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Mountebank

<h1>Chapter XXI</h1> The first sign of commotion in the morning was a note from Bakkus, whose turn it was to act as luncheon host. Our friends at Clermont-Ferrand, said he, had cried off. They had also asked him to go over and see them. Would I be so kind as to regard this as a dies non in the rota of our pleasant gatherings? I dressed and bought some flowers, which I sent up to Lady Auriol with a polite message. The chasseur returned saying that Miladi had gone out about half an hour before. "You don't mean that she has left the hotel with her luggage?" The boy smiled reassurance. She had only gone for a walk. I breathed freely. It would have been just like her to go off by the first train. I suffered my treatment, drank my glasses of horrible water and again enquired at the hotel for Lady Auriol. She had not yet returned. Having nothing to do, I took my Moniteur du Puy de Dôme, which I had not read, to the café which commands a view of the park gates and the general going and coming of Royat. Presently, from the tram terminus I saw advancing the familiar gaunt figure of Lackaday. I was glad, I scarcely knew why, to note that he wore a grey soft felt instead of the awful straw hat. I rose to greet him, and invited him to my table. "I would join you with pleasure," said he, "but I am thinking of paying my respects to Lady Auriol." When I told him that he would not find her, he sat down. We could keep an eye on the hotel entrance, I remarked. "Our lunch with Bakkus is off," said I. "Yes. I'm sorry. I rang him up early this morning. Elodie isn't quite herself to-day." "The thunder last night, perhaps." He nodded. "Women have nerves." That something had happened was obvious. I remembered last night's half-hearted performance. "By the way," said I, "Bakkus mentioned in his note that he was going over to Clermont-Ferrand to see you." "Yes," said Lackaday, "I left him there. He has marvellous tact and influence when he chooses to exert them. A man thrown away on the trivialities of life. He was born to be a Cardinal. I'm so glad you have taken to him." I murmured mild eulogy of Bakkus. We spoke idly of his beautiful voice. Conversation languished, Lackaday's eyes being turned to the entrance of the hotel some fifty yards away up the sloping street. "I'm anxious not to miss Lady Auriol," he said at last. "It will be my only chance of seeing her. We're off to-morrow." "To-morrow?" "Our engagement ends to-night. We're due at Vichy next week." I had not realized the flight of the pleasant days. But yet--I was puzzled. Yesterday there had been no talk of departure. I mentioned my surprise. "I have ended the engagement of my own accord," said he. "The management had engaged another star turn for to-day--overlapping mine. A breach of contract which gave me the excuse for terminating it. I don't often stand on the vain dignity of the so-called artist, but this time I've been glad to do so." "The atmosphere of the circus is scarcely congenial," said I. "That's it. I'm too big for my boots, or my head's too big for my hat. And the management are not sorry to save a few days' salary." "But during these few days----?" "We wait at Vichy." He spoke woodenly, his lined face set hard. "I shall miss you tremendously, my dear fellow," said I. "I shall miss your company even more," said he. "We won't, at any rate, say good-bye to-day," I ventured. "There are cars to be hired, and Vichy from the car point of view is close by." "You, my dear Hylton, I shall be delighted to see." The emphasis on the pronoun would have rendered his meaning clear to even a more obtuse man than myself. No Lady Auriols flaunting over to Vichy. "May I ask when you came to this decision?" I enquired. "Bakkus's note suggested only a postponement of our meeting." "Last night," said he. "That's one reason why I sent for Bakkus." "I see," said I. But I did not tell him what I saw. It looked as though the gallant fellow were simply running away. Soon afterwards, to my great relief, there came Lady Auriol swinging along on the other side of the pavement. The café, you must know, forms a corner. To the left, the park and the tram terminus; to the right, the street leading to the post office and then dwindling away vaguely up the hill. It was along this street that Lady Auriol came, short-skirted, flushed with exercise, rather dusty and dishevelled. I stood and waved an arresting hand. She hesitated for a second and then crossed the road and met us outside the café. I offered a seat at our table within. She declined with a gesture. We all stood for a while and then went diagonally over to the park entrance. "I've been such a walk," she declared. "Miles and miles--through beautiful country and picturesque villages. You ought to explore. It's worth it." "I know the district of old," said Lackaday. "I'm tremendously struck with the beauty of the women of Auvergne." "They're the pure type of old Gaul," said Lackaday. She put up a hand to straying hair. "I'm falling to pieces. I have but two desires in the world--a cold bath and food. Perhaps I shall see you later." He stood unflinching, like a soldier condemned for crime. I wondered at her indifference. He said: "Unfortunately I can't have that pleasure. My engagements take up the rest of the day, and tomorrow I leave Clermont-Ferrand. I shan't have another opportunity of seeing you." Their eyes met and his, calm yet full of pain, dominated. She thrust her hand through my arm. "Very well then, let us get into the shade." We entered the park, found an empty bench beneath the trees and sat down, Auriol between us. She said: "Do you mean at Royat or in the world in general?" "Perhaps the latter." She laughed queerly. "As chance has thrown us together here, it will possibly do the same somewhere else." "My sphere isn't yours," said he. "If it hadn't been for the accident of Hylton being here, we should not have met now." "Captain Hylton had nothing to do with it," she said warmly. "I had no notion that you were at Clermont-Ferrand." "I'm quite aware of that, Lady Auriol." She flushed, vexed at having said a foolish thing. "And Captain Hylton had no notion that I was coming." "Perfectly," said Lackaday. "Well?" she said after a pause. "I came over to Royat, this morning," said Lackaday, "to call on you and bid you good-bye." "Why?" she asked in a low voice. "It appeared to be ordinary courtesy." "Was there anything particular you wanted to say to me?" "Perhaps to supplement just the little I could tell you yesterday afternoon." "Captain Hylton supplemented it after you left. Oh, he was very discreet. But there were a few odds and ends that needed straightening out. If you had been frank with me from the beginning, there would have been no need of it. As it was, I had to clear everything up. If I had known exactly. I should not have gone to the circus last night." His eyelids fluttered like those of a man who has received a bullet through him, and his mouth set grimly. "You might have spared me that," said he. He bent forward. "Hylton, why did you let her do it?" "I might just as well have tried to stop the thunder," said I, seeing no reason why this young woman should not bear the blame for her folly. "A circus is a comfortless place of entertainment," he said, in the familiar, even voice. "I wish it had been a proper theatre. What did you think of the performance?" She straightened herself upright, turned and looked at him; then looked away in front of her: a sharp breath or two caused a little convulsive heave of her bosom; to my astonishment I saw great tears run down her cheeks on to her hands tightly clasped on her lap. As soon as she realized it, she dashed her hands roughly over her eyes. Lackaday ventured the tip of his finger on her sleeve. "It's a sorry show, isn't it? I'm not very proud of myself. But perhaps you understand now why I left you in ignorance." "Yet you told Anthony. Why not me?" I was about to rise, this being surely a matter for them to battle out between themselves, but I at once felt her powerful grip on my arm. Whether she was afraid of herself or of Lackaday, I did not know. Anyway, I seemed to represent to her some kind of human dummy which could be used, at need, as a sentimental buffer. "I presume," she continued, "I was quite as intimate a friend as Anthony?" "Quite," said he. "But Hylton's a man and you're a woman. There can be no comparison. You are on different planes of sentiment. For instance, Hylton, loyal friend as he is, has not to my knowledge done me the honour of shedding tears over Petit Patou." I felt horribly out of place on the bench in this public leafy park, beside these two warring lovers. But it was most humanly interesting. Lackaday seemed to be reinvested with the dignity of the man as I had first met him, a year ago. "Anthony--" I could not help feeling that her repeated change of her term of reference to me, from the formal Captain Hylton to my Christian name, sprang from an instinctive desire to put herself on more intimate terms with Lackaday--"Anthony," she said in her defiant way, "would have cried, if he could." Lackaday's features relaxed into his childlike smile. "Ah," said he, "'The little more and how much it is. The little less and how far away.'" She was silent. Although the situation was painful, I could not help feeling the ironical satisfaction that she was getting the worst of the encounter. I was glad, because I thought she had treated him cruelly. The unprecedented tears, however, were signs of grace. Yet the devil in her suggested a riposte. "I hope Madame Patou is quite well." Lackaday's smile faded into the mask. "Last night's thunderstorm upset her a little--but otherwise--yes--she is quite well." He rose. Lady Auriol cried: "You're not going already?" His ear caught a new tone, for he smiled again. "I must get back to Clermont-Ferrand. Goodbye, Hylton." We shook hands. "Good-bye, old chap," said I. "We'll meet soon." Auriol rose and turned on me an ignoring back. As I did not seem to exist any longer, I faded shadow-like away to the park gate, where I hung about until Auriol should join me. As to what happened between them then, I must rely on her own report, which, as you shall learn, she gave me later. They stood for a while after I had gone. Then he held out his hand. "Good-bye, Lady Auriol," said he. "No," she said. "There are things which we really ought to say to each other. You do believe I wish I had never come?" "I can quite understand," said he, stiffly. "It hurts," she said. "Why should it matter so much?" he asked. "I don't know--but it does." He drew himself up and his face grew stern. "I don't cease to be an honourable man because of my profession; or to be worthy of respect because I am loyal to sacred obligations." "You put me in the wrong," she said. "And I deserve it. But it all hurts. It hurts dreadfully. Can't you see? The awful pity of it? You of all men to be condemned to a fife like this. And you suffer too. It all hurts." "Remember," said he, "it was the life to which I was bred." She felt hopeless. "It's my own fault for coming," she said. "I should have left things as they were when we parted in April. There was beauty--you made it quite clear that our parting was final. You couldn't have acted otherwise. Forgive me for all I've said. I pride myself on being a practical woman; but--for that reason perhaps--I'm unused to grappling with emotional situations. If I've been unkind, it's because I've been stabbing myself and forgetting I'm stabbing you at the same time." He walked a pace or two further with her. For the first time he seemed to recognize what he, Andrew Lackaday, had meant to her. "I'm sorry," he said gravely. "I never dreamed that it was a matter of such concern to you. If I had, I shouldn't have left you in any doubt. To me you were the everything that man can conceive in woman. I wanted to remain in your memory as the man the war had made me. Vanity or pride, I don't know. We all have our failings. I worshipped you as the Princesse Loinlaine. I never told you that I am a man who has learned to keep himself under control. Perhaps under too much control. I shouldn't tell you now, if----" "You don't suppose I'm a fool," she interrupted. "I knew. And the Verity-Stewarts knew. And even my little cousin Evadne knew." They still strolled along the path under the trees. He said after a while: "I'm afraid I have made things very difficult for you." She was pierced with remorse. "Oh, how like you! Any other man would have put it the other way round and accused me of making things difficult for him. And he would have been right. For I did come here to get news of you from Anthony Hylton. He was so discreet that I felt that he could tell me something. And I came and found you and have made things difficult for you." He said in his sober way: "Perhaps it is for the best that we have met and had this talk. We ought to have had it months ago, but--" he turned his face wistfully on her--"we couldn't, because I didn't know. Anyhow, it's all over." "Yes," she sighed. "It's all over. We're up against the stone wall of practical life." "Quite so," said he. "I am Petit Patou, the mountebank; my partner is Madame Patou, whom I have known since I was a boy of twenty, to whom I am bound by indissoluble ties of mutual fidelity, loyalty and gratitude; and you are the Lady Auriol Dayne. We live, as I said before, in different spheres." "That's quite true," she said. "We have had our queer romance. It won't hurt us. It will sweeten our lives. But, as you say, it's over. It has to be over." "There's no way out," said he. "It's doubly locked. Good-bye." He bent and kissed her hand. To the casual French valetudinarians sitting and strolling in the park, it was nothing but a social formality. But to Auriol the touch of his lips meant the final parting of their lives, the consecrated burial of their love. She lingered for a few moments watching his long, straight back disappear round the corner of the path, and then turned and joined me by the park gate. On our way to the hotel the only thing she said was: "I don't seem to have much chance, do I, Tony?" It was after lunch, while we sat, as the day before, at the end of the terrace, that she told me of what had taken place between Lackaday and herself, while I had been hanging about the gate. I must confess to pressing her confidence. Since I was lugged, even as a sort of raisonneur, into their little drama, I may be pardoned for some curiosity as to development. I did not seem, however, to get much further. They had parted for ever, last April, in a not unpoetic atmosphere. They had parted for ever now in circumstances devoid of poetry. The only bit of dramatic progress was the mutual avowal, apparently dragged out of them. It was almost an anticlimax. And then dead stop. I put these points before her. She agreed dismally. Bitterly reproached herself for giving way in Paris to womanish folly; also for deliberately bringing about the morning's explanation. "You were cruel--which is utterly unlike you," I said, judicially. "That horrible green, white and red thing haunted me all night--and that fat woman bursting out of her clothes. I felt shrivelled up. If only I had left things as they were!" She harped always on that note. "I thought I could walk myself out of my morbid frame of mind. Oh yes--you're quite right--morbid--unlike me. I walked miles and miles. I made up my mind to return to Paris by the night train. I should never see him again. The whole thing was dead. Killed. Washed out. I had got back some sense when I ran into the two of you. It seemed so ghastly to go on talking in that cold, dry way. I longed to goad him into some sort of expression of himself--to find the man again. That's why I told him about going to the circus last night." She went on in this strain. Presently she said: "I could shed tears of blood over him. Don't think I'm filled merely with selfish disgust. As I told him--the pity of it--all that he must have suffered--for he has suffered, hasn't he?" "He has gone through Hell," said I. She was silent for a few moments. Then she said: "What's the good of going round and round in a circle? You either understand or you don't." By way of consolation I mendaciously assured her that I understood. I don't think I understand now. I doubt whether she understood herself. Her emotions were literally going round and round in a circle, a hideous merry-go-round with fixed staring features, to be passed and repassed in the eternal gyration. Horror of Petit Patou. Her love for Lackaday. Madame Patou. Hatred of Lacka-day. Scorching self-contempt for seeking him out. Petit Patou and Madame Patou. Lackaday crucified. Infinite pity for Lackaday. General Lackaday. Old dreams. The lost illusion. The tomb of love. Horror of Petit Patou--and so da capo, endlessly round and round. At least, this figure gave me the only clue to her frame of mind. If she went on gyrating in this way indefinitely, she must go mad. No human consciousness could stand it. For sanity she must stop at some point. The only rational halting-place was at the Tomb. If I knew my Auriol, she would drop a flower and a tear on it, and then would start on a bee-line for Central Tartary, or whatever expanse of the world's surface offered a satisfactory field for her energies. She swallowed the stone-cold, half-remaining coffee in her cup and rose and stretched herself, arms and back and bust, like a magnificent animal, the dark green, silken knitted jumper that she wore revealing all her great and careless curves, and drew a long breath and smiled at me. "I've not slept for two nights and I've walked twelve miles this morning. I'll turn in till dinner." She yawned. "Poor old Tony," she laughed. "You can have it at a Christian hour this evening." "The one bright gleam in a hopeless day," said I. She laughed again, blew me a kiss and went her way to necessary repose. I remained on the terrace a while longer, in order to finish a long corona-corona, forbidden by my doctors. But I reflected that as the showman makes up on the swings what he loses on the roundabouts, so I made up on the filthy water what I lost on the cigars. How I provided myself with excellent corona-coronas in Royat, under the Paris price, I presume, of ten francs apiece, wild reporters will never drag out of me. I mused, therefore, over the last smokable half-inch, and at last, discarding it reluctantly, I sought well-earned slumber in my room. But I could not sleep. All this imbroglio kept me awake. Also the infernal band began to play. I had not thought--indeed, I had had no time to think of the note from Bakkus which I had received the first thing in the morning, and of Lackaday's confirmation of the summons to the ailing Elodie. Women, said he, had nerves. The thunder, of course. But, thought I, with elderly sagacity, was it all thunder? As far as I could gather, from Lackaday's confessions he had never given Elodie cause for jealousy from the time they had become Les Petit Patou. Her rout of the suggestive Ernestine proved her belief in his insensibility to woman's attractions during the war. She had never heard of Lady Auriol. Lady Auriol, therefore, must have bounded like a tiger into the placid compound of her life. Reason enough for a crise des nerfs. Even I, who had nothing to do with it, found my equilibrium disturbed. Lady Auriol and I dined together. She declared herself rested and in her right and prosaic mind. "I have no desire to lose your company," said I, "so I hope there's no more talk of an unbooked strapontin on the midnight train." "No need," she replied. "He's leaving Clermont-Ferrand tomorrow. I'll keep to my original programme and enjoy fresh air until a wire summons me back to Paris. That's to say if you can do with me." "If you keep on looking as alluring as you are this evening," said I, "perhaps I mayn't be able to do without you." "I wonder why I've never been able to fall in love with a man of your type, Tony," she remarked in her frank, detached way. "You--by which I mean hundreds of men like you, much younger, of course--you are of my world, you understand the half-said thing, your conduct during the war has been irreproachable, you've got a heart beneath a cynical exterior, you've got brains, you're as clean as a new pin, you're an agreeable companion, you can turn a compliment in a way that even a savage like me can appreciate, and yet----" "And yet," I interrupted, "when you're presented with a whole paper, row on row, of new pins, you're left cold because choice is impossible." I smiled sadly and sipped my wine. "Now I know what I am, one of a row of nice, clean, English-made pins." "It's you that are being rude to yourself, not I," she laughed. "But you are of a type typical, and in your heart you're very proud of it. You wouldn't be different from what you are for anything in the world." "I would give a good deal," said I, "to be different from what I am--but--from the ideal of myself--no." She was quite right. Although I may not have sound convictions, thank Heaven I've sacred prejudices. They have kept me more or less straight in my unimaginative British fashion during a respectable lifetime. So far am I from being a Pharisee, that I exclaim: "Thank God I am as other decent fellows are." We circled pleasantly round the point until she returned to her original proposition--her wonder that she had never been able to fall in love with a man of my type. "It's very simple," said I. "You distrust us. You know that if you suddenly said to one of us, 'Let us go to Greenland and wear bearskins and eat blubber'; or, 'Let us fit up the drawing-room with incubators for East-end babies doomed otherwise to die,' he would vehemently object. And there would be rows and the married life of cat and dog." She said: "Am I really as bad as that, Tony?" "You are," said I. She shook her head. "No," she replied, after a pause. "In the depths of myself I'm as conventional as you are. That's why I said I was puzzled to know why I had never fallen in love with any one of you. I had my deep reasons, my dear Tony, for saying it. I'm bound to my type and my order. God knows I've seen enough and know enough to be free. But I'm not. Last night showed me that I'm not." "And that's final, my dear?" said I. She helped herself to salad with an air of bravura. She helped herself, to my surprise, to a prodigious amount of salad. "As final as death," she replied. <hr /> There had been billed about the place a Grand Concert du Soir in the Casino de Royat. The celebrated tenor, M. Horatio Bakkus. The Casino having been burned down in 1918, the concerts took place under the bandstand in the park. After dinner we found places, among the multitude, on the Casino Cafe Terrace overlooking the bandstand, and listened to Bakkus sing. I explained Bakkus, more or less, to Auriol. Although she could not accept Lackaday as Petit Patou, she seemed to accept Bakkus, without question, as a professional singer. The concert over, he joined us at our little japanned iron table, and acknowledged her well-merited compliments--I tell you, he sang like a minor Canon in an angelic choir--with, well, with the well-bred air of a minor Canon in an angelic choir. With easy grace he dismissed himself and talked knowledgeably and informatively of the antiquities and the beauties of Auvergne. To most English folk it was an undiscovered country. We must steal a car and visit Orcival. Hadn't I heard of it? France's gem of Romanesque churches? And the Château--ages old---with its charmille--the towering maze-like walks of trees kept clipped in scrupulous formality by an old gardener during the war--the charmille designed by no less a genius than Le Nôtre, who planned the wonders of Versailles and the exquisite miniature of the garden of Nîmes? To-morrow must we go. This white-haired, luminous-eyed ascetic--he drank but an orangeade through post-war straws--had kept us spellbound with his talk. I glanced at Auriol and read compliance in her eye. "Will you accompany us ignorant people and act as cicerone?" "With all the pleasure in life," said Bakkus. "What time shall we start?" "Would ten be too early?" "Lady Auriol and I are old campaigners." "I call for you at ten. It is agreed?" We made the compact. I lifted my glass. He sputtered response through the post-war straws resting in the remains of his orangeade. He rose to go, pleading much correspondence before going to bed. We rose too. He accompanied us to the entrance to our hotel. At the lift, he said: "Can you give me a minute?" "As many as you like," said I, for it was still early. We sped Lady Auriol upwards to her repose, and walked out through the hall into the soft August moonlight. "May I tread," said he, "on the most delicate of grounds?" "It all depends," said I, "on how delicately you do it." He made a courteous movement of his hand and smiled. "I'll do my best. I take it that you're very fully admitted into Andrew Lackaday's confidence." "To a great extent," I admitted. "And--forgive me if I am impertinent--you have also that of the lady whom we have just left?" "Really, my dear Bakkus----" I began. "It is indeed a matter of some importance," he interposed quickly. "It concerns Madame Patou--Elodie. Rightly or wrongly, she received a certain impression from your charming luncheon party of yesterday. Andrew, as you are aware, is not the man with whom a woman can easily make a scene. There was no scene. A hint. With that rat-trap air of finality with which I am, for my many failings, much more familiar than yourself, he said: 'We will cancel our engagement and go to Vichy.' This morning, as I wrote, I was called to Clermont-Ferrand. Madame Patou, you understand, has the temperament of the South. Its generosity is apt to step across the boundaries of exaggeration. In my capacity of friend of the family, I had a long interview with her. You have doubtless seen many such on the stage. I must say that Andrew, to whom the whole affair appeared exceedingly distasteful, had announced his intention of obeying the rules of common good manners and leaving his farewell card on Lady Auriol. Towards the end of our talk it entered the head of Madame Patou that she would do the same. I pointed out the anomaly of the interval between the two visits. But the head of a Marseillaise is an obstinate one. She dressed, put on her best hat--there is much that is symbolical in a woman's best hat, as doubtless a man of the world like yourself has observed--and took the tram with me to Royat. We alighted at the further entrance to the park, and came plump upon a leave-taking between Lackaday and Lady Auriol. You know there is a turn--some masking shrubs--we couldn't help seeing through them. She was for rushing forward. I restrained her. A second afterwards, Andrew ran into us. For me, at any rate, it was a most unhappy situation. If he had fallen into a rage, like ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and accused us of spying, I should have known how to reply. But that's where you can never get hold of Andrew Lackaday. He scorns such things. He said in his ramrod fashion: 'It's good of you to come to meet me, Elodie. I was kept longer than I anticipated.' He stopped the Clermont-Ferrand tram, nodded to me, and, with his hand under Elodie's elbow, helped her in." "May I ask why you tell me all this?" I asked. "Certainly," said he, and his dark eyes glittered in the moonlight. "I give the information for what it may be worth to you as a friend, perhaps as adviser, of both parties." "You are assuming, Mr. Bakkus," I answered rather stiffly, "that Madame Patou's unfortunate impressions are in some way justified." It was a most unpleasant conversation. I very much resented discussing Lady Auriol with Horatio Bakkus. "Not at all," said he. "But Fate has thrown you and me into analogous positions--we are both elderly men--me as between Lackaday and Madame Patou, you as between Lady Auriol and Lackaday." "But, damn it all, man," I cried angrily, "what have I just been saying? How dare you assume there's anything between them save the ordinary friendship of a distinguished soldier and an English lady?" "If you can only assure me that there is nothing but that ordinary friendship, you will take a weight off my mind and relieve me of a great responsibility." "I can absolutely assure you," I cried hotly, "that by no remote possibility can there be anything else between Lady Auriol Dayne and Petit Patou." He thrust out both his hands and fervently grasped the one I instinctively put forward. "Thank you, thank you, my dear Hylton. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Au revoir. I think we said ten o'clock." He marched away briskly. With his white hair gleaming between his little black felt hat cocked at an angle and the collar of his flapping old-fashioned opera-cloak, he looked like some weird bird of the night. I entered the hotel feeling the hot and cold of the man who has said a damnable thing. Through the action of what kinky cell of the brain I had called the dear gallant fellow "Petit Patou," instead of "Lackaday," I was unable to conjecture. I hated myself. I could have kicked myself. I wallowed in the unreason of a man vainly seeking to justify himself. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to see Horatio Bakkus again. I went to bed loathing the idea of our appointment. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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