"I'll never have the chance again," she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.

"Two liqueur brandies, please," she said to the woman in grey, who had left her ap.r.o.n calculations. "That's all right," she murmured, as the woman stared a question at her. Then the woman smiled to herself, and poured out the liqueur brandies from a labelled bottle with startling adroitness, and dashed the full gla.s.ses on to a bra.s.s tray.

As Audrey walked across the gravel carefully balancing the tray, she speculated whether the public eye would notice the shape of her small handbag, which was attached by a safety pin to her dress beneath the ap.r.o.n, and whether her streamers were streaming out far behind her head.

Before she could put the tray down on the table, the rosetted steward, who looked pale, s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the gla.s.ses and gulped down its entire contents.

"I wanted it!" said he, smacking his lips. "I wanted it bad. They'll catch 'em all right. I should know the young 'un again anywhere. I'll swear to identify her in any court. And I will. Tasty little piece o' goods, too!...

But not so good-looking as you," he added, gazing suddenly at Audrey.

"None o' your sauce," snapped Audrey, and walked off, leaving the tray behind.

The two men exploded into coa.r.s.e but amiable laughter, and called to her to return, but she would not. "You can pay the other young lady," she said over her shoulder, pointing vaguely to the counter where there was now a bevy of other young ladies.

Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock. Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.

That night they reached Northampton. At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram. And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey:

"It won't be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow. And perhaps not to any of our places in London."

"That won't matter," said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact. "We'll go anywhere, won't we, Winnie?"

And Miss Ingate a.s.sented.

"Well," said Jane Foley. "I've just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton."

"You don't mean Frinton-on-Sea?" exclaimed Miss Ingate, suddenly excited.

"It _is_ on the sea," said Jane. "We have to go through Colchester. Do you know it?"

"Do I know it!" repeated Miss Ingate. "I know everybody in Frinton, except the Germans. When I'm at home I buy my bacon at Frinton. Are you going to an hotel there?"

"No," said Jane. "To some people named Spatt."

"There's n.o.body that is anybody named Spatt living at Frinton," said Miss Ingate.

"They haven't been there long."

"Oh!" murmured Miss Ingate. "Of course if that's it...! I can't guarantee what's happened since I began my pilgrimages. But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester. This afternoon's business has been too feverish for me. When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught. I shall just go home."

"I don't care much about going to Frinton, Jenny," said Audrey.

Indeed, Moze lay within not many miles of Frinton-on-Sea.

Then Audrey and Miss Ingate observed a phenomenon that was both novel and extremely disturbing. Tears came into the eyes of Jane Foley.

"Don't say it, Audrey, don't say it!" she appealed in a wet voice. "I shall have to go myself. And you simply can't imagine how I hate going all alone into these houses that we're invited to. I'd much sooner be in lodgings, as we were last night. But these homes in quiet places here and there are very useful sometimes. They all belong to members of the Union, you know; and we have to use them. But I wish we hadn't. I've met Mrs. Spatt once. I didn't think you'd throw me over just at the worst part. The Spatts will take all of us and be glad."

("They won't take me," said Miss Ingate under her breath.)

"I shall come with you," said Audrey, caressing the recreant who, while equal to trifles such as policemen, magistrates, and prisons, was miserably afraid of a strange home. In fact Audrey now liked Jane much more than ever, liked her completely--and perhaps admired her rather less, though her admiration was still intense. And the thought in Audrey's mind was: "Never will I desert this girl! I'm a militant, too, now, and I shall stick by her." And she was full of a happiness which she could not understand and which she did not want to understand.

The next morning all the newspaper posters in Northhampton bore the words: "Policemen and suffragettes on Joy Wheel," or some variation of these words. And they bore nothing else. And in all the towns and many of the villages through which they pa.s.sed on the way to Colchester, the same legend greeted their flying eyes. Audrey and Miss Ingate, in the motor-car, read with great care all the papers. Audrey blushed at the descriptions of herself, which were flattering. It seemed that the Cabinet Minister's political meeting had been seriously damaged by the episode, for the reason that rumours of the performance on the Joy Wheel had impaired the spell of eloquence and partially emptied the hall. And this was the more disappointing in that the police had been sure that nothing untoward would occur. It seemed also that the police were on the track of the criminals.

"Are they!" exclaimed Jane Foley with a beautiful smile.

Then the car approached a city of towers on a hill, and as it pa.s.sed by the station, which was in the valley, Miss Ingate demanded a halt. She got out in the station yard and transferred her belongings to a cab.

"I shall drive home from here," she said. "I've often done it before. After all, I did play the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street. Surely I can rest on the barrel organ, can't I, Miss Foley--at my age? ... What a business I shall have when I _do_ get home, and n.o.body expecting me!"

And when certain minor arrangements had been made, the car mounted the hill into Colchester and took the Frinton road, leaving Miss Ingate's fly far behind.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SPATTS

The house of the Spatts was large, imposing and variegated. It had turrets, balconies, and architectural nooks in such quant.i.ty that the unaided individual eye could not embrace it all at once. It overlooked, from a height, the grounds of the Frinton Sports Club, and a new member of this club, upon first beholding the residence, had made the immortal remark: "It wants at least fourteen people to look at it." The house stood in the middle of an unfinished garden, which promised ultimately to be as heterogeneous as itself, but which at present was merely an expanse of sorely wounded earth.

The time was early summer, and therefore the summer dining-room of the Spatts was in use. This dining-room consisted of one white, windowed wall, a tiled floor, and a roof of wood. The windows gave into the winter dining-room, which was a white apartment, spa.r.s.ely curtained and cushioned with chintz, and containing very few pieces of furniture or pictures. The Spatts considered, rightly, that furniture and pictures were unhygienic and the secret lairs of noxious germs. Had the Spatts flourished twenty-five years earlier their dining-room would have been covered with brown paper upon which would have hung permanent photographs of European masterpieces of graphic art, and there would have been a multiplicity of draperies and specimens of battered antique furniture, with a warming-pan or so suspended here and there in place of sporting trophies. But the Spatts had not begun to flourish twenty-five years ago. They flourished very few years ago and they still flourish.

As the summer dining-room had only one wall, it follows that it was open to the powers of the air. This result had been foreseen by the Spatts--had indeed been expressly arranged, for they believed strongly in the powers of the air, as being beneficent powers. It is true that they generally had sniffling colds, but their argument was that these maladies had no connection whatever with the powers of the air, which, according to their theory, saved them from much worse.

They and their guests were now seated at dinner. Twilight was almost lost in night. The table was illuminated by four candles at the corners, and flames of these candles flickered in the healthful evening breeze, dropping pink wax on the candlesticks. They were surrounded by the mortal remains of tiny moths, but other tiny moths would not heed the warning and continually shot themselves into the flames. On the outskirts of the table moved with silent stealth the forms of two middle-aged and ugly servants.

Mrs. Spatt was very tall and very thin, and the simplicity of her pale green dress--sole reminder of the brown-paper past--was calculated to draw attention to these attributes. She had an important reddish nose, and a mysterious look of secret confidence, which never left her even in the most trying crises. Mr. Spatt also was very tall and very thin. His head was several sizes too small, and part of his insignificant face, which one was apt to miss altogether in contemplating his body, was hidden under a short grey beard. Siegfried Spatt, the sole child of the union, though but seventeen, was as tall and as thin as his father and his mother; he had a pale face and red hands.

The guests were Audrey, Jane Foley, and a young rubicund gentleman, beautifully clothed, and with fair curly locks, named Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was far more perfectly at ease than anybody else at the table, which indeed as a whole was rendered haggard and nervous by the precarious state of the conversation, expecting its total decease at any moment. At intervals someone lifted the limp dying body--it sank back--was lifted again--struggled feebly--relapsed. Young Siegfried was excessively tongue-tied and self-conscious, and his demeanour frankly admitted it. Jane Foley, acknowledged heroine in certain fields, sat like a schoolgirl at her first dinner-party. Audrey maintained her widowhood, but scarcely with credit. Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were as usual too deeply concerned about the awful condition of the universe to display that elasticity of mood which continuous chatter about nothing in particular demands. And they were too worshipful of the best London conventions not to regard silence at table as appalling. In the part of the country from which Jane Foley sprang, hosts will sit mute through a meal and think naught of it. But Mr. and Mrs. Spatt were of different stuff. All these five appeared to be in serious need of conversation pills. Only Mr. Ziegler beheld his companions with a satisfied equanimity that was insensible to spiritual suffering. Happily at the most acute moments the gentle night wind, meandering slowly from the east across leagues of North Sea, would induce in one or another a sneeze which gave some semblance of vitality and vigour to the scene.

After one of these sneezes it was that Jane Foley, conscience-stricken, tried to stimulate the exchanges by an effort of her own.

"And what are the folks like in Frinton?" she demanded, blushing, and looking up. As she looked up young Siegfried looked down, lest he might encounter her glance and be utterly discountenanced.

Jane Foley's question was unfortunate.

"We know nothing of them," said Mrs. Spatt, pained. "Of course I have received and paid a few purely formal calls. But as regards friends and acquaintances, we prefer to import them from London. As for the holiday-makers, one sees them, naturally. They appear to lead an exclusively physical existence."

"My dear," put in Mr. Spatt stiffly. "The residents are no better. The women play golf all day on that appalling golf course, and then after tea they go into the town to change their library books. But I do not believe that they ever read their library books. The mentality of the town is truly remarkable. However, I am informed that there are many towns like it."

"You bet!" murmured Siegfried Spatt, and then tried, vainly, to suck back the awful remark whence it had come.

Mr. Ziegler, speaking without pa.s.sion or sorrow, added his views about Frinton. He a.s.serted that it was the worst example of stupid waste of opportunities he had ever encountered, even in England. He pointed out that there was no band, no pier, no casino, no shelters--and not even a tree; and that there were no rules to govern the place. He finished by remarking that no German state would tolerate such a pleasure resort. In this judgment he employed an excellent English accent, with a scarcely perceptible thickening of the t's and thinning of the d's.

Mr. Ziegler left nothing to be said.

Then the conversation sighed and really did expire. It might have survived had not the Spatts had a rule, explained previously to those whom it concerned, against talking shop. Their attachment to this rule was heroic.