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:
“Will you not stay your caravan an hour or two, and with your companions, give me the pleasure of your company this evening at my house by the pine trees? _Sans cérémonie_--for are we not fellow-gipsies on the highway of Art?
“LADY AUBURN-HAIR.
“P.S--Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse.”
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:
“Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow, Thy way is long to the sun and south, But I, fulfilled of my heart’s desire, Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow, From tawny body and sweet small mouth, Feed the heart of the night with fire!”
And she cried disappointedly:
“You mean, when summer is over, you will go to your South?”
(South, where all Troubadours live!)
And he, unheeding that Thatch Lane lay on the London and North-Western Railway, gave careless acquiescence. “I never stop long in any one place. We are birds of passage, Lady Auburn-hair, and when summer is over we will sing our songs in other lands.”
We? Our?--so what had been to her a thrilling pastime, he, deluded Troubadour, had actually meant? He had been building dreams of continuing their golden idyll in other lands? Aureole replied, in curiously vibrant tones:
“Once--I struck you--for suggesting--less than that.”
Bertram, still humming, could not remember what was the direful suggestion he had just inadvertently let fall; but supposing it to have been for a caress, as were usually his demands, he merely stated with a mirthless laugh--not caring to risk again the sting of Aureole’s little fingers:
“Then I must continue to exist without,--somehow,” added in a lower tone of pain.
Aureole had since three years been striving to teach Oliver this language, which came so naturally to the man beside her. To “work up a scene” with her husband had held as much--or as little--intoxication, as going to a ball, in a blouse and skirt, at eleven o’clock of a November morning. Aureole had an insatiable greed for ‘powerful’ scenes; she took dalliance seriously, inasmuch as she always saw herself as a coquette with a heart of stone, scratching at hearts of flesh to see how they bled. “I’m a beast!” she that night adjured her image in the looking-glass--since without a looking-glass impassioned monologues sound never very convincing. “Oh, I _am_ a beast. I don’t care a damn for him, and he thinks I do care; he thinks I’m--coming.” During the month of September, the vision of her Troubadour, a lonely swallow to the South, became almost too poignant to be born.
Summer was dropping her days as faintly and imperceptibly as the first faintly yellowing leaves from the trees. A sense of depression, of the closing-down of the year, drifted over the Farme. Some of the visitors were leaving; as entities they did not matter; but as a symbol of evanescence, their departure affected Aureole with profound melancholy. The Troubadour Quartette sang no more of an evening in the Pavilion Gardens. Bertram rented a room in the town, and lingered on; but at any moment, she felt, the call of the South might peal too clearly for him; and then, with or without her, he too would depart.
With or without her.
* * * * *
Climax was heralded by poisoned fish....
Stuart went nearly every day now to his business in High Holborn, returning to Bournemouth in time for dinner in the evening. On a certain Friday, he was met in the hall by the Cabbage-rose, who informed him in sprightly tones:
“We shall be _tête-à-tête_ for dinner to-night, Mr. Heron.”
On the grounds that some things are too bad to be true, Stuart did not at once grasp the prospect:
“Where’s everybody, then?”
“All ill!” announced the Cabbage-rose triumphantly; and some of her evening-dress fell off.
“All?”
“My poor Johnny has been terribly bad, and so has Mrs. Percival. And, if you listen, you will hear Sir James groaning. There was mackerel for breakfast this morning, and it can’t have been quite good. I took a boiled egg, and you, of course, had gone off to town before the fish came, so you see we are sole survivors!” she adjusted a slippery shoulder-strap, and trilled with laughter at the compromising situation.--Then her face fell, as she spied the Disagreeable Female marching down the stairs.
“I’m better. Not well, but better. I’ve had no food and no attention all day, so I trust there’s a substantial dinner. Good evening, Mr. Heron; I wish to complain of the fish we had for breakfast to-day. We’ve all been seriously indisposed. One has to eat mackerel or nothing, because there was only one egg, and naturally we couldn’t _all_ have that,” and here she glared at the Cabbage-rose. “I believe I am voicing the dissatisfaction of all the visitors here, Mr. Heron, when I say that I consider it your duty to be at home during the day to control these matters.--Ah! there is the gong, thank goodness. Even if you are running a second boarding establishment in London, it can hardly warrant neglect of us. Please pass the potatoes. I am bound to say that matters were improved during the fortnight you had entire control.”
Stuart bowed: “You overwhelm me.”
“Mustard, please. And as for Mrs. Strachey, I cannot say she ever struck me as a very competent person; but since she spends her days running about with that very disreputable beach-performer--in my time they blacked their faces, so that one might know they weren’t gentlemen,--she has let everything go to rack and ruin.”
“Oh, but he’s hardly what you’d call a nigger,” put in the Cabbage-rose. “He has one of those nice olive complexions, you know; and he has sung before all the crowned heads of Europe. Certainly, dear Mrs. Strachey is making herself rather conspicuous----”
But the Disagreeable Female continued stonily: “I am purposely calling your attention to the scandal, Mr. Heron, as if she is also deceiving you, who pass yourself off as her husband’s friend----”
“Pardon me, I _am_ her husband’s friend. And both he and I have implicit confidence in Mrs. Strachey’s choice of acquaintances; so that there’s no need at all for scandal. If you’ve any more complaints to make about the _food_, I shall be pleased to listen.”
The Disagreeable Female, quelled for the moment, merely suggested that Stuart should bring two dozen eggs every day from London, as they seemed to be scarce in Bournemouth “And not fresh. We _all_ like eggs,” and again her eye roamed towards the Cabbage-rose.
But in spite of his championship of Aureole, Stuart’s principles of morality were severely outraged by this account of her flirtation. Defiance of the standing social and domestic code, was in his eyes only permissible to what he termed free-lance adventurers, like himself, Peter, or Sebastian. But Aureole was a wife; and, moreover, his pal’s wife. Running about all day with--an organ-grinder, was it? It would not be too much to state that Heron of Balliol, Heron of Heron & Carr, was genuinely shocked.--“It isn’t done!” Besides which, he had obstinately determined that Aureole should eventually be handed over, as far as possible undamaged, to her husband. He had written several letters to Oliver, at the latter’s bank and office, hoping that either of these would receive an address to which to forward correspondence. Pending his arrival, Aureole must be kept spotless as snow. Very worried at the new development in his responsibilities, Stuart tackled her the following evening:
“How are the invalids? Anybody dead?”
“They’re all up, except Mr. Johnson. He had it worst. Stuart, will I have to pay the doctor for all of them? The old cat says I’m liable.” The old cat was the Disagreeable Female.
“Indeed you are. Why don’t you examine fish when it comes in?”
“I don’t care for the smell. I ... just don’t care for it. And I was out.”
“Where?”
Aureole smiled; a slow mutinous smile. “You grow more like Oliver every day.”
“I hope so,” quoth Stuart virtuously; “he’s a better man than I am. Wouldn’t it be as well to see in future that your guests aren’t poisoned as well as starved?”
“Dear man, it would bore me.”
He strove to be moderate: “Quite so. But you’ve only five weeks still to run here, and confound it, Aureole! surely it’s more fun to get through a stodgy job decently and with credit, than just bungle it. Even if you hate it, it’s more fun.”
“Our ideas of fun differ,” she laughed, impenitent. And then Stuart realized with horror that she was looking remarkably pretty. He knew enough of neurotic women to be assured that they did not sparkle and bloom unless danger was imminent. He did not know enough of them to refrain from making a mistake in his next remark:
“I’ve reason to believe your husband will be here shortly. He won’t be over-pleased to fork out, among other things, for thirteen doctor’s bills on attending thirteen bilious attacks.”
“Damn doctors!” she stamped her foot viciously. “Damn bilious attacks and fish and boarding-houses and husbands and ... and you....” She fled to Bertram, awaiting her among the pines. A soft drizzling moisture filled the air. In the garden she passed Sebastian and Letty, whose mission it seemed to leave themselves lying about to act as goads in critical moments.--“Damn lovers....”
--“Lady Auburn-hair, this is almost our good-bye. In a very few days----”
“You must go? Is that it?” the chill in the air crept into her very soul.
“Not that I must go, but that I must not stay,” parried Bertram, skilfully implying unutterable things. Sooth to say, he was weary of troubadouring.
South ... South ... he on his lonely voyage to the sun; and she remaining to examine fish at the door ... colder drearier days ... Oliver coming back to scold her ... other lovers, two and two and two ... and romance, masked and cloaked, abandoning her for ever?...
“Non ti scordar di me!” he throbbed forth suddenly, in his passionate tenor. “Non ti scordar di me!”
And Aureole replied: “Ask me again, Troubadour, as you asked me once ... and perhaps--perhaps I will come with you.”
* * * * *
After her departure, Bertram still sat on the damp bench beneath the trees, gazing helplessly before him. He found himself pledged, he knew not how, and, ten days hence, he knew not why, to a journey South, he knew not where. He believed he had been guilty of describing, in vivid spirited narrative, some such adventure across the water; because--deuce take it! with the reputation of a troubadour, a traveller, a pedlar of songs, a lover of fair women, a comrade of lords and beggars alike, he could hardly leave acquiescence at a tame: “Yes. Let’s. How jolly,” when she proposed their hazardous plunge together into the unknown. Well, he had still, as result of a successful summer tour, some thirty odd pounds in his pocket, and a store of faithful attachment in his heart. As to their ultimate destiny, when love and the thirty pounds were exhausted,--that was a problem too deep for a mazed troubadour, sitting disconsolately beneath a dripping pine tree. Floating in the vague backwaters of his mind was the supposition that, at worst, he could always take Aureole to Miss Esther Worthing--his sister-in-law--and leave her there. After all, Esther had made Chavvy very welcome. Meanwhile ... Bertram’s inflammable heart had certainly landed him in some awkward situations of late; he didn’t know what women were coming to, when one willy-nilly married you, and another ran away with you! He wondered if it would ever be his lot to meet with a nice modest girl, content with a few kisses and endearments; a girl like his daughter Peter!
--“Lord! I wonder what Peter would say to this mess. _When_ did I promise? _What_ did I ask? I’m hanged if I can remember....”
* * * * *
Stuart came to the conclusion that it was no good plunging into this affair before it had reached its zenith. Just at present there was nothing to get at. It was best as rapidly as possible to hasten the ultimate climax, which he strongly believed would be a romantic elopement, and then, somehow, smash it!
So, in furtherance of these plans, he came to Aureole; and meekly, as though in atonement for his former surliness, placed his sailing-yacht at the disposal of herself and her visitors.
“I’ve brought it over from the Haven, and it’s lying anchored at the foot of the Chine. If at any time you care to use it, old Dan Truefitt will act skipper; he’s perfectly trustworthy; and he has my orders.”
It struck Aureole how delightfully ironical it would be to employ Stuart’s boat--just Stuart’s boat--for the means of transport, when she and Bertram escaped from the old to the new. At present, her chiefest joy in the prospect of the elopement, was in contemplating Stuart’s reception of the tidings. And if the latter should come to him flavoured by the final audacity of _his_ property as the vehicle of sin----!
“Thank you, Stuart,” demurely; “it’s very thoughtful of you; and it’s so difficult, now that the real summer weather is over, to keep everyone amused. We play coon-can, of course. But there’s something more virile about sailing, isn’t there?”
“Much more virile,” he agreed. And wondered if his bait had been swallowed. At all events, he must assume it had. He calculated that the pair would not make their flight by day, both for practical reasons of concealment, and from a sense of atmosphere. On the other hand, Aureole would scarcely wait for the arrival of her ‘gaoler’ from town, by the 7.40 train every evening. Between six and seven, then, the twilight hour, he fixed as the time when two cloaked figures might be expected at the foot of the Chine, where the boat lay at anchor. At this spot, therefore, in the shadow of the cliff, Stuart waited secretly, patiently, every evening between six and seven o’clock. Baldwin demanded frequently why he left the office so early; and confided to Arthur Heron that he believed Stuart to be mixed up in “some affair with a woman.”
--“Would you advise me to move in the matter?”
“No,” replied Uncle Arthur, always inclined to be taciturn.
“Not find out who she is? and call on the female? and attempt to square her?”
“No.”
“Well then, shall I tackle Stuart? Remind him what he owes to the name? Set forth, from experience, how helpless a young fellow can be in the hands of a clever adventuress? Tell him----”
This time the other man answered at greater length: “My God, no.”
And Baldwin left it at that.
“I should say it would be very soon now,” reflected Stuart, on the ninth day of waiting. This he deduced from Aureole’s demeanour; she being quite incapable of restraining herself from inscrutable smiles, eyes dream-laden, spurts of brilliantly hectic conversation, bouts of feverish consideration for others, speech and comment pregnant with triple meanings, and other indications of a swiftly approaching crisis; all of which Stuart found extremely useful. He had no notion of exactly how he was to effect the _débâcle_, but trusted for his inspiration to that solemn moment when, about to embark, the guilty couple should hear the shuffle of footsteps in the sand, and, turning, gaze into his accusing eyes.... “Is this prophetic sight, or did I ever read about it?” mused Stuart.
He paid Aureole the compliment of not for a moment believing that she was taking her fun all this while in a squalid furtive fashion, attempting to blend outward respectability with hidden romance. No; decidedly she had the courage of her emotional caprices; this had been proved by her prompt flight from Norfolk, directly she had convinced herself that it was necessary for her soul’s development and for the stimulation of Oliver’s after-marriage courtship.--“She’ll burn her boats right enough--little fool!” Stuart muttered; “and I hope it will be to-night.” He was beginning to find his shadowy watches both wearisome and chilly.
* * * * *
“But, sweetheart, I _can’t_ sail a yacht,” cried the Troubadour in despair, when Aureole unfolded her latest scheme.
“You can row, then; and we’ll reef the sails--tie them up in a bundle. It’s a pity ... but yet ... plash of oars on the calm still water....”
Bertram hoped it would indeed be calm still water. He did not care to disturb her imagination by mere facts,--but he had no liking for the sea. He asked if he were expected to row all the way to France, to Provence, golden land of minstrelsy, which she had chosen as their first background for unending and virile scenes of love.
Aureole sighed. “It’s a pity,” she repeated. “However, we’ll row along the coast to Poole, and hire a man, a strange fierce-eyed man, to sail the boat across the Channel. And then, after landing us, he shall sail her back again”--and she added, in a vicious undertone,--“to Stuart Heron!”
* * * * *
To Stuart Heron, crouching far back in an indentation hollowed out of the cliff, the events of that night were swift and improbable as scenes reeled off the film. The white line of wave hissed and broke with exactly that sound; and the twilight had sucked the background of all colour save lifeless greys; clearly etched against the pale sky, rose the mainmast of the boat; beside it, the tall figure of a man stood immovable, wrapped in heavy folds of cloak, his face blurred by the deepening shadows. The white line of wave hissed and broke. Then, quite tiny at first, but gradually growing to life-size, a woman’s figure fled down the winding road of the Chine. The man stepped forward to meet her, held her for a moment silently in his arms, then drew her along the shore to the boat. They gesticulated with sharp little movements. Another figure stole out of hiding; crept towards the couple, whose backs were turned to him. His steps were noiseless on the sand. So that still no sound shattered the picture, save of the white line of wave that monotonously hissed and broke....
All this, Stuart watched with mingled amusement and interest. His was the stealthy shape which might have been a spy among conspirators, a Customs Officer amid smugglers, an Indian with a tomahawk, or the hero to the rescue.
--Then he spoke, casually:
“Going for a sail? Can I be of any use?”
Aureole did not shriek. She swayed slightly, recovered herself, looked at the intruder steadily, and said: “You ... beast!”
He smiled. “Oh, yes, I think the breeze is strong enough.” Then he turned to meet full-face the eyes of--Bertram Kyndersley. “You? the devil!”
Bertram betrayed no surprise at the sudden apparition. He was already a stricken man this night. Aureole’s wishes he had carried out in a dazed mazed sort of fashion, still not sure how he came to be involved in this medieval escapade. He had eloped before; but sensibly,--never like this. He was just aware that for one who had troubadoured not wisely but too well, there were no honourable means of withdrawal. Wondering whether for the rest of his life he would be doomed to carry a guitar, without its case, exposed to the mockery of all men; whether, once at sea, he would ever again be able to induce a demoniacal boat shorewards; whether his little store of gold would vanish in a single night, and leave him a beggar in Provence; wondering all this, he yet acquiesced to his fate; and even, when the string was pulled, said: “Lady Auburn-hair,” passionately, and added a few lyrical snatches expressive of his enamoured condition.
So that Stuart Heron, from whom he remembered once borrowing ten pounds in the garden of Bloemfontein, now took his place quite naturally as part of the scenery imported by Aureole; for what purpose Bertram knew not, and cared not; while things were happening to him, they might as well happen one way as another. And when Stuart, having unroped the boat, said: “Would you mind sitting to windward, Mr. Kyndersley?” then he obediently sat in the spot indicated, beside Aureole; and alternately watched Stuart in a deft manipulation of sheets, and the waves that split in a white lather of fury along the bows.
“Not the weather I’d have chosen to take you for a pleasure-trip,” remarked the skipper to his passengers, when he had finally got her running with dangerous speed before the wind. “However----” he shrugged his shoulders, implying it was their choice, not his.
Presently a silence fell upon Bertram, different from the numb passivity of his bearing hitherto; a more pregnant sort of silence, eloquent of a thousand words unspoken....
“Care to smoke?” enquired Stuart, with brutal courtesy. He made fast the sheet, and lit a cigarette. Then, ruthlessly, held the shielded flame for Bertram; that instant of light showed him--many things! All his previous indignation with Aureole was now shifted to Aureole’s partner in crime: Bertram Kyndersley--who was a father--Peter’s father--Why, the man must be an arrant scoundrel! Aureole, Stuart observed thankfully, dumb with scorn and hatred and apprehension, was yet being spared the worst; she was a good sailor. Hitherto she had bravely maintained the pretence that this was merely a delightful half-hour’s excursion on the water; but now she leant forward, and demanded tensely:
“What are you going to do with us?”
“Where were you bound for?” replied Stuart.
“Does that matter ... now?”--a guitar slid suddenly between them, fallen from a limp hand, and bounded against the rail.
Stuart said, eyes fixed upon the slant of the sail: “This man has a wife.” His speech was bound to be curt, for the increasing wind broke up every sentence as it fell from the salt-stiff lips, and tossed the words sportively hither and thither.
“This man has a wife.”
“It’s not true!” cried Aureole.
And Bertram muttered something about “man to man” and “code of honour”--
“Oh, honour!” Stuart did some malicious act which caused the bows to dip slowly into the trough of a wave, then suddenly rear, and roll over sideways with a lurch; “why should I be bound in honour to uphold you in your dishonourable acts, because you happen to be of my sex? Where’s your honour where Chavvy is concerned? little Chavvy, yours by right of England’s sacred laws, and by her unwavering love! It’s men like you,” continued Stuart Heron, “who wreck the sanctity of the home and violate the sanctity of the heart”--seeing that Bertram was perforce not attending to his eloquent harangue, he addressed himself to Aureole: “I’ve told you the truth, Aureole; and I can prove it to be the truth. You’ve come into his arms only over the body of another woman. Even now, she’s waiting patiently for his return; she--damn! the wind’s changed!” ... and only just in time the sheet was unlashed and pulled in.... “About ship!” he roared. Aureole obeyed instantly; but Bertram, not at home in nautical phraseology, had to be lugged forcibly from the drenched scuppers.
Stuart went on: “And, in the same way, brutally, remorselessly, he would desert you, when he got tired of the episode; and you would be stranded, an outcast from respectability, a derelict of life, without a single fighting weapon left; your looks raddled and faded”--he felt he might as well pile it on while he was about it,--“no money, no hope, your husband alienated, your faith shattered,--all for the sake of a man who should be labelled _dangerous!_ for everyone with whom he comes in contact, to see and beware!”
A ray of moon pierced the drifting clouds, and showed him Aureole, huddled on the seat, a woebegone little figure, with wisps of soaked veil and hair blown flat on to her pinched white face; not a trace left of the flare and defiant glow with which she had started on her pursuit of love _à la_ troubadour. And he became suddenly human, and very sorry for her, and rather embarrassed at his former rant and rhetoric.
“Never mind, dear; we’re tacking landwards now; and not a soul need ever know the facts of this. If anyone asks, you’ve been for a spin with a tomfool skipper who didn’t know dirty weather when he saw it. I expect Mr. Kyndersley can be trusted to keep his mouth shut,” with a scathing glance at the second of the romantic pair, who, at the moment, was emphatically not fulfilling these expectations.
They landed at the same spot where they had previously embarked. Stuart was eager to get Aureole home; he saw she was on the verge of a breakdown; and recognizing perhaps the new note of solicitude and pity in his tones, she seemed to cling to him. Without a word of farewell, they left Bertram standing on the shore; carrying in one hand a smashed guitar, with the other hand striving to gather closer about his shivering figure, the sodden folds of his cloak. It was not till his two companions were finally gulped by the darkness, as they passed up the winding road of the Chine, that his bewildered consciousness was slowly illumined by recognition of his freedom.
“Did you have any luggage?” Stuart demanded of Aureole, as he supported her up the drive of the Farme.
“No--yes; only a small bag; it’s still in the boat.”
“Then what----?”
“Bertram was going to buy me all I wanted.”
Stuart wondered if his ten-pound note, as well as his boat, was to have been pressed into service for the elopement.
They found the hall deserted; from behind the dining-room door could be heard sounds indicative of dinner progressing within.
“Excellent; nobody need see you; go up to your room, and put on something dry; and I’ll have hot soup sent up to you, and tell them to light you a fire.”
Aureole bestowed on him a wan smile of gratitude, and droopingly went upstairs. Stuart gave the necessary orders; then, not caring either to join the rest of the company, or change his wet clothes, remained fidgeting restlessly about the hall. Like Bertram, he was feeling “strangely disturbed in his innards,” though from different causes. Bertram ... how diabolically the man’s eyes, in spite of the puffiness beneath, had recalled Peter’s.... “Infernal old reprobate!” muttered Stuart; “one would think he might have a sense of decency, with a grown-up daughter.”
Peter ... Stuart swore softly as he meandered from staircase to window, from dining-room door to front door.
Presently the latter opened, and Oliver Strachey walked in.
“Hullo, Nigger!”
“Hullo. Where’s my wife?”
“In her room,” replied Stuart, with deep inner thankfulness that this should be so.
“Which room?” Oliver prepared to mount.
“First floor, second on the left. And go easy; she’s a bit nervous to-night; I took her for a sail, and it upset her.”
“So I should think; in this weather. What a crazy old slogger you are! Your first letter was forwarded to me ages ago; so, knowing Aureole was all right with you, I stopped on in New York, and did some business.”
“Um.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Second door on the left.”
Oliver ran up the stairs, two at a time, and vanished.
“Nice old mess-up it might have been, but for me,” reflected Stuart complacently. “And I wonder if that’s going to be something on my credit side of the ledger, at last. _Who_ pulled ’em out?--little Tommy Stout!”
--But who put ’em in?... Stuart remembered suddenly his debit account; and ceased to crow.
* * * * *
A sad little Pierrette crouched in front of the fire. Pierrot had gone away. Would he ever come back? Pierrette had waited so long.
The wind lashed and sobbed at the windows. Up the street crept the solitary figure of a man. Outside the house he paused, cast away a phantom cloak and mask--(oh, the infinite relief!) and donned a phantom skull cap and white frill. Metamorphosis easily effected.
Pierrette opened to the knock at the door. And, with a cry of joy, held out both hands to welcome in the truant.
“I knew you would come home, Pierrot,” quoth Chavvy.