The Mountebank Part 34

"I desire earnestly," said he, "to do what is right."

"Are you sure that it doesn't come from the respectability of an English General?"

"I don't know how it comes," he replied, hiding the sting of the shrewd thrust with a laugh, "but it's there, all the same."

"Well, I'll think of it," said Elodie, "but give me time. _Ne m'embete pas._"

He promised not to worry her. "But tell me," he said, after a few moments'

perplexity, "why were you so agitated all yesterday after you had seen that photograph?"

Elodie let her hand fall on her lap and regarded him with pitying astonishment. "_Mon Dieu!_ What do you expect a woman to be when she learns that her husband, whom she thinks alive, has been killed two years ago?"

Andrew gave it up.

On the morning of the sailing of the Osway from Ma.r.s.eilles, he called on Arbuthnot at the Hotel de Noailles, and told him of his decision.

"I'm sorry," said Arbuthnot, "as sorry as I can be. But in case you care to change your mind, here's my card."

"And here's mine," said Andrew, and he handed him his card thus inscribed

MONSIEUR PATOU (_Combinaison des Pet.i.t Patou_) 3 rue Falda Faubourg Saint-Denis Paris

Arbuthnot looked from the card to Andrew and from Andrew to the card, in some perplexity.

"Why," said he, "I've seen your bills about the town. You're playing here!

Why the deuce didn't you let me know?"

"I gave a better performance at Bourdon Wood," said Andrew.

Now hereabouts, I ought to say, the famous ma.n.u.script ends. Indeed, this late Ma.r.s.eilles part of it was very hurried and sketchy. The main object which he had in view--or rather which, in the first inception of the idea, I had suggested he should have in view--namely, "to interest, perhaps encourage, at any rate to stimulate the thoughts of many of my old comrades who have been placed in the same predicament as myself" (as he says in the letter which accompanied the ma.n.u.script) he had abandoned as hopeless. He had merely jotted things down helter-skelter, diary fas.h.i.+on. I have had to supplement these notes from his letters and from the confidential talks which we had, not very long after he had left Ma.r.s.eilles.

From these letters and these talks also, it appears that the tour booked by Moignon did not prove the disastrous failure prognosticated by the first two nights at Ma.r.s.eilles. Nowhere did he meet a prewar enthusiasm; but, on the other hand, nowhere did he encounter the hostility of the Ma.r.s.eilles audience. At Lyons, owing to certain broad effects, which he knew of old to be acceptable to that unique, hard-headed, full-bellied, tradition-bound bourgeoisie, he had an encouraging success. He felt the old power return to him--the power of playing on the audience as on a musical instrument.

But at Saint-Etienne--a town of operatives--the performance went disappointingly flat. Before a dull or discontented audience he stood helpless. No, the old magnetic power had gone.

However, he had recovered the faculty of making his livelihood somehow or other as Pet.i.t Patou, which, he began desperately to feel, was all that mattered. His soul revolted, but his will prevailed. Elodie accompanied him in serene content, more flaccid and slatternly than ever in her hotel room, keenly efficient on the stage.

Now it happened that, a while later, during a visit to some friends in Shrops.h.i.+re who have nothing to do with this story, I broke down in health.

I have told you before, that liaison work during the war had put out of action the elderly crock that is Anthony Hylton. Doctors drew undertakers'

faces between the tubes of their stethoscopes as they jabbed about my heart, and raised their eyebrows over my blood pressure.

Just at this time I had a letter from Lackaday. Incidentally he mentioned that he was appearing in August at Clermont-Ferrand and that Horatio Bakkus (who, in his new prosperity, could afford to choose times and seasons) had arranged to accept a synchronous engagement at the Casino of Royat.

So while my medical advisers were wringing their hands over the practical inaccessibility and the lack of amenity of Nauheim, whither they had despatched me unwilling in dreary summers before the war, and while they were suggesting even more depressing health resorts in the British Isles, it occurred to me to ask them whether Royat-les-Bains did not contain broken-down heart repairing works of the first order. They brightened up.

"The place of all places,' said they.

"Write me a chit to a doctor there," said I, "and I'm off at once."

I did not care much about my heart. It has always been playing me tricks from the day I fell in love with my elder sister's French governess. But I did care about seeing my friend Lackaday in his reincarnation as Pet.i.t Patou, and I was most curious to make the acquaintance of Elodie and Horatio Bakkus.

Soon afterwards, therefore, behold me on my way to Clermont-Ferrand, of which manufacturing town Royat is a suburb.

Chapter XVIII

Without desiring to interfere with the sale of guide-books, I may say that Clermont-Ferrand is a great big town, the princ.i.p.al city of Auvergne, and devotes itself to turning out all sorts of things from its factories such as Michelin and Berguignan tyres, and all sorts of young lawyers, doctors and schoolmasters from its university. It proudly claims Blaise Pascal as its distinguished son. It has gardens and broad walks and terraces along the old ramparts, whence one can see the round-backed pride (with its little pip on the top) of the encircling mountain range, the Puy de Dome; and it also has a wilderness of smelly, narrow little streets with fine old seventeenth-century mansions hidden in mouldering court-yards behind dilapidated portes cocheres; it has a beautiful romanesque Church in a hollow, and, on an eminence, an uninteresting restored cathedral whose twin spires dominate the town for miles around. By way of a main entrance, it has a great open square, the Place de Jaude, the clanging ganglion of its tramway system, about which are situated the munic.i.p.al theatre and the chief cafes, and from which radiate the main arteries of the city. On the entrance side rises a vast ma.s.s of sculpture surmounted by a statue of Vercingetorix, the hero of those parts, the gentleman over whose name we have all broken our teeth when learning to construe Caesar "_De Bello Gallico_." Pa.s.sing him by for the first time, I should have liked to shake hands with him for old times' sake, to show my lack of ill feeling.

Now that you all know about Clermont-Ferrand, as the ancient writers say, I will tell you about Royat. You take a tram from Vercingetorix and after a straight mile you are landed at the foot of a cup of the aforesaid encircling mountains, and, looking around, when the tram refuses to go any further owing to lack of rails, you perceive that you are in Royat-les-Bains. It consists, on the ground floor, as it were, of a white Etabliss.e.m.e.nt des Bains surrounded by a little park, which is fringed on the further side by an open-air concert platform and a theatre, of a few rows of shops, and a couple of cafes. You could play catch with a cricket ball across it. The hotels are perched around on the slopes of the hills, so that you may enter stately portals among the shops, but shall be whirled upwards in a lift to the main floor, whence you look down on the green and tidy miniature place.

From my room in the Royat Palace Hotel I had a view across the Park, beyond which I could see the black crowds pouring out of the Clermont-Ferrand trams. The reason for this frenzied going and coming of human beings between Clermont-Ferrand and Royat, I could never understand. I believe tram-riding is a hideous vice. Just connect up by tramlines a place no one ever wants to go to with another no one ever wants to go from, and in a week you will have the inhabitants of those respective Sleepy Hollows running to and fro with the strenuous aimlessness of ants. Progressive politicians will talk to you of the wonders of transport. Well, transport or madness, what does it matter? I mean what does it matter to the course of this narrative?

I had a pleasant room, I say, with a good view blocked above the tram terminus by a vine-clad mountain. I called on a learned gentleman who knew all about hearts and blood pressures, he prescribed baths and unpleasant waters, and my cure began. All this by way of preamble to the statement that I had comfortably settled down in Royat a week before Les Pet.i.t Patou were billed to appear in Clermont-Ferrand. Having nothing in the world to do save attend to my internal organs, I spent much time in the old town, which I had not visited for many years, match-hunting (with indifferent success) being at first my main practical pursuit. Then a natural curiosity leading me to enquire the whereabouts of the chief music-halls and vacant ignorance manifesting itself on the faces of the policemen and waiters whom I interrogated, I abandoned matches for the chase of music-halls.

Eventually I became aware that I was pursuing a phantom. There were no music-halls. All had been perverted into picture palaces. I read Lackaday's letter again. There it was as clear as print.

"So we proceed on our pilgrimage; we are booked for Clermont-Ferrand for the third week in August. I hate it--because I hate it. But I'm looking forward to it because my now prosperous friend Bakkus has arranged to sing during my stay there, at the Casino of Royat."

And sure enough the next day, they stuck up bills by the park gates announcing the coming of the celebrated tenor, Monsieur Horatio Bakkus.

It was only later that the great flaming poster of a circus--The Cirque Vendramin--which had pitched its tent for a fortnight past at Clermont-Ferrand, caught my eye. There it was, amid announcements of all sorts of clowns and trapezists and j.a.panese acrobats:

"Special engagement of the world famed eccentrics, Les Pet.i.t Patou."

If I uttered profane words, I am sure the Recording Angel followed an immortal precedent.

In order to spy out the land, I went then and there to the afternoon performance. The circus was pitched in a disgruntled field somewhere near the dismally remote railway station. The tent was crowded with the good inhabitants of Clermont-Ferrand who, since they could not buy sugar or matches or coal for cooking, must spend their money somewhere. I scarcely had entered a circus since the good old days of the Cirque Rocambeau.

And what a difference! They had a few uninspiring horses and riders for convention sake. But the _haute ecole_ had vanished. Not even a rouged and painted ghost of Mademoiselle Renee Saint-Maur remained. It was a ragged, old-fas.h.i.+oned acrobatic entertainment, with the mildewed humour of antiquated clowns. But they had a star turn--a juggler of the school of Cinquevallis--an amazing fellow. And then I remembered having seen the name on the last week's bill, printed in the great eighteen inch letters which were now devoted to Les Pet.i.t Patou.

Next week Lackaday would be the star turn. But still...

I went back to Royat feeling miserable. I was not elated by finding a letter from Lady Auriol which had been forwarded from my St. James's Street chambers. She was in Paris organising something in connection with the devastated districts. She reproached me for not having answered a letter written a month ago, written at her ancestral home where she had been summoned to her father's gouty chair side. I might, she said, have had the politeness to send a line of condolence.... Well, I might: but whether to her or to Lord Mounts.h.i.+re, whose gout was famous in the early nineties, I did not know. Yes, I ought to have answered her letter. But then, you see, I am a villainous correspondent: I was running about, and doctors were worrying me: and I could not have answered without lying about Andrew Lackaday who, leaving her without news of himself, had apparently vanished from her ken. She had asked me all sorts of pointed questions about Lackaday which I, having by that time read his ma.n.u.script, found very embarra.s.sing to answer. Of course I intended to write. One always does, in such cases. There was nothing for it now but to make immediate and honourable amends.

I explained my lack of courtesy, as best I could, bewailed her father's gout and her dreary ministrations on that afflicted n.o.bleman, regretted incidentally her lack of news of the gallant General and spread myself over my own sufferings and my boredom in a little hole of a place, where no one was to be seen under the age of seventy-three--drew, I flattered myself, rather a smart picture of the useless and gasping ancients flocking pathetically to the futile _Fons Juventutis_ (and what business had they to be alive anyhow during this world food shortage?) and then, commending her devotion to the distressed and homeless, expressed the warm hope that I should meet her in Paris on my way back to England.

It was the letter of a friend and a man of the world. It put me into a better humour with myself. I dined well on the broad terrace of the hotel, smoked a cigar in defiance of doctor's orders, and after an instructive gastronomical discussion with a comfortable old Bordeaux merchant with whom I had picked acquaintance, went to bed in a selfishly contented frame of mind.

Two or three mornings later, going by tram into Clermont-Ferrand and pa.s.sing by the great cafe on the east side of the Place de Jaude opposite the statue of Vercingetorix, I ran literally, stumbling over long legs outstretched from his chair to the public danger, into Andrew Lackaday. It was only at the instant of disentanglement and mutual apologies that we were aware of each other. He sprang to his great height and held out-both his long arms, and grinned happily.

"My dear fellow, what a delight. Fancy seeing you here! Elodie----"

If he had given me time, I should have recognized her before he spoke.

There she was in the flesh--in a great deal of flesh--more even than I had pictured. She had a coa.r.s.e, dark face, with the good humour written on it that loose features and kind soft eyes are able so often to express--and white teeth rather too much emphasized by carmined lips above which grew the faint black down of many women of the South. She was dressed quite tastefully: white felt hat, white skirt, and a silken knitted yellow _chandail_.

"Elodie--I present Monsieur le Capitaine Hylton, of whom you have heard me speak so much." To me--"Madame Patou," said he.

"Madame," said I. We shook hands. I professed enchantment.