small handbag, which was attached by a safety pin to her dress beneath the apron, and whether her streamers were streaming out far behind her head.

Before she could put the tray down on the table, the rosetted steward, who looked pale, snatched one of the glasses and gulped down its entire contents.

"I wanted it!" said he, smacking his lips. "I wanted it bad. They'll catch 'em all right. I should know the young 'un again anywhere. I'll swear to identify her in any court. And I will. Tasty little piece o' goods, too!... But not so good-looking as you," he added, gazing suddenly at Audrey.

"None o' your sauce," snapped Audrey, and walked off, leaving the tray behind.

The two men exploded into coarse but amiable laughter, and called to her to return, but she would not. "You can pay the other young lady," she said over her shoulder, pointing vaguely to the counter where there was now a bevy of other young ladies.

Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock. Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.

That night they reached Northampton. At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram. And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey:

"It won't be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow. And perhaps not to any of our places in London."

"That won't matter," said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact. "We'll go anywhere, won't we, Winnie?"

And Miss Ingate assented.

"Well," said Jane Foley. "I've just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton."

"You don't mean Frinton-on-Sea?" exclaimed Miss Ingate, suddenly excited.

"It is on the sea," said Jane. "We have to go through Colchester. Do you know it?"

"Do I know it!" repeated Miss Ingate. "I know everybody in Frinton, except the Germans. When I'm at home I buy my bacon at Frinton. Are you going to an hotel there?"

"No," said Jane. "To some people named Spatt."

"There's nobody that is anybody named Spatt living at Frinton," said Miss Ingate.

"They haven't been there long."

"Oh!" murmured Miss Ingate. "Of course if that's it...! I can't guarantee what's happened since I began my pilgrimages. But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester. This afternoon's business has been too feverish for me. When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught. I shall just go home."

"I don't care much about going to Frinton, Jenny," said Audrey.

Indeed, Moze lay within not many miles of Frinton-on-Sea.

Then Audrey and Miss Ingate observed a phenomenon that was both novel and extremely disturbing. Tears came into the eyes of Jane Foley.

"Don't say it, Audrey, don't say it!" she appealed in a wet voice. "I shall have to go myself. And you simply can't imagine how I hate going all alone into these houses that we're invited to. I'd much sooner be in lodgings, as we were last night. But these homes in quiet places here and there are very useful sometimes. They all belong to members of the Union, you know; and we have to use them. But I wish we hadn't. I've met Mrs. Spatt once. I didn't think you'd throw me over just at the worst part. The Spatts will take all of us and be glad."

("They won't take me," said Miss Ingate under her breath.)

"I shall come with you," said Audrey, caressing the recreant who, while equal to trifles such as policemen, magistrates, and prisons, was miserably afraid of a strange home. In fact Audrey now liked Jane much more than ever, liked her completely—and perhaps admired her rather less, though her admiration was still intense. And the thought in Audrey's mind was: "Never will I desert this girl! I'm a militant, too, now, and I shall stick by her." And she was full of a happiness which she could not understand and which she did not want to understand.

The next morning all the newspaper posters in Northhampton bore the words: "Policemen and suffragettes on Joy Wheel," or some variation of these words. And they bore nothing else. And in all the towns and many of the villages through which they passed on the way to Colchester, the same legend greeted their flying eyes. Audrey and Miss Ingate, in the motor-car, read with great care all the papers. Audrey blushed at the descriptions of herself, which were flattering. It seemed that the Cabinet Minister's political meeting had been seriously damaged by the episode, for the reason that rumours of the performance on the Joy Wheel had impaired the spell of eloquence and partially emptied the hall. And this was the more disappointing in that the police had been sure that nothing untoward would occur. It seemed also that the police were on the track of the criminals.

"Are they!" exclaimed Jane Foley with a beautiful smile.

Then the car approached a city of towers on a hill, and as it passed by the station, which was in the valley, Miss Ingate demanded a halt. She got out in the station yard and transferred her belongings to a cab.

"I shall drive home from here," she said. "I've often done it before. After all, I did play the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street. Surely I can rest on the barrel organ, can't I, Miss Foley—at my age? ... What a business I shall have when I do get home, and nobody expecting me!"

And when certain minor arrangements had been made, the car mounted the hill into Colchester and took the Frinton road, leaving Miss Ingate's fly far behind.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE SPATTS

The house of the Spatts was large, imposing and variegated. It had turrets, balconies, and architectural nooks in such quantity that the unaided individual eye could not embrace it all at once. It overlooked, from a height, the grounds of the Frinton Sports Club, and a new member of this club, upon first beholding the residence, had made the immortal remark: "It wants at least fourteen people to look at it." The house stood in the middle of an unfinished garden, which promised ultimately to be as heterogeneous as itself, but which at present was merely an expanse of sorely wounded earth.

The time was early summer, and therefore the summer dining-room of the Spatts was in use. This dining-room consisted of one white, windowed wall, a tiled floor, and a roof of wood. The windows gave into the winter dining-room, which was a white apartment, sparsely curtained and cushioned with chintz, and containing very few pieces of furniture or pictures. The Spatts considered, rightly, that furniture and pictures were unhygienic and the secret lairs of noxious germs. Had the Spatts flourished twenty-five years earlier their dining-room would have been covered with brown paper upon which would have hung permanent photographs of European masterpieces of graphic art, and there would have been a multiplicity of draperies and specimens of battered antique furniture, with a warming-pan or so suspended here and there in place of sporting trophies. But the Spatts had not begun to flourish twenty-five years ago. They flourished very few years ago and they still flourish.

As the summer dining-room had only one wall, it follows that it was open to the powers of the air. This result had been foreseen by the Spatts—had indeed been expressly arranged, for they believed strongly in the powers of the air, as being beneficent powers. It is true that they generally had sniffling colds, but their argument was that these maladies had no connection whatever with the powers of the air, which, according to their theory, saved them from much worse.

They and their guests were now seated at dinner. Twilight was almost lost in night. The table was illuminated by four candles at the corners, and flames of these candles flickered in the healthful evening breeze, dropping pink wax on the candlesticks. They were surrounded by the mortal remains of tiny moths, but other tiny moths would not heed the warning and continually shot themselves into the flames. On the outskirts of the table moved with silent stealth the forms of two middle-aged and ugly servants.

Mrs. Spatt was very tall and very thin, and the simplicity of her pale green dress—sole reminder of the brown-paper past—was calculated to draw attention to these attributes. She had an important reddish nose, and a mysterious look of secret confidence, which never left her even in the most trying crises. Mr. Spatt also was very tall and very thin. His head was several sizes too small, and part of his insignificant face, which one was apt to miss altogether in contemplating his body, was hidden under a short grey beard. Siegfried Spatt, the sole child of the union, though but seventeen, was as tall and as thin as his father and his mother; he had a pale face and red hands.

The guests were Audrey, Jane Foley, and a young rubicund gentleman, beautifully clothed, and with fair curly locks, named Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was far more perfectly at ease than anybody else at the table, which indeed as a whole was rendered haggard and nervous by the precarious state of the conversation, expecting its total decease at any moment. At intervals someone lifted the limp dying body—it sank back—was lifted again—struggled feebly—relapsed. Young Siegfried was excessively tongue-tied and self-conscious, and his demeanour frankly admitted it. Jane Foley, acknowledged heroine in certain fields, sat like a schoolgirl at her first dinner-party. Audrey maintained her widowhood, but scarcely with credit. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were as usual too deeply concerned about the awful condition of the universe to display that elasticity of mood which continuous chatter about nothing in particular demands. And they were too worshipful of the best London conventions not to regard silence at table as appalling. In the part of the country from which Jane Foley sprang, hosts will sit mute through a meal and think naught of it. But Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were of different stuff. All these five appeared to be in serious need of conversation pills. Only Mr. Ziegler beheld his companions with a satisfied equanimity that was insensible to spiritual suffering. Happily at the most acute moments the gentle night wind, meandering slowly from the east across leagues of North Sea, would induce in one or another a sneeze which gave some semblance of vitality and vigour to the scene.

After one of these sneezes it was that Jane Foley, conscience-stricken, tried to stimulate the exchanges by an effort of her own.

"And what are the folks like in Frinton?" she demanded, blushing, and looking up. As she looked up young Siegfried looked down, lest he might encounter her glance and be utterly discountenanced.

Jane Foley's question was unfortunate.

"We know nothing of them," said Mrs. Spatt, pained. "Of course I have received and paid a few purely formal calls. But as regards friends and acquaintances, we prefer to import them from London. As for the holiday-makers, one sees them, naturally. They appear to lead an exclusively physical existence."

"My dear," put in Mr. Spatt stiffly. "The residents are no better. The women play golf all day on that appalling golf course, and then after tea they go into the town to change their library books. But I do not believe that they ever read their library books. The mentality of the town is truly remarkable. However, I am informed that there are many towns like it."

"You bet!" murmured Siegfried Spatt, and then tried, vainly, to suck back the awful remark whence it had come.

Mr. Ziegler, speaking without passion or sorrow, added his views about Frinton. He asserted that it was the worst example of stupid waste of opportunities he had ever encountered, even in England. He pointed out that there was no band, no pier, no casino, no shelters—and not even a tree; and that there were no rules to govern the place. He finished by remarking that no German state would tolerate such a pleasure resort. In this judgment he employed an excellent English accent, with a scarcely perceptible thickening of the t's and thinning of the d's.

Mr. Ziegler left nothing to be said.

Then the conversation sighed and really did expire. It might have survived had not the Spatts had a rule, explained previously to those whom it concerned, against talking shop. Their attachment to this rule was heroic. In the present instance shop was suffragism. The Spatts had developed into supporters of militancy in a very curious way. Mrs. Spatt's sister, a widow, had been mixed up with the Union for years. One day she was fined forty shillings or a week's imprisonment for a political peccadillo involving a hatpin and a policeman. It was useless for her to remind the magistrate that she, like Mrs. Spatt, was the daughter of the celebrated statesman B——, who in the fifties had done so much for Britain. (Lo! The source of that mysterious confidence that always supported Mrs. Spatt!) The magistrate had no historic sense. She went to prison. At least she was on the way thither when Mr. Spatt paid the fine in spite of her. The same night Mr. Spatt wrote to his favourite evening paper to point out the despicable ingratitude of a country which would have imprisoned a daughter of the celebrated B——, and announced that henceforward he would be an active supporter of suffragism, which hitherto had interested him only academically. He was a wealthy man, and his money and his house and his pen were at the service of the Union—but always with discretion.

Audrey and Jane Foley had learnt all this privately from Mrs. Spatt on their arrival, after they had told such part of their tale as Jane Foley had deemed suitable, and they had further learnt that suffragism would not be a welcome topic at their table, partly on account of the servants and partly on account of Mr. Ziegler, whose opinions were quite clearly opposed to the movement, but whom they admired for true and rare culture. He was a cousin of German residents in First Avenue and, visiting them often, had been discovered by Mr. Spatt in the afternoon-tea train.

And just as the ices came to compete with the night wind, the postman arrived like a deliverer. The postman had to pass the dining-room en route by the circuitous drive to the front door, and when dinner was afoot he would hand the letters to the parlourmaid, who would divide them into two portions, and, putting both on a salver, offer the salver first to Mrs. and then to Mr. Spatt, while Mr. or Mrs. Spatt begged guests, if there were any, to excuse the quaint and indeed unusual custom, pardonable only on the plea that any tidings from London ought to be savoured instantly in such a place as Frinton.

After leaving his little pile untouched for some time, Mr. Spatt took advantage of the diversion caused by the brushing of the cloth and the distribution of finger-bowls to glance at the topmost letter, which was addressed in a woman's hand.

"She's coming!" he exclaimed, forgetting to apologise in the sudden excitement of news, "Good heavens!" He looked at his watch. "She's here. I heard the train several minutes ago! She must be here! The letter's been delayed."

"Who, Alroy?" demanded Mrs. Spatt earnestly. "Not that Miss Nickall you mentioned?"

"Yes, my dove." And then in a grave tone to the parlourmaid: "Give this letter to your mistress."

Mr. Spatt, cheered by the new opportunity for conversation, and in his eagerness abrogating all rules, explained how he had been in London on the previous day for a performance of Strauss's Elektra, and according to his custom had called at the offices of the Suffragette Union to see whether he could in any manner aid the cause. He had been told that a house in Paget Gardens lent to the Union had been basely withdrawn from service by its owner on account of some embroilment with the supreme police authorities at Scotland Yard, and that one of the inmates, a Miss Nickall, the poor young lady who had had her arm broken and was scarcely convalescent, had need of quietude and sea air. Mr. Spatt had instantly offered the hospitality of his home to Miss Nickall, whom he had seen in a cab and who was very sweet. Miss Nickall had said that she must consult her companion. It now appeared that the companion was gone to the Midlands. This episode had occurred immediately before the receipt of the telegram from head-quarters asking for shelter for Miss Jane Foley and Mrs. Moncreiff.

Mr. Spatt's excitement had now communicated itself to everybody except Mr. Ziegler and Siegfried Spatt. Jane Foley almost recovered her presence of mind, and Mrs. Spatt was extraordinarily interested to learn that Miss Nickall was an American painter who had lived long in Paris, and that Audrey had first made her acquaintance in Paris, and knew Paris well. Audrey's motor-car had produced a considerable impression on Aurora Spatt, and this impression was deepened by the touch about Paris. After breathing mysterious orders into the ear of the parlourmaid Mrs. Spatt began to talk at large about music in Paris, and Mr. Spatt made comparisons between the principal opera houses in Europe. He proclaimed for the Scala at Milan; but Mr. Ziegler, who had methodically according to a fixed plan lived in all European capitals except Paris—whither he was soon going, said that Mr. Spatt was quite wrong, and that Milan could not hold a candle to Munich. Mrs. Spatt inquired whether Audrey had heard Strauss's Elektra at the Paris Opera House. Audrey replied that Strauss's Elektra had not been given at the Paris Opera House.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Spatt. "This prejudice against the greatest modern masterpieces because they are German is a very sad sign in Paris. I have noticed it for a long time."

Audrey, who most irrationally had begun to be annoyed by the blandness of Mr. Ziegler's smile, answered with a rival blandness:

"In Paris they do not reproach Strauss because he is German, but because he is vulgar."

Mrs. Spatt had a martyrised expression. In her heart she felt a sick trembling of her religious belief that Elektra was the greatest opera ever composed. For Audrey had the prestige of Paris and of the automobile. Mrs. Spatt, however, said not a word. Mr. Ziegler, on the other hand, after shuffling some seconds for utterance, ejaculated with sublime anger:

"Vulgar!"

His rubicundity had increased and his blandness was dissolved. A terrible sequel might have occurred, had not the crunch of wheels on the drive been heard at that very instant. The huge, dim form of a coach drawn by a ghostly horse passed along towards the front door, just below the diners. Almost simultaneously the electric light above the front door was turned on, casting a glare across a section of the inchoate garden, where no flower grew save the dandelion. Everybody sprang up. Host and hostess, urged by hospitality, spun first into the drive, and came level with the vehicle precisely as the vehicle opened its invisible interior. Jane Foley and Audrey saw Miss Nickall emerge from it rather slowly and cautiously, with her white kind face and her arm all swathed in white.

"Well, Mr. Spatt," came the American benevolent voice of Nick. "How glad I am to see you. And this is Mrs. Spatt? Mrs. Spatt! Delighted. Your husband is the kindest, sweetest man, Mrs. Spatt, that I've met in years. It is perfectly sweet of you to have me. I shouldn't have inflicted myself on you—no, I shouldn't—only you know we have to obey orders. I was told to come here, and here I've come, with a glad heart."

Audrey was touched by the sight and voice of grey-haired Nick, with her trick of seeing nothing but the best in everybody, transforming everybody into saints, angels, and geniuses. Her smiles and her tones were irresistible. They were like the wand of some magical princess come to break a sinister thrall. They nearly humanised the gaunt parlourmaid, who stood grimly and primly waiting until these tedious sentimental preliminaries should cease from interfering with her duties in regard to the luggage.

"We have friends of yours here, Miss Nickall," simpered Mrs. Spatt, after she had given a welcome. She had seen Jane Foley and Audrey standing expectant just behind Mr. Spatt, and outside the field of the electric beam.

Nick glanced round, hesitated, and then with a sudden change of all her features rushed at the girls regardless of her arm. Her joy was enchanting.

"I was afraid—I was afraid——" she murmured as she kissed them. Her eyes softly glistened.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, after a moment. "And I have got a surprise for you! I have just! You may say it's some surprise." She turned towards the cab. "Musa, now do come out of that wagon."

And from the blackness of the cab's interior gingerly stepped Musa, holding a violin case in his hand.

"Mrs. Spatt," said Nick. "Let me introduce Mr. Musa. Mr. Musa is perhaps the greatest violinist in Paris—or in Europe. Very old friend of ours. He came over to London unexpectedly just as I was starting for Liverpool Street station this afternoon. So I did the only thing I could do. I couldn't leave him there—I brought him along, and we want Mr. Spatt to recommend us an hotel in Frinton for him." And while Musa was shyly in his imperfect English greeting Mr. and Mrs. Spatt, she whispered to Audrey: "You don't know. You'd never guess. A big concert agent in Paris has taken him up at last. He's going to play at a lot of concerts, and they actually paid him two thousand five hundred francs in advance. Isn't it a perfect dream?"

Audrey, who had seen Musa's trustful glance at Nick as he descended from the cab, was suddenly aware of a fierce pang of hate for the benignant Nick, and a wave of fury against Musa. The thing was very disconcerting.

After self-conscious greetings, Musa almost dragged Audrey away from the others.

"It's you I came to London to see," he muttered in an unusual voice.



CHAPTER XXV

THE MUTE

It was upon this evening that Audrey began alarmingly to develop the quality of being incomprehensible—even to herself. Like most young women and men, she had been convinced from an early age that she was mysteriously unlike all other created beings, and—again like most young men and women—she could find, in the secrecy of her own heart, plenty of proof of a unique strangeness. But now her unreason became formidable. There she sat with her striking forehead and her quite unimportant nose, in the large austere drawing-room of the Spatts, which was so pervaded by artistic chintz that the slightest movement in it produced a crackle—and wondered why she was so much queerer than other girls could possibly be.

Neither the crackling of chintz nor the aspect of the faces in the drawing-room was conducive to clear psychological analysis. Mr. Ziegler, with a glass of Pilsener by his side on a small table and a cigar in his richly jewelled hand, reposed with crossed legs in an easy chair. He had utterly recovered from the momentary irritation caused by Audrey's attack on Strauss, and his perfect beaming satisfaction with himself made a spectacle which would have distracted an Indian saint from the contemplation of eternity and nothingness. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt, seated as far as was convenient from one another on a long sofa, their emaciated bodies very upright and alert, gazed with intense expectation at Musa. Musa stood in the middle of the room, tuning his violin with little twangs and listening to the twangs as to a secret message.

Miss Nickall, being an invalid, had excusably gone to bed, and Jane Foley, sharer of her bedroom, had followed. The happy relief on Jane's face as she said good night to her hosts had testified to the severity of the ordeal of hospitality through which she had so heroically passed. She might have been going out of prison instead of going out of the most intellectual drawing-room in Frinton.

Audrey, too, would have liked to retire, for automobiles and sensations had exhausted her; but just at this point her unreason had begun to operate. She would not leave Musa alone, because Miss Nickall was leaving him alone. Yet she did not feel at all benevolent towards Musa. She was angry with him for having quitted Paris. She was angry with him for having said to her, in such a peculiar tone: "It's you I came to London to see." She was angry with him for not having found an opportunity, during the picnic meal provided for the two new-comers after the regular dinner, to explain why he had come to London to see her. She was angry with him for that dark hostility which he had at once displayed towards Mr. Ziegler, though she herself hated the innocent Mr. Ziegler with the ferocity of a woman of the Revolution. And further, she was glad, ridiculously glad, that Musa had come to London to see her. Lastly she was aware of a most irrational objection to the manner in which Miss Nickall and Musa said good night to one another, and the obvious fact that Musa in less than an hour had reached terms of familiarity with Jane Foley.

She thought:

"I haven't the faintest idea why he has given up his practising in Paris to come to see me. But if it is what I feel sure it is, there will be trouble.... Why do I stay in this ghastly drawing-room? I am dying to go to sleep, and I simply detest everybody in the room. I detest Musa more than all, because as usual he has been acting like a child.... Why can't you smile at him, Audrey Moze? Why frown and pretend you're cross when you know you aren't, Audrey Moze? ... I am cross, and he shall suffer. Was this a time to leave his practising—and the concerts soon coming on? I positively prefer this Ziegler man to him. Yes, I do." So ran her reflections, and they annoyed her.

"What would you wish me to play?" asked Musa, when he had definitely finished twanging. Audrey noticed that his English accent was getting a little less French. She had to admit that, though his appearance was extravagantly un-British, it was distinguished. The immensity of his black silk cravat made the black cravat of Mr. Spatt seem like a bootlace round his thin neck.

"Whatever you like, Mr. Musa," replied Aurora Spatt. "Please!"

And as a fact the excellent woman, majestic now in spite of her red nose and her excessive thinness, did not care what Musa played. He had merely to play. She had decided for herself, from the conversation, that he was a very celebrated performer, and she had ascertained, by direct questioning, that he had never performed in England. She was determined to be able to say to all comers till death took her that "Musa—the great Musa, you know—first played in England in my own humble drawing-room." The thing itself was actually about to occur; nothing could stop it from occurring; and the thought of the immediate realisation of her desire and ambition gave Mrs. Spatt greater and more real pleasure than she had had for years; it even fortified her against the possible resentment of her cherished Mr. Ziegler.

"French music—would you wish?" Musa suggested.

"Is there any French music? That is to say, of artistic importance?" asked Mr. Ziegler calmly. "I have never heard of it."

He was not consciously being rude. Nor was he trying to be funny. His question implied an honest belief. His assertion was sincere. He glanced, blinking slightly, round the room, with a self-confidence that was either terrible or pathetic, according to the degree of your own self-confidence.

Audrey said to herself.

"I'm glad this isn't my drawing-room." And she was almost frightened by the thought that that skull opposite to her was absolutely impenetrable, and that it would go down to the grave unpierced with all its collection of ideas intact and braggart.

As for Mr. and Mrs. Spatt they were both in the state of not knowing where to look. Immediately their gaze met another gaze it leapt away as from something dangerous or obscene.

"I will play Debussy's Toccata for violin solo," Musa announced tersely. He had blushed; his great eyes were sparkling. And he began to play.

And as soon as he had played a few bars, Audrey gave a start, fortunately not a physical start, and she blushed also. Musa sternly winked at her. Frenchmen do not make a practice of winking, but he had learnt the accomplishment for fun from Miss Thompkins in Paris. The wink caused Audrey surreptitiously to observe Mr. and Mrs. Spatt. It was no relief to her to perceive that these two were listening to Debussy's Toccata for solo violin with the trained and appreciative attention of people who had heard it often before in the various capitals of Europe, who knew it by heart, and who knew at just what passages to raise the head, to give a nod of recognition or a gesture of ecstasy. The bare room was filled with the sound of Musa's fiddle and with the high musical culture of Mr. and Mrs. Spatt. When the piece was over they clapped discreetly, and looked with soft intensity at Audrey, as if murmuring: "You, too, are a cultured cosmopolitan. You share our emotion." And across the face of Mrs. Spatt spread a glow triumphant, for Musa now positively had played for the first time in England in her drawing-room, and she foresaw hundreds of occasions on which she could refer to the matter with a fitting air of casualness. The glow triumphant, however, paled somewhat as she felt upon herself the eye of Mr. Ziegler.

"Where is Siegfried, Alroy?" she demanded, after having thanked Musa. "I wouldn't have had him miss that Debussy for anything, but I hadn't noticed that he was gone. He adores Debussy."

"I think it is like bad Bach," Mr. Ziegler put in suddenly. Then he raised his glass and imbibed a good portion of the beer specially obtained and provided for him by his hostess and admirer, Mrs. Spatt.

"Do you really?" murmured Mrs. Spatt, with deprecation.

"There's something in the comparison," Mr. Spatt admitted thoughtfully.

"Why not like good Bach?" Musa asked, glaring in a very strange manner at Mr. Ziegler.

"Bosh!" ejaculated Mr. Ziegler with a most notable imperturbability. "Only Bach himself could com-pose good Bach."

Musa's breathing could be heard across the drawing-room.

"Eh bien!" said Musa. "Now I will play for you Debussy's Toccata. I was not playing it before. I was playing the Chaconne of Bach, the most famous composition for the violin in the world."

He did not embroider the statement. He left it in its nakedness. Nor did he permit anybody else to embroider it. Before a word of any kind could be uttered he had begun to play again. Probably in all the annals of artistic snobbery, no cultured cosmopolitan had ever been made to suffer a more exquisite moral torture of humiliation than Musa had contrived to inflict upon Mr. and Mrs. Spatt in return for their hospitality. Their sneaped squirmings upon the sofa were terrible to witness. But Mr. Ziegler's sensibility was apparently quite unaffected. He continued to smile, to drink, and to smoke. He seemed to be saying to himself: "What does it matter to me that this miserable Frenchman has caught me in a mistake? I could eat him, and one day I shall eat him."

After a little while Musa snatched out of his right-hand lower waistcoat pocket the tiny wooden "mute" which all violinists carry without fail upon all occasions in all their waistcoats; and, sticking it with marvellous rapidity upon the bridge of the violin, he entered upon a pianissimo, but still lively, episode of the Toccata. And simultaneously another melody faint and clear could be heard in the room. It was Mr. Ziegler humming "The Watch on the Rhine" against the Toccata of Debussy. Thus did it occur to Mr. Ziegler to take revenge on Musa for having attempted to humiliate him. Not unsurprisingly, Musa detected at once the competitive air. He continued to play, gazing hard at his violin and apparently entranced, but edging little by little towards Mr. Ziegler. Audrey desired either to give a cry or to run out of the room. She did neither, being held to inaction by the spell of Mr. Ziegler's perfect unconcern as, with the beer glass lifted towards his mouth, he proceeded steadily to work through "The Watch on the Rhine," while Musa lilted out the delicate, gay phrases of Debussy. The enchantment upon the whole room was sinister and painful. Musa got closer to Mr. Ziegler, who did not blench nor cease from his humming. Then suddenly Musa, lowering his fiddle and interrupting the scene, snatched the mute from the bridge of the violin.

"I have put it on the wrong instrument," he said thickly, with a very French intonation, and simultaneously he shoved the mute with violence into the mouth of Mr. Ziegler. In doing so, he jerked up Mr. Ziegler's elbow, and the remains of the beer flew up and baptised Mr. Ziegler's face and vesture. Then he jammed the violin into its case, and ran out of the room.

"Barbare! Imbecile! Sauvage!" he muttered ferociously on the threshold.

The enchantment was broken. Everybody rose, and not the least precipitately the streaming Mr. Ziegler, who, ejecting the mute with much spluttering, and pitching away his empty glass, sprang towards the door, with justifiable homicide in every movement.

"Mr. Ziegler!" Audrey appealed to him, snatching at his dress-coat and sticking to it.

He turned, furious, his face still dripping the finest Pilsener beer.

"If your dress-coat is not wiped instantly, it will be ruined," said Audrey.

"Ach! Meiner Frack!" exclaimed Mr. Ziegler, forgetting his deep knowledge of English. His economic instincts had been swiftly aroused, and they dominated all the other instincts. "Meiner Frack! Vill you vipe it?" His glance was imploring.

"Oh! Mrs. Spatt will attend to it," said Audrey with solemnity, and walked out of the room into the hall. There was not a sign of Musa; the disappearance of the violinist was disquieting; and yet it made her glad—so much so that she laughed aloud. A few moments later Mr. Ziegler stalked forth from the house which he was never to enter again, and his silent scorn and the grandeur of his displeasure were terrific. He entirely ignored Audrey, who had nevertheless been the means of saving his Frack for him.



CHAPTER XXVI

NOCTURNE

Soon afterwards Audrey, who had put on a hat, went out with Mr. Spatt to look for Musa. Not until shortly before the musical performance had the Spatts succeeded in persuading Musa to "accept their hospitality for the night." (The phrase was their own. They were incapable of saying "Let us put you up.") Meanwhile his bag had been left in the hall. This bag had now vanished. The parlourmaid, questioned, said frigidly that she had not touched it because she had received no orders to touch it. Musa himself must therefore have removed it. With bag in one hand and fiddle case in the other, he must have fled, relinquishing nothing but the mute in his flight. He knew naught of England, naught of Frinton, and he was the least practical creature alive. Hence Audrey, who was in essence his mother, and who knew Frinton as some people know London, had said that she would go and look for him. Mr. Spatt, ever chivalrous, had impulsively offered to accompany her. He could indeed do no less. Mrs. Spatt, overwhelmed by the tragic sequel to her innocent triumphant, had retired to the first floor.

The wind blew, and it was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of the daughters of an arch-deacon. Nobody was abroad. Absurd thoughts ran through Audrey's head. A letter from Mr. Foulger had followed her to Birmingham, and in the letter Mr. Foulger had acquainted her with the fact that Great Mexican Oil shares had just risen to L2 3s. apiece. She knew that she had 180,000 of them, and now under the thin protection of Mr. Spatt she tried to reckon 180,000 times L2 3s. She could not do the sum. At any rate she could not be sure that she did it correctly. However, she was fairly well convinced beneath the dark, impenetrable sky that the answer totalled nearly L400,000, that was, ten million francs. And the ridiculousness of an heiress who owned over ten million francs wandering about a place like Frinton with a man like Mr. Spatt, searching for another man like Musa, struck her as exceeding the bounds of the permissible. She considered that she ought to have been in a magnificent drawing-room of her own in Park Lane or the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, welcoming counts, princes, duchesses, diplomats and self-possessed geniuses of finished manners, with witty phrase that displayed familiarity with all that was profoundest and most brilliant in European civilisation. Life seemed to be disappointing her, and assuredly money was not the thing that she had imagined it to be.

She thought:

"If this walking lamp-post does not say something soon I shall scream."

Mr. Spatt said:

"It seems to be blowing up for rain."

She screamed in the silent solitude of Frinton.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised quickly. "I thought I saw something move."

"One does," faltered Mr. Spatt.

They were now in the shopping street, where in the mornings the elect encounter each other on expeditions to purchase bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes and tennis balls. It was a black and empty canyon through which the wind raced.

"He may be down—down on the shore," Mr. Spatt timidly suggested. He seemed to be suggesting suicide.

They turned and descended across the Greensward to the shore, which was lined with hundreds of bathing huts, each christened with a name, and each deserted, for the by-laws of the Frinton Urban District Council judiciously forbade that the huts should be used as sleeping-chambers. The tide was very low. They walked over the wide flat sands, and came at length to the sea's roar, the white tumbling of foamy breakers, and the full force of the south-east wind. Across the invisible expanse of water could be discerned the beam of a lightship. And Audrey was aware of mysterious sensations such as she had not had since she inhabited Flank Hall and used to steal out at nights to watch the estuary. And she thought solemnly: "Musa is somewhere near, existing." And then she thought: "What a silly thought! Of course he is!"

"I see somebody coming!" Mr. Spatt burst out in a dramatic whisper. But the precaution of whispering was useless, because the next instant, in spite of himself, he loudly sneezed.

And about two hundred yards off on the sands Audrey made out a moving figure, which at that distance did in fact seem to have vague appendages that might have resembled a bag and a fiddle case. But the atmosphere of the night was deceptive, and the figure as it approached resolved itself into three figures—a black one in the middle of two white ones. A girl's coarse laugh came down the wind. It could not conceivably have been the laugh of any girl who went into the shopping street to buy bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes or tennis balls. But it might have been—it not improbably was—the laugh of some girl whose mission was to sell such things. The trio meandered past, heedless. Mr. Spatt said no word, but he appreciably winced. The black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy. As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament.

"I'm afraid it's not much use looking any longer," said Mr. Spatt weakly. "He—he may have gone back to the house. Let us hope so."

At the chief garden gate of the Spatt residence they came upon Miss Nickall, trying to open it. The sling round her arm made her unmistakable. And Miss Nickall having allowed them to recover from a pardonable astonishment at the sight of her who was supposed to be exhausted and in bed, said cheerfully:

"I've found him, and I've put him up at the Excelsior Hotel."

Mrs. Spatt had related the terrible episode to her guest, who had wilfully risen at once. Miss Nickall had had luck, but Audrey had to admit that these American girls were stupendously equal to an emergency. And she hated the angelic Nick for having found Musa.

"We tried first to find a cafe," said Nick. "But there aren't any in this city. What do you call them in England—public-houses, isn't it?"

"No," agreed Mr. Spatt in a shaking voice. "Public-houses are not permitted in Frinton, I am glad to say." And he began to form an intention, subject to Aurora's approval, to withdraw altogether from the suffrage movement, which appeared to him to be getting out of hand.

As they were all separating for the night Audrey and Nick hesitated for a moment in front of each other, and then they kissed with a quite unusual effusiveness.

"I don't think I've ever really liked her," said Audrey to herself.

What Nick said to herself is lost to history.



CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE GARDEN

The next morning, after a night spent chiefly in thought, Audrey issued forth rather early. Indeed she was probably the first person afoot in the house of the Spatts, the parlour-maid entering the hall just as Audrey had managed to open the front door. As the parlour-maid was obviously not yet in that fullness and spruceness of attire which parlour-maids affect when performing their mission in life, Audrey decided to offer no remark, explanatory or otherwise, and passed into the garden with nonchalance as though her invariable habit when staying in strange houses was to get up before anybody else and spy out the whole property while the helpless hosts were yet in bed and asleep.

Now it was a magnificent morning: no wind, no cloud, and the sun rising over the sea; not a trace of the previous evening's weather. Audrey had not been in the leafy street more than a moment when she forgot that she was tired and short of sleep, and also very worried by affairs both private and public. Her body responded to the sun, and her mind also. She felt almost magically healthy, strong and mettlesome, and, further, she began to feel happy; she rather blamed herself for this tendency to feel happy, calling herself heedless and indifferent. She did not understand what it is to be young. She had risen partly because of the futility of bed, but more because of a desire to inspect again her own part of the world after the unprecedented absence from it.

Frinton was within the borders of her own part of the world, and, though she now regarded it with the condescending eyes of a Parisian and Londoner, she found pleasure in looking upon it and in recognising old landmarks and recent innovations. She saw, on the Greensward separating the promenade from the beach, that a rustic seat had been elaborately built by the Council round the great trunk of the only tree in Frinton; and she decided that there had been questionable changes since her time. And in this way she went on. However, the splendour and reality of the sun, making such an overwhelming contrast with the insubstantial phenomena of the gloomy night, prevented undue cerebral activity. She reflected that Frinton on a dark night and Frinton on a bright morning were not like the same place, and she left it at that, and gazed at the facade of the Excelsior Hotel, wondering for an instant why she should be interested in it, and then looking swiftly away.

She had to glance at all the shops, though none of them was open except the dairy-shop; and in the shopping street, which had a sunrise at one end and the railway station at the other, she lit on the new palatial garage.

"My car may be in there," she thought.

After the manner of most car-owners on tour, she had allowed the chauffeur to disappear with the car in the evening where he listed, confident that the next morning he and it would reappear cleansed and in good running order.

The car was in the garage, almost solitary on a floor of asphalt under a glass roof. An untidy youth, with the end of a cigarette clinging to his upper lip in a way to suggest that it had clung there throughout the night and was the last vestige of a jollification, seemed to be dragging a length of hose from a hydrant towards the car, the while his eyes rested on a large notice: "Smoking absolutely prohibited. By order."

Then from the other extremity of the garage came a jaunty, dapper, quasi-martial figure, in a new grey uniform, with a peaked grey cap, bright brown leggings, and bright brown boots to match—the whole highly brushed, polished, smooth and glittering. This being pulled out of his pocket a superb pair of kid gloves, then a silver cigarette-case, and then a silver match-box, and he ignited a cigarette—the unrivalled, wondrous first cigarette of the day—casting down the match with a large, free gesture. At sight of him the untidy youth grew more active.

"Look 'ere," said the being to the youth, "what the 'ell time did I tell you to have that car cleaned by, and you not begun it!"

Pointing to the clock, he lounged magnificently to and fro, spreading smoke around the intimidated and now industrious youth. The next second he caught sight of Audrey, and transformed himself instantaneously into what she had hitherto imagined a chauffeur always was; but in those few moments she had learnt that the essence of a chauffeur is godlike, and that he toils not, neither does he swab.

"Good morning, madam," in a soft, courtly voice.

"Good morning."

"Were you wanting the car, madam?"

She was not, but the suggestion gave her an idea.

"Can we take it as it is?"

"Yes, madam. I'll just look at the petrol gauge ... But ... I haven't had my breakfast, madam."

"What time do you have it?"

"Well, madam, when you have yours."

"That's all right, then. You've got hours yet. I want you to take me to Flank Hall."

"Flank Hall, madam?" His tone expressed the fact that his mind was a blank as to Flank Hall.

As soon as Audrey had comprehended that the situation of Flank Hall was not necessarily known to every chauffeur in England, and that a stay of one night in Frinton might not have been enough to familiarise this particular one with the geography of the entire district, she replied that she would direct him.

They were held up by a train at the railway crossing, and a milk-cart and a young pedestrian were also held up. When Audrey identified the pedestrian she wished momentarily that she had not set out on the expedition. Then she said to herself that really it did not matter, and why should she be afraid... etc., etc. The pedestrian was Musa. In French they greeted each other stiffly, like distant acquaintances, and the train thundered past.

"I was taking the air, simply, Madame," said Musa, with his ingenuous shy smile.

"Take it in my car," said Audrey with a sudden resolve. "In one hour at the latest we shall have returned."

She had a great deal to say to him and a great deal to listen to, and there could not possibly be any occasion equal to the present, which was ideal.

He got in; the chauffeur manoeuvred to oust the milk-cart from its rightful precedence, the gates opened, and the car swung at gathering speed into the well-remembered road to Moze. And the two passengers said nothing to each other of the slightest import. Musa's escape from Paris was between them; the unimaginable episode at the Spatts was between them; the sleepless night was between them. (And had she not saved him by her presence of mind from the murderous hand of Mr. Ziegler?) They had a million things to impart. And yet naught was uttered save a few banalities about the weather and about the healthfulness of being up early. They were bashful, constrained, altogether too young and inexperienced. They wanted to behave in the grand, social, easeful manner of a celebrated public performer and an heiress worth ten million francs. And they could only succeed in being a boy and a girl. The chauffeur alone, at from thirty to forty miles an hour, was worthy of himself and his high vocation. Both the passengers regretted that they had left their beds. Happily the car laughed at the alleged distance between Frinton and Moze. In a few minutes, as it seemed, with but one false turning, due to the impetuosity of the chauffeur, the vehicle drew up before the gates of Flank Hall. Audrey had avoided the village of Moze. The passengers descended.

"This is my house," Audrey murmured.

The gates were shut but not locked. They creaked as Audrey pushed against them. The drive was covered with a soft film of green, as though it were gradually being entombed in the past. The young roses, however, belonged emphatically to the present. Dewdrops hung from them like jewels, and their odour filled the air. Audrey turned off the main drive towards the garden front of the house, which had always been the aspect that she preferred, and at the same moment she saw the house windows and the thrilling perspective of Mozewater. One of the windows was open. She was glad, because this proved that the perfect Aguilar, gardener and caretaker, was after all imperfect. It was his crusty perfection that had ever set Audrey, and others, against Aguilar. But he had gone to bed and forgotten a window—and it was the French window. While, in her suddenly revived character of a harsh Essex inhabitant, she was thinking of some sarcastic word to say to Aguilar about the window, another window slowly opened from within, and Aguilar's head became visible. Once more he had exasperatingly proved his perfection. He had not gone to bed and forgotten a window. But he had risen with exemplary earliness to give air to the house.

"'d mornin', miss," mumbled the unsmiling Aguilar, impassively, as though Audrey had never been away from Moze.

"Well, Aguilar."

"I didn't expect ye so early, miss."

"But how could you be expecting me at all?"

"Miss Ingate come home yesterday. She said you couldn't be far off, miss."

"Not Miss ... Mrs.—Moncreiff," said Audrey firmly.

"I beg your pardon, madam," Aguilar responded with absolute imperturbability. "She never said nothing about that."

And he proceeded mechanically to the next window.

The yard-dog began to bark. Audrey, ignoring Musa, went round the shrubbery towards the kennel. The chained dog continued to bark, furiously, until Audrey was within six feet of him, and then he crouched and squirmed and gave low whines and his tail wagged with extreme rapidity. Audrey bent down, trembling.... She could scarcely see.... There was something about the green film on the drive, about the look of the house, about the sheeted drawing-room glimpsed through the open window, about the view of Mozewater...! She felt acutely and painfully sorry for, and yet envious of, the young girl in a plain blue frock who used to haunt the house and the garden, and who had somehow made the house and the garden holy for evermore by her unhappiness and her longings.... Audrey was crying.... She heard a step and stood upright. It was Musa's step.

"I have never seen you so exquisite," said Musa in a murmur subdued and yet enthusiastic. All his faculties seemed to be dwelling reflectively upon her with passionate appreciation.

They had at last begun to talk, really—he in French, and she partly in French and partly in English. It was her tears, or perhaps her gesture in trying to master them, that had loosed their tongues. The ancient dog was forgotten, and could not understand why. Audrey was excusably startled by Musa's words and tone, and by the sudden change in his attitude. She thought that his personal distinction at the moment was different from and superior to any other in her experience. She had a comfortable feeling of condescension towards Nick and towards Jane Foley. And at the same time she blamed Musa, perceiving that as usual he was behaving like a child who cannot grasp the great fact that life is very serious.

"Yes," she said. "That's all very fine, that is. You pretend this, that, and the other. But why are you here? Why aren't you at work in Paris? You've got the chance of a lifetime, and instead of staying at home and practising hard and preparing yourself, you come gadding over to England simply because there's a bit of money in your pocket!"

She was very young, and in the splendour of the magnificent morning she looked the emblem of simplicity; but in her heart she was his mother, his sole fount of wisdom and energy and shrewdness.

Pain showed in his sensitive features, and then appeal, and then a hot determination.

"I came because I could not work," he said.

"Because you couldn't work? Why couldn't you work?" There was no yielding in her hard voice.

"I don't know! I don't know! I suppose it is because you are not there, because you have made yourself necessary to me; or," he corrected quickly, "because I have made you necessary to myself. Oh! I can practise for so many hours per day. But it is useless. It is not authentic practice. I think not of the music. It is as if some other person was playing, with my arm, on my violin. I am not there. I am with you, where you are. It is the same day after day, every day, every day. I am done for. I am convinced that I am done for. These concerts will infallibly be my ruin, and I shall be shamed before all Paris."

"And did you come to England to tell me this?"

"Yes."

She was relieved, for she had thought of another explanation of his escapade, and had that explanation proved to be the true one, she was very ready to make unpleasantness to the best of her ability. Nevertheless, though relieved in one direction, she was gravely worried in another. She had undertaken the job of setting Musa grandiosely on his artistic career, and the difficulties of it were growing more and more complex and redoubtable.

She said:

"But you seemed so jolly when you arrived last night. Nobody would have guessed you had a care in the world."

"I had not," he replied eagerly, "as soon as I saw you. The surprise of seeing you—it was that.... And you left Paris without saying good-bye! Why did you leave Paris without saying good-bye? Never since the moment when I learnt that you had gone have I had the soul to practise. My violin became a wooden box; my fingers, too, were of wood."

He stopped. The dog sniffed round.

Audrey was melting in bliss. She could feel herself dissolving. Her pleasure was terrible. It was true that she had left Paris without saying good-bye to Musa. She had done it on purpose. Why? She did not know. Perhaps out of naughtiness, perhaps.... She was aware that she could be hard, like her father. But she was glad, intensely glad, that she had left Paris so, because the result had been this avowal. She, Audrey, little Audrey, scarcely yet convinced that she was grown up, was necessary to the genius whom all the Quarter worshipped! Miss Thompkins was not necessary to him, Miss Nickall was not necessary to him, though both had helped to provide the means to keep him alive. She herself alone was necessary to him. And she had not guessed it. She had not even hoped for it. The effect of her personality upon Musa was mysterious—she did not affect to understand it—but it was obviously real and it was vital. If anything in the world could surpass the pleasure, her pride surpassed it. All tears were forgotten. She was the proudest young woman in the world; and she was the wisest, and the most harassed, too. But the anxieties were delicious to her.