"I feared that you might mistake your vocation--that vocation which is so clearly written on your face. I saw a woman young and free and rich, and I was afraid that she might waste everything."
"But do you know anything about me?"
Madame Piriac paused before replying.
"Nothing but what I see. But I see that you are in a high degree what all women are to a greater extent than men--an individualist. You know the feeling that comes over a woman in hours of complete intimacy with a man?
You know what I mean?"
"Oh, yes!" Audrey agreed, blushing.
"In those moments we perceive that only the individual counts with us. And with you, above all, the individual should count. Unless you use your youth and your freedom and your money for some individual, you will never be content; you will eternally regret. All that is in your face."
Audrey blushed more, thinking of certain plans formed in that head of hers.
She said nothing. She was both very pleased and very exasperated.
"I have a relative in England, a young girl," Madame Piriac proceeded, "in some unp.r.o.nounceable county. We write to each other. She is excessively English."
Audrey was scarlet. Several times during the sojourn in Paris she had sent letters (to Madame Piriac) to be posted in Ess.e.x by Mr. Foulger. These letters were full of quaint inventions about winter life in Ess.e.x, and other matters.
Madame Piriac, looking reflectively at the red embers of wood in the grate, went on:
"She says she may come to Paris soon. I have often asked her to come, but she has refused. Perhaps next month I shall go to England to fetch her. I should like her to know you--very much. She is younger than you are, but only a little, I think."
"I shall be delighted, if I am here," Audrey stammered, and she rose. "You are a very kind woman. Very, very amiable. You do not know how much I admire you. I wish I was like you. But I am not. You have seen only one side of me. You should see the inside. It is very strange. I must go to London. I am forced to go to London. I should be a coward if I did not go to London. Tell me, is my dress really good? Or is it a deception?"
Madame Piriac smiled, and kissed her on both cheeks.
"It is good," said Madame Piriac. "But your maid is not all that she ought to be. However, it is good."
"If you had simply praised it, and only that, I should not have been content," said Audrey, and kissed Madame Piriac in the English way, the youthful and direct way.
Not another word about the male s.e.x, the female s.e.x, tradition or individualism, pa.s.sed between them.
Mr. Gilman was summoned to take Audrey across the river to the right bank.
They went in a taxi. He was protective and very silent. But just as the cab was turning out of the Rue de Rivoli into the Rue Castiglione he said:
"I shall obey you absolutely, Mrs. Moncreiff. It is a great pleasure for an old, lonely man to keep a secret for a young and charming woman. A greater pleasure than you can possibly imagine. You may count on me. I am not a talker, but you have put me under an obligation, and I am very grateful."
She took care that her thanks should reward him.
"Winnie," she burst out in the rose-coloured secrecy of the bedroom, "has Elise gone to bed? ... All right. Well, I"m lost. Madame Piniac is going to England to fetch me."
CHAPTER XX
PAGET GARDENS
"Has anything happened in this town?" asked Audrey of Miss Ingate.
It was the afternoon of the day following their arrival in London from Paris, and it was a fine afternoon. They were walking from the Charing Cross Hotel, where they had slept, to Paget Gardens.
"Anything happened?" repeated Miss Ingate. "What you mean? I don"t see anything vehy particular on the posters."
"Everybody looks so sad and worried, compared with people in Paris."
"So they do! So they do!" cried Miss Ingate. "Oh, yes! So they do! I wondered what it was seemed so queer. That"s it. Well, of course you mustn"t forget we"re in England. I always did say it was a vehy peculiar place."
"Do _we_ look like that?" Audrey suggested.
"I expect we do."
"I"m quite sure that I don"t, Winnie, anyway. I"m really very cheerful. I"m surprisingly cheerful."
It was true. Also she both looked and felt more girlish than ever in Paris.
Impossible to divine, watching her in her light clothes, and with her airy step, that she was the relict of a man who had so tragically died of blood-poisoning caused by bad table manners.
"I"ve a good mind to ask a policeman," said she.
"You"d better not," Miss Ingate warned her.
Audrey instantly turned into the roadway, treating the creosoted wood as though it had been rose-strewn velvet, and reached a refuge where a policeman was standing. The policeman bent with benevolence and politeness to listen to her tale.
"Excuse me," she said, smiling innocently up at him, "but is anything the matter?"
"_What_ street, miss?" he questioned, bending lower.
"Is anything the matter? All the people round here are so gloomy."
The policeman glanced at her.
"There will be something the matter," he remarked calmly. "There will be something the matter pretty soon if I have much more of that suffragette sauce. I thought you was one of them the moment I saw you, but I wasn"t sure."
This was the first time Audrey had ever spoken to a policeman, save Inspector Keeble, at Moze, who was a friendly human being. And she had a little pang of fear. The policeman was like a high wall of blue cloth, with a marvellous imitation of a human face at the top, and above the face a cupola.
"Thank you," she murmured reproachfully, and hastened back to Miss Ingate, who heard the tale with a grinning awe that was, nevertheless, sardonic.
They pressed onwards to Piccadilly Circus, where the only normal and cheerful living creatures were the van horses and the flower-women; and up Regent Street, through crowds of rapt and mystical women and romantical men who had apparently wandered out of a play by Henrik Ibsen.
They then took a motor-bus, which was full of the same enigmatic, far-gazing heroines and heroes. When they got off, the conductor pointed dreamily in a certain direction and murmured the words: "Paget Square."
Their desire was Paget Gardens, and, after finding Paget Square, Paget Mansions, Paget Houses, Paget Street, Paget Mews, and Upper Paget Street, they found Paget Gardens. It was a terrace of huge and fashionable houses fronting on an immense, blank brick wall. The houses were very lofty; so lofty that the architect, presumably afraid of hitting heaven with his patent chimney cowls, had sunk the lowest storey deep into the earth.
Looking over the high palisades which protected the pavement from the precipice thus made, one could plainly see the lowest storey and all that was therein.
"Whoever can she be staying with?" exclaimed Miss Ingate. "It"s a marchioness at least. There"s no doubt the very best people are now in the movement."
Audrey went first up ma.s.sive steps, and, choosing with marked presence of mind the right bell, rang it, expecting to see either a butler or a footman.
A young woman, however, answered the ring. She wore a rather shabby serge frock, but no ap.r.o.n, and she did not resemble any kind of servant. Her ruddy, heavy, and slightly resentful face fronted the visitors with a steady, challenging stare.