Twos and Threes

CHAPTER III
“RUN ON BOHEMIAN LINES!”

Sebastian owned a hundred pounds per annum, bequeathed him by legacy; which sum Stuart had induced him to retain:

“I agree with you it would be far more effective to renounce that as well, and confront the world as the penniless son of the rich Ned Levi. But it isn’t done, my lad; if it were, I shouldn’t be trading in diamonds. Theatricality is only a species of fat. If you strip yourself because it gives opportunity for your dramatic faculties, you’re feeding hard, all the time; feeding on the astounded faces of your friends, on your own ringing accents, on the picturesque contrast of your life as it was yesterday to what it will be to-morrow. You mustn’t be picturesque, Levi, your tawny locks are against you as it is. Your forty bob a week will ensure you a pleasantly mediocre existence in a furnished bed-sitting-room.”

Sebastian looked worried; he wished Stuart would not exhibit so many mental acrobatics. Last week he could have sworn the man was preaching total renunciation of all worldly goods, in order to make the struggle as strenuous as possible. Now he had doubled and twisted again to something entirely different. And beyond all the inconsistencies, Sebastian glimpsed a splendid consistency, a paramount truth, but, as usual, too high up for him to do aught but cling to it by the finger-tips. And seemingly he had blundered already.

“I’ve given up my room at the hotel, and I think I’ll go to the Farme for the rest of August and September,” he announced tentatively; “it’s not expensive, and I shall be near Letty.” He might have added: “and near you.”

—“And it will be quiet for writing,” he continued.

“What do you intend to write?”

“I want to throw your theory of the shears into a book; in fact, all your theories.” Sebastian tried to make the announcement without blushing, and failed miserably.

“Volume of ethical essays? Treatise on metaphysics?—Good Lord, man,”—a horrible thought struck Stuart—“surely you’re not going to butcher me to make a book of minor verse?”

“No, I hardly regard you as a lyrical subject,” retorted Sebastian, with some show of spirit,—he wasn’t always going to let himself be badgered by Heron! “The novel is the best form of literature for wide circulation,—and, after all, we do want the truth to reach the masses. I’ve got the title fixed already: ‘Shears,’ by Sebastian Levi, dedicated to Stuart Heron,—if I may?” with a return to the old shyness.

Stuart offered no active opposition, but he felt doubtful. Perversely, ever since the advent of his keen young disciple, he himself had been less keen. He was not sure now if indeed he wanted a disciple?... It was agony to watch Sebastian doing his stunts—and doing them badly! This Jewish boy was too responsive, too enthusiastic, too flexible altogether; he tempted Stuart to do his worst—and Stuart was uncomfortably aware of just how bad his worst could be. He longed for firmer material against which to pit himself.... And this sent his thoughts flying to Oliver Strachey in America—and to Oliver’s wife in Bournemouth. He felt more guilty over that affair than he cared to acknowledge; and wondered once or twice if he ought not himself to take in hand the muddle at the Menagerie, pending Nigger’s return. So now he enjoined Sebastian to let him know just how chaotic were Aureole’s affairs, morally and financially.

Sebastian had decided to ignore Mr. Johnson’s commands to see less of his daughter. Without previous word to Letty, he arrived at the Farme, in quest of a room, late the following afternoon; and found the place deserted, save in the square-flagged hall, a couple of rather forlorn persons standing beside a pile of dusty luggage.

“We’ve been waiting over half an hour,” explained the plain prim female of the pair; “I sent Mrs. Strachey a card when to expect us, but I suppose it got mislaid in the post. There are no servants anywhere. And Bertie gets such cold feet, travelling,” indicating her pallid young companion. “When I pulled the bell-rope, it came off in my hands. Do you suppose she will charge much for the damage? Is she like that?”

Sebastian’s reassurances were drowned in the hoot of a motor-horn, and a chorus of laughing chatter. Through the wide windows and through the open door, a miscellaneous crowd swarmed into the hall, and paused abruptly at sight of the strangers.

“Aureole, forward please, and serve,” remarked somebody flippant. And Aureole stepped apologetically from the throng, striving to smooth her tawny hair, loosened under the motor-veil.

“You must forgive me; of course I’ve muddled dates again. It’s Mrs. Gilchrist and her husband, isn’t it?”

“No,” contradicted the prim girl, “it’s Miss Fortescue and her brother. I wrote you were to expect us this evening. You are Mrs. Strachey, I suppose?”

“Yes,—but—but you said you couldn’t come till the end of September,” stammered their hostess. Whereupon Miss Fortescue produced Mrs. Strachey’s own letter, bidding them welcome on the fifteenth of August; damning evidence before which the culprit remained merrily unabashed.

“I am a goose! Let’s run round and see where I can put you. It was a shame to let you wait; we were picnicking. Did you ring?... Oh, I see! It doesn’t matter in the least; we’re breaking things all day long here. Mr. Mowbray, do be an angel, and help Ada carry up these trunks; you are so strong.”

Mr. Mowbray, a stolid bronzed young man, evidently in the army, signified his willingness to act as porter. And then Sebastian, who had noted with relief the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson from the party, broke off his conversation with Letty, and, drawing Aureole aside, asked her if she could find him a room anywhere. “Because I’d like to move in at once.”

She scrutinized him intently ... then her gaze flickered to Letty.

“Yes. I see. You are feeling the pull—the strain. She is the moon, and you the tide ... it draws and draws ... I understand, Mr. Levi.” She motioned him to follow her up the wooden stairway which rose from the centre of the hall. Miss Fortescue and Bertie had preceded them, and: “This is the rummest boarding-house I’ve ever known,” the latter was heard whispering to his dazed sister, as Aureole and Sebastian approached them.

Not aware of aught unconventional in her reception of the Paying Guest, Aureole stopped on the first landing; and, frowning with a sort of reproach at the various unresponsive doors, said she believed that all those rooms were full.—“You see, I thought you would be Mr. and Mrs. Gilchrist; and then I expected you the day before yesterday.”

“And where would you have put me if I had been Mrs. Gilchrist the day before yesterday?” queried the prim girl from the Midlands, trying to cope with the situation.

“Here,” their hostess ran lightly down a flight of steps branching into a wing of the rambling old building; and displayed an enormous double bedroom. “Perhaps—perhaps you two young men wouldn’t mind sharing?” hopefully. “I should have to put you in an extra washstand, naturally. You can have Mr. Mowbray’s.”

Sebastian, rather enjoying matters, wondered of what other necessities the long-suffering Mowbray was to be deprived. All the same, if he was to write, he would want a room to himself; and this he made clear to Aureole, who looked worried,—and enquired irrelevantly of Miss Fortescue:

—“Would you like a cup of tea in the mornings?” She assumed an expression of portentous gravity, as though she had recollected something: “It’s extra, of course.”

Miss Fortescue agreed: “Oh, of course!” glad to find this symptom of dawning sanity in their most incompetent landlady. “Will you show me my room, please,” she added firmly.

“I suppose you’d better have this one,” said Aureole, very reluctant. “It’s meant for two, ...” she pondered the matter, gazing absently at Sebastian; who, uncertain of the exact plight into which the advertised “Bohemian lines” were about to plunge him, again reiterated his plaintive request for a single room.

Then Aureole dived into her bag, and brought forth a crumpled sheet of paper, which, opened out, proved to be a blend between a map of the house, a time-table, and a fever-chart.

“Let me see: Miss Bruce is leaving on the twenty-second, but Mr. Vyvyan Leclerc comes in on the twenty-first to take her room, so that won’t do.”

Quite obviously it would not do, in more senses than one.

Aureole continued poring over the much-bescribbled, much-erased paper:

“The dairy room is empty for three days; the Lloyds left in a temper over the breakfasts. You could start there, Mr. Levi. And then perhaps for a week or two I could get you a room in a cottage near by—only ten minutes’ walk. And after that, little Verney is away for a week-end; he wouldn’t mind if you slept in his bed as long as you don’t disturb his moralities.”

“His—what?” from Sebastian. The prim girl turned pink.

“His morality plays. He’s mad about them; and has a cardboard model fixed up, with all the puppet characters.—That would bring us to about the beginning of September, wouldn’t it? Oh, well, somebody is sure by then to have lost patience with me, and quitted, and left a room vacant. So that’s all right, isn’t it?” and she raised wistful brown velvet eyes to Sebastian, who replied gravely:

“Mrs. Strachey, you have again mistaken identity. I am a Jew, indeed, but not the Wandering Jew.”

“You’re not satisfied with the arrangements?” disappointed. She puckered her brows yet again over the fever-chart. “Would you mind sleeping in an attic?”

His imagination leapt. “I should like nothing better.”

They all four trooped upstairs to inspect. The Farme was a sprawling mansion of two storeys only. From the second, a narrow twisting staircase, not unlike a ladder, led to what were, once upon a time, granaries.

“This is the best of them,” Aureole threw open a door.

The attic revealed fully satisfied Sebastian’s “theatrical instinct,” as Stuart would have called it. Here his book could be written. Here, in shadowy company of Chatterton and Francis Thompson, he could be Starving-Genius-in-a-Garret; lord of his four walls.

“This will do splendidly, thanks,” he informed Aureole.

“I must get you up a bed from somewhere,” she remarked thoughtfully. “I wonder....”

She said no more. But Sebastian suspected that Mr. Mowbray was doomed.

“And what about my brother?” demanded Miss Fortescue.

Without waiting to hear Bertie’s fate, which he foresaw as hopeless, Sebastian returned to the hotel, and broke the news of his impending departure to his father, who received it in grim silence.

Then he made his usual evening pilgrimage to the Haven, and laid before Stuart his impressions of the state of affairs at the Farme.

It was evident that the management of the boarding-house was proving rather too much for Aureole; and she ran it in a fashion that certainly marked a new and eccentric era in that particular line of business. The boarders were compounded of three separate strata; members from her own social and artistic circle, such as Archie Mowbray, little Verney, and Ethel Wynne, who were there by way of a lark, and to “give Aureole a leg-up”; respectable folk, like the Johnsons and the Fortescues, and others from the Midlands and the suburbs of London, who usually departed after their first day, spreading a report of “heathenish goings-on”; unless they stayed on, because secretly fascinated by the difference between this bizarre establishment and the more usual article. Finally, the Doubtfuls, with profession a trifle misty and laughter a shade too loud. Aureole would fain have rid herself of some of these, but did not quite know how to set about it. She relied on her visitors for sympathy and assistance in a manner that was wholly disarming; would send one to the town for butter, if she ran out of the commodity; beg another to lend his cherished motor-car for the common weal; would relate confidentially how the cook had just left—“so we must put up with a scratch dinner, isn’t it tiresome?” Or, taking a guest for companion on a shopping expedition, would question casually: “Do you like salmon?” and, on receiving an affirmative reply, order eighteen shillings’ worth to be sent immediately to the Farme for lunch. Nor did she think it necessary ever to rise from her slumbers till noon; with the result that breakfast, unsuperintended, resembled a steeplechase more than anything in the world; each person with a separate fad, entering at a separate time, calling for separate food—or sometimes merely grabbing; wandering to and fro from the kitchen; sounding bells,—occasional outbursts of rage, when Aureole’s foggy ideas of quantity had misled her on the near side. Nevertheless, her very helplessness aroused a dormant quality of chivalry in the boarders, so that they put up with an astonishing amount of discomfort and incapacity, flattered to find themselves treated in the spirit of an accidental society house-party. The great amusement was to watch the bewildered entry of new-comers; mark their slow emancipation from the set state of mind which expected to find a framed copy of rules, hours, and terms, on their bedroom wall; expected, indeed, to find a bedroom wall, which rarely existed till Aureole, in collaboration with the fever-chart, would discuss who could with impunity be ejected to make place. Idle to speculate how often Archie Mowbray had travelled with his polo-boots and hair-brushes.

About a week after the advent of Sebastian, chaos reached its supreme height. Aureole, deeply in debt, found the weather too warm for effort, and decided to let things rip. They ripped. A great many problems she solved by simply staying in bed; others, less adjustable, reduced her to the verge of angry tears. Ada, invaluable housemaid, bethought herself to give notice. Aureole would dearly like to have done the same.

“Que diable fais-je donc dans cette galère?” she demanded impatiently of Letty, as they undressed together in the bathing-hut.

“Je ne say pas,” replied Letty, in careful High School French.

“Sir James and Lady Merridik are due this evening. Thank goodness, I’ve got quarters for them, at least. Facing north, to be cool—or was it a south aspect they wanted, because of the cold? He’s an Indian judge, so he’s sure to feel the climate, but I forget which way they feel it. Tant pis!” Aureole slipped into a most becoming bathing-dress, tied a black silk handkerchief round her flaming curls, and lounging against a miscellaneous heap of deck-chairs, wet and dry towels, tumbled garments both masculine and feminine, shrimping-nets, spades, and greengages, she watched Letty, in the earlier stages of disrobing. This wooden bathing-shed, given exclusively for the use of the Farme, was a little separate chaos of its own, a sort of annexe to the major chaos. While some undressed in it, some waited to undress, and some, already undressed and in the water, were awaiting their opportunity to come out till those undressing were in the water, when the first set would dash in and encounter in the doorway those who were waiting to undress. The men of the party were supposed to take their dip earlier, before breakfast, when the sea was iciest, or directly after, and risk apoplexy. But the laggards usually contrived to overlap, and their drippings made the shed untenable before the turn of the ladies. Add to all this a defective latch, which allowed the door to swing open if directly leant against, the demands of the little Percival boy, who throughout the morning was in shrill need of spade or pail or buns or fishing-net; add a large earwig colony inhabiting the chinks between the boards;—and it will be understood that the Farme bathing-shed was hardly a spot to choose for confidential conversation.

Nevertheless, Aureole remarked suddenly: “Why has Mr. Levi quarrelled with his father—and yours?”

Letty bent to tie up her sandals. “Sebastian has given up all his money.”

“Yes. It was a queer thing to do. Why?”

Letty evaded the point: “He doesn’t know I know why.”

“But you do.”

“Yes, I do.”

Willy Percival hammered at the door, which instantly gave way. “Oooo-oo!”—Letty caught up a towel and huddled it close, looking like a water-nymph taken unawares by a mortal.

“Please, may I have my pail?”

Aureole tossed it through the aperture.

“No. The other one. The coloured one.”

“Run away, Billikins, and don’t bother.”

“Aren’t you nearly ready?” came a heartrending chorus from outside, accompanied by the chattering teeth of some blue-faced individual longing to get dry.

“Yes, very nearly, Mr. Fortescue.—Why?” repeated Aureole to Letty, struggling in a chaste attempt to don her red serge white-anchored costume, before letting slip the rest of her garments.

“Because ... but you won’t tell? he doesn’t know I’ve guessed.”

Aureole smiled loftily. “Go on. I don’t tell things. But I’m interested. He’s a curious type.”

“It’s a Test,” whispered Letty, in a hopeless tangle of on and off, scarlet knickers and lawn camisole, and hair in light brown clouds over her shoulders.

“Test? Of your father, you mean?” and Aureole knit her brows.

“No. Of me. You see, he was much richer than us, and I suppose he got it into his head that I loved him for his money and not for himself. So he’s given it all up. When he thinks he has proved me enough, when he sees it makes no difference, he’ll take it back again.”

Letty stood upright now, fully robed for her plunge; and before the speckled little square of looking-glass which hung on the wall, tried to tie her hair into a red and white spotted handkerchief. “When he has proved me enough,” she whispered to her glowing reflection.

Aureole clasped her hands round one shapely knee, and pondered the matter:

“It’s romantic, of course. Ultra-romantic for this century. But then he’s a Renaissance type. Denys l’Auxerrois—have you read Pater? And ... yes, it suits him. I believe you’re right. You have rather a wonderful instinct about matters concerning him, haven’t you? wonderfully simple and direct ... piercing through complexities to the crystalline heart. Now I, I—”

“Aure-ole! Aure-ole! the tide will be too high unless you hurry up. And there are two frozen corpses on your doorstep.” Thus Ethel Wynne, compassionating the shivering spectres of Fortescue and Mowbray.

Aureole, who just had settled into her favourite attitude for lengthy discussion of her peculiar temperament: prone on her back, hands clasped behind her head, scrambled now to her feet, rather annoyed at the interruption.

“It’s their own faults. The arrangement was for the men to bathe directly after breakfast. Come along!” she held out her hand to Letty, and they ran together down the beach.

Sir James and Lady Merridik drove up in a cab that evening, at the hour when the miscellaneous members of the household were gathered in the hall before dinner. A second cab, piled high with luggage, followed up the drive a moment later; Mr. and Mrs. Durward-Jones, their two children, dog, and governess, had weeks ago booked the very first-floor front double bedroom into which Mowbray and the cabman were now lugging Lady Merridik’s multitudinous boxes. Mrs. Durward-Jones meant to have that room; so did Lady Merridik. Lady Merridik was shrill and flippant; Mrs. Durward-Jones deep-toned and abusive. The stairway, congested by boxes, formed the main scene of battle. The clamour was deafening, aided by the performance of Fritz, the waiter, upon the gong, and the barks of the Durward-Jones dog. Finally, both ladies turned to Aureole, demanding what she intended to do in the matter. Glancing wildly about her for a means of escape, Aureole flung herself upon the chest of an apparition whose face was suddenly illumined by the lantern swinging in the porch.

—“Oh, please, please, Mr. Heron, take me away!”

Stuart took her to the theatre, immediately, and without paying the slightest heed to the raging debate. The next morning at breakfast, Lady Merridik appeared, blandly smiling. There was no sign of the Durward-Jones party.

“Always best to let these things adjust themselves by natural means,” remarked Stuart to Aureole.

“Natural means?”

“Survival of the fittest. Now look here, Mrs. Strachey, what about letting me treat the whole Menagerie in the same fashion; sling out all the harpies and adventurers, square the landlord—till how long have you rented the Farme? End of October?—and set detectives on Oliver’s track to bring him home to Chelsea to look after you.”

Aureole shook her head. “It would be no good slinging everyone out; there are dozens more coming in. And they’d all bring lawsuits and breach-of-promise acts against me, because I did let them the rooms.”

“Then I’ll hunt round for a competent manageress, instal her with a salary, and you can leave whenever you like.”

“Do you think I’d touch your money?” she flashed at him proudly.

“But——”

“Besides, I won’t have a horrid prying person here, who will see what a mess everything is in; see that I’ve failed....”

Stuart walked about the empty breakfast-room, hands in his pockets, pondering deeply. Conscience had driven him to reconnoitre, and now the same conscience informed him very clearly that he could not allow his friend’s wife to continue her present burlesque of management, unprotected, accumulating enormous debts. One owed something to one’s pals; Stuart hid a rather special affection for the imperturbable Nigger Strachey. But if Aureole refused to smash the establishment, and refused to have a manageress,—well then, what was he to do?

—“Stay here, and control matters yourself,” suggested Aureole, divining and answering his thoughts. With a mischievous glint beneath her heavy eyelids, she added, “I don’t mind you knowing the worst; after all—you’re responsible!”

And as it really seemed the only solution to the problem, Stuart consented.

Speculation ran riot as to the identity of the mysterious stranger. Later in the day, Aureole introduced him as: “My husband’s friend” without further explanation. The husband’s friend became a scowling and unpopular permanency. He marvelled how he came thus to be saddled with the white elephant of Aureole’s folly; nevertheless, there seemed no way of shaking off the boarding establishment till the 31st of October, or till Oliver’s return. He at once wrote to Oliver, care of the latter’s bank, trusting that there the address would have been forwarded.

Aureole he alternately bullied and consoled, quite in the spirit of a working partner; and she, relying peacefully on his competence, forgave him for missing this excellent opportunity of being in love with her. Almost forgave him.

A couple of rigid old maids disbelieved the “husband’s friend” story, and left at once. Stuart found this annoying. Neither did he like it when the fussy little man from Shropshire pointed out items on his bill incorrectly charged to him: “I do not have a bath every morning, Mr.—ah—Heron.”

Stuart went in search of Aureole. “How many baths has Mr. Kibble had this week?”

“How should I know?” virtuously indignant. “Ask his wife.”

“We’ve put him down six, but he says he has only had one. He must have had more. How does one control these things?”

“Oh, knock off the extra half-crown from the bill, and chance it!” laughed Aureole.

Stuart returned to his fuming interlocutor: “We have decided to believe in your integrity rather than in your cleanliness,” he said suavely, counting out Mr. Kibble’s change. Mr. Kibble left immediately, with his wife and child.

Least of all Stuart liked it when it devolved upon him to give Vyvyan the boot.

“Vyvyan” had booked his room since a considerable time, though letters perpetually postponed the day of his arrival. Somehow or other, his unknown personality had captured the imagination of the female portion of the boarding-house. They gathered from his correspondence with Aureole, that he was comparatively young, unwedded, owned a motor-car, and was at present travelling on the Continent. An attractive list of hints from which to draw deductions. Archie Mowbray and Bertie Fortescue began already to suffer from spasms of jealousy, when Aureole, who since the advent of Stuart was not allowed any more to take her breakfast in bed, read aloud a telegram to say “Vyvyan” might that afternoon be expected.

“At last we shall have a young man in the house,” quoth Ethel Wynne; which was cruel to Mowbray, who loved her; and to eighteen-year-old Bertie. Sebastian could not of course be counted, being manifestly Letty’s property. And Stuart wore a pencil behind his ear, by way of protection, to intimate that he was to be viewed in a business capacity only.

Bertie’s sister entered the breakfast-room, and enquired of everybody how they had slept, and asked everybody with a cold if their cold was better, and passed the salt, and placed herself carefully between her brother and the Ostend-Plage Girl, whom she suspected of sirenic intentions. The Ostend-Plage Girl, who never passed salt, and who wore a soiled creation of white serge and light blue pom-poms, promptly upset the equilibrium of Bertie’s sister, by announcing: “I quite intend to fall in love with Vyvyan, don’t you, Aureole?”

“I believe he is going to mean something,” murmured Aureole.

Stuart grunted.

“What! no mackerel left again?” from the Disagreeable Female, whose name nobody ever seemed to know.

Letty offered hers: “I haven’t touched it yet; do, please, take it. I’m not hungry.” And Mrs. Percival looked archly at Sebastian: “Not hungry? dear me! now I wonder why that is!”

Mrs. Johnson exchanged significant glances with her husband. She had only been able to keep him from an open row with Sebastian, by frequent allusions to Letty’s loss of appetite:—“and what it would be like if you forbade her to see him, Matthew——” “So tactful of the fellow to come and plant himself under the same roof, directly after I’ve told him not to call so often, isn’t it?” but he restrained his smouldering wrath, nevertheless. Letty was his pet, and he hated to see her leaving her food; good food, that he had paid for.

The talk veered round again to Vyvyan; and the Cabbage-rose skittishly proposed making him an apple-pie bed: “We always used to have no end of that sort of fun when I stayed at Lyn House—Lord Burchester’s place, that is.” She broke off her reminiscences to throw the Earwig a solicitous: “Johnny, dearest, is no one looking after you?”

The Earwig mumbled, and spilt the milk. He was a very ancient and decrepit Earwig. And Ethel Wynne, who sat beside him, sprang up with an unnecessarily quick: “Oh, am I in your place? So sorry. Do come here and look after your husband yourself!”

The Ostend-Plage Girl broke into smothered giggles.

“My egg isn’t fresh,” said the Disagreeable Female. And looked relentlessly at Stuart; who afterwards privately relieved his feelings to Sebastian, by a prolonged outburst on the evils of boarding establishments:

“I tell you what, Levi,—it’s a most villainous contrivance of civilization, to pack stray people together under one roof, as you would cats into a home; each little group at table with their separate wine or beer or Apollinaris, not passing the bottle in good fellowship, but sticking labels on it, for its safer preservation. Chance companions are the finest to be had, on the road or at the inn, that I maintain. But this compulsory herding, this miserly meaningless thin-blooded——How’s the book getting on?”

“Nearly half-way through.”

“Rather quick work, isn’t it?”

“I must pelt ahead with it while I’m in the mood. I won’t show it to you till it’s complete, though.”

“Right!” Stuart was glad of the reprieve.

“He’s come!” announced Ethel Wynne, that afternoon. She had sighted a motor-car outside the house. A quiver of excitement thrilled the group gathered for tea under the lime trees, as Aureole walked away to welcome Vyvyan, on the threshold of the hall.

Vyvyan did not at once enter. He had first to seek a room near by for his cousin-once-removed. That is, unless Mrs. Strachey could manage.... No? Ah, well, doubtless they would find something. She had been so ill, the cousin, and had come down to Bournemouth for some fresh air. Mrs. Strachey would excuse him for an hour?... He appeared at dinner, a florid person, with an ingratiating smile under his auburn moustaches, and a debonair manner with the ladies. He was sure he would enjoy his stay at the Farme; had been looking forward to it immensely. A charming fellow; even Bertie’s sister succumbed to his fascinations. But Aureole was curiously frigid. After dinner, Vyvyan ran round to see if his cousin-once-removed were all right; she had been so ill! He was seen taking her for a little walk along the esplanade.

The same evening, Aureole had an earnest confabulation with her partner.

“We can’t have that sort of thing in the house,” with the demure severity of a Quakeress.

“Hang it all! what am I to say to him?”

“Just tell him to go. And to remove his cousin—for the second time.”

“It’s deuced awkward,” growled Stuart.

“Not from one man to another. He’ll understand.”

Then Stuart exploded his wrath: “Comes of comic advertisement! The fellow naturally thought ... Bohemian lines! you see where they lead to!”

Aureole walked away, with her head in the air.

Vyvyan received his congé with protestations of astonishment and regret at having unwittingly offended Mrs. Strachey. His manner at lunch the next day, was tinged with gentle reproach. Aureole wore an apron, and her rebellious hair was gathered into a bun, by way of signifying that her Bohemianism had limits. An air of strain hung over the meal. By the evening, Vyvyan the debonair, Vyvyan, the fairy prince so eagerly awaited, Vyvyan had gone. So had his cousin—twice removed.

CHAPTER IV
IL TROVATORE

Aureole was beset by a fear that her ejection of Vyvyan had somewhat impaired her claims to Bohemianism, as set forth by the advertisement. Wherefore it was one evening that she suddenly bethought herself to invite the ‘Troubadours’ to the Farme.

The Troubadours were a singing quartette who performed thrice weekly in the Pavilion Gardens. Their national costume consisted of a darkly flung cloak, a slouched hat, and a mask; occasionally the cloak was abandoned, showing beneath it a garb of gay-hued tatters: further atmosphere was imparted by a beribboned guitar. Therefore some slight confusion existed as to whether the Troubadours were intended to be grandees of Spain, or else those light-hearted medieval wanderers trolling their ballads of praise to the Kings of France—who usually retaliated by hanging the ballad-monger. Either way, the effect was picturesque enough, on the improvised wooden platform, lit by the few flickering footlights, and encircled by a dark band of trees. The tenor of the quartette possessed a really melodious voice; his songs were mostly of the Arab-Gipsy variety; type that perpetually invite a lady to come forthwith and be wooed in some spot where she is not, preferably a gondola, a caravan or a desert. He presented rather a fine romantic figure, singing thus, head flung back, hazel-green eyes half-closed, voice languorous with passion.

“That man has suffered,” whispered Aureole to Archie Mowbray. Who made reply: “Oh, I dunno. Think he’s a gentleman, then?”

“It’s just possible to suffer without being a gentleman,” with fine scorn. To which Archie protested uneasily: “Oh, I dunno.”

The party from the Farme numbered six: Letty, the Cabbage-rose, Ethel Wynne, and little Verney being also present. Sebastian had retired to find inspiration in the attic, directly after dinner, as was now his wont; he had told Letty he was engaged on the production of a masterpiece of fiction; and she, rejoicing in his genius, had bidden him recite the words by which the book was to be dedicated to her,—which assumption produced an awkward silence.

“There’s plenty of time for that,” he had said at last, feebly. “It may never be published, you know.”

But of course it would be published, cried Letty; and without complaint sacrificed her evenings with him. Though it would have been bliss to have had him here, beside her, in the warm darkness.

A final duet was warbled from the stage, while the tenor of the troupe went among the dim blur of faces in the audience, holding a silver tray, and showering jests and gallantries in return for the shillings that clattered thereon. This necessary part of the performance always sent hot waves of shame surging up Aureole’s neck, for the fancied anguish of soul the man underwent during his pilgrimage of degradation. The jokes were doubtless a poor and threadbare garment to cover naked pride,—Aureole shut her eyes tightly, with the result that her shilling dropped beside the tray and onto the parched grass. The man paused to grope for it, exchanging the while grave witticisms with the donor. Bertram Kyndersley knew no such writhings as Aureole attributed unto him; being indeed mainly concerned with the amount of the evening’s takings, in his capacity of treasurer to the Troubadours.

“Under my feet, perhaps,” remarked Aureole; and Bertram made swift reply: “Impossible, Lady Auburn-hair; they could hardly cover the coin; it would peep out at the edges.”

Whereupon Aureole became extremely friendly with this particular Troubadour, and laughingly bade him serenade her window at dawn, since he could utter such fair impromptus.

“Alas and alack! and in all Hampshire how am I to find my lady’s window?”

“If I let fall that secret, will you let fall your mask?” Aureole looked meaningly at the strip of black velvet which concealed the upper portion of his face.

“Give me but a chance!” And with that the Troubadour passed on, between the benches, and back to the platform.

Aureole began to scribble feverishly on the back of her programme, which she then folded into a note.

“Take this round to the tenor of the quartette,” she commanded little Verney; “hurry up, or they’ll be gone,” for the spectators were already beginning to stir and disperse in the darkness, and the flaming footlights had one by one been extinguished. Verney obediently went. The missive ran as follows:

Tim Jones, Ferdinand Wagge, Billy Dawson, and Bertram Kyndersley, reading this effusion behind their shabby drapery of green baize which did duty for a curtain, were mightily amused at the fellow-gipsies on the highway of Art; and in the hope that the house by the pine trees might at least be productive of decent whisky and cigars, fervidly accepted the invitation.

“S’pose the postscript is her telegraphic address?” hazarded Billy Dawson, knitting his brows. “More like the ’phone number,” from Ferdinand Wagge.

Meanwhile, Aureole, sparkling with the double consciousness of having vindicated her Bohemianism, and at the same time acted in a way which would thoroughly annoy Stuart, was being championed by Letty and the Cabbage-rose, against the disapproval of Archie Mowbray, whose attitude was so consistently characteristic of the British subaltern, as to be almost untrue to life.

“It doesn’t do, y’know. Really, Mrs. Strachey, it’s deuced cheek of me to interfere, but to mix privately with those singing chaps——”

“They’re as good as we are,” flashed Letty. And the Cabbage-rose interpolated: “Of course they are, delightful fellows! It was a splendid idea to invite them; so unconventional; and I do so love their dear little peepy masks. Do, Mr. Verney, go round again and beg them not to change their costumes.”

The good-natured hunchback went, chuckling to himself. On the way home—a taxi and Verney’s motor-car proving sufficient to accommodate their own party in mixed proportion with the four Troubadours—Aureole had time to hope Stuart would be in bed. He was; and so were all the remaining boarders, save Bertie and the Ostend-Plage Girl, who were discovered in the kitchen, drinking champagne and eating dressed crab. This inspired Aureole with a fresh idea:

“Ye must spread your own feast,” she cried, medievally. “Ransack cellars, larders and pantry, and bring forth all ye find. Ho, revellers, to the groaning board!—We’ll make a midnight picnic of it.”

Thereafter, a helter-skelter of laughter and rummaging, and clatter of forks on the flagged floor, and little shrieks of delight from the Cabbage-rose, and an occasional agonized: sh-sh-sh, from Aureole, fearing to wake the more respectable portion of her household; dreading the sudden appearance of Stuart, exquisite in pyjamas and monocle, his face screwed into an expression of formidable politeness; and his tone holding all there was of Archie Mowbray’s insular disapproval, and, in addition, a blend of “my husband’s friend,” a sound man in diamonds, and the Balliol undergraduate,—all of which traits had developed to the entire exclusion of pirate and leprechaun, since he had taken over management of the Farme.

Ferdinand Wagge went solemnly to and fro from the cellar, each time a pair of bottles under his arm. Tim Jones and Ethel Wynne collaborated over the mixing of the mayonnaise salad. And Letty, finding a bowl of cream, suddenly suggested a dish of fruit from the kitchen-garden.

“Oh, splendid! there are dozens of late raspberries, I saw them this morning. Dark? Never mind; I’ll take my own light,” and laughing at the absurdity of the notion, Aureole snatched a candle, and stepped out into the garden, calling on someone to follow with a plate.

The night was sultry and moonless, as the Troubadour pursued the tremulous flicker of light across the shadowy lawn, and through an archway cut into the wall. Beyond lay an almost solid blackness; only the passage of the candle to reveal on either side pale dangling shapes of apple and pear: the orchard; thence a twisting path that led round the conservatories to the fruit-garden. He paused, opened a glass door ... the answering gush of perfume crept into his veins, heavy as a bee that sways in a foxglove. He had lost sight of the woman’s figure in its gleaming sheath of satin—no, there the prick of candle light, and there Aureole, tempting enough as she swept the flame up and down the line of raspberry canes; hair tumbled duskily against her shining pallor of neck, eyes brilliant with the search; body swaying towards her companion each time she pattered the ripe crimson berries on to the plate.

“Can’t you come nearer? I’ve just dropped two beauties,” reproachfully.

The Troubadour never resisted temptation. He pressed forward between the bushes; slipped an arm round her, murmured a caressing word, had kissed her full on the lips before she was even aware of his movements. With realization, she repelled the man swiftly. Bertram was startled—let her go, a move very much against his principles. The raspberries lay spilt on the earth between them. Scorning to run, she walked by his side, without speaking, back to the house. He was amused, yet slightly indignant, at this unwonted response to his gallantries: “After all, it isn’t as if she were still in her teens!”—and Billy Dawson, observant beggar, would notice the empty plate, and ask sly questions. Aureole, her heart thudding like a drum, and the blood raging at her lips where he had touched them, was wondering how much it all meant to him? What would be the outcome? Furiously angry, all of a sudden, with Oliver, for not being at hand to protect her from this type of outrage; furiously angry at the loss of dignity implied by the bruised stung sensation on her mouth,—mouth which nevertheless would persist in curving dangerously, provocatively, at the corners. ... She laughed aloud, laughed contempt for her husband, defiance at her ‘husband’s friend,’ laughed a welcome to the temperament which had lain too long between lavender.

Encouraged, Bertram kissed her again, quickly, before they quitted the shadows of the orchard and Aureole struck him, for his insolence, but mostly because she wanted to see the hurt pride blaze in his Spanish eyes, and because she hoped he would try and strangle her for the blow. She was avid of sensations this night.

“Oh Lord!” muttered Bertram, rather disconcerted. Then, in tender reproach: “You spill my shillings, Lady Auburn-hair, and you spill the raspberries, and now you spill my blood, which isn’t redder than they—I mean, less red....”

They re-entered the lit hall; Aureole glanced furtively at his mouth, to see if his accusations were justified: an infinitesimal dot of scarlet had welled on the lower lip. But it was she, not he, who had tasted blood....

The next meeting between Aureole and Bertram happened four days later, hot noontide, in one of the declivities of the cliff that sloped so gently to the sea. Bertram did not hesitate an instant at repeating his offence. Sooth to say, he had almost forgotten it was a repetition; had certainly forgotten the reception which had met his previous overtures. He came to Aureole as natural and fresh in gallantry as though she were his first love for the first time seen. That this state of mind could be at all possible, never occurred to the woman, who herself forever playing with emotion, yet most remarkably gave credit to the other party for a fierce, lasting, and genuine passion. Assuming that the man’s interim had been spent in brooding over his dismissal, then what excellent courage, what doggedness of persistence, nay, what true measure of desire he showed in thus returning undaunted to the charge.... Aureole rebelled—continued to rebel—yielded. The Troubadour was surprised by her acquiescence, into fervour keener than he usually displayed in his passing errantry of light love. They met again. And again. Her vanity had been damaged by Stuart’s refusal to ‘come and play.’ If he had responded ever so slightly, ever so harmlessly, instead of viewing her so determinedly in the light of “rather a little fool, but Nigger’s wife, so I s’pose I must do my best for her,”—who knows, she might have kept out of mischief elsewhere; but he had lashed her by his rigid imperturbability to a very demon of defiance. The origin of her severance from Oliver, her initiative in the matter, was for Aureole completely lost in the mists of long-agone; she genuinely viewed herself as a deserted wife, forlorn, neglected, forgotten, her youth wasting to middle-age.... And when a cloaked man, a masked man, comes along, trolling gaily his ballads of love, is one to let him pass for the sake of Oliver, forsooth? or because one is frightened of Stuart Heron?

—“She called you Pierrot, and immediately you were Pierrot!” thus had remarked Bertram’s daughter, Peter, on a certain occasion when he had been endeavouring to explain to her the incident of one Chavvy. Equally, she might now have paraphrased the situation; “She saw you a Troubadour, and immediately you were a Troubadour!” Bertram could no more help responding to suggestion, than mercury to the weather. And he troubadoured most excellently; liked the rôle, with its flavour of ripening vineyards, and southern roads white in the sunshine; snatched intrigues of the court, alternating with the careless give-and-take of wayside kisses. It was picturesque, yet virile; and altogether more suited to his years and girth than had been Pierrot. He basked in Aureole’s admiration; her abstinence from awkward questioning was a divine trait in womankind; she was radiantly attractive in this, her wilful leap towards the sun. Bertram loved her; he was quite sure he did.

And she would not have been Aureole had she not attached all importance to the trappings of her romance: the delicious sense of secrecy and guilt; the elaborate excuses enabling her to retire early to her room; thence to slip out through the low side window, on to the cliff, to the belt of pine trees amidst whose lean and swaying shadows the Troubadour would be waiting to keep tryst, those nights when no performance took place at the Pavilion Gardens. Yet more cunning machinations were required to induce some of the boarding-house party to attend the concerts of the quartette, that she might sit there, among the vague people who had not been held in his arms; and hear him sing for her—yes, for her—his ballads of the tavern and the caravan and the desert.

Once indeed, shattering her sense of his eternal presence, he warbled gaily, as they paced the dark cliff edge: