Simon the Jester Part 13

"I miss Dale greatly," said I.

"I suppose you do. You are very fond of him?"

"Very," said I. "By the by, how did you first come across Dale?"

She threw me a swift glance and smiled.

"Oh, in the most respectable way. I was dining at the Carlton with Sir Joshua Oldfield, the famous surgeon, you know. He performed a silly little operation on me last year, and since then we've been great friends. Dale and some sort of baby boy were dining there, too, and afterwards, in the lounge, Sir Joshua introduced them to me. Dale asked me if he could call. I said 'Yes.' Perhaps I was wrong. Anyhow, _voila_!

Do you know Sir Joshua?"

"I sat next to him once at a public dinner. He's a friend of the Kynnersleys. A genial old soul."

"He's a dear!" said Lola.

"Do you know many of Dale's friends?" I asked.

"Hardly any," she replied. "It's rather lonesome." Then she broke into a laugh.

"I was so terrified at meeting you the first time. Dale can talk of no one else. He makes a kind of G.o.d of you. I felt I was going to hate you like the devil. I expected quite a different person."

The diplomatist listens to much and says little.

"Indeed," I remarked.

She nodded. "I thought you would be a big beefy man with a red face, you know. He gave me the idea somehow by calling you a 'splendid chap.' You see, I couldn't think of a 'splendid chap' with a white face and a waxed moustache and your way of talking."

"I am sorry," said I, "not to come up to your idea of the heroic."

"But you do!" she cried, with one of her supple twists of the body. "It was I that was stupid. And I don't hate you at all. You can see that I don't. I didn't even hate you when you came as an enemy."

"Ah!" said I. "What made you think that? We agreed to argue it out, if you remember."

She drew out of a case beside her one of her unspeakable cigarettes. "Do you suppose," she said, lighting it, and pausing to inhale the first two or three puffs of smoke, "do you suppose that a woman who has lived among wild beasts hasn't got instinct?"

I drew my chair nearer to the fire. She was beginning to be uncanny again.

"I expected you were going to be horrified at the dreadful creature your friend had taken up with. Oh, yes, I know in the eyes of your cla.s.s I'm a dreadful creature. I'm like a cat in many ways. I'm suspicious of strangers, especially strangers of your cla.s.s, and I sniff and sniff until I feel it's all right. After the first few minutes I felt you were all right. You're true and honourable, like Dale, aren't you?"

Like a panther making a sudden spring, she sat bolt upright in her chair as she launched this challenge at me. Now, it is disconcerting to a man to have a woman leap at his throat and ask him whether he is true and honourable, especially when his att.i.tude towards her approaches the Machiavellian.

I could only murmur modestly that I hoped I could claim these qualifications.

"And you don't think me a dreadful woman?"

"So far from it, Madame Brandt," I replied, "that I think you a remarkable one."

"I wonder if I am," she said, sinking back among her cus.h.i.+ons. "I should like to be for Dale's sake. I suppose you know I care a great deal for Dale?"

"I have taken the liberty of guessing it," said I. "And since you have done me the honour of taking me so far into your confidence," I added, playing what I considered to be my master-card, "may I venture to ask whether you have contemplated"--I paused--"marriage?"

Her brow grew dark, as she looked involuntarily at her bare left hand.

"I have got a husband already," she replied.

As I expected. Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.

"Forgive my rudeness," I said, "but you wear no wedding ring."

"I threw it into the sea."

"Ah!" said I.

"Do you want to hear about him?" she asked suddenly. "If we are to be friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?"

I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should have yawned myself out of the house.

It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she had first taken Ma.r.s.eilles captive with the prodigiosities of her horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too pa.s.sionately infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of offering marriage she accepted.

She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white faces of the audience in the front rows. The civil ceremony having been performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks' secrecy on account of his family. The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other towns. At last, when she returned to Ma.r.s.eilles, it became apparent that Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly as his wife. Hence many tears. Moreover, he had little beyond his pay and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that would have a.s.sured her social position. Now, officers in the French Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable being in the world. It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde's wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be happy and cheerful and devoted. Lola refused. Hence more tears.

There were scenes of frantic jealousy, not on account of any human being, but on account of the horse. If she loved him as much as she loved that abominable quadruped whose artificial airs and graces made him sick every time he looked at it, she would accede to his desire.

Besides, he had the husband's right--a powerful privilege in France. She pointed out that he could only exercise it by declaring her to be his wife. Relations were strained. They led separate lives. From Ma.r.s.eilles she went to Genoa, whither he followed her. Eventually he went away in a temper and never came back. She had not heard from him since, and where he was at the present moment she had not the faintest idea.

"So you went cheerfully on with your profession?" I remarked.

"I returned to Ma.r.s.eilles, and there I lost my horse Sultan. Then my father died and left me pretty well off, and I hadn't the heart to train another animal. So here I am. Ah!"

With one of her lithe movements she rose to her feet, and, flinging out her arms in a wide gesture, began to walk about the room, stopping here and there to turn on the light and draw the flaring chintz curtains. I rose, too, so as to aid her. Suddenly as we met, by the window, she laid both her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face earnestly and imploringly, and her lips quivered. I wondered apprehensively what she was going to do next.

"For G.o.d's sake, be my friend and help me!"

The cry, in her rich, low notes, seemed to come from the depths of the woman's nature. It caused some absurd and unnecessary chord within me to vibrate.

For the first time I realised that her strong, handsome face could look n.o.bly and pathetically beautiful. Her eyes swam in an adorable moisture and grew very human and appealing. In a second all my self-denying ordinances were forgotten. The witch had me in her power again.

"My dear Madame Brandt," said I, "how can I do it?"

"Don't take Dale from me. I've lived alone, alone, alone all these years, and I couldn't bear it."

"Do you care for him so very much?"

She withdrew her hands and moved slightly. "Who else in the wide world have I to care for?"

This was very pathetic, but I had the sense to remark that compromising the boy's future was not the best way of showing her devotion.

"Oh, how could I do that?" she asked. "I can't marry him. And if I do what I've never done before for any man--become his mistress--who need know? I could stay in the background."

"You seem to forget, dear lady," said I, "that Captain Vauvenarde is probably alive."