“My mistake,” said Nigger, slowly masticating the new aspect. Oliver Strachey’s mind matched his face, in that it presented a great dark bulk occasionally illuminated by a flash of white. His quick grin was as unexpected as the rare streaks he displayed of wit or humour; and his cumbersome: “I don’t quite follow your meaning, Heron,” a great pleasure to his young comrade, who liked to watch Nigger’s massive and reliable mentality at work upon his own twisted acrobatics. The two men were never confidential; never gave mutual good advice; were ignorant each of the other’s troubles; disagreed on all abstract topics; and had thrice in company faced death by wave and wind. All of which made for entirely satisfactory comradeship. So that now Oliver asked no questions about the proposed visit to Norfolk, and merely commented:
“Got stacks of work on hand. Still, I could do it in Norfolk as well as here. What I’m wondering is if my wife will care to go?”
“Hang your wife,” Stuart was about to say; then recollected in time that men are absurdly prone to touchiness on the subject of their domestic partners. Especially when as doggedly in love as Oliver. It was just as well to have restrained himself, as Aureole Strachey just then came into the room. She walked swayingly up to Stuart, and remarked in a heavy-lidded voice:
“I dreamt that your uncle was dead. Is he?”
As an entrance, quite effective.
“I don’t think so,” said Stuart, surprised. “Which? Baldwin?” hopefully.
Aureole did not know. But she was insistent about the death. So to settle the matter one way or another, Stuart telephoned home:
“Hullo ... that you, Mater?... Any of the uncles dead?... No, you needn’t scream, darling—I haven’t heard anything; just a passing curiosity.... Morbid? well, perhaps!... You saw them at dinner. All quite healthy?... Good!” He rang off, and reassured Aureole: “They’re not dead, any of them.”
Aureole remained unconvinced. The soft full curves of her mouth, resemblance of which she was vainly trying to coax from a Greuze to a Rossetti, drooped sulkily at the corners. She had no acquaintance with Stuart Heron, save from her wedding-day, when she had not much liked him. “He—gives me nothing,” she had complained to her husband; “he—means nothing.” And Nigger had made no reply, save by one of his dazzlingly incongruous smiles, which all Aureole’s provoked questionings could not compel him to explain.
But to-night there seemed a possibility that Stuart would give her more. He scrutinized her intently for a moment, from her copper hair, carelessly caught up with a single jade hairpin, down to her temperamental feet; and, inspired by these, shot out at her a sudden: