The Artist seemed to regard this as normal charing, nothing uncommon. He returned to the Austrian bent-wood chair, and sat down to think whether he should light the gas. He began to suspect himself of going imbecile with disheartenment and depression. He was at his lowest ebb. "I tell you what," said he—it was Space he was addressing—"I shall just go straight away to-morrow after breakfast to Coombe, and tell Mrs. Hay that if she doesn't come back I shall let the Studio and go to Japan."
But Space didn't seem interested. It had three dimensions, and was content.
He might as well light the gas as not; so he did it, and it sang, and burned blue. Then it stopped singing, and became transigeant, and you could turn it down or up. Mr. Aiken turned it down, but not too much, and listened to a cab coming down the street. "That's not for here," said he. He had no earthly reason for saying this. He was only making conversation; or rather, soliloquy. But he was wrong; at least so far as that the cab was really stopping, here or next door. And in the quadrupedations, door-slammings, backings, reproofs to the horse, interchange of ideas between the Captain and the passengers of a hansom cab of spirit, a sound reached Mr. Aiken's ear which arrested him as he stood, with his finger on the gas-tap. "Hullo!" said he, and listened as a musical Critic listens to a new performance.
When towards the end of such a symphony, the fare seeks the exact sum he is named after, and weighs nice differences, some bars may elapse before the conductor—or rather the driver, else we get mixed with omnibuses—sanctions a start. But a reckless spendthrift has generally discharged his liability, and is knocking at the door or using his latchkey, before his late driver has done pretending to consider the justice of his award. It happened so in this case, for before Mr. Aiken saw anything to confirm or contradict the need for his close attention, eight demisemiquavers, a pause, and a concussion, made a good wind-up to the symphony aforesaid, and the cab was free to begin the next movement on its own account.
He discarded the gas-tap abruptly, and pounced upon his velveteen, nearly pulling over the screen he had hung it on. "That drunken jade must not go to the door," he gasped, as he bolted from the room and down the stairs. He need not have been uneasy. The jade was singing in the kitchen—either the Grandfather's Clock or the Lost Chord—and was keeping her accompanist waiting, with an intense feeling of pathos. Mr. Aiken swung down the stairs, got his collar right in the passage, and nearly embraced the wrong lady on the doorstep, so great was his hurry to get at the right one.
"Never mind!" said Madeline; and her laugh was like nightingales by the Arno in May. "Don't apologize, Mr. Aiken. Look here!—I've brought you your wife home. Now kiss her!"
"You're not fit to kiss anybody, Reginald; but I suppose there's soap in the house." So said Mrs. Aiken. And then, after qualifying for a liberal use of soap, she added, "What is that hideous noise in the kitchen?"
"Oh, that?" said her husband. "That's Mrs. Gapp."