The Mountebank Part 26

"A woman of course."

"Did he tell you?" I asked, startled, for that shed a new light on the matter.

"No." She boomed the word at me. "What on earth do you suppose was the meaning of our talk about playing the game?"

"Well, my dear," said I, "if it comes to that, do you think it was playing the game for him, a married man with possibly a string of children, to come down here and make love to you?"

She flared up. "He never made love to me. You've no right to say such a thing. If there was any love-making, it was I that made it. Ninety per cent of the love-making in the world is the work of women. And you know it, although you pretend to be shocked. And I'm not ashamed of myself in the least. As soon as I set my eyes on him I said 'That's the man I want,' and I soon saw that I could give him what he never had before--and I kept him to me, so that I could give it him. And I gloried in it. I don't care whether he has ten wives or twenty children. I'm telling you because"--she started up and looked me full in the face--"upon my word I don't know why--except that you're a comfortable sort of creature, and if you know everything you'll be able to deal with the pet lambs." She rose, held out her hand. "You must be bored stiff."

"On the contrary," said I, "I'm vastly interested--and honoured, my dear Auriol. But tell me. As all this sad, mad, glad affair seems to have come to a sudden stop, what do you propose to do?"

"I don't know," she replied with a half laugh. "What I feel like doing is to set out for h.e.l.l by the most adventurous route."

She laughed again, shook hands. "Good night, Tony." And she pa.s.sed out through the door I held open for her.

I finished my cigar before the fire. It was the most unsatisfactory romance I had come across in a not inexperienced career. Was it the green silk tights or the possible woman in the background that restrained the gallant General? Suppose it was only the former? Would my Lady Auriol jib at them? She was a young woman with a majestic scorn for externals. In her unexpectedness she might cry "Motley's the only wear" and raise him ever higher in his mountebankic path.... I was sorry for both of them. They were two such out-of-the-way human beings--so vivid, so real. They seemed to have a preordained right to each other. He, dry, stern, simple stick of a man needed the flame-like quality that ran through her physical magnificence. She, piercing beneath the glamour of his soldierly achievements, found in him the primitive virility she could fear combined with the spiritual helplessness to which she could come in her full womanly and maternal aid. To her he was as a rock, but a living rock, vitalized by a myriad veins of sensitiveness. To him--well, I knew my Auriol--and could quite understand what Auriol in love could be to any man. Auriol out of love (and in her right mind) had always been good enough for me.

So I mused for a considerable time. Then, becoming conscious of the flatness, staleness and unprofitableness of it all, as far as my elderly selfishness was concerned, I threw my extinct cigar end into the fire, and thanking G.o.d that I had come to an age when all this storm and fuss over a creature of the opposite s.e.x was a thing of the past, and yet with an unregenerate pang of regret for manifold what-might-have-beens, I put out the lights and went to bed.

The next day I succeeded by hook or by crook in guiding the pet lambs, Evadne included, in the way they should go. I reported progress to Lady Auriol.

"Good dog," she said.

I returned to London on Monday morning. When next I heard of her, she was, I am thankful to say, not on the adventurous path to the brimstone objective of her predilection, but was fooling about, all by herself, in a five-ton yacht, somewhere around the Outer Hebrides, in the foulest of weather.

In the days of my youth I was the victim of a hopeless pa.s.sion and meditated suicide. A seafaring friend of mine suggested my accompanying him on his cargo steamer from the Port of London to Bordeaux. It was blazing summer. But I was appallingly sea-sick all the way, and when I set foot on land I was cleansed of all human emotion save that of utter thankfulness that I existed as an ent.i.ty with an un-queasy stomach. I was cured for good and all.

But a five-ton yacht off the Outer Hebrides in bleak tempests--No, it was too heroic. Even my dear old friend Burton for all his wit and imagination had never devised such a _remedia amoris_, such a remedy for Love Melancholy.

And then came June and with it the ma.n.u.script and all the flood of information about the Agence Moignon and Bakkus and Pet.i.t Patou and Prepimpin and Elodie and various other things that I have yet to set down.

Chapter XIV

While Lady Auriol Dayne was rocking about the Outer Hebrides, we find Andrew Lackaday in Paris confronted with the grim necessity of earning a livelihood. His pre-war savings had amounted to no fortune, and in spite of Elodie's economy and occasional earnings with her birds, they were well-nigh spent. The dearness of everything! Elodie wrung her hands. Where once you had change out of a franc, now you had none out of a five-franc note. He could still carry on comfortably for a year, but that would be the end of it.

When he propounded the financial situation, Elodie did not understand.

"I must work," said he.

"But Generals don't work," she protested incredulously.

Even the war had developed little of the Ma.r.s.eilles _gamine's_ conceptions of life. A General--she knew no grades--a modest Brigadier ranking second only to a Field Marshal--was a General. He commanded an army. A military demiG.o.d invested with a glamour and glory which, _ipso facto_, of its own essence, provided him with ample wealth. And once a General, always a General. The mere fact of no longer being employed in the command of armies did not matter. The rank remained and with the rank the golden stream to maintain it. According to popular legend the Oriental ascetic who concentrates his gaze on the centre of his body and his thoughts on the syllable "Om" arrives at a peculiar mental condition. So the magic word on which she had so long meditated, had its hypnotic effect on Elodie.

And when he had patiently explained--

"They give you nothing at all for being a General?" she almost screamed.

"Nothing at all," said Andrew.

"Then what's the good of being a General?"

"None that I can see," he replied with his grim smile.

Elodie's illusions fell clattering round about her ears. Not her illusions as to Generals, but her illusions as to Andrew and British military prestige. It was a strange army that no longer acknowledged its high commanders--a strange country that could sc.r.a.p them. Were British Generals real, like French Generals, Lyautey and Manoury and Foch before he became _Marechal?_ She was bitterly disappointed. She had lived for nearly a year in Andrew's glory. Now there seemed to be no s.h.i.+ne in it whatever. He wore no uniform. He received no pay. He was a mere civilian. He had to work for his living like any demobilized poilu who returned to his counter or his conductor's step on the tramway. And she had made such a flourish among all her acquaintance over _son mari le general_. She went off by herself and wept.

The cook whom she had engaged, coming to lay the cloth in the tiny dining-room found her sobbing with her arms on the table. What was the matter with Madame?

"_Ah, ma pauvre Ernestine, je suis bien malheureuse_."

Ernestine could think of only one cause for a lady's unhappiness. Had Monsieur le General then been making her infidelities? All allowances should be made for the war. On every side she had heard tales of the effects of such long separations. But, on the other hand, she had heard of many reconciliations. Apply a little goodwill--that was all. Monsieur le General was a man, _comme tout le monde_. She was certain that the object of his warrior fancy was not worth Madame--and he would quickly realize the fact. She only had to make much of him and give him everything he liked to eat. As soon as the stream of words ceased Elodie vehemently denounced the disgusting state of her mind. She must have a foul character to think such things. She bade her haughtily to mind her own business. Why then, asked the outraged Ernestine, did Madame declare she was miserable?

To invite sympathy and then reject it did not argue a fine character on the part of Madame. Also when a woman sits down and weeps like a cow, _mon Dieu_, there must be a reason. Perhaps if Monsieur was not at fault, then--

"I order you to be silent," stormed Elodie, interrupting the intolerable suggestion. "My reasons you couldn't possibly understand. Get on with your work and set the table."

She made a dignified exit and returned to the _salon_ where Andrew was writing.

"Ah, these servants--since the war! The insolence of them!"

"What have they been doing now?" he asked sympathetically.

She would not say. Why worry him with such vulgarities? But the housekeeper's life, these days, was not an easy one. "_Tiens_," she cried, with a swift resolve, "I'll tell you all. What you said about yourself, a general only in name, rejected and cast on the world without money made me very unhappy. I didn't want you to see me cry. So I went into the _salle a manger_--"

And then a dramatic reproduction of the scene. The insolence of the woman!

Andrew rose and drew out his pocket-book.

"She shall go at once. What's her wages?"

But Elodie looked at him aghast. What? Dismiss Ernestine? He must be mad.

Ernestine, a treasure dropped from Heaven? Didn't he know that servants did not grow like the leaves on the trees in the Champs Elysees? And cooks--they were worth their weight in gold. In the army he could say to an orderly "_Fiche-moi le camp_," because there were plenty of others. But in civil life--no. She forbade him to interfere in domestic arrangements, the nice conduct of which she had proved herself perfectly capable of determining. And then, in her queer, twisted logic, she said, clutching the lapels of his coat and looking up into his face:

"And it's not true what she said? You have never made me infidelities?"

He pa.s.sed his delicate hand over her forehead, and smiled somewhat wearily.

"You may be sure, my dear, I have been faithful to you."

She glanced away from him, somewhat abashed. Now and then his big simplicity frightened her. She became dimly aware that the report of the cook's chatter had offended the never comprehended delicacies of his soul.

She murmured:

"_Je te demande bien pardon, Andre_."

"There's no reason for that, my dear," said he.

She went over to her birds. Andrew resumed his writing. But after a minute or two his pen hung idle in his hand. Yes. He had spoken truly. He had been faithful to her in that he had fled from divine temptation. For her sake he had put the other woman and the glory that she signified out of his life.