“Pierrot?” Peter felt that this sobriquet bestowed upon her slightly obese parent, added the last absurd touch of unreality to the situation:
Pierrot and Chavvy—the doorstep vigil—tired and cold and hungry—the prodigal and the play-actress—certainly a snowstorm was lacking, but Miss Esther on her return home might be trusted to supply this last essential.
Nevertheless, with all her artificial appeal, there was about poor little third-rate Chavvy something genuinely pathetic, though one felt instinctively that this was her favourite adjective and ought not to be encouraged; genuinely pathetic in the north-east, where she saw herself attractively pathetic in the south-west. Peter was irresistibly reminded of the touring road-companies she had known in her pre-Bloemfontein days; their jargon, their manners, and careless bonhomie. And in this spirit she bade her stepmother heartily welcome.
“Come in, both of you; cut all explanations, they don’t matter much, any old way! And help yourselves to whatever you want in the food line. I say, though, you’re shivering,—half a jiff, while I light a fire! Rather eccentric in June—Auntie’s hair will stand on end when she sees. Yes, that’s right, off with your jersey and cap, sling them anywhere ... what pretty hair you’ve got.” Peter talked very fast, concealing intense amusement at her father’s latest escapade, and uncaring that the trimly conventional dining-room was being transformed as if by magic to a fair replica of cheap theatrical lodgings: Chavvy squatting on the hearthrug, her sharp white features lit by the wavering flames, the while she peeled a tangerine and carelessly littered the skin in the fender; jersey, cap and muffler tossed anyhow on the floor; firescreen (hand-painted with lilies) upset; Bertram lounging in an arm-chair, his boots half-way up the mantelpiece, and spilling wherever most convenient the ash of a particularly foul-smelling cigar; a glass of port streaming its contents across the white cloth, and dripping slowly from the table’s edge; crumbs on every plate; Peter herself astride the table, listening to irrelevant anecdotes of shoddy people whose names she did not even know, and delighting at the taint of vulgarity within her which woke so very naturally to the prevailing atmosphere.
—“By the way,” she interrupted a stirring narrative of how one Billy Devereux—such a dear boy—had been slung out of work because the leading lady—vain old beast—had bestowed his rôle and her affections upon a youth with longer eyelashes than Billy’s,—“by the way, dad, are you stopping?”
Bertram drew from his pocket a shilling, a threepenny bit and a halfpenny:
“’Tis the very last shilling
That with me would stay,”
in a tenor voice of exceeding charm;
“All its charming companions
Have faded away——”
“And therefore I have come to seek shelter beneath your aunt’s roof; dwelling amidst so much luxury, she will surely not begrudge me my cup of cold water,” and he sipped appreciatively at the port wine.