“He’s more confused, dear, than violent,” Mrs. Smee explained. “He seems to think we’re doing The Tempest; Romeo’s tanned breast he takes for Ferdinand’s. ‘Mind, Ferdy, boy,’ I heard him say, ‘and keep the —— out.’ Whereupon, his mind wandered to the Russian plays I love, and he ran through some of Irina’s lines from The Three Sisters: ‘My soul,’ you know she says, ‘my soul is like an expensive piano which is locked and the key lost.’ Ah, there’s for you; Shakespeare never wrote that. He couldn’t. Even by making piano, spinet. Oh, Russia! Russia! land of Tchekhov, land of Andrief, of Solugub, of Korelenko, of Artzibashef—Maria Capulet salutes thee! And then my man was moved to sing. His love, she was in Otaheite.... But as soon as he saw me he was back at The Tempest again, calling me Caliban, Countess, and I don’t know what.”
“Oh, how disgraceful.”
“After the performance I’ll pop home—Home!—in a drosky and shut him out.”
“Meanwhile?”
“He’ll pass for a Friar. The Moujik!”
“Still....”
“He’ll probably be priceless; the masses always love the man who can make them laugh.”
Miss Sinquier moved restlessly towards the door and looked out.
All was activity.
Plants for the balcony set of a rambling, twining nature, together with a quantity of small wicker cages labelled “Atmospherics,” and containing bats, owls, lizards, etc., were in course of being prepared.