“Yes, I did,” Lydia cried in return. “But the Maestro was furious. All through the performance he kept coming to me and saying ‘Que schiva!’ and shook his fists. Bonelli said afterwards: ‘You’re not an artist, no! You have made things come out of that part which aren’t there. An artist would have controlled herself to it. But you shall sing it again.’ So I sang it again, flatly and shockingly, and a third time like the first time.”
“And then you went on to the Scala.”
“Yes, for the end of the season. But before that I got a request from Covent Garden to say what my repertoire was. Well, I didn’t know then what a repertoire is. I thought it meant all the parts I wanted to sing. So I put down all the mezzo-soprano parts I could think of — Carmen, of course, Mignon, Dalila, Clytemnestra, Octavian, Brangane, Kundry, Amneris, Azucema, and a host of others; and they engaged me at sixty pounds a performance, and old Bonelli rolled off her chair with laughter when I told her.”
Lydia Flight became serious again.
“But, you see, Mr. Ricardo, the Maestro and Bonelli were right. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t control myself to the part I was singing. So at New York I got those little nodes on the vocal cords which meant: ‘Stop now or never sing again.’ So I went unhappily down to Nassau, and aquaplaned in my best white satin frock, just to keep my spirits up.”
“And to depress ours, since we hadn’t the privilege of seeing you.” Guy Stallard’s approach had been quite unnoticed by the little group at the tea-table, so engrossed had Lydia’s audience been in listening to her story, so eager and lively was she in the telling. But he was at their elbows now. He was leaning against the corner of the glass screen of the verandah.
“May I take a seat?” he drawled, and he drew up a basket chair to Lydia Flight’s side. Was there a tiny movement of repulsion made by Lydia? If she made one, it was so slight that Guy Stallard betrayed no sign of having seen it. He stretched out his long legs under the table and leaned comfortably back, the fine column of his throat rising from the open collar of his white silk shirt, the dark wave of his hair accentuating the grace of his profile. He took his cigarette case from his pocket. “I have an invitation for you, Mr. Ricardo,” he said. “Madame Bouchette will be delighted if you will have tea with her party one afternoon on board the Marie-Popette.”
It was remarkable how completely the congeniality of that little party had vanished. Lydia had lost all her gaiety, Oliver Ransom his delight in the quick changes of her face and the lilt of her voice. The cloud of inquietude was gathering about that couple again.
Mr. Ricardo, it is true, seemed unaware of it. But something was happening to Mr. Ricardo. He was sitting forward on the edge of his chair, his eyes bright, his head a little on one side like a bird, and he was watching Guy Stallard with an absorbing expectation.
“But she would like you to let her know beforehand the day on which you are coming,” Stallard continued. “For otherwise nobody might be at home.”
Ricardo had been waiting with impatience for those last words to come to an end. Whatever was happening to him had happened. He thumped his little fist upon the table.
“I’ve got it,” he cried excitedly.
He looked round with a smile of triumph, whilst Stallard struck a match and lit his cigarette.
“Got what, Mr. Ricardo?” Oliver Ransom asked.
“Why, I felt sure that I had seen Mr. Stallard before.”
Stallard inhaled the smoke of his cigarette, and said lazily:
“But you can’t have seen me before, Mr. Ricardo, unless, that’s to say, you’ve visited Arizona within the last ten years. That’s where I’ve been. Ten mortal years in Arizona. Searching for copper, certain it was there within a square mile, and not finding it. They thought me loony in Arizona. ‘Shorty Stallard,’ they called me. Short of his wits, you know, if long in the leg. But I found the copper at the last, and had the laugh of ’em. By gum I did.”
And Stallard laughed heartily as he thought of the revenge he had had in the end. But again Mr. Ricardo was watching a face, and not listening to words.
“And why I felt that your American accent didn’t belong to you, Mr. Stallard,” he went on.
“Well, it doesn’t,” Stallard returned. “Any more than measles belong to you if you pick them up. I shall get out of it all right. I’m dropping it fast already. It’s only when I’m a trifle excited that you hear very much of it.”
“And where I did see you,” Mr. Ricardo cried gleefully. “Yes, I’ve got that too, Mr. Stallard. Where I did see you?”
“And where was that?”
Stallard with one swift movement leaned forward from the hips, his body stiff, his great shoulders drawn back, until his face seemed to be within a foot of Mr. Ricardo’s.
A wide smile spread over Ricardo’s face. He was holding his audience, he was for continuing to hold it, and savouring its expectations.
“Well?” Oliver Ransom asked slowly; and “Well?” Guy Stallard repeated.
“In the portraits of Byron,” Mr. Ricardo cried, beaming and laughing with good humour. “I was as curious as a magpie about it. I couldn’t tell why I recognised you, and I hate forgetting faces. But that’s it. I’m satisfied now. That’s where I’ve seen you, Mr. Stallard. In the portraits of Byron. You’re Byron without his limp.”
Stallard leaned back again in his chair.
“In that case,” he said, “I think that I’m entitled to a brandy and soda.”
And certainly, at the moment, he looked as if he needed one.
CHAPTER VII
THE NET
AT CAUDEBEC IT was easier to think of doing something than to do anything. Zeal and impetuosity were affronts to that drowsy, forgotten town. Mr. Ricardo let the time slip by without paying his visit to the Marie-Popette, though its gay awnings by day, and its long beams of light quivering on the waters at night upbraided him. Where was his curiosity now? His passion to be on the inside of the subtler little secrets of life? His enthusiasm for Grand Opera? Lapped in summer peace, he waved all such intemperances aside. To pay an afternoon call upon ladies, he must button about his neck the laundress’s white band of slavery, and he was not going to do it. Besides, every day the most exciting things happened at Caudebec. A trim yacht one day would pass up the Seine to Rouen, a cargo boat might run on to a mud-bank, or the Paris newspapers might not arrive. Your whole attention was occupied by a diversity of events. Moreover, Mr. Ricardo had a vague recollection that he had heard Guy Stallard suggest that he should send word of his coming the day before he came. At once an absurdity and a presumption. After all, one did not come to Caudebec-en-Caux in order to write letters. Mr. Ricardo preferred to drive up the Calidu Hill in the cool of the evening to the Place du Gibet. On that small high open space on the roadside in the woods there was a bench. It was pleasant to sit there in the cool of the day and watch, far below you across the river, the empty rectangular fields marked off by their fringes of willows and poplars. Voices and the cries of animals and the peal of bells rose very soothingly in the still air, and do what one would, the eyelids closed.
But Mr. Ricardo, returning one evening from some such adventurous expedition, found upon the table of his sitting-room an envelope; and in the envelope a card inviting him to a fancy dress ball which Mr. Stallard was preparing to give at the House of the Pebble on Thursday, the 28th of July. It was to be an informal affair got up in a hurry. In the big dining-room upon the first floor he found out that one way or another Guy Stallard had made the acquaintance of every visitor during the past month, and that the whole colony was looking forward to this amazing way of winding up a summer holiday. Mr. Ricardo accepted the invitation that night.
This was the night of the 24th of July. The next morning Ricardo took himself severely to task. He knew himself to be naturally a busy little man, and sloth was creeping on him like a paralysis. “Really, really,” he said to his reflection in the mirror as he tied his cravat, “I shall hardly dare to speak to the lady of
the sliding eyes at the House of the Pebble, unless I present myself this afternoon at the Marie-Popette.”
But he modified the exactions which this expedition demanded in two particulars, of which one, in the retrospect, was of some importance. He put on a white collar, it is true, but with only a semblance of starch in its make-up; and secondly he did not walk. If he walked, he must walk the length of the town along the broad front, past the wharf, if wharf it could be called, past the tiny jetty from which the ferry worked, to the end of the hard. There the road to Rouen curved to the left up the hill, and on the right a little footpath broke off which bent round the end of a villa and broadened out on to an embankment. The embankment ran straight between the shady gardens of summer houses and the river to the brand-new memorial to the crew of the Latham aeroplane who perished amongst Arctic snows in the search for General Nobile. Some half-way along this embankment the Marie-Popette was moored. The proper way for Mr. Ricardo was to walk along this embankment until he was opposite to the house-boat, hail it, and descending one of the flights of stone steps which at intervals led down to the water’s edge, wait for the arrival of the Marie-Popette’s dinghy.
But apart from his objection to the walk, Mr. Ricardo was no Alpine climber. Those flights of stone steps were exceedingly steep. The treads were far apart, and there were no handrails. Also the lower treads were always slippery with the tide. Mr. Ricardo saw himself with terrifying clarity being precipitated into the brown stream, and being rescued thence with every circumstance of indignity.
“That would be too much!” said Mr. Ricardo, and he noticed a dead leaf floating past him on the way to Rouen.
The tide was on the flow, then. Here was a better way. A rowing-boat was tied at the side of the river, and a boatman was dozing on the thwart. Mr. Ricardo jumped into the boat. “To the Marie-Popette,” he cried, flinging out his arm like Napoleon leaving Elba; and he sat down heavily in the stern seat, as the startled boatman dug his sculls into the water.
This was the only rowing which the boatman did. He was Caudebec all through. Why row a boat which went by itself? He let it float upwards with the tide in a leisurely and gentlemanly way. Thus the boat approached the Marie-Popette. From a long chair upon the roof, Oliver Ransom waved a welcome. Then the boat slid alongside, and the boatman in the bows held it against the house-boat. He was level with the last window of the big saloon at the stern. But Mr. Ricardo was level with the open after-deck behind the saloon. It was shaded with an awning, a Wilton carpet of brown pile covered the floor, and comfortable basket chairs with red cushions made it a place of ease. Yet the first impression which Mr. Ricardo received of it was one of unrest and disturbance. There was nothing in the attitude of the group seated there to which he could attribute his impression, even upon an analysis. But his sensation was vivid and definite. It was that under a smooth calm surface, far down, the sharks were busy.
There were three young women sitting at the three points of a triangle: Lydia Flight with her back to the saloon, the apex of the triangle, and opposite to her, Lucrece Bouchette and another, a stranger to Mr. Ricardo. She was, he thought, older than Lydia and a little younger than Lucrece Bouchette, and pretty with a sort of plump common prettiness. They were engaged in weaving a net of thick string, such as is used for a hammock, but as he watched, Ricardo noticed that the only one of the three who was really netting was Lydia Flight. Lucrece Bouchette was playing with her corner of the net, and the stranger with her corner resting idle upon her knees was watching Lydia; and, it seemed, without any friendliness in her look.
The tinkle and rush of the tide against the house-boat’s side had drowned even the slight jar which the dinghy made as it touched. Mr. Ricardo’s head was just above the house-boat’s bulwark, and not one of the three had noticed his approach or was aware of his presence.
Then Lucrece Bouchette spoke to Lydia Flight, with the irritation of a captious mistress to a servant whom she dislikes.
“That won’t do, Lydia. Your meshes are much too big. They’ll make the net weak. If we get our fish into it, we don’t want it to break through and get away, do we?”
“I’m sorry,” said Lydia remorsefully, and with her netting shuttle she undid her last few knots and began again.
Lucrece Bouchette shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
“Sorry! I seem to be hearing that excuse all day long from you,” and the third girl sniggered with derision.
Ricardo was recognising for the hundredth time that the real test of character is applied when one finds oneself in a small position of authority. The little functionary in an office who is more difficult and occupied than a Cabinet Minister, the Battalion Sergeant-Major who delights to make his recruits squirm upon parade, the advocate bullying and sneering at a witness in a law court, the chatelaine with a governess — they were all of the same ugly mould. Mr. Ricardo’s spirit grew hot with indignation. The only one of that trio who had something of true distinction was being treated as if she was a clumsy maid of all work.
“It won’t be for long now,” said Lydia patiently.
As she bent over her work again, those heavy lustrous beads which she wore slipped out of the front of her shirt and fell upon her knee.
The stranger uttered a sharp little cry of amazement and leaned forward.
“Let me see!” she exclaimed, and she stretched out her hand towards them.
“No,” said Lydia, and she drew back swiftly, and tucked the beads again into her bosom. “Don’t touch them, please!”
The new girl went scarlet.
“Why shouldn’t I touch them?” she asked defiantly.
“Because I’m not going to begin all over again,” Lydia Flight said firmly.
Mr. Ricardo was beginning to feel as uncomfortable as if he had been caught spying through a keyhole. Here was a private quarrel going on, with which he had nothing to do, and of which he understood not a word. If he broke in now and announced his presence, Lydia might feel humiliated; if he waited for a better opportunity, he might be held guilty of eavesdropping. He was in a dilemma, and before he could decide how to escape it, the third, unknown, girl began again.
“I don’t care!” she cried, throwing her head back. “It hadn’t anything to do with me, and I’ve got a few useful words for anybody who dares to say that it had, Miss Lydia Flight.” Mr. Ricardo had seldom heard so much malice and acrimony compressed into so few words. “I’m just as clean as any other girl, even including bust-up prima donnas.”
She turned to Lucrece Bouchette with a look of suspicion.
“You telegraphed that Major Carruthers would be here. But he isn’t.”
“He’s had to go to Trouville to arrange for rooms for the young Rajah next week,” said Lucrece Bouchette, and Lydia Flight drew a breath of relief, as though no prospect could be more welcome to her.
“So he’s coming to Trouville,” cried the stranger. Then she looked at Lydia and sneered. “I believe I could whistle him back if I wanted to,” she said disagreeably. “He was crazy about me. Everybody called him the Prince and Son Altesse, but he was just Natty to me. That’s why I wanted to see Scott Carruthers.”
“He went away yesterday,” said Lydia quietly.
“Yesterday?” The girl’s voice went up into a scream and she swung round to Lucrece Bouchette, and the corner of the net slipped off her knee on to the carpet. “But I only got your telegram this morning. You only sent it this morning.”
“It was I who wanted to see you,” Lucrece explained calmly.
“And you used Scott Carruthers’s name?”
Lucrece Bouchette smiled, in no wise put out.
“I thought my name would mean nothing to you,” she explained sweetly. “Whilst Carruthers’s name might seem to offer possibilities”; and before the girl could answer, Lucrece saw Mr. Ricardo’s head above the bulwark of the Marie-Popette.
Mr. Ricardo had been uncomfortable before. He began now slowly and unaccountably to become terribly frightened. Lu
crece Bouchette neither made a gesture nor spoke a word. She stared at him with the steady inscrutable stare of a wild animal. Ricardo had never been in a jungle, but he had read books about jungles, and he saw himself walking round a bunch of scrub in a desert and coming upon a panther six feet away from him. The very shape of her eyes, narrow and long between the heavy lashes, accentuated his fear, and the more they stared, the more dangerously they glittered. He was held by them in a catalepsy.
Then Lucrece Bouchette, with her eyes still upon him, leaned forward and tapped Lydia Flight on the knee.
“Your friend,” she said.
Mr. Ricardo recovered himself sufficiently to plunge into apologies. He had shrunk from the walk on that hot afternoon.
“I was to have let you know beforehand,” he floundered on. “But I didn’t want to keep you at home if you had planned another expedition.”
Lucrece Bouchette smiled easily at him now.
“Come on board, and I’ll get Marie to make us some tea.” She rolled up the unfinished net as she spoke, with her eyes upon Ricardo. “We’ve got to get this done if we’re going to use it before we all separate at the end of the month. We thought of running down on the launch to the mouth of the river and seeing what we could catch.” Mr. Ricardo had now clambered on board and paid off his boatman. He picked up a stretch of the netting.
“But you could hold a shark in this, Madame Bouchette.”
The new girl shivered prettily.
“I should die of fright if we caught one,” and since Ricardo turned to her, Madame Bouchette was compelled to present her.
“Mr. Ricardo, Miss Elsie Marsh!” she ran on without a break. “Oliver! Tea! I’ll put the net away. It’s probably labour lost.”
She carried the net into the saloon, and came back without it. Marie, the squat yellowish Javanese maid, brought in a table and the tea.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 124