“Mother thayth I’m to athk you to ’ave a look at me thore throat, Mith!” The children of the Second Jewish Tailor, whom the good-natured Cavalry officer had gathered and brought in from the landing, were grouping themselves round Zoe’s Barrie-like representation of the lonely little mother to whom all the children bring their troubles, as spontaneously and efficiently as though they had been rehearsed for weeks. Zoe really had been very good to them in different ways at different times, and their present adhesion round her knees, in full view of a beaming Captain Braithwaite, was her reward.
Antonia, in an aside to Richard, anxiously questioned her own grotesque fancy that yet another set of doors had just banged, and yet more footsteps were scuffling and clattering up the stairs: “This flat is haunted by a delusion of banging doors—listen!”
“Listen!” echoed Zoe, smashed into sudden silence—“It’s Pinto!” she whispered, all her gay resourcefulness paralysed.
“She hears it too,” Antonia sighed with relief; “I don’t mind so much if we’re all raving together!” And indeed it was obviously incredible that the corpulent whiskered person who was projected squealing into the sitting-room, by an image of bony yellow ferocity, could be otherwise than chimera. The wine-bottles which the pursued swung in impotent arabesques from either hand, erased the last touch of credibility.
“Face—like—an—orang-outang—temper—Patagonian savage ...” were the only words distinguishable from the yapping, snapping medley of limbs and bottles and vituperation.
There was a crash of splintered glass, and ruddy liquid poured into pools on the carpet, and Zoe cried out to Captain Braithwaite, who flung his big form on top of the belligerents and wrenched them apart. The ensuing sequence of events was rather too nimble for disentanglement. The Italian wine-and-macaroni merchant from round the corner collapsed panting—then rallied his faculties and bolted for the door. Zoe darted in his wake, and returned triumphant, a few seconds afterwards, carrying the second and undamaged flask of Chianti. Meanwhile Pinto had vented his spleen upon the Cavalry officer, the landlord, the round-eyed Belgian, and Richard, on whom each in turn he fastened his saga of “face like an orang-outang—tempaire of a P-P-Patagonian savage!”... The return of Zoe he greeted by a violent and uncomprehensible outbreak of what was certainly bad language and probably Portuguese; informed her that he knew all about it, and was done with her for ever ... caught up a chair and wrenched it into fragments ... glared viciously at the innocent amazement of Monsieur le Caporal; jabbed an accusing finger at him—“You—yes, it is you—you may have her—she is worth nothing, I tell you—stop eating and take her—take her—take her!” lifting the remains of the steak from the plate and flinging it across to the window, where it narrowly missed Antonia—“Here—just you stop that!” Richard ejaculated, doubling his fists truculently.
“Leave ’im alone, Sonny—’e dunno wot ’e’s doing!”
The finger travelled instantly round to the pacifist—“Whose is this house, you——?”
“Mine!” the landlord retorted, putting up his boots on the sofa as a sign of ownership. “Nah shut up, do—ladies present!”
“It is then you with the face and the temper?”