The Mountebank Part 37

"Ah!" said Lady Auriol. "I never thought of it." She translated her remark.

"I'm afraid my French is that of the British Army, where I learned most of it. But if people are kind and patient I can make myself understood."

"Mademoiselle speaks French very well," replied Elodie politely.

"You are very good to say so, Madame."

I caught questioning, challenging glances flas.h.i.+ng across the table, each woman hostilely striving to place the other. You see, we originally sat: Elodie on my right hand, then Bakkus facing straight down the terrace, then Lackaday, then myself. It occurred to me at once that, with her knowledge of my convention-trained habits, she would argue that, at a luncheon party, either I would not have placed the lady next the man to whom she belonged, or that she was a perfectly independent guest, belonging, so to speak, to n.o.body. But on the latter hypothesis, what was she doing in this galley? I swear I saw the wrinkle on Lady Auriol's brow betokening the dilemma. She had known me from childhood's days of lapsed memory. I had always been.

Romantically she knew Lackaday. Horatio Bakkus, with his sacerdotal air and well-bred speech and manner, evidently belonged to our own social cla.s.s.

But Madame Patou, who mopped up the sauce on her plate with a bit of bread, and made broad use of a toothpick, and leaned back and fanned herself with her napkin and breathed a "_Mon Dieu, qu'ilfait chaud_" and contributed nothing intelligent to the conversation, she could not accept as the detached lady invited by me to charm my two male guests. She was then driven to the former hypothesis. Madame Patou belonged in some way to the man by whose side she was not seated.

Of course, there was another alternative. I might have been responsible for the poor lady. But she was as artless as a poor lady could be. Addressing my two friends it was always Andre and Horace, and instinctively she used the familiar "_tu_." Addressing me she had affrightedly forgotten the pact of Christian names, and it was "Monsieur le Capitaine" and, of course, the "_vous_" which she had never dreamed of changing. Even so poor a French scholar as Lady Auriol could not be misled into such absurd paths of conjecture.

She belonged therefore, in some sort of fas.h.i.+on, to General Lackaday. An elderly man of the world, with his nerves on edge, has no need of wizardry to divine the psychology of such a situation.

Mistress of social forms, Lady Auriol, after sweeping Elodie into her net, caught Horatio Bakkus and through reference to her own hospital experiences during the war, wrung from him the avowal of his concerts for the wounded in Paris.

"How splendid of you! By the way, how do you spell your name? It's an uncommon one."

"With two k's."

"I wonder if you have anything to do with an old friend of my fattier, Archdeacon Bakkus?"

"My eldest brother."

"No, really? One of my earliest recollections is his buying a prize boar from my father."

"Just like the dear fellow's prodigality," said Bakkus. "He had a whole Archdeaconry to his hand for nothing. I've lately spent a couple of months with him in Westmorland, so I know."

"How small the world is," said Lady Auriol to Lackaday.

"Too small," said he.

"Oh," said Auriol blankly.

"Have you seen our good friends, the Verity-Stewarts lately?"

She had. They were in perfect health. They were wondering what had become of him.

"And indeed, General," she flashed, "what _has_ become of you?"

"It is not good," said Elodie, in quick antic.i.p.ation, "that the General should neglect his English friends."

There sounded the note of proprietors.h.i.+p, audible to anybody. Auriol's eyes dwelt for a second on Elodie; then she turned to Lackaday.

"Madame Patou is quite right."

Said he, with one of his rare flights into imagery, "I was but a shooting star across the English firmament."

"Encore une etoile qui file, File, file et disparait!"

"Oh no, my dear friend," laughed Bakkus. "He can't persuade us, Lady Auriol, that he is afflicted with the morbidezza of 1830."

"_Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela?_" asked Elodie, sharply.

"It was a fas.h.i.+on long ago, my dear, for poets to a.s.sume the gaiety of a funeral. Even Beranger who wrote _Le Roi d'Yvetot_--you know it--"

"Naturally, '_Il etait un roi d'Yvetot!_'"--cried Elodie, who had learned it at school.

"Well--of course. Even Beranger could not escape the malady of his generation. Do you remember"--his swift glance embraced us all--"Longfellow's criticism of European poets of that epoch, in his prose masterpiece, _Hyperion?_ He refers to Salis and Matthisson, but Lamartine and people of his kidney come in--'Melancholy gentlemen' pardon, my dear Elodie, if I quote it in English--'Melancholy gentlemen to whom life was only a dismal swamp, upon whose margin they walked with cambric handkerchiefs in their hands, sobbing and sighing and making signals to Death to come and ferry them over the lake.' _Cela veut dire_," he made a marvellous French paraphrase for Elodie's benefit.

"_Comprends pas_," she shrugged at the boredom of literary allusion.

"I don't see what all that has to do with Andre. I shall see, Mademoiselle, that he writes to his friends."

"You will be doing them a great service, Madame," replied Auriol.

There was a stiff silence. If Bakkus had stuck to his intention of driving the conversation away from embarra.s.sing personal questions, instead of being polite to Elodie, we should have been spared this freezing moment of self-consciousness. I asked Auriol whether she had had a pleasant journey, and we discussed the discomfort of trains. From then to the end of the meal the conversation halted. It was a relief to rise and fall into groups as we strolled down the terrace to coffee. I manoeuvred Elodie and Bakkus to the front leaving Auriol and Lackaday to follow. I sought a table at the far end, for coffee; but when I turned round, I discovered that the pair had descended by the mid-way flight of three or four steps to the gra.s.s-plotted and fountained terrace below.

We sat down. Elodie asked:

"Who is that lady?"

I explained as best I could. "She is the daughter of an English n.o.bleman, whence her t.i.tle. The way to address her is 'Lady Auriol.' She did lots of work during the war, work of hospital organization in France, and now she is still working for France. I have known her since she was three years old; so she is a very great friend of mine."

Her eyes wandered to the bit of red thatched head and the gleam of the crown of a white hat just visible over the bal.u.s.trade.

"She appears also to be a great friend of Andre."

"The General met many charming ladies during his stay in England," I lied cheerfully.

"Which means," she said with a toss of her head and an ironical smile, "that the General behaved like a real--who was it, Horace, who loved women so much? _Ah oui_--like a real Don Juan." She wagged her plump forefinger. "Oh no, I know my Andre."

"I could tell you stories--" said I.

"Which would not be true."

She laughed in a forced way--and her eyes again sought the tops of the couple promenading in the suns.h.i.+ne. She resumed her catechism.

"How old is she?"

"I don't know exactly."

"But since you have known her since she was three years old?"

"If I began to count years at my time of life," said I, "I should die of fright."

"She looks about thirty. Wouldn't you say so, Horace? It is droll that she has not married. Why?"

"Before the war she was a great traveller. She has been by herself all over the world in all sorts of places among wild tribes and savages. She has been far too busy to think of marriage."