Mr. Seedwell shook his head in grave doubt. Weighing eighteen stone and a bit over he found it hard to put himself in Mademoiselle Letizia’s place.
“I don’t want an accident,” he explained. “The magistrates are only too glad of an excuse to close us down these days.”
“Dere willa not be no accident,” Madame Oriano assured him.
And Mr. Seedwell, looking at the raven-haired and raven-beaked and raven-eyed woman beside him, took her word for it and went off to see that all was ready inside the house for the entertainment of his guests.
Madame Oriano squeezed a handful of her yellow satin gown.
“Bagnato!”[1] she murmured to herself. Then looking across to one of the alcoves she called out in a shrill harsh voice, “Caleb! Caleb Fuller!”
[1] Wet.
A beetle could not have left his carapace more unwillingly than Caleb Fuller that alcove. He was a young man—certainly not more than twenty-five, perhaps not as much—whose lumpish and pasty face suggested at first an extreme dulness of mind until one looked a little closer and perceived a pair of glittering granite-grey eyes that animated the whole countenance with an expression that passed beyond cunning and touched intelligence. Beside the dragon-fly vividness of his employer he appeared, as he shambled across the lawn to hear what she wanted of him, like an awkward underground insect, with his turgid rump and thin legs in tight pantaloons and his ill-fitting tail-coat of rusty black.
“Dissa English cleemat non è possibile,” Madame shrilled. “Everyting willa be wet before we beginna to fire.”
“It’s the heavy dew,” said Caleb.