“And what about the Earwig and the Cabbage-rose?”
“It’s a General and his wife. He’s brown, and about eighty; hobbles and shakes; a shrivelled little chap with beady eyes. She’s enormous and pink, with bulging petals, as if she’d been left out too long in the rain; some of the petals have fallen, and the rest are loose. She skits and sirens, and wears her evening-gowns too low. Now I ask you, Heron, don’t you consider she’s a bad influence for Letty? I do.”
Stuart pondered the matter: “I don’t think you can call a woman a bad influence because her outside petals are falling from her shoulders. However, I’ll have a look to-morrow, and judge for myself.”
But by the morrow he had forgotten the impending intrusion; and it was a mere accident that when the Menagerie trooped noisily on to the little wood and iron jetty, Stuart should just have been at its foot; unroping his skiff from among a welter of palings and steps, anchors and chains and beams, rust-eaten and weed-green. His trousers were rolled thigh-high over his bare legs; he wore an old blue sweater, and a sou’wester protected the back of his neck from the sun. Standing up to his knees in water, he glanced up in some curiosity, mingled in equal proportions with indifference. The various members of the party were easily enough distinguishable by Sebastian’s word-pictures: Here the Earwig and the Cabbage-rose; she in a large leghorn hat, waving a sunshade, and calling to Stuart in shrill tones: “Ferry! Hi, Ferry!” There, Archie Mowbray, the very spit of a Kipling subaltern; avowing, when questioned on the subject, that he ‘had no patience with Kipling.’ Besides him, the untidy girl of his adoration, Ethel Wynne, her blouse agape where it lacked buttons, her fingers stained with nicotine. And—yes, that must be ‘Maddermerzell,’ disturbingly piquante French governess of a small boy, who, Stuart surmised impartially, would in five seconds be headlong in the water, and require saving. And there Mrs. Percival, for eleven months of the year most respectable of British matrons that ever wore a hair-net, now, by some strange seizure of rejuvenescence, making a giggling fool of herself with the doggish husband of another matron, not rejuvenated, and therefore icy of eye. That pretty little maiden in white, with soft hair shadowed to brown beneath her big burnt-straw sun-hat, Stuart had no difficulty in recognizing as Letty, the other ‘little lover’ from the shadow-side of the hulk; Letty, looking demure, as she hugged the secret of how well she knew these shores—by moonlight.
Stuart pushed off vigorously; then, leaning on his oars, looked up again to see if he could pick out Mr. Johnson from among the chattering gesticulating crowd. The Cabbage-rose was still desperately hailing the boat: “Hi! Boy! Ferry! we’re coming with you!”
“Not if I know it,” muttered Stuart; quite determined that the Haven should not see him again till cleared of the Menagerie. Then a graceful figure, auburn-haired and supple, thrust a way to the front of the jetty, and cried, in tones sufficiently supplicating to melt glaciers into torrents:
“Mr. Heron! Oh, Mr. Heron!”
“Aureole Strachey!” With a few powerful strokes, he brought the boat back to the palings, roped it securely, then plunged again into the water, and waded ashore. Aureole flew down the jetty, and met him on the sand:
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you; of all people in the world, you! you who awoke my sleeping—but let’s get away from these gorillas!” indicating with distaste the Cabbage-rose, who was approaching with the evident fell intent of an introduction. “How I hate them all, directly I come again in contact with someone from the old life.” Then, as Stuart drew her hastily in an opposite direction, “Have you—do you know where Oliver can be?” sinking her voice to a whisper.
“Oliver is in America, looking for you.”