Project Gutenberg's The Troubadour, by Robert Augustine Ward Lowndes

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Title: The Troubadour

Author: Robert Augustine Ward Lowndes

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23091]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

The Troubadour

By Peter Michael Sherman

There was something odd about
the guest attraction, Mr.
Fayliss, and something
odder still about
his songs.

So far as parties go, Jocelyn's were no duller than any others. I went
to this one mainly to listen to Paul Kutrov and Frank Alva bait each
other, which is usually more entertaining than most double features.
Kutrov adheres to the "onward and upward" school of linear progress,
while Alva is more or less of a Spenglerian. More when he goes along by
himself; less when you try to pin him down to it. And since the subject
of tonight's revelations would be the pre-Mohammed Arabian Culture, I'd
find Alva inclined toward my side of the debate, which is strictly
morphological and without any pious theories of "progress".

I'd completely forgotten that Jocelyn had mentioned something about
having a special attraction: a "Mr. Fayliss", who, she insisted, was a
troubadour. I didn't comment, not wanting to spend a day with Jocelyn on
the phone, exploring the Provence.

The night wasn't too warm for August, and there were occasional gusts of
air seeping through the layers of tobacco smoke that hovered over the
assemblage. As usual, it was a heterogeneous crowd, which rapidly formed
numerous islands of discourse. The trade winds carried salient gems of
intelligence throughout the entire archipelago at times, and Jocelyn
walked upon the water, scurrying from one body to another, sopping up
the overflow of "culture". She visited our atoll, where Kutrov's
passionate exposition had already raised the mean temperature some
degrees, but didn't stay long. Such debates didn't suggest any course of
social or political action, and couldn't be trued in to any of h