The Mountebank Part 5

"Am I what?"

"Dying to know etcetera, etcetera--I am not addicted to vain repet.i.tion."

She sighed, tried to pick a black crimson Victor Hugo, p.r.i.c.ked her fingers and said "d.a.m.n!" With my penknife I cut the stalk and handed her the rose, which she pinned on her blouse.

"I suppose I am," she eventually replied. Then she caught me by the arm.

"Look here, Tony, do be a dear. You're old enough to be my ancestor and by all accounts you've had a dreadful past. Do tell me if I'm making an a.s.s of myself. I only did it once," she went on, without giving me time to answer.

"You know all about it--Vanucci, the little beast. I needn't put on frills with you. Since then I swore off that sort of thing. I've gone about in maiden meditation and man's breeches, fancy free. I've loved lots of men just as I've loved lots of women--as friends, comrades. I'm level-headed and, I think, level-hearted. I haven't gone about like David in his wrath, saying that all men are liars. They're not. They're just as good as women, if not better. I've no betrayed virgin's grouch against men. But I've made myself too busy to worry about s.e.x. It's no use talking tosh. s.e.x is the root of the whole sentimental, maudlin----"

"But tremulous and bewildering and nerve-racking and delicious and myriad-adjectived soul-condition," I interrupted, "known generally as love.

Ninety-nine point nine repeater per cent of the world's literature has been devoted to its a.n.a.lysis. It's therefore of some importance. It's even the vital principle of the continuity of the human race."

"I'm perfectly aware of it."

"Then why, my dear, resent, as you seem to do, the inevitable rea.s.sertion, in your own case, of the vital principle?"

She laughed. "_Cha.s.sez le naturel, il revient au galop_. But that's just it. Is it a gallop or is it a crawl? I tell you, I thought myself immune for many years. But now, these last two or three days I'm beginning to feel a perfect idiot. A few minutes ago if the whole lot of you hadn't been standing round, I think I should have cried. Just for silly gladness.

After all there are thousands of Brigadier-Generals."

"To be accurate, not more than a few hundreds."

"Hundreds or thousands, what does it matter?" she cried impatiently.

"What's Hecuba to me or I to Hecuba?" Few women have the literary sense of apposite quotation--but no matter. She went on. "What's one Brigadier-General to me or I to one Brigadier-General? And yet--there it is. I'm beginning to fear lest this particular Brigadier-General may mean a lot to me. So I come back to my original question. Am I making an a.s.s of myself?"

"One can't answer that question, my dear Auriol," said I, "without knowing how far your fears, feelings and all the rest of it are reciprocated."

"Suppose I think they are?"

"Then all I can say is: 'G.o.d bless you my children.' But," I added, after a pause, "I must warn you that your budding idyll is not pa.s.sing unnoticed."

She snapped her fingers. "I've lived my private life in public too long to care a hang for that. I'm only concerned about my own course of action.

Shall I go on, or shall I pull myself up with a jerk?"

"What would you like to do?"

She walked on for a few yards without replying. I glanced at her and saw that the colour had come into her cheeks, and that her eyes were downcast.

At last she said:

"Now that I'm a woman again, I should like to get some happiness out of it.

I should like to give happiness, too, full-handed." She flashed up and took my arm and pressed it. "I could do it, Tony."

"I know you could," said I.

After which the conversation became more intimate. Anybody, to look at us, as we walked, arm in arm, round the paths of the rose garden, would have taken us for lovers. Of course she wanted none of my advice. Her frank and generous nature felt the imperious need of expansion. I, to whom she could talk as to a sympathetic wooden idol, happened to be handy. I don't think she could have talked in the same way to a woman, I don't think she would have talked so even to me, who had taken her pick-a-back round about her nursery, if I had not with conviction qualified Lackaday as a gallant gentleman.

Eventually we came down to the practical aspect of a situation, as old as Romance itself. The valorous and gentle knight of hidden lineage and the Earl's daughter. Not daring to aspire, and ignorant of the flame he has kindled in the high-born bosom, he rides away without betraying his pa.s.sion, leaving the fair owner of the bosom to pine in lonely ignorance.

"At this time of day, it's all such d.a.m.n nonsense," said Lady Auriol.

I pointed out to her that chivalrous souls still beautified G.o.d's earth and that such d.a.m.n nonsense could not be other than the essence of their being.

To this knightly company Colonel Lackaday might well belong. On the other hand, there was she, the same old proud Earl's daughter. For all her modernity, her independence, her democratic sympathies, she remained a great lady. She had little fortune; but she had position and an ancient name. Her father, the impoverished fourteenth Earl of Mounts.h.i.+re, and the thirtieth Baron of something else, refused to sit among the canaille of the present House of Peers. He bred shorthorns and Berks.h.i.+re pigs, which he disposed of profitably, and grew grapes and melons for Covent Garden, read the lessons in church and wrote letters to the _Times_ about the war on which the late Guy Earl of Warwick would have rather prided himself when he took a fancy to make a King.

"The dear old idiot," said Lady Auriol. "He belongs to the time of Nebuchadnezzar."

But, all the same, in spite of her flouting, her birth a.s.sured her a social position from which she could be thrown by nothing less than outrageous immorality or a Bolshevist revolution. That Lackaday, to whom the British Peerage, in the ordinary way, was as closed a book as the Talmud, realized her high estate I was perfectly aware. Dear and garrulous Lady Verity-Stewart had given him at dinner the whole family history--she herself was a Dayne--from the time of Henry I. I was sitting on the other side of her and heard and amused myself by scanning the expressionless face of Lackaday who listened as a strayed aviator might listen to the social gossip of the inhabitants of Mars. Anyhow he left the table with the impression that the Earl of Mounts.h.i.+re was the most powerful n.o.ble in England and that his hostess and her cousin, Lady Auriol, regarded the Royal Family as upstarts and only visited Buckingham Palace in order to set a good example to the proletariat.

"I'm sure he does," said I, after summarizing Lady Verity-Stewart's monologue.

"The family has been the curse of my life," said Auriol. "If I hadn't antic.i.p.ated them--or is it it?--by telling them to go to the devil, they would have disowned me long ago. Now they're afraid of me, and I've got the whip hand. A kind of blackmail; so they let me alone."

"But if you made a _mesalliance_, as they call it," said I, "they'd be down upon you like a cartload of bricks."

"Bricks?" she retorted, with a laugh. "A cartload of puff-b.a.l.l.s. There isn't a real brick in the whole obsolete structure. I could marry a beggar man to-morrow and provided he was a decent sort and didn't get drunk and knock me about and pick his teeth with his fork, I should have them all around me and the beggar man in a week's time, trying to save face. They'd move heaven and earth to make the beggar man acceptable. They know that if they didn't, I'd be capable of going about with him like a raggle-taggle gipsy--and bring awful disgrace on them."

"All that may be true," said I, "but the modest Lackaday doesn't realize it."

"I'll put sense into him," replied Lady Auriol. And that was the end, conclusive or not, of the conversation.

In the afternoon they went off for a broiling walk together. What they found to say to each other, I don't know. Lady Auriol let me no further into her confidence, and my then degree of intimacy with the General did not warrant the betrayal of my pardonable curiosity as to the amount of sense put into him by the independent lady.

Now, from what I have related, it may seem that Lady Auriol had brought up all her storm troops for a frontal attack on the position in which the shy General lay entrenched. This is not the case. There was no question of attack or siege or any military operation whatever on either side. The blessed pair just came together like two drops of quicksilver. Each recognized in the other a generous and somewhat lonely soul; an appreciation of the major experiences of life and, with that, a craving for something bigger even than the war, which would give life its greater meaning. She, born on heights that looked contemptuously down upon a throne, he born almost in a wayside ditch, their intervening lives a mutual mystery, they met--so it seemed to me, then, as I mused on the romantical situation--on some common plane not only of adventurous sympathy but of a humanity simple and sincere. From what I could gather afterwards, they never exchanged a word, during this intercourse, of amorous significance.

Nor did they steer the course so dear to modern intellectuals (and so dear too to the antiquated wanderers through the Land of Tenderness) which led them into a.n.a.lytical discussions of their respective sentimental states of being. They talked just concrete war, politics and travel. On their tramps they scarcely talked at all. They kept in step which maintained the rhythm of their responsive souls. She would lay an arresting touch on his arm at the instant in which he pointed his stick at some effect of beauty; and they would both turn and smile at each other, intimately, conscious of harmony.

We left the next morning, Lackaday to take over his brigade in France, I to hang around the War Office for orders to proceed on my further unimportant employment. Lady Auriol and Charles saw us off at the station.

"It's all very well for your new brigade, sir," said the latter when the train was just coming into the station. "They're in luck. But the regiment's in the soup."

He wanted to discuss the matter, but with, elderly tact I drew the young man aside, so that the romantic pair should have a decent leave-taking. But all she said was:

"You'll write and tell me how you get on?"

And he; with a flash in his blue eyes and his two-year-old grin:

"May I really?"

"You may--if a General in the field has time to write to obscure females."

She looked adorable, provoking, with the rich colour rising beneath her olive cheek--I almost fell in love with her myself and I was glad that the ironical Charles had his back to her. An expression of shock overspread Lackaday's ingenuous features. He shot out both hands in protest, and mumbled something incoherent. She took the hands with a happy laugh, as the train lumbered noisily in.

Lackaday was silent and preoccupied during the run to London.

At the terminus we parted. I asked him to dinner at my club. He hesitated for a moment, then declined on the plea of military business. I did not see him or the Verity-Stewarts or Lady Auriol till after the Armistice.

Chapter IV