The weather grew hotter and the hard work made them all irritable; when they got home for dinner at midday it was impossible to eat, and they used to loll about in the stuffy sitting-room, which the five of them shared in common, while the flies buzzed everywhere. It was never worth while to remove the make-up; so all their faces used to get mottled with pale streaks of perspiration, the rouge on their lips would cake, and their ruffles hung limp and wet, stained round the neck with dirty carmine. Sylvia lost all enjoyment in the tour, and used to lie on the horsehair sofa that pricked her cheeks, watching distastefully the cold mutton, the dull knives, and the spotted cloth, and the stewed fruit over which lay a faint silvery film of staleness. Round the room her fellow-mountebanks were still seated on the chairs into which they had first collapsed when they reached the lodgings, motionless, like great painted dolls.
The weather grew hotter. The men, particularly Henry, took to drinking brandy at every opportunity; toward the end of their stay in Bournemouth the quarrels between him and Mabel broke out again, but with a difference, because now it was Henry who was the aggressor. He had never objected to Mabel’s admirers hitherto, had, indeed, been rather proud of their existence in a fatuous way and derived from their numbers a showman’s satisfaction. When it was her turn to take round the hat, he used to smirk over the quantity of post-cards she sold of herself and call everybody’s attention to her capricious autography that was so successful with the callow following. Then suddenly one day he made an angry protest against the admiration which an older man began to accord her, a pretentious sort of man with a diamond ring and yellow cummerbund, who used to stand with his straw hat atilt and wink at Mabel, tugging at his big drooping mustache and jingling the money in his pockets.
Everybody told Henry not to be foolish; he only sulked and began to drink more brandy than ever. The day after Henry’s outbreak, the Pink Pierrots moved to Swanage, where their only rivals were a troupe of niggers, upon whom Henry was able to loose some of his spleen in a dispute that took place over the new-comers’ right to plant their pink tent where they did.
“This isn’t Africa, you know,” Henry said. “This is Swanage. It’s no good your waving your banjo at me. I know it’s a banjo, all right, though I may forget, next time I hear you play it.”
“We’ve been here every year for the last ten years,” the chief nigger shouted.
“I thought so by your songs,” Henry retorted. “If you told me you got wrecked here with Christopher Columbus I shouldn’t have contradicted you.”
“This part of the beach belongs to us,” the niggers proclaimed.
“I suppose you bought it off Noah, didn’t you, when he let you out of the ark?” said Henry.
In the end, however, the two companies adjusted their differences and removed themselves out of each other’s hearing. Mabel’s voice defeated even the tambourines and bones of the niggers. Swanage seemed likely to be an improvement upon Bournemouth, until one day Mabel’s prosperous admirer appeared on the promenade and Henry’s jealousy rose to fury.
“Don’t you tell me you didn’t tell him to follow you here,” he said, “because I don’t believe you. I saw you smile at him.”