The Mountebank Part 45

She was quite right. Although I may not have sound convictions, thank Heaven I've sacred prejudices. They have kept me more or less straight in my unimaginative British fas.h.i.+on during a respectable lifetime. So far am I from being a Pharisee, that I exclaim: "Thank G.o.d I am as other decent fellows are."

We circled pleasantly round the point until she returned to her original proposition--her wonder that she had never been able to fall in love with a man of my type.

"It's very simple," said I. "You distrust us. You know that if you suddenly said to one of us, 'Let us go to Greenland and wear bearskins and eat blubber'; or, 'Let us fit up the drawing-room with incubators for East-end babies doomed otherwise to die,' he would vehemently object. And there would be rows and the married life of cat and dog."

She said: "Am I really as bad as that, Tony?"

"You are," said I.

She shook her head. "No," she replied, after a pause. "In the depths of myself I'm as conventional as you are. That's why I said I was puzzled to know why I had never fallen in love with any one of you. I had my deep reasons, my dear Tony, for saying it. I'm bound to my type and my order.

G.o.d knows I've seen enough and know enough to be free. But I'm not. Last night showed me that I'm not."

"And that's final, my dear?" said I.

She helped herself to salad with an air of bravura. She helped herself, to my surprise, to a prodigious amount of salad.

"As final as death," she replied.

There had been billed about the place a Grand Concert du Soir in the Casino de Royat. The celebrated tenor, M. Horatio Bakkus. The Casino having been burned down in 1918, the concerts took place under the bandstand in the park.

After dinner we found places, among the mult.i.tude, on the Casino Cafe Terrace overlooking the bandstand, and listened to Bakkus sing. I explained Bakkus, more or less, to Auriol. Although she could not accept Lackaday as Pet.i.t Patou, she seemed to accept Bakkus, without question, as a professional singer. The concert over, he joined us at our little j.a.panned iron table, and acknowledged her well-merited compliments--I tell you, he sang like a minor Canon in an angelic choir--with, well, with the well-bred air of a minor Canon in an angelic choir. With easy grace he dismissed himself and talked knowledgeably and informatively of the antiquities and the beauties of Auvergne. To most English folk it was an undiscovered country. We must steal a car and visit Orcival. Hadn't I heard of it?

France's gem of Romanesque churches? And the Chateau--ages old---with its _charmille_--the towering maze-like walks of trees kept clipped in scrupulous formality by an old gardener during the war--the _charmille_ designed by no less a genius than Le Notre, who planned the wonders of Versailles and the exquisite miniature of the garden of Nimes? To-morrow must we go.

This white-haired, luminous-eyed ascetic--he drank but an orangeade through post-war straws--had kept us spellbound with his talk. I glanced at Auriol and read compliance in her eye.

"Will you accompany us ignorant people and act as cicerone?"

"With all the pleasure in life," said Bakkus.

"What time shall we start?"

"Would ten be too early?"

"Lady Auriol and I are old campaigners."

"I call for you at ten. It is agreed?"

We made the compact. I lifted my gla.s.s. He sputtered response through the post-war straws resting in the remains of his orangeade. He rose to go, pleading much correspondence before going to bed. We rose too. He accompanied us to the entrance to our hotel. At the lift, he said:

"Can you give me a minute?"

"As many as you like," said I, for it was still early.

We sped Lady Auriol upwards to her repose, and walked out through the hall into the soft August moonlight.

"May I tread," said he, "on the most delicate of grounds?"

"It all depends," said I, "on how delicately you do it."

He made a courteous movement of his hand and smiled. "I'll do my best. I take it that you're very fully admitted into Andrew Lackaday's confidence."

"To a great extent," I admitted.

"And--forgive me if I am impertinent--you have also that of the lady whom we have just left?"

"Really, my dear Bakkus----" I began.

"It is indeed a matter of some importance," he interposed quickly. "It concerns Madame Patou--Elodie. Rightly or wrongly, she received a certain impression from your charming luncheon party of yesterday. Andrew, as you are aware, is not the man with whom a woman can easily make a scene. There was no scene. A hint. With that rat-trap air of finality with which I am, for my many failings, much more familiar than yourself, he said: 'We will cancel our engagement and go to Vichy.' This morning, as I wrote, I was called to Clermont-Ferrand. Madame Patou, you understand, has the temperament of the South. Its generosity is apt to step across the boundaries of exaggeration. In my capacity of friend of the family, I had a long interview with her. You have doubtless seen many such on the stage.

I must say that Andrew, to whom the whole affair appeared exceedingly distasteful, had announced his intention of obeying the rules of common good manners and leaving his farewell card on Lady Auriol. Towards the end of our talk it entered the head of Madame Patou that she would do the same.

I pointed out the anomaly of the interval between the two visits. But the head of a Ma.r.s.eillaise is an obstinate one. She dressed, put on her best hat--there is much that is symbolical in a woman's best hat, as doubtless a man of the world like yourself has observed--and took the tram with me to Royat. We alighted at the further entrance to the park, and came plump upon a leave-taking between Lackaday and Lady Auriol. You know there is a turn--some masking shrubs--we couldn't help seeing through them. She was for rus.h.i.+ng forward. I restrained her. A second afterwards, Andrew ran into us. For me, at any rate, it was a most unhappy situation. If he had fallen into a rage, like ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and accused us of spying, I should have known how to reply. But that's where you can never get hold of Andrew Lackaday. He scorns such things. He said in his ramrod fas.h.i.+on: 'It's good of you to come to meet me, Elodie. I was kept longer than I antic.i.p.ated.' He stopped the Clermont-Ferrand tram, nodded to me, and, with his hand under Elodie's elbow, helped her in."

"May I ask why you tell me all this?" I asked.

"Certainly," said he, and his dark eyes glittered in the moonlight. "I give the information for what it may be worth to you as a friend, perhaps as adviser, of both parties."

"You are a.s.suming, Mr. Bakkus," I answered rather stiffly, "that Madame Patou's unfortunate impressions are in some way justified."

It was a most unpleasant conversation. I very much resented discussing Lady Auriol with Horatio Bakkus.

"Not at all," said he. "But Fate has thrown you and me into a.n.a.logous positions--we are both elderly men--me as between Lackaday and Madame Patou, you as between Lady Auriol and Lackaday."

"But, d.a.m.n it all, man," I cried angrily, "what have I just been saying?

How dare you a.s.sume there's anything between them save the ordinary friends.h.i.+p of a distinguished soldier and an English lady?"

"If you can only a.s.sure me that there is nothing but that ordinary friends.h.i.+p, you will take a weight off my mind and relieve me of a great responsibility."

"I can absolutely a.s.sure you," I cried hotly, "that by no remote possibility can there be anything else between Lady Auriol Dayne and Pet.i.t Patou."

He thrust out both his hands and fervently grasped the one I instinctively put forward.

"Thank you, thank you, my dear Hylton. That's exactly what I wanted to know. _Au revoir_. I think we said ten o'clock."

He marched away briskly. With his white hair gleaming between his little black felt hat c.o.c.ked at an angle and the collar of his flapping old-fas.h.i.+oned opera-cloak, he looked like some weird bird of the night.

I entered the hotel feeling the hot and cold of the man who has said a d.a.m.nable thing. Through the action of what kinky cell of the brain I had called the dear gallant fellow "Pet.i.t Patou," instead of "Lackaday," I was unable to conjecture.

I hated myself. I could have kicked myself. I wallowed in the unreason of a man vainly seeking to justify himself. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to see Horatio Bakkus again. I went to bed loathing the idea of our appointment.

Chapter XXII

Lady Auriol, myself and the car met punctually at the hotel door at ten o'clock. There was also a _cha.s.seur_ with Lady Auriol's dust-coat and binoculars, and a _concierge_ with advice. We waited for Bakkus.