The Mountebank Part 4

He gasped, looking down upon me from his lean height. "My dear fellow--it's the very last thing I want to do. I've told you because I let the thing out a day or two ago--in peculiar circ.u.mstances--but it's in confidence."

"Confidence be hanged," said I.

Heaven sent me Evadne--just escaped from morning lessons with her governess, and scuttling across the lawn to visit her Sealyhams. I whistled her to heel. She raced up.

"If you were a soldier what would you do if you were made a General?"

She countered me with the incredulous scorn bred of our familiarity.

"You haven't been made a General?"

"I haven't," I replied serenely. "But Colonel Lackaday has."

She looked wide-eyed up into Lackaday's face.

"Is that true?"

I swear he blushed through his red sun-glaze.

"Since Captain Hylton says so----"

She held out her hand with perfect manners and said:

"I'm so glad. My congratulations." Then, before the bewildered Lackaday could reply, she tossed his hand to the winds.

"There'll be champagne for dinner and I'm coming down," she cried and fled like a doe to the house. At the threshold of the drawing-room she turned.

"Does Cousin Auriol know?"

"n.o.body knows," I said.

She shouted: "Good egg!" and disappeared.

I turned to the frowning and embarra.s.sed Lackaday.

"Your modesty doesn't appreciate the pleasure that news will give all those dear people. They've shown you in the most single-hearted way that they're your friends, haven't they?"

"They have," he admitted. "But it's very extraordinary. I don't belong to their world. I feel a sort of impostor."

"With this--and all these?"

I flourished the letter which I still held, and with it touched the rainbow on his tunic. His features relaxed into his childish ear-to-ear grin.

"It's all so incomprehensible--here--in this old place--among these English aristocrats--the social position I step into. I don't know whether you can quite follow me."

"As a distinguished soldier," said I, "apart from your charming personal qualities, you command that position."

He screwed up his mobile face. "I can't understand it. It's like a nightmare and a fairy-tale jumbled up together. On the outbreak of war I came to England and joined up. In a few months I had a commission. I don't know..." he spread out his ungainly arm--"I fell into the metier--the business of soldiering. It came easy to me. Except that it absorbed me body and soul, I can't see that I had any particular merit. Whatever I have done, it would have been impossible, in the circ.u.mstances, not to do. Out there I'm too busy to think of anything but my day's work. As for these things"--he touched his ribbons--"I put them up because I'm ordered to. A matter of discipline. But away from the Army I feel as though I were made up for a part which I'm expected to play without any notion of the words.

I feel just as I would have done five years ago if I had been dressed like this and planted here. To go about now disguised as a General only adds to the feeling."

"If you'll pardon me for saying so," said I, "I think you're super-sensitive. You imagine yourself to be the same man that you were five years ago. You're not. You're a different human being altogether. Men with characters like yours must suffer a sea-change in this universal tempest."

"I hope not," said he, "for what will become of me when it's all over?

Everything must come to an end some day--even the war."

I laughed. "Don't you see how you must have changed? Here you are looking regretfully to the end of the war. If it were only bloodless you would like it to go on for ever. Who knows whether you wouldn't eventually wear two batons instead of the baton and sword."

"I'm not an ambitious man, if you mean that," said he, soberly. "Besides this war business is far too serious for a man to think of his own interests. Suppose a fellow schemed and intrigued to get high rank and then proved inefficient--it would mean death to hundreds or thousands of his men. As it is, I a.s.sure you I'm not c.o.c.k-a-whoop about commanding a brigade. I was a jolly sight happier with a platoon."

"At any rate," said I, "other people are c.o.c.k-a-whoop. Look at them."

The household, turned out like a guard by Evadne, emerged in a body from the house. Sir Julius beamed urbanely. Lady Verity-Stewart almost fell on the great man's neck. Young Charles broke into enthusiastic and profane congratulations. From the point of view of eloquent compliment his speech was disgraceful; but I loved the glisten in the boy's eyes as he gazed on his hero. A light also gleamed in the eyes of Lady Auriol. She shook hands with him in her direct fas.h.i.+on.

"I'm glad. So very very glad." Perhaps I alone--except Lackaday--detected a little tremor in her voice. "Why didn't you want us to know?"

Instinctively I caught Evadne's eye. She winked at me, acknowledging thereby that she had divulged the General's secret. But by what feminine process of divination had she guessed it? Charles came to his chief's rescue.

"The General couldn't go around shouting 'I'm to command a brigade mother, I'm to command a brigade,' could he?"

"He might have stuck on his badges and walked in as if nothing had happened. It would have been such fun to see who would have spotted them first."

Thus Evadne, immediately called to order by Sir Julius. The hero said very little. What in his modesty could the good fellow say? But it was obvious that the sincere and spontaneous tributes pleased him. Sir Julius, after the suppression of Evadne, made him the little tiniest well-bred ghost of an oration. That the gallant soldier under whom his son had the distinguished honour to serve should receive the news of his promotion under his roof was a matter of intense gratification to the whole household.

It was a gracious scene--the little group, on the lawn in shade of the old manor house, so intimate, so kindly, so genuinely emotional, yet so restful in its English restraint, surrounding the long, lank, khaki-clad figure with the ugly face, who, after looking from one to the other of them in a puzzled sort of way, drew himself up and saluted.

"You're very kind," said he, in reply to Sir Julius. "If I have the same loyalty in my brigade as I had in my old regiment," he glanced at Charles, "I shall be a very proud man."

That ended whatever there was of ceremony. Lady Auriol drew me aside.

"Come for a stroll."

"To see the Sealyhams and the rabbits?"

"No, Tony. To talk of our friend. He interests me tremendously."

"I'm glad to hear it," said I.

We entered the rose garden heavy with the full August blooms.

"Well, my dear," said I. "Talk away."

"If you have a bit of sense in you, it would be you who would talk. If you were a bit _simpatico_ you would at once set the key of the conversation."

"All of which implied abuse means that you're dying to know, through the medium of subtle and psychological dialogue, which is entirely beyond my brain power, whether you're not just on the verge of wondering if you're not on the verge of falling in love with Colonel Lackaday."

"You put it with your usual direct brutality----"

"Well," said I. "Are you?"