The Mountebank Part 32

They worked out the taking of Bourdon Wood. A medallion de veau perigourdine, a superimposition of toast, foie gras, veal and truffles, interrupted operations. They concluded them, more languidly, before the cheese. The mild mellow Asti softened their hearts, so that at the end of the exquisite meal, in the mingled aroma of coffee, a cigarette, and the haunting saltness of the sea, they spoke (with Andrew's eternal reserve) like brothers.

"My dear fellow," said Arbuthnot, "the more I talk to you the more impossible does it seem that you should settle down to your pre-war job.

Why don't you chuck it and come out with me on a business footing?"

"I have no capital," said Andrew.

"You don't need much--a few thousands."

He might have said a few millions for all Andrew's power to command such a sum. The other continued his fairy-tale of the islands. They were going to boom one of these near days. Fortune lay to the hand of the man who came in first. Labour was cheap, the world was shrieking for copra, the transport difficulty would soon adjust itself---and then a dazzling reward. It was quite possible, he suggested with some delicacy, to find financial aid, and in the meantime to do management work on a salary, so as to keep himself going. The qualities which made him a General were just those which out there would command success. And, Australian born, as he was, he could claim a welcome among his own people.

"I can guarantee you a living, anyhow," said the enthusiast. "Think it over, and let me know before the Osway sails."

It was a great temptation. If he were a free man, he would have cast off the garb of Pet.i.t Patou for ever and gone to seek fortune in a new world where he could unashamedly use his own name and military rank among men who did men's work and thought all the better of a man for doing the same. And also he became conscious of a longing to leave France for a season. France was pa.s.sing through a post-war stage of disgruntlement and suspicion, drawing tight around her feet her tri-coloured skirts so that they should not be touched by the pa.s.sing foreigner. France was bleeding from her wounds--weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. The Englishman in Andrew stood hurt and helpless before this morbid, convulsive nationalism. Like a woman in certain emotional states she were better left alone for awhile, till she recovered and smiled her benevolent graciousness again.

Yet if he remained Pet.i.t Patou he must stay in France, the land of his professional adoption. From appearing on the English stage he shrank, with morbid sensitiveness. There was America, where he was unknown.... Already Moignon was in touch, on his behalf, with powerful American agencies. Just before he left Paris Moignon had said: "They are nibbling for the winter."

But it was all vague. France alone appeared solid--in spite of the disasters of these first two nights.

"I wish to G.o.d," he cried suddenly, after a long silence, "I wish to G.o.d I could cut everything and come with you."

"What prevents you?" asked Arbuthnot.

"I have ties," said he.

Arbuthnot met the grim look on his face which forbade further questioning.

"Ah!" said he. "Still," he added with a laugh, "I'm at the Hotel de Noailles till Friday. That is to say----"

He explained that he was going the next day to Monte Carlo, which he had never seen, to spend a night or two, but would return in good time for the sailing of the Osway and the hearing of General Lackaday's final decision.

On their drive back to Ma.r.s.eilles, Arbuthnot, during a pause in their talk, said:

"What I can't understand is this. If you're on the music-hall stage, what the deuce are you doing in Ma.r.s.eilles?"

"I'm here on business with my partner," Andrew replied curtly. "If it weren't for that--a business engagement--I would ask you to spend the evening with me," he added. "What are you going to do?"

"I went to the theatre last night. What else is there?"

"They have an excellent Revue at the El Dorado. Go there."

"I will," said Arbuthnot.

Andrew breathed freely, relieved from the dread lest this genial and unsuspecting brother in arms should wander into Olympia and behold--what?

What kind of a performance? What kind of a reception? All apart from beholding him in his green silk tights and painted face.

They parted at the Hotel de Noailles. The Australian shook him warmly by the hand.

"This has been one of the great days of my life," said he, with his frank smile. "The day when I return and you tell me you're coming with me, will be a greater."

Andrew walked away in a glow. Here was a man of proved worth, proved in the furnace in which they had met, straight as his eyes, sincere to his soul, who had claimed him as a leader of the Great Brotherhood, who, with a generosity acceptable under the unwritten law of that 'Brotherhood's Freemasonry, had opened his way to freedom and a man's hie. Whether he could follow the way or not was another matter. The fact of the generous opening remained; a heartening thing for all time.

You may perhaps remember that, in the introductory letter which accompanied the ma.n.u.script and is quoted at the beginning of this record of the doings of Andrew Lackaday, he remarks:

"At the present moment I am between the devil and the deep sea. I am hoping that the latter will be the solution of my difficulties."

This was written in his hotel room, as soon as he returned. Elodie, unnerved by an over-driven dentist's torture, lay resting in her bedroom with closed windows and drawn shutters. He was between the Devil of Pet.i.t Patou-ism and the Deep Sea beyond which lay the Fortunate Isles where men were men and coco-nuts were gold and where the sweat could roll down your leather skin undefiled with greasepaint.

When he had finished writing, he dined with a curiously preoccupied though pain-relieved Elodie. He attributed her unusual mood either to anxiety as to their reception at Olympia, after the previous night's performance, or to realization of the significance of her indiscretion. She ate little, drank less, and scarcely spoke at all.

They reached the music-hall. Andrew changed into his tights. The little dresser retailed the gossip of the place. Elodie had undoubtedly caused a sensation. The dresser loudly acclaimed Madame's action as a _beau geste_.

"In these days of advertis.e.m.e.nt one can't afford to be so modest, _mon general_," said he. "And I, for example, who committed the stupidity of asking whether you had served in the war! To-night we are going to see something quite different."

Andrew laughed. Haunted by the great seas and the Solomon Islands and the palm trees, he found himself scarcely interested in his reception. The audience could talk and cough and hiss as much as they liked. He had practically told them to go to the devil last night. He was quite ready, if need be, to do it again. He was buoyed up by a sublime indifference.

The singer was ending her encore from "La Traviata" when he went down the iron stairs. Elodie met him punctually, for they had agreed to avoid the dreary wait. As soon as the stage was set and the curtain up, he went on and was greeted by a round of applause. Somehow the word had been pa.s.sed round the populace that formed the Olympia clientele. Thenceforward the performance went without a hitch, to the attentive gratification of the audience. There was no uproarious demonstration; but they laughed in the right places and acclaimed satisfactorily his finale on the giant violin.

They gave him a call, to which he responded, leading Elodie by the hand.

For himself, he hardly knew whether to feel relief or contempt, but Elodie, blindly stumbling through the cages of the performing dogs in the wings, almost broke down.

"Now all goes well. Confess I was right."

He turned at the bottom of the stairs.

"Yes. I confess. You did what was right to make it go well."

She scanned his face to read his meaning. Of late he had grown so remote and difficult to understand. He put his arm round her kindly and smiled--and near by his smile, painted to the upper tip of each ear, was grotesquely horrible.

"Why yes, little goose. Now everything will go on wheels."

"That is true?" she asked anxiously.

"I swear it," said he.

When they reached the hotel, she swiftly discarded the walking clothes and slipped on her wrapper in which only was she the real Elodie, and went to his room and sat on the little narrow bed.

"_Mon ami_," said she, "I have something to tell you. I would not speak this afternoon because it was necessary that nothing should disturb your performance."

Andrew lit a pipe and sat down in the straight-backed arm-chair.

"What's the matter?"

"I had to wait an hour at the dentist's. Why those people say one o'clock when they mean two, except to make you think they are so busy that they do you a favour to look inside your mouth, and can charge you whatever they like--thirty francs, the monster charged me--you ought to go and tell him it was a robbery--"

"My dear," he interrupted, thus cutting out the predicate of her rhetorical sentence, "you surely couldn't have thought a dentist's fee of thirty francs would have put me off my work?"

She threw up her arms. "Mon Dieu! Men are stupid! No. Listen. I had to wait an hour. I had to distract myself--well--you know the supplement to _L'Ill.u.s.tration_ that has appeared every week during the war--the pages of photographs of the heroes of France. I found them all collected in a portfolio on the table. Ah! Some living, but mostly dead. It was heart-breaking. And do you know what I found? I found this. I stole it."

She drew from her pocket peignoir a crumpled page covered with vignette photographs of soldiers, a legend underneath each one, and handed it to Andrew, her thumb indicating a particular portrait.