ARIADNE
A few days later an automobile--not Audrey's but a large limousine--bumped,
with slow and soft dignity, across the railway lines which diversify the
quays of Boulogne harbour and, having hooted in a peculiar manner, came to
a stop opposite nothing in particular.
"Here we are," said Mr. Gilman, reaching to open the door. "You can see her
masthead light."
It was getting dark. Behind, over the station, a very faint flush lightened
the west, and in front, across the water, and reflected in the water, the
thousand lamps of the town rose in tiers to the lofty church which stood
out a dark mass against the summer sky. On the quays the forms of men moved
vaguely among crates and packages, and on the water, tugs and boats flitted
about, puffing, or with the plash of oars, or with no sound whatever. And
from the distance arrived the reverberation of electric trams running their
courses in the maze of the town.
Madame Piriac and Audrey descended, after Mr. Gilman, from the car and Mr.
Gilman turned off the electric light in the interior and shut the door.
"Do not trouble about the luggage, I beg you," said Mr. Gilman, breathing,
as usual, rather noticeably. "_Bon soir_, Leroux. Don't forget to meet the
nine-thirty-five." This last to the white-clad chauffeur, who saluted
sharply.
At the same moment two sailors appeared over the edge of the quay, and a
Maltese cross of light burst into radiance at the end of a sloping gangway,
whose summit was just perched on the solid masonry of the port. The sailors
were clothed in blue, with white caps, and on their breasts they bore the
white-embroidered sign: "_Ariadne, R.T.Y.C._"
"Look lively, lads, with the luggage," said Mr. Gilman.
"Yes, sir."
Then another figure appeared under the Maltese cross. It was clad in white
ducks, with a blue reefer ornamented in gold, and a yachting cap crowned in
white: a stoutish and middle-aged figure, much like Mr. Gilman himself in
bearing and costume, except that Mr. Gilman had no gold on his jacket.
"Well, skipper!" greeted Mr. Gilman, jauntily and spryly. In one moment, in
one second, Mr. Gilman had grown at least twenty years younger.
"Captain Wyatt," he presented the skipper to the ladies. "And this is Mr.
Price, my secretary, and Doctor Cromarty," as two youths, clothed exactly
to match Mr. Gilman, followed the skipper up the steep incline of the
gangway.
And now Audrey could see the _Ariadne_ lying below, for it was only just
past low water and the tide was scarcely making. At the next berth higher
up, with lights gleaming at her innumerable portholes and two cranes hard
at work producing a mighty racket on her, lay a Channel steamer, which, by
comparison with the yacht, loomed enormous, like an Atlantic liner. Indeed,
the yacht seemed a very little and a very lowly and a very flimsy flotation
on the dark water, and her illuminated deck-house was no better than a toy.
On the other hand, her two masts rose out of the deep high overhead and had
a certain impressiveness, though not quite enough.
Audrey thought:
"Is this what we're going on? I thought it was a big yacht." And she had a
qualm.
And then a bell rang twice, extremely sweet and mellow, somewhere on the
yacht. And Audrey was touched by the beauty of its tone.
"Two bells. Nine o'clock," said Mr. Gilman. "Will you come aboard? I'll
show you the way." He tripped down the gangway like a boy. Behind could be
heard the sailors giving one another directions about the true method of
handling luggage.
Audrey had met Madame Piriac by sheer hazard in a corset shop in the Rue de
la Chaussée-d'Antin. The fugitive from justice had been obliged, in the
matter of wardrobe, to begin life again on her arrival trunkless in Paris,
and the business of doing so was not disagreeable. Madame Piriac had
greeted her with most affectionate warmth. One of her first suggestions had
been that Audrey should accompany her on a short yachting trip projected by
Mr. Gilman. She had said that though the excellent Gilman was her uncle,
and her adored uncle, he was not her real uncle, and that therefore, of
course, she was incapable of going unaccompanied, though she would hate to
disappoint the dear man. As for Monsieur Piriac, the destiny of France was
in his hands, and the moment being somewhat critical, he would not quit the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs without leaving a fixed telegraphic address.
On the next day Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac had called on Audrey at the
Hôtel du Danube, and the invitation became formal. It was pressing and
flattering. Why refuse it? Mr. Gilman was obviously prepared to be her
slave. She accepted, with enthusiasm. And she said to herself that in doing
so she was putting yet another spoke in the wheel of the British police.
Immediately afterwards she learnt that Musa also had been asked. Madame
Piriac informed her, in reply to a sort of protest, that Musa's first
concert was postponed by the concert agency until the autumn. "I never
heard of that!" Audrey had cried. "And why should you have heard of it?
Have you not been in England?" Madame Piriac had answered, a little
surprised at Audrey's tone. Whereupon Audrey had said naught. The chief
point was that Musa could take a holiday without detriment to his career.
Moreover, Mr. Gilman, who possessed everything, possessed a marvellous
violin, which he would put at the disposal of Musa on the yacht if Musa's
own violin had not been found in the meantime. The official story was that
Musa's violin had been mislaid or lost on the Métropolitain Railway, and
the fact that he had been to England somehow did not transpire at all.
Mr. Gilman had gone forward in advance to make sure that his yacht was in a
state worthy to receive two such ladies, and he had insisted on meeting
them in his car at Abbeville on the way to Boulogne. He had not insisted on
meeting Musa similarly. He was a peculiar and in some respects a
stiff-necked man. He had decided, in his own mind, that he would have the
two women to himself in the car, and so indeed it fell out. Nevertheless
his attitude to Musa, and Madame Piriac's attitude to Musa, and everybody's
attitude to Musa, had shown that the mere prospect of star-concerts in a
first-class hall had very quickly transformed Musa into a genuine Parisian
lion. He was positively courted. His presence on the yacht was deemed an
honour, and that was why Mr. Gilman had asked him. Audrey both resented the
remarkable change and was proud of it--as a mother perhaps naturally would
do and be. The admitted genius was to arrive the next morning.
On boarding the _Ariadne_ in the wake of Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac, the
first thing that impressed Audrey was the long gangway itself. It was made
of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost
like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the
gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the
goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar
mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made
Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing
that impressed her was that immediately she got down on deck the yacht, in
a very mysterious manner, had grown larger, and much larger. At the forward
extremity of the deck certain blue figures lounging about seemed to be
quite a long way off, indeed in another world. Here and there on the deck
were circles of yellow or white rope, coiled as precisely and perfectly as
Audrey could coil her own hair. Mr. Gilman led them to the door of the
deck-house and they gazed within. The sight of the interior drew out of the
ravished Audrey an ecstatic exclamation: "What a darling!" And at the words
she saw that Mr. Gilman, for all his assumed nonchalant spryness, almost
trembled with pleasure. The deck-house was a drawing-room whose walls were
of carved and inlaid wood. Orange-shaded electric bulbs hung on short, silk
cords from the ceiling, and flowers in sconces showed brilliantly between
the windows, which were draped with curtains of silk matching the thick
carpet. Several lounge chairs and a table of bird's-eye maple completed the
place, and over the table were scattered newspapers and illustrated
weeklies. Everything, except the literature, was somewhat diminished in
size, but the smallness of the scale only intensified the pleasure derived
from the spectacle.
Then they went "downstairs," as Audrey said; but Mr. Gilman corrected her
and said "below," whereupon Audrey retorted that she should call it the
"ground floor," and Mr. Gilman laughed as she had never heard a man of his
age laugh. The sight of the ground floor still further increased Audrey's
notion of the dimensions of the yacht, whose corridors and compartments
appeared to stretch away endlessly in two directions. At the foot of the
curving staircase Mr. Gilman, pulling aside a curtain, announced: "This is
the saloon." When she heard the word Audrey expected a poky cubicle, but
found a vast drawing-room with more books than she had ever seen in any
other drawing-room, many pictures, an open piano, with music on it; sofas
in every quarter, and about a thousand cupboards and drawers, each with a
silver knob or handle. Above all was a dome of multi-coloured glass, and
exactly beneath the dome a table set for supper, with the finest napery,
cutlery and crystal. The apartment was dazzlingly lighted, and yet not a
single lamp could be detected in the act of illumination. A real
parlourmaid suddenly appeared at the far end of the room, and behind her
two stewards in gilt-buttoned white Eton jackets and black trousers. Mr.
Gilman, with seriousness, bade the parlourmaid take charge of the ladies
and show them the sleeping-cabins.
"Choose any cabins you like," said he, as Madame Piriac and Audrey rustled
off.
There might have been hundreds of sleeping-cabins. And there did, in fact,
appear to be quite a number of them, to say nothing of two bathrooms. They
inspected all of them save one, which was locked. In an awed voice the
parlourmaid said, "That is the owner's cabin." At another door she said, in
a different, disdainful voice, "That only leads to the galley and the
crew's quarters." Audrey wondered what a galley could be, and the mystery
of that name, and the mystery of the two closed doors, merely made the
whole yacht perfect. The sleeping-cabins surpassed all else--they were so
compact, so complex, so utterly complete. No large bedchamber, within
Audrey's knowledge, held so much apparatus, and offered so much comfort and
so much wardrobe room as even the least of these cabins. It was impossible,
to be sure, that in one's amused researches one had not missed a cupboard
ingeniously disguised somewhere. And the multiplicity of mirrors, and the
message of the laconic monosyllable "Hot" on silver taps, and the
discretion of the lighting, all indicated that the architect and creator of
these marvellous microcosms had "understood." The cosy virtue of
littleness, and the entire absurdity of space for the sake of space, were
strikingly proved, and the demonstration amounted, in Audrey's mind, to a
new and delicious discovery.
The largest of the cabins had two berths at right angles to one another,
each a lovely little bed with a running screen of cashmere. Having admired
it once, they returned to it.
"Do you know, my dear," said Madame Piriac in French, "I have an idea. You
will tell me if it is not good.... If we shared this cabin...! In this so
curious machine one feels a satisfaction, somehow, in being very near the
one to the other. The ceiling is so low.... That gives you
sensations--human sensations.... I know not if you experience the same...."
"Oh! Let's!" Audrey exclaimed impulsively in English. "Do let's!"
When the parlourmaid had gone, and before the luggage had come down, Madame
Piriac caught Audrey to her and kissed her fervently on both cheeks, amid
the glinting confusion of polished woods and draperies and silver mountings
and bevelled glass.
"I am so content that you came, my little one!" murmured Madame Piriac.
The next minute the cabin and the corridor outside were full of open trunks
and bags, over which bent the forms of Madame Piriac, Audrey and the
parlourmaid. And all the drawers were gaping, and the doors of all the
cupboards swinging, and the narrow beds were hidden under piles of
variegated garments. And while they were engaged in the breathless business
of installing themselves in the celestial domain, strange new thoughts
flitted about like mice in Audrey's head. She felt as though she were in a
refuge from the world, and as though her conscience was being narcotised.
In that cabin, firm as solid land and yet floating on the water, with Mr.
Gilman at hand her absolute slave--in that cabin the propaganda of women's
suffrage presented itself as a very odd and very remote phenomenon, a
phenomenon scarcely real. She had positively everything she wanted without
fighting for it. The lion's share of life was hers. Comfort and luxury were
desirable and beautiful things, not to be cast aside nor scorned. Madame
Piriac was a wise woman and a good woman. She was a happy woman.... There
was a great deal of ugliness in sitting on Joy Wheels and being chased by
policemen. True, as she had heard, a crew of nineteen human beings was
necessary to the existence of Mr. Gilman and his guests on board the yacht.
Well, what then? The nineteen were undoubtedly well treated and in clover.
And the world was the world; you had to take it as you found it.... And
then in her mind she had a glimpse of the blissful face of Jane
Foley--blissful in a different way from any other face she had met in all
her life. Disconcerting, this glimpse, for an instant, but only for an
instant! She, Audrey, was blissful, too. The intense desire for joy and
pleasure surged up in her.... The bell which she had previously heard
struck three; its delicate note vibrated long through the yacht, unwilling
to expire. Half-past nine, and supper and the chivalry of Mr. Gilman
waiting for them in the elegance of the saloon!
As the two women approached the _portière_ which screened the forward
entrance to the saloon, they heard Mr. Gilman say, in a weary and resigned
voice:
"Well, I suppose there's nothing better than a whisky and soda."
And the vivacious reply of a steward:
"Very good, sir."
The owner was lounging in a corner, with a gloomy, bored look on his face.
But as soon as the _portière_ stirred and he saw the smiles of Madame
Piriac and Audrey upon him, his whole demeanour changed in an instant. He
sprang up, laughed, furtively smoothed his waistcoat, and managed to convey
the general idea that he had a keen interest in life, and that the keenest
part of that interest was due to a profound instinctive desire to serve
these two beautiful benefactors of mankind--the idea apparently being that
the charming creatures had conferred a favour on the human race by
consenting to exist. He cooed round them, he offered them cushions, he
inquired after their physical condition, he expressed his fear lest the
cabins had not contained every convenience that caprice might expect. He
was excited; surely he was happy! Audrey persuaded herself that this must,
after all, be his true normal condition while aboard the yacht, and that
the ennui visible on his features a moment earlier could only have been
transient and accidental.
"I am sure the piano is as wonderful as all else on board," said Madame
Piriac.
"Do play!" he entreated. "I love to hear music here. My secretary plays
for me when I am alone."
"I, who do not adore music!" Madame Piriac protested against the
invitation. But she sat down on the clamped music stool and began a waltz.
"Ah!" said Mr. Gilman, dropping into a seat by Audrey. "I wish I danced!"
"But you don't mean to say you don't," said Audrey, with fascination. She
felt that she could fascinate him, and that it was her duty to fascinate
him.
Mr. Gilman responded to the challenge.
"I suppose I do," he said modestly. "We must have a dance on deck one
night. I'll tell my secretary to get the gramophone into order. I have a
pretty good one."
"How lovely!" Audrey agreed. "I do think the _Ariadne's_ the most heavenly
thing, Mr. Gilman! I'd no idea what a yacht was! I hope you'll tell me the
proper names for all the various parts--you know what I mean. I hate to
use the wrong words. It's not polite on a yacht, is it?"
His smile was entranced.
"You and I will go round by ourselves to-morrow morning, Mrs. Moncreiff,"
he said.
Just then the steward appeared with the whisky and soda, but Mr. Gilman
dismissed him with a sharp gesture, and he vanished back into the
unexplored parts of the vessel. The implication was that the society of
Audrey made whisky and soda a superfluity for Mr. Gilman. Although she was
so young, he treated her with exactly the same deference as he lavished on
Madame Piriac, indeed with perhaps a little more. If Madame Piriac was for
him the incarnation of sweetness and balm and majesty, so also was Audrey,
and Audrey had the advantage of novelty. She was growing, morally, every
minute. The confession of Musa had filled her with a good notion of
herself. The impulsive flattery of Madame Piriac in the joint cabin, and
now the sincere, grave homage of Mr. Gilman, caused her to brim over with
consciousness that she was at last somebody.
An automobile hooted on the quay, and at the disturbing sound Madame Piriac
ceased to play and swung round on the stool.
"That--that must be our other lady guest," said Mr. Gilman, who had
developed nervousness; his cheeks flushed darkly.
"Ah?" cautiously smiled Madame Piriac, who was plainly taken aback.
"Yes," said Mr. Gilman. "Miss Thompkins. Before I knew for certain that
Mrs. Moncreiff could come with you, Hortense, I asked Miss Thompkins if she
would care to come. I only got her answer this morning--it was delayed. I
meant to tell you.... You are a friend of Miss Thompkins, aren't you?" He
turned to Audrey.
Audrey replied gaily that she knew Tommy very well.
"I'd better go up," said Mr. Gilman, and he departed, and his back, though
a nervous back, seemed to be defying Madame Piriac and Audrey to question
in the slightest degree his absolute right to choose his own guests on his
own yacht.
"Strange man!" muttered Madame Piriac. It was a confidence to Audrey, who
eagerly accepted it as such. "Imagine him inviting Mees Thompkins without
a word to us, without a word! But, you know, my dear uncle was always
bizarre, mysterious. Yet--is he mysterious, or is he ingenuous?"
"But how did he come to know Miss Thompkins?" Audrey demanded.
"Ah! You have not heard that? Miss Thompkins gave a--a musical tea in her
studio, to celebrate these concerts which are to occur. Musa asked the Foas
to come. They consented. It was understood they should bring friends. Thus
I went also, and Monsieur Gilman being at my orders that afternoon, he went
too. Never have I seen so strange a multitude! But it was amusing. And all
Paris has begun to talk of Musa. Miss Thompkins and my uncle became friends
on the instant. I assume that it was her eyes. Also those Americans have
vivacity, if not always distinction. Do you not think so?"
"Oh, yes! And do you mean to say that on the strength of that he asked her
to go yachting?"
"Well, he had called several times."
"Aren't you surprised she accepted?" asked Audrey.
"No," said Madame Piriac. "It is another code, that is all. It is a
surprise, but she will be amusing."
"I'm sure she will," Audrey concurred. "I'm frightfully fond of her
myself."
They glanced at each other very intimately, like long-established allies
who fear an aggression--and are ready for it.
Then steps were heard. Miss Thompkins entered.
"Well," drawled Miss Thompkins, gazing first at Audrey and then at Madame
Piriac. "Of all the loveliest shocks----Say, Musa----"
Behind her stood Musa. It appeared that he had been able to get away by the
same train as Tommy.