The Lion's Share Part 37

"However," said Mr. Gilman, "he's not much use to me personally. He doesn't understand liver. Scotsmen never do. Fortunately, I have a very good doctor in Paris. I prefer French doctors. And I'm sure they're right on the great liver question. All English doctors tell you to take plenty of violent exercise if you want to shake off a liver attack. Quite wrong. Too much exercise tires the body and so it tires the liver as well--obviously.

What's the result? You can see, can't you? The liver works worse than ever.

Now, a French doctor will advise complete rest until the attack is over.

_Then_ exercise, if you like; but not before. Of course, _you_ don't know you've got a liver, and I dare say you think it's very odd of me to talk about my liver. I'm sure you do."

"I don't, honestly. I like you to talk like that. It's very interesting."

And she thought: "Suppose Tommy was wrong, after all! ... She's very spiteful."

"That's you all over, Mrs. Moncreiff. You understand men far better than any other woman I ever saw, unless, perhaps, it's Madame Piriac."

"Oh, Mr. Gilman! How can you say such a thing?"

"It's not the first time you've heard it, I wager!" said Mr. Gilman. "And it won't be the last! Any man who knows women can see at once that you are one of the women who understand. Otherwise, do you imagine I should have begun upon my troubles?"

Now, at any rate, he was sincere--she was convinced of that. And he looked very smart as he spied the horizon for lights and peered at the compa.s.s, and moved the wheel at intervals with a strong, accustomed gesture. And, a.s.suredly, he looked very experienced. Audrey blushed. She just had to believe that there must be something in what he said concerning her talent.

She had noticed it herself several times.

In an interval of the music the sea washed with a long sound against the bow of the yacht; then silence.

"I do love that sudden wash against the yacht," said Audrey.

"Yes," agreed Mr. Gilman, "so do I. All doctors tell me that I should be better if I gave up yachting. But I won't. I couldn't. Whatever it costs in health, yachting's worth it."

"Oh! It must be!" cried Audrey, with enthusiasm. "I've never been on a yacht before, but I quite agree with you. I feel as if I could live on a yacht for ever--always going to new places, you know; that's how I feel."

"You do?" Mr. Gilman exclaimed and gazed at her for a moment with a sort of ecstasy. Audrey instinctively checked herself. "There's a freemasonry among those who like yachting." His eyes returned to the compa.s.s. "I've kept your secret. I've kept it like something precious. I've enjoyed keeping it. It's been a comfort to me. Now I wonder if you'll do the same for me, Mrs. Moncreiff?"

"Do what?" Audrey asked weakly, intimidated.

"Keep a secret. I shouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac. Will you?

May I tell you?"

"Yes, if you think you can trust me," said Audrey, concealing, with amazing ease and skill, her excitement and her mighty pleasure in the scene.... "He wouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac." ...It is doubtful whether she had ever enjoyed anything so much, and yet she was as prim as a nun.

"I'm not a happy man, Mrs. Moncreiff. Materially, I've everything a man can want, I suppose. But I'm not happy. You may laugh and say it's my liver.

But it isn't. You're a woman of the world; you know what life is; and yet experience hasn't spoilt you. I could say anything to you; anything! And you wouldn't be shocked, would you?"

"No," said Audrey, hoping, nevertheless, that he would not say "anything, anything," but somehow simultaneously hoping that he would. It was a disconcerting sensation.

"I want you always to remember that I'm unhappy and never to tell anybody,"

Mr. Gilman resumed.

"But why?"

"It will be a kindness to me."

"I mean, why are you unhappy?"

"My opinions have all changed. I used to think I could be independent of women. Not that I didn't like women! I did. But when I'd left them I was quite happy. You know what the facts of life are, Mrs. Moncreiff. Young as you are you are older than me in some respects, though I have a long life before me. It's just because I have a long life before me--dyspeptics are always long-lived--that I'm afraid for the future. It wouldn't matter so much if I was an old man."

"But," asked Audrey adventurously, "why should you be unhappy because your opinions have changed? What opinions?" She endeavoured to be perfectly judicial and indifferent, and yet kind.

"What opinions? Well, about Woman Suffrage, for instance. You remember that night at the Foas', and what I remarked afterwards about what you all said?"

"Yes, I remember," said Audrey. "But can _you_ remember it? Fancy you remembering a thing like that!"

"I remember every word that was said. It changed me.... Not at first. Oh, no! Not for several days, perhaps weeks. I fought against it. Then I said to myself, 'How absurd to fight against it!' ... Well, I've come to believe in women having the vote. You've no more stanch supporter than I am. I _want_ women to have the vote. And you're the first person I've ever said that to. I want _you_ to have the vote."

He smiled at her, and she saw scores and scores of excellent qualities in his smile; she could not believe that he had any defect whatever. His secret was precious to her. She considered that he had confided it to her in a manner both distinguished and poetical. He had shown a quality which no youth could have shown. Youths were inferior, crude, incomplete. Not that Mr. Gilman was not young! Emphatically he was young, but her conception of the number of years comprised in youthfulness had been enlarged. She saw, as in a magical enlightenment, that forty was young, fifty was young, any age was young provided it had the right gestures. As for herself, she was without age. The obvious fact that Mr. Gilman was her slave touched her; it saddened her, but sweetly; it gave her a new sense of responsibility.

She said:

"I still don't see why this change of view should make you unhappy. I should have thought it would have just the opposite effect."

"It has altered all my desires," he replied. "Do you know, I'm not really interested in this new yacht now! And that's the truth."

"Mr. Gilman!" she checked him. "How can you say such a thing?"

It now appeared that she was not a nice girl. If she had been a nice girl she would not have comprehended what Mr. Gilman was ultimately driving at.

The word "marriage" would never have sounded in her brain. And she would have been startled and shocked had Mr. Gilman even hinted that there was such a word in the dictionary. But not being, after all, a nice girl, she actually dwelt on the notion of marriage with somebody exactly like Mr.

Gilman. She imagined how fine and comfortable and final it would be. She admitted that despite her riches and her independence she would be and could be simply naught until she possessed a man and could show him to the world as her own. Strange att.i.tude for a wealthy feminist, but she had the att.i.tude! And, moreover, she enjoyed having it; she revelled in it. She desired, impatiently, that Mr. Gilman should proceed further. She thirsted for his next remark. And her extremely deceptive features displayed only a blend of simplicity and soft pity. Those features did not actually lie, for she was ingenuous without being aware of it and her pity for the fellow-creature whose lot she could a.s.suage with a glance was real enough.

But they did suppress about nine-tenths of the truth.

"I tell you," said Mr. Gilman, "there is nothing I could not say to you.

And--and--of course, you'll say I scarcely know you--yet----"

Clearly he was proceeding further. She waited as in a theatre one waits for a gun to go off on the stage. And then the gun did go off, but not the gun she was expecting.

Skipper Wyatt's head popped up like a cannon shot out of a hole in the forward deck, and it gazed sharply and apprehensively around the calm, moonlit sea. Mr. Gilman was, beyond question, perturbed by the movements of that head, though he could not see the expression of the eyes. This was the first phenomenon. The second phenomenon was a swirling of water round the after part of the s.h.i.+p, and this swirling went on until the water was white with a thin foam.

"Reverse those d----d engines!" shouted Captain Wyatt, quite regardless of the proximity of refined women. He had now sprung clear of the hole and was running aft. The whole world of the yacht could not but see that he was coatless and that his white s.h.i.+rtsleeves, being rather long, were kept in position by red elastic rings round his arms. "Is that blithering engineer asleep?" continued Captain Wyatt, ignoring the whole system of yacht etiquette. "She's getting harder on every second!"

"Ay, ay, skipper!" came a m.u.f.fled voice from the engine-room.

"And not too soon either!" snapped the captain.

The yacht throbbed more violently; the swirling increased furiously. The captain stared over the rail. Then, after an interval, he stamped on the deck in disgust.

"Shut off!" he yelled. "It's no good."

The yacht ceased to throb. The swirling came to an end, and the thin white foam faded into flat sombre water. Whereupon Captain Wyatt turned back to the wheel, which, in his extreme haste, he had pa.s.sed by.

"You've run her on to the sand, sir," said he to Mr. Gilman, respectfully but still accusingly.

"Oh, no! Impossible!" Mr. Gilman defended himself, pained by the charge.

"She's hard on, anyhow, sir. And many a good yacht's left her bones on this Buxey."

"But you gave me the course," protested Mr. Gilman, with haughtiness.