"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. n.o.body 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 surpa.s.s the pleasure, her pride surpa.s.sed it. All tears were forgotten. She was the proudest young woman in the world; and she was the wisest, and the most hara.s.sed, too. But the anxieties were delicious to her.
"I am essential to him," she thought ecstatically. "I stand between him and disaster. When he has succeeded his success will be my work and n.o.body else"s. I have a mission. I must live for it.... If anyone had told me a year ago that a great French genius would be absolutely dependent upon me, and that I meant for him all the difference between failure and triumph, I should have laughed.... And yet!..." She looked at him surrept.i.tiously.
"He"s an angel. But he"s also a baby." The feelings of motherhood were as naught compared to hers.
Then she remarked harshly, icily:
"Well, I shall be much obliged if you will go back to Paris at once--to-day. _Somebody_ must have a little sense."
Just at this point Aguilar interrupted. He came slouching round the corner of the clipped bushes, untidy, shabby, implacable, with some set purpose in his hard blue eyes. She could have annihilated him with satisfaction, but the fellow was indestructible as well as implacable.
"Could I have a word with ye, madam?" he mumbled, putting on his well-known air of chicane.
With the unexplained Musa close by her she could not answer: "Wait a little. I"m engaged." She had to be careful. She had to make out especially that she and the young man were up to nothing in particular, nothing that had the slightest importance.
"What is it, Aguilar?" she questioned, inimically.
"It"s down here," said Aguilar, who recked not of the implications of a tone. And by the mere force of his glance he drew his mistress away, out of sight of Musa and the dog.
"Is that your motor-car at the gates, madam?" he demanded gloomily and confidentially, his gaze now fixed on the ground or on his patched boots.
"Of course it is," said Audrey. "Why, what"s the matter?"
"That"s all right then," said he. "But I thought it might belong to another person, and I had to make sure. Now if ye"ll just step along a bit farther, I"ve a little thing as I want to point out to ye, madam. It"s my duty to point it out, let others say _what_ they will."
He walked ahead doggedly, and Audrey crossly came after, until they arrived nearly at the end of the hedge which, separating the upper from the lower garden, hid from those immediately behind it all view of the estuary.
Here, still sheltered by the hedge, he stopped and Audrey stopped, and Aguilar absently plucked up a young plantain from the turf and dropped it into his pocket.
"There"s been a man a-hanging round this place since yesterday mornin","
said Aguilar intimately. "I call him a suspicious character--at least, I _did_, till last night. He ain"t slept in the village, that I do know, but he"s about again this morning."
"Well," said Audrey with impatience. "Why don"t you tell Inspector Keeble?
Or have you quarrelled with Inspector Keeble again?"
"It"s not that as would ha" stopped me from acquainting Inspector Keeble with the circ.u.mstances if I thought it my duty so to do," replied Aguilar.
"But the fact is I saw the chap talking to Inspector Keeble yesterday evening. He don"t know as I saw him. It was that as made me think; now is he a suspicious character or ain"t he? Of course Keeble"s a rare simple-minded "un, as we all know."
"And what do you want me to do?"
"I thought you might like to have a look at him yeself, madam. And if you"ll just peep round the end of this hedge casual-like, ye"ll see him walking across the salting from Lousey Hard. He"s a-comin" this way.
Casual-like now--and he won"t see ye."
Audrey had to obey. She peeped casual-like, and she did in fact see a man on the salting, and this man was getting nearer. She could see him very plainly in the brilliant clearness of the summer morning. After the shortest instant of hesitation she recognised him beyond any doubt. It was the detective who had been so plenteously baptised by Susan Foley in the area of the house at Paget Gardens. Aguilar looked at Audrey, and Audrey annoyed herself somewhat by blushing. However, an agreeable elation quickly overcame the blush.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ENCOUNTER
"Good morning," Audrey cried, very gaily, to the still advancing detective, who, after the slightest hesitation in the world, responded gaily:
"Good morning."
The man"s accent struck her. She said to herself, with amus.e.m.e.nt:
"He"s Irish!"
Audrey had left the astonished but dispa.s.sionate gardener at the hedge, and was now emerging from the scanty and dishevelled plantation close to the boundary wall of the estate. She supposed that the police must have been on her track and on the track of Jane Foley, and that by some mysterious skill they had hunted her down. But she did not care. She was not in the least afraid. The sudden vision of a jail did not affright her. On the contrary her chief sensation was one of joyous self-confidence, which sensation had been produced in her by the remarks and the att.i.tude of Musa. She had always known that she was both shy and adventurous, and that the two qualities were mutually contradictory; but now it appeared to her that diffidence had been destroyed, and that that change which she had ever longed for in her const.i.tution had at least really come to pa.s.s.
"You don"t seem very surprised to see me," said Audrey.
"Well, madam," said the detective, "I"m not paid to be surprised--in my business."
He had raised his hat. He was standing on the d.y.k.e, and from that height he looked somewhat down upon Audrey leaning against the wall. The watercourse and the strip of eternally emerald-green gra.s.s separated them. Though neither tall nor particularly handsome, he was a personable man, with a ready smile and alert, agile movements. Audrey was too far off to judge of his eyes, but she was quite sure that they twinkled. The contrast between this smart, cheerful fellow and the half-drowned victim in the area of the house in Paget Gardens was quite acute.
"Now I"ve a good mind to hold a meeting for your benefit," said Audrey, striving to recall the proper phrases of propaganda which she had heard in the proper quarters in London during her brief connection with the cause.
However, she could not recall them, "But there"s no need to," she added. "A gentleman of your intelligence must be of our way of thinking."
"About what?"
"About the vote, of course. And so your conduct is all the more shocking."
"Why!" he exclaimed, laughing. "If it comes to that, your own s.e.x is against you."
Audrey had heard this argument before, and it had the same effect on her as on most other stalwarts of the new political creed. It annoyed her, because there was something in it.
"The vast majority of women are with us," said she.
"My wife isn"t."
"But your wife isn"t the vast majority of women," Audrey protested.