Read Ebook: The Orchard of Tears by Rohmer Sax

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Ebook has 376 lines and 28372 words, and 8 pages

Flamby's eyes were so misty that she averted her face. "Oh, Don," she said unsteadily, "and I wrote to you only three days ago and thought you were safe."

Don unbuttoned the left breast-pocket of his tunic and flourished a letter triumphantly. "Young Conroy has been forwarding all my mail," he explained, "and I have addressed my letters from nowhere in particular and sent them to him to be posted! Now, what about the guile and subtlety of the serpent! Let us take counsel with the great Severus Regali. I am allowed a little clear soup and an omelette, now."

"Found me out?"

"You have seen him, then?"

"Of course I have seen him. But one thing I do know. I owe you over a hundred pounds, and I am going to pay it!"

"But, Flamby," said Don, a startled expression appearing upon his face, "you don't owe it to me at all. You are wrong."

Flamby studied him carefully for awhile. "I am going to send it to Mr. Nevin--I have told him so--and he can settle the matter." She laid her hand on Don's sleeve. "Don't think me silly, or an ungrateful little beast," she said, "but I can't talk about it any more; it makes me want to cry. Did you know that Chauvin got me a commission from the War Office propaganda people to do pictures of horses and mules and things?"

"Yes," replied Don, guiltily. But to his great relief Flamby did not accuse him of being concerned in the matter.

"I felt a rotten little slacker," explained Flamby; "I wrote and told you so. Did you get the letter?"

"Of course. Surely I replied?"

"I don't remember if you did, but I told Chauvin and he recommended my work to them and they said I could do twelve drawings. They accepted the first three I did, but rejected the fourth, which both Hammett and Chauvin thought the best."

"Please," pleaded Flamby.

Don looked into her eyes and was silenced. He suppressed a sigh. "Have you seen Paul lately?" he asked.

"No. He is away. His book frightens me."

"Frightens you," said Don, staring curiously. "In what way?"

"For Paul?"

"Yes."

"Because he has seen the truth?"

"That he suffers from it? This is a common thing with specialists." Don spoke almost heedlessly, but had no sooner spoken than he became aware of the peculiar significance of his words. He sat staring silently at Flamby. Before he had time for further speech Regali attended in person to announce that places were vacant at one of the tables. This table Don and Flamby shared with a lady wearing her hair dressed in imitation of a yellow dahlia, and with a prominent colourist who was devoting his life to dissipating the popular delusion about trees being green. He was gradually educating the world to comprehend that trees were not green but blue. He had a very long nose and ate French mustard with his macaroni. The conversation became cubical and coloured.

"I maintain," said the colourist, who was fiercely cynical, as might have been anticipated of one who consumed such large quantities of mustard, "that humanity is akin to the worm. The myth of Psyche and the idea that we possess souls arose simply out of the contemplation of colour by some primitive sensitive. Very delicately coloured young girls were responsible for the legend, but humanity in the bulk is colourless and therefore soulless. Large public gatherings fill me with intense personal disgust. From Nelson's point of view, a popular demonstration in Trafalgar Square must unpleasantly resemble a box of bait."

"Clearly you have never loved," said Don. "One day some misguided woman may marry you. You will awaken to the discovery that she is different from common humanity."

"Nearly every man considers his own wife to be different from other women--until the third or fourth, day of the honeymoon."

He was incorrigible; French mustard had embittered his life. "Some men are even more gross than women," he declared thoughtfully. "Cubically they are stronger, but their colouring is less delicate."

His yellow-haired companion watched him with limpid faithful brown eyes, hanging upon his words as upon the pronouncements of a Cumaean oracle. Having concluded his luncheon with a piece of cheese liberally coated in mustard he rose, shaking his head sadly.

"Don't shake your head like that," Don implored him. "I can hear your brains rattling."

But smileless, the cynic departed, and Flamby looked after him without regret. "If he painted as much as he talked," she said, "he would have to hire a railway station to show his pictures."

"Yes, or the offices of the Food Controller. His conversation is intensely interesting, but it doesn't mean anything. I have always suspected him of keeping coal in his bath."

Orlando James came in, standing just by the doorway, one hand resting upon his hip whilst he gnawed the nails of the other with his fine white teeth. He wore the colours of a regiment with which he had served for a time, and a silver badge on the right lapel of his tweed jacket. Presently, perceiving Flamby, he advanced to the table at which she was seated with Don. He had all the arrogance of acknowledged superiority. "Hullo, kid," he said, dropping into the chair vacated by the cynical one. "How do, Courtier. You look a bit cheap--been gassed?"

"No," replied Don; "merely a stiff neck due to sleeping with my head above the parapet."

James stared dully, continuing to bite his nails. "When are you going back?"

"As soon as my batman wires me that the weather has improved."

"Have you finished lunch? Let's split a bottle of wine before you go."

"No bottle of wine for me," said Flamby, "unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you'd be ashamed to know me." She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. "Isn't it time we started?" she asked, turning to Don. "Mrs. Chumley will be expecting us."

"Ah!" cried Don gratefully, glancing at his watch. "Of course she will. Where is the waiter?"

"You don't like James, do you?" said Flamby, as the car approached The Hostel.

"No. Vanity in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul's request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should go about with James and we discussed the point whilst I was home. You remember, no doubt?"

Flamby nodded. Her expression was very pensive. "Then I wrote and asked if you minded my seeing him occasionally for a special purpose, and you wrote back that you had every confidence in my discretion, which pleased me very much. Now I suppose you want to know what the special purpose was?"

"Not unless you wish to tell me, Flamby."

"I do wish to tell you," said Flamby slowly. "That was why I suggested coming here, because I knew all the time of course that Mrs. Chumley was away."

They entered The Hostel, deserted as it usually was at that hour of the day, passing into the courtyard, which already was gay with the flowers of early spring. The window-boxes, too, and vases within open casements splashed patches of colour upon the old-world canvas, the yellow and purple of crocus and daffodil, modest star-blue of forget-me-nots and the varied tints of sweet hyacinth. Flamby's tiny house, which Mrs. Chumley called "the squirrel's nest," was fragrant with roses, for Flamby's taste in flowers was extravagant, and she regularly exhausted the stocks of the local florist. A huge basket of white roses stood upon a side-table, a card attached. Flamby glanced at the card. "James again," she said. "He's some use in the world after all." She composedly filled a jug with water and placed the flowers in it until she should have time to arrange them.

"Is Chauvin expecting you this afternoon?" asked Don.

"No, not to-day. I love Chauvin, but I don't think I shall be able to stay on with him if I am to finish the other eight designs for the War Office people in time. Please light your pipe. Would you like a drink? I've got all sorts of things to drink."

"No, thank you, Flamby. We can go out to tea presently."

"No, let's have tea here. I have some gorgeous cakes I got at Fullers' this morning."

"Right. Better still. I will help."

Flamby tossed her tam-o'-shanter on to a chair, slapped the pockets of Don's tunic in quest of his cigarette-case, found it, took out and lighted a cigarette, and then curled herself up in a corner of the settee, hugging her knees. "Paul thinks I'm fast," she said.

Don, who was lighting his pipe, stared at her so long that the match burned his fingers and dropped into his cap, which lay beside him on the floor.

Flamby's visitors speedily acquired the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest."

"You have said one thing, Flamby, which I must request you to explain," said Don gravely. "Paul is utterly incapable of harbouring an evil thought about anyone, and equally incapable of misjudging character."

"Ah, I knew you would say that, Don, and it is just that which worries me so."

"I don't understand."

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