The Mountebank Part 40

"So certain was I," she said, "that you were hiding things from me, that when I saw him this morning at your table, I was scarcely surprised."

"My dear Auriol," said I, when she had finished the psychological sketch of her flight from Paris, "I think the man who unlearned most about women as the years went on, was Methuselah."

"A woman only puts two and two together and makes it five. It's as simple as that."

"No," said I, "the d.a.m.nable complex mystery of it, to a man's mind, is that five should be the right answer."

She dismissed the general proposition with a shrug.

"Well, there it is. I was miserable--I've been miserable for months--I was hung up in Paris. I had this impulse, intuition--call it what you like. I came--I saw--and I wish to goodness I hadn't!"

"I wasn't so wrong after all, then," I suggested mildly.

She laughed, this time mirthlessly. "I should have taken it for a warning.

Blue Beard's chamber...."

We were silent for a while. The waiters came scurrying down with trays and cloths and cups to set the little tables for tea. The western sun had burst below the awning and flooded half the length of the terrace with light leaving us by the wall just a strip of shade.

I said as gently as I could: "When you two parted in April, I thought you recognized it as final."

"It would have been, if only I had known," she said.

"Known what?"

She answered me with weary impatience.

"Anything definite. If he had gone to his death I could have borne it. If he had gone to any existence to which I had a clue, I could have borne it.

But don't you see?" she cried, with a swift return of vitality. "Here was a man whom any woman would be proud to love--a strong thing of flesh and blood--disappearing into the mist. I said something heroical to him about the creatures of the old legends. One talks high-falutin' nonsense at times. But I didn't realize the truth of it till afterwards. A woman, even though it hurts her like the devil, prefers to keep a mental grip of a man.

He's there--in Paris, Bombay, Omaha, with his wife and family, doing this, that and the other. He's still alive. He's still in some kind of human relation with you. You grind your teeth and say that it's all in the day's work. You know where you are. But when a man fades out of your life like a wraith--well--you don't know where you are. It has been maddening--the ghastly seriousness of it. I've done my best to keep sane. I'm a woman with a lot of physical energy--I've run it for all it's worth. But this uncanny business got on my nerves. If the man had not cared for me, I would have kicked myself into sense. But--oh, it's no use talking about that--it goes without saying. Besides you know as well as I do. You've already told me.

Well then, you have it. The man I loved, the man who loved me, goes and disappears, like the shooting star he talked about, into s.p.a.ce. I've done all sorts of fool things to get on his track, just to know. At last I came to you. But I had no notion of running him down in the flesh. You're sure of that, Tony, aren't you?"

The Diana in her flashed from candid eyes.

"Naturally," I answered. How could she know that Lackaday was here?

I asked, in order to get to the bottom of this complicated emotional condition:

"But didn't you ever think of writing--oh, as a friend of course--to Lackaday, care of War Office, c.o.x's...?"

She retorted: "I'm not a sloppy school-girl, my friend."

"Quite so," said I. I paused, while the waiter brought tea. "And now that there's no longer any mystery?"

Her bosom rose with a sigh.

"I mourn my mystery, Tony."

She poured out tea. I pa.s.sed the uninspiring food that accompanied it. We conversed in a lower key of tension. At last she said:

"If I don't walk, I'll break something."

A few moments afterwards we were in the street. She drew the breath of one suffering from exhausted air.

"Let us go up a hill."

Why the ordinary human being should ever desire to walk up hill I have never been able to discover. For me, the comfortable places. But with Lady Auriol the craving was symbolical of character. I agreed.

"Choose the least inaccessible," I pleaded.

We mounted the paths through the vines. At the top, we sat down. I wiped a perspiring brow. She filled her lungs with the air stirred by a faint breeze.

"Whereabouts is this circus?" she asked suddenly.

I told her, waving a hand in the direction of Clermont-Ferrand.

"How far?"

"About two or three miles."

"I'll go there this evening," she announced calmly.

"What?"

I nearly jumped off the wooden bench.

"My dear Auriol," said I, "my heart's d.i.c.ky. You oughtn't to spring things like that on me."

"I don't see where the shock comes in. Why shouldn't I go to a circus if I want to?"

"It's your wanting to go that astonishes me."

"You're very easily surprised," she remarked. "You ought to take something for it."

"Possibly," said I. "But why on earth do you want to see the wretched Lackaday make a fool of himself?"

"If you take it that way," she said icily, "I'm sorry I mentioned it. I could have gone without your being a whit the wiser."

I lifted my shoulders. "After all, it's entirely your affair. You talked a while ago about mourning your mystery--which suggested a not altogether unpoetical frame of mind."

"There s no poetry at all about it," she declared. "That's all gone. We've come to facts. I'm going to get all the facts. Crucify myself with facts, if you like. That's the only way to get at Truth."

When a woman of Auriol's worth talks like this, one feels ashamed to counter her with plat.i.tudes of worldly wisdom. She was going to the Cirque Vendramin. Nothing short of an Act of G.o.d could prevent her. I sat helpless for a few moments. At last, taking advantage of a gleam of common sense, I said:

"It's all very well for you to try to get to the bedrock of things. But what about Lackaday?"

"He's not to know."

"He'll have to know," I insisted warmly. "The circus tent is but a small affair. You'll be there under his nose." I followed the swift change on her face. "Of course--if you don't care if he sees you..."

She flashed: "You don't suppose I'm capable of such cruelty!"