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The Lion's Share, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 26. Nocturne |
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_ 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. _ |
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