When the pair in question were back in the brougham, and the horse's
head was turned the other way, they had not gone very far before a
distinct change took place in the lady's manner. She was no longer
solicitous; she no longer sat close to her companion's side; indeed,
she seemed disposed to give him as wide a berth as possible, to ignore
him as completely as the exigencies of the situation permitted, and she
never spoke a word. She was, possibly, too engrossed with the
singularity of her proceedings to pay any attention to him. On her lap
was a pile of bank-notes which she was dividing into separate parcels;
these parcels she was bestowing in distinctly surprising portions of
her attire. She slipped one parcel in the top of one stocking, a second
into the top of the other; she took off her shoes, and placed a wad of
notes in each; she turned up the sleeves of her coat--into the lining
about the wrists, in which an aperture seemed to have been purposely
cut, she inserted quite a number. Loosening her bodice, she slipped
several into the band at the top of her skirt. With the residue she
performed quite a surprising feat of legerdemain. She produced a small
bag which was made of what looked like oil-skin, into which she crammed
the notes; raising it to the back of her neck, she gave her shoulders a
sort of hunch, it slipped down the back of her dress; one could see
from the movements she made that she was trying to get it to settle in
its proper place. Then, for the first time, she turned towards Beaton.
Some of her performances had been hardly of the kind which the average
woman would care to essay in front of an entire stranger. She had been
as indifferent to her companion's presence as if he had been a
mechanical figure; and, indeed, when she looked at him, one perceived
that he might just as well have been. He seemed to be as devoid of
intelligence, as incapable of taking active interest in what was going
on about him; it was probable that he had been quite oblivious of what
she had been doing. But this time the spectacle he presented, instead
of amusing her, seemed to fill her with quite different feelings. She
addressed him all at once as if he had been a dog, her voice hard,
cold, strident, even a trifle vulgar:
"Hullo--over there!" He remained still, clearly not realising that he
was being spoken to. She went on in the same tone: "Now then, wake up!
Haven't you been ill quite long enough? Try another sort of game. Do
you hear me speak to you?" Apparently he did not. "Don't you, or won't
you? Are you drunk? Now then, this won't do. I'm very much obliged to
you, but I've had quite enough of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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