‘MY DEAR MASTER, – In the exhilaration of your subject it has obviously not occurred to you that you’ve bust up the show. In The Sobbing Turtle you were absolutely in tune with half the orchestra, and that – er – the noisiest half. You were charmingly archaic, and securely cold-blooded. But now, what have you gone and done? Taken the last Marquesan islander for your hero and put him down in London town! This thing’s a searching satire, a real criticism of life. I’m sure you didn’t mean to be contemporary, or want to burrow into reality; but your subject has run off with you. Cold acid and cold blood are very different things, you know, to say nothing of your having had to drop the archaic. Personally, of course, I think this new thing miles better than The Sobbing Turtle, which was a nice little affair, but nothing to make a song about. But I’m not the public, and I’m not the critics. The young and thin will be aggrieved by your lack of modernity, they’ll say you’re moralizing; the old and fat will call you bitter and destructive; and the ordinary public will take your Marquesan seriously, and resent your making him superior to themselves. The prospects, you see, are not gaudy. How d’you think we’re going to “get away” with such a book? Well, we’re not! Such is the flat of the firm. I don’t agree with it. I’d publish it tomorrow; but needs must when Danby and Winter drive. So, with every personal regret, I return what is really a masterpiece.
Always yours,
MICHAEL MONT.’
‘D’you know, Miss Perren, I don’t think you need translate that?’
‘I’m afraid it would be difficult.’
‘Right-o, then; but do the other, please. I’m going to take my wife out to see a picture; back by four. Oh! and if a little chap called Bicket, that we used to have here, calls any time and asks to see me, he’s to come up; but I want warning first. Will you let them know downstairs?’
‘Yes, Mr Mont. Oh! didn’t – wasn’t that Miss Manuelli the model for the wrapper on Mr Storbert’s novel?’
‘She was, Miss Perren; alone I found her.’
‘She’s very interesting-looking, isn’t she?’
‘She’s unique, I’m afraid.’
‘She needn’t mind that, I should think.’
‘That depends,’ said Michael; and stabbed his blotting-paper.
Chapter Three
‘AFTERNOON OF A DRYAD’
FLEUR was still gracefully concealing most of what Michael called ‘the eleventh baronet’, now due in about two months’ time. She seemed to be adapting herself, in mind and body, to the quiet and persistent collection of the heir. Michael knew that, from the first, following the instructions of her mother, she had been influencing his sex, repeating to herself, every evening before falling asleep, and every morning on waking the words: ‘Day by day, in every way, he is getting more and more male,’ to infect the subconscious which, everybody now said, controlled the course of events; and that she was abstaining from the words; ‘I will have a boy,’ for this, setting up a reaction, everybody said, was liable to produce a girl. Michael noted that she turned more and more to her mother, as if the French, or more naturalistic, side of her, had taken charge of a process which had to do with the body. She was frequently at Mapledurham, going down in Soames’s car, and her mother was frequently in South Square. Annette’s handsome presence, with its tendency to black lace was always pleasing to Michael, who had never forgotten her espousal of his suit in days when it was a forlorn hope. Though he still felt only on the threshold of Fleur’s heart, and was preparing to play second fiddle to ‘the eleventh baronet’, he was infinitely easier in mind since Wilfrid had been gone. And he watched, with a sort of amused adoration, the way in which she focused her collecting powers on an object that had no epoch, a process that did not date.
Personally conducted by Aubrey Greene, the expedition to view his show at the Dumetrius Gallery left South Square after an early lunch.
‘Your Dryad came to me this morning, Aubrey,’ said Michael in the cab. ‘She wanted me to ask you to put up a barrage if by any chance her husband blows round to accuse you of painting his wife. It seems he’s seen a reproduction of the picture.’
‘Umm!’ murmured the painter: ‘Shall I, Fleur?’
‘Of course you must, Aubrey!’
Aubrey Greene’s smile slid from her to Michael.
‘Well, what’s his name?’
‘Bicket.’
Aubrey Greene fixed his eyes on space, and murmured slowly:
‘An angry young husband called Bicket