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Spatt greater and more real pleasure than she had had for years; it even fortified her against the possible resentment of her cherished Mr. Ziegler. "French music would you wish?" Musa suggested. "Is there any French music? That is to say, of artistic importance?" asked Mr. Ziegler calmly. "I have never heard of it." He was not consciously being rude. Nor was he trying to be funny.
Meiner Frack!" exclaimed Mr. Ziegler, forgetting his deep knowledge of English. His economic instincts had been swiftly aroused, and they dominated all the other instincts. "Meiner Frack! Vill you vipe it?" His glance was imploring. "Oh! Mrs. Spatt will attend to it," said Audrey with solemnity, and walked out of the room into the hall.
They were like the wand of some magical princess come to break a sinister thrall. They nearly humanised the gaunt parlourmaid, who stood grimly and primly waiting until these tedious sentimental preliminaries should cease from interfering with her duties in regard to the luggage. "We have friends of yours here, Miss Nickall," simpered Mrs. Spatt, after she had given a welcome.
Foulger had followed her to Birmingham, and in the letter Mr. Foulger had acquainted her with the fact that Great Mexican Oil shares had just risen to £2 3s. apiece. She knew that she had 180,000 of them, and now under the thin protection of Mr. Spatt she tried to reckon 180,000 times £2 3s. She could not do the sum. At any rate she could not be sure that she did it correctly.
Spatt took advantage of the diversion caused by the brushing of the cloth and the distribution of finger-bowls to glance at the topmost letter, which was addressed in a woman's hand. "She's coming!" he exclaimed, forgetting to apologise in the sudden excitement of news, "Good heavens!" He looked at his watch. "She's here. I heard the train several minutes ago! She must be here!
However, she was fairly well convinced beneath the dark, impenetrable sky that the answer totalled nearly £400,000, that was, ten million francs. And the ridiculousness of an heiress who owned over ten million francs wandering about a place like Frinton with a man like Mr. Spatt, searching for another man like Musa, struck her as exceeding the bounds of the permissible.
"I wouldn't have had him miss that Debussy for anything, but I hadn't noticed that he was gone. He adores Debussy." "I think it is like bad Bach," Mr. Ziegler put in suddenly. Then he raised his glass and imbibed a good portion of the beer specially obtained and provided for him by his hostess and admirer, Mrs. Spatt. "Do you really?" murmured Mrs. Spatt, with deprecation.
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.
Probably in all the annals of artistic snobbery, no cultured cosmopolitan had ever been made to suffer a more exquisite moral torture of humiliation than Musa had contrived to inflict upon Mr. and Mrs. Spatt in return for their hospitality. Their sneaped squirmings upon the sofa were terrible to witness. But Mr. Ziegler's sensibility was apparently quite unaffected.
The black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy. As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament. "I'm afraid it's not much use looking any longer," said Mr. Spatt weakly. "He he may have gone back to the house. Let us hope so."
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