Lady Auriol, myself and the car met punctually at the hotel door at ten o'clock. There was also achasseurwith Lady Auriol's dust-coat and binoculars, and aconciergewith advice. We waited for Bakkus. Auriol, suddenly bethinking herself of plain chocolate, to the consumption of which she was addicted on the grounds of its hunger-satisfying qualities, although I guaranteed her a hearty midday meal on the occasion of the present adventure, we went down the street to theMarquise de Sévignéshop and bought some. This took time, because she lingered over several varieties devastating to the appetite. I paid gladly. If we all had the same ideas as to the employment of a happy day, it would be a dull world. We went back to the car. Still no Bakkus. We waited again. I railed at the artistic temperament. Pure, sheer bone idleness, said I.
"But what can he be doing?" asked Auriol.
I, who had received through Lackaday many lights on Bakkus's character, was at no loss to reply.
"Doing? Why, snoring. He'll awake at midday, stroll round here and expect to find us smiling on the pavement. We give him five more minutes."
At the end of the five minutes I sent theconciergeoff for a guide-book; much more accurate, I declared, than Bakkus was likely to be, and at half-past ten by my watch we started. Although I railed at the sloth of Bakkus, I rejoiced in his absence. My over-night impression had not been dissipated by slumber.
"I'm not sorry," said I, as we drove along. "Our friend is rather too much of a professed conversationalist."
"You also have a comfortable seat which possibly you would have had to give up to your guest," said Auriol.
"How you know me, my dear," said I, and we rolled along very happily.
I think it was one of the pleasantest days I have ever passed in the course of a carefully spent life. Auriol was at her best. She had thrown off the harried woman of affairs. She had put a nice little tombstone over the grave of her romance, thus apparently reducing to beautiful simplicity her previous complicated frame of mind. For aught I could have guessed, not a cloud had ever dimmed the Diana serenity of her soul. If I said that she laid herself out to be the most charming of companions, I should be accusing her of self-consciousness. Rather, let me declare her to have been so instinctively. Vanity apart, I stood for something tangible in her life. She could not remember the time when I had not been her firm friend. Between my first offering of chocolates and my last over a quarter of a century had lapsed. As far as a young woman can know a middle-aged man, she knew me outside in. If she came to me for my sympathy, she knew that she had the right. If she twitted me on my foibles, she knew that I granted her the privilege, with affectionate indulgence.
Now, perhaps you may wonder why I, not yet decrepit, did not glide ever so imperceptibly in love with Lady Auriol, who was no longer a dew-besprinkled bud of a girl and therefore beyond the pale of my sentimental inclinations. Well, just as she had avowed that she could not fall in love with a man of my type, so was it impossible for me to fall in love with a woman of hers. Perhaps some dark-eyed devil may yet lure me to destruction, or some mild, fair-haired, comfortable widow may entice me to domesticity. But the joy and delight of my attitude towards Auriol was its placid and benignant avuncularity. We were the best and frankest friends in the world.
And the day was an August hazy dream of a day. We wound along the mountain roads, first under overhanging greenery and then, almost suddenly, remote, in blue ether. We hung on precipices overlooking the rock-filled valleys of old volcanic desolation. Basaltic cliffs rose up from their bed of yellow cornfields, bare and stark, yet, in the noontide shimmer, hesitating in their eternal defiance of God and man. We ascended to vast tablelands of infinite scrub and yellow broom, and the stern peaks of the Puy de Dôme mountains, a while ago seen like giants, appeared like rolling hillocks; but here and there a little white streak showed that the snow still lingered and would linger on until the frosts of autumn bound it in chains to await the universal winding-sheet of winter. Climate varied with the varying altitude of the route. Here, on a last patch of mountain ground, were a man or two and a woman or two and odd children, reaping and binding; there, after a few minutes' ascent, on another sloping patch, a solitary peasant ploughed with his team of oxen. Everywhere on the declivitous waysides, tow-haired, blue-eyed children guarded herds of goats, as their forbears had done in the days of Vercingetorix, the Gaul. Nowhere, save in the dimly seen remotenesses of the valleys, where vestiges of red-roofed villages emerged through the fertile summer green, was there sign of habitation. Whence came they, these patient humans, wresting their life from these lonely spots of volcanic wildernesses?
Now and then, on a lower hump of mountain, appeared the ruined tower of a stronghold fierce and dominating long ago. There the lord had all the rights of theseigneur, as far as his eye could reach. He had men-at-arms in plenty, and could ride down to the valley and could provision himself with what corn and meat he chose, and could return and hold high revel. But when the winter came, how cold must he have been, for all the wood with its stifling smoke that he burned in his crude stone hall. And Madame the Countess, his wife, and her train of highborn young women--imagine the cracking chilblains on the hands of the whole fair community.
"Does the guide-book say that?" asked Auriol, on my development of this pleasant thesis.
"Is a guide-book human?"
"It doesn't unweave rainbows. As aciceroneyou're impossible. I regret Horatio Bakkus."
Still, in spite of my prosaic vision, we progressed on an enjoyable pilgrimage. I am not giving you an itinerary. I merely mention features of a day's whirl which memory has recaptured. We lunched in that little oasis of expensive civilization, Mont Dore. Incidentally we visited Orcival, with its Romanesque church and château, the objective of our expedition, and found it much as Bakkus's glowing eloquence had described. From elderly ladies at stalls under the lee of the church we bought picture post cards. We wandered through the deeply shaded walks of thecharmille, as trimly kept as the maze of Hampton Court and three times the height. We did all sorts of other things. We stopped at wild mountain gorges alive with the rustle of water and aglow with wild-flowers. We went on foot through one-streeted, tumble-down villages and passed the time of day with the kindly inhabitants. And the August sun shone all the time.
We reached Royat at about six o'clock and went straight up to our rooms. On my table some letters awaited me; but instead of finding among them the apology from Bakkus which I had expected, I came across a telephone memorandum asking me to ring up Monsieur Patou at the Hôtel Moderne, Vichy, as soon as I returned.
After glancing through my correspondence, I descended to the bureau and there found Auriol in talk with theconcierge. She broke off and waved a telegram at me.
"The end of my lotus-eating. The arrangements are put through and I'm no longer hung up. So"--she made a little grimace--"it's the midnight train to Paris."
"Surely to-morrow will do," I protested.
"To-morrow never does," she retorted.
"As you will," said I, knowing argument was hopeless.
Meanwhile theconciergewas 'allo'-ing lustily into the telephone.
"I ought to have stuck to head-quarters," she said, moving away into the lounge. "It's the first time I've ever mixed up business and--other things. Anyhow," she smiled, "I've had an adorable day. I'll remember it in Arras."
"Arras?"
"Roundabout." She waved vaguely. "I'll know my exact address to-morrow."
"Please let me have it."
"What's the good unless you promise to write to me?"
"I swear," said I.
"Pardon, Miladi," called theconcierge, receiver in hand. "Thegare de Clermont-Ferrandsays there is noplace salon-litorcoupé-litfree in the train to-night. But there isone place de milieu,premiere, not yet taken."
"Reserve it then and tell them you're sending achasseurat once with the money." She turned to me. "My luck's in."
"Luck!" I cried. "To get a middle seat in a crowded carriage, for an all-night journey, with the windows shut?"
She laughed. "Why is it, my dear Tony, you always seem to pretend there has never been anything like a war?"
She went upstairs to cleanse herself and pack. I remained master of the telephone. In the course of time I got on to the Hôtel Moderne, Vichy. Eventually I recognized Lackaday's voice. The preliminaries of fence over, he said:
"I wonder whether it would be trespassing too far on your friendship to ask you to pay your promised visit to Vichy to-morrow?"
The formality of his English, which one forgot when talking to him face to face, was oddly accentuated by the impersonal tones of the telephone.
"I'll motor over with pleasure," said I. The prospect pleased me. It was only sixty kilometres. I was wondering what the deuce I should do with myself all alone.
"You're sure it wouldn't be inconvenient? You have no other engagement?"
I informed him that, my early morning treatment over, I was free as air.
"Besides," said I, "I shall be at a loose end. Lady Auriol's taking the midnight train to Paris."
"Oh!" said he.
There was a pause.
"'Allo!" said I.
His voice responded: "In that case, I'll come to Clermont-Ferrand by the first train and see you."
"Nonsense," said I.
But he would have it his own way. Evidently the absence of Lady Auriol made all the difference. I yielded.
"What's the trouble?" I asked.
"I'll tell you when I see you," said he. "I don't know the trains, but I'll come by the first. Yourconciergewill look it up for you. Thanks very much. Good-bye."'
"But, my dear fellow----" I began.
But I spoke into nothingness. He had rung off.
Auriol and I spent a comfortable evening together. There was no question of Lackaday. For her part, she raised none. For mine--why should I disturb her superbly regained balance with idle chatter about our morrow's meeting? We talked of the past glories of the day; of an almost forgotten day of disastrous picnic in the mountains of North Wales, when her twelve-year-old sense of humour detected the artificial politeness with which I sought to cloak my sodden misery; of all sorts of pleasant far-off things; of the war; of what may be called the war-continuation-work in the devastated districts in which she was at present engaged. I reminded her of our fortuitous meetings, when she trudged by my side through the welter of rain and liquid mud, smoking the fag-end of my last pipe of tobacco.
"One lived in those days," she said with a full-bosomed sigh.
"By the dispensation of a merciful Providence," I said, "one hung on to a strand of existence."
"It was fine!" she declared.
"It was--for the appropriate adjective," said I, "consult any humble member of the British Army."
We had a whole, long evening's talk, which did not end until I left her in the train at Clermont-Ferrand.
On our midnight way thither, she said:
"Now I know you love me, Tony."
"Why now?" I asked.
"How many people are there in the world whom you would see off by a midnight train, three or four miles from your comfortable bed?"
"Not many," I admitted.
"That's why I want you to feel I'm grateful." She sought my hand and patted it. "I've been a dreadful worry to you. I've been through a hard time." This was her first and only reference during the day to the romance. "I had to cut something out of my living self, and I couldn't help groaning a bit. But the operation's over--and I'll never worry you again."
At the station I packed her into the dark and already suffocating compartment. She announced her intention to sleep all night like a dog. She went off, in the best of spirits, to the work in front of her, which after all was a more reasonable cure than tossing about the Outer Hebrides in a five-ton yacht.
I drove home to bed and slept the sleep of the perfect altruist.
I was reading theMoniteur du Puy de Dômeon the hotel terrace next morning, when Lackaday was announced. He looked grimmer and more careworn than ever, and did not even smile as he greeted me. He only said gravely that it was good of me to let him come over. I offered him refreshment, which he declined.
"You may be wondering," said he, "why I have asked for this interview. But after all I have told you about myself, it did not seem right to leave you in ignorance of certain things. Besides, you've so often given me your kind sympathy, that, as a lonely man, I've ventured to trespass on it once more."
"My dear Lackaday, you know that I value your friendship," said I, not wishing to be outdone in courteous phrase, "and that my services are entirely at your disposal."
"I had better tell you in a few words what has happened," said he.
He told me.
Elodie had gone, disappeared, vanished into space, like the pearl necklaces which Petit Patou used to throw at her across the stage.
"But how? When?" I asked, in bewilderment; for Lackaday and Elodie, as Les Petit Patou, seemed as indissoluble as William and Mary or Pommery and Greno.
He had gone to her room at ten o'clock the previous morning, her breakfast hour, and found it wide open and empty save for thefemme de chambremaking great clatter of sweeping. He stood open-mouthed on the threshold. To be abroad at such an hour was not in Elodie's habits. Their train did not start till the afternoon. His eye quickly caught the uninhabited bareness of the apartment. Not a garment straggled about the room. The toilet table, usually strewn with a myriad promiscuously ill-assorted articles, stared nakedly. There were no boxes. The cage of love-birds, Elodie's inseparable companions, had gone.
"Madame----?"
He questioned thefemme de chambre.
"But Madame has departed. Did not Monsieur know?"
Monsieur obviously did not know. The girl gave him the information of which she was possessed. Madame had gone in an automobile at six o'clock. She had rung the bell. Thefemme de chambrehad answered it. The staff were up early on account of the seven o'clock train for Paris.
"Then Madame has gone to Paris," cried Lackaday.
But the girl demurred at the proposition. One does not hire an automobile from a garage,a voiture de luxe, quoi?to go to the railway station, when the hotel omnibus would take one there for a franc or two. As she was saying, Madame rang her bell and gave orders for her luggage to be taken down. It was not much, said Lackaday; they travelled light, their professional paraphernalia having to be considered. Well, the luggage was taken down to the automobile that was waiting at the door, and Madame had driven off. That is all she knew.
Lackaday strode over to the bureau and assailed the manager. Why had he not been informed of the departure of Madame? It apparently never entered the manager's polite head that Monsieur Patou was ignorant of Madame Patou's movements. Monsieur had given notice that they were leaving. Artists like Monsieur and Madame Patou were bound to make special arrangements for their tours, particularly nowadays when railway travelling was difficult. So Madame's departure had occasioned no surprise.
"Who took her luggage down?" he demanded.
The dingy waistcoated, alpaca-sleeved porter, wearing the ribbon of the Médaille Militaire on his breast, came forward. At six o'clock, while he was sweeping the hall, an automobile drew up outside. He said: "Whom are you come to fetch? The Queen of Spain?" And the chauffeur told him to mind his own business. At that moment the bell rang. He went up to theétageindicated. Thefemme de chambrebeckoned him to the room and he took the luggage and Madame took the bird-cage, and he put Madame and the luggage and the birdcage into the auto, and Madame gave him two francs, and the car drove off, whither the porter knew not.
Although he put it to me very delicately, as he had always conveyed his criticism of Elodie, the fact that struck a clear and astounding note through his general bewilderment, was the unprecedented reckless extravagance of the economical Elodie. There was the omnibus. There was the train. Why the car at the fantastic rate of one franc fifty per kilometre, to say nothing of the one franc fifty per kilometre for the empty car's return journey?
"And Madame was all alone in the automobile," said the porter, by way of reassurance. "Pardon, Monsieur," he added, fading away under Lackaday's glare.
"I cut the indignity of it all as short as I could," said Lackaday, "and went up to my room to size things up. It was a knock-down blow to me in many ways, as you no doubt can understand. And then came thefemme de chambrewith a letter addressed to me. It had fallen between the looking-glass and the wall."
He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to me.
"You had better read it."
I fitted my glasses on my nose and read. In the sprawling, strong, illiterate hand I saw and felt Elodie.
Mon petit André----
But I must translate inadequately, for the grammar and phrasing were Elodesque.
As you no longer love me, if ever you have loved me, which I doubt, for we have madeun drôle de ménageever since we joined ourselves together, and as our life in common is giving you unhappiness, which it does me also, for since you have returned from England as a General you have not been the same, and indeed I have never understood how a General [and then followed a couple of lines vehemently erased]. And as I do not wish to be a burden to you, but desire that you should feel yourself free to lead whatever life you like, I have taken the decision to leave you for ever--pour tout jamais. It is the best means to regain happiness.
For the things that are still at the Cirque Vendramin, do with them what you will. I shall write to Ernestine to send me my clothes and all the little birds I love so much. Your noble heart will not grudge them to me,mon petit André.
Praying God for your happiness, I am always
Your devoted
ELODIE
I handed him back the letter without a word. What could one say?
"The first thing I did," he said, putting the letter back in his pocket, "was to ring up Bakkus, to see whether he could throw any light on the matter."
"Bakkus--why, he cut his engagement with us yesterday."
"The damned scoundrel," said Lackaday, "was running away with Elodie."
He banged his hand on the little iron table in front of us and started to his feet, exploding at last with his suppressed fury.
"The infernal villain!"
I gasped for a few seconds. Then I accomplished my life's effort in self-control. My whole being clamoured for an explosion equally violent of compressed mirth. I ached to lie back in my chair and shriek with laughter. Thedénouementof the little drama was so amazingly unexpected, so unexpectedly ludicrous. A glimmer of responsive humour in his eyes would have sent me off. But there he stood, with his grimmest battle-field face, denouncing his betrayer. Even a smile on my part would have been insulting.
Worked up, he told me the whole of the astonishing business, as far as he knew it. They had eloped at dawn, like any pair of young lovers. Of that there was no doubt. The car had picked up Bakkus at his hotel in Royat--Lackaday had the landlord's word for it--and had carried the pair away, Heaven knew whither. The proprietor of the Royat garage deposed that Mr. Bakkus had hired the car for the day, mentioning no objective. The runaways had the whole of France before them. Pursuit was hopeless. As Lackaday had planned to go to Vichy, he went to Vichy. There seemed nothing else to do.
"But why elope at dawn?" I cried. "Why all the fellow's unnecessary duplicity? Why, in the name of Macchiavelli, did he seize upon my ten o'clock invitation with such enthusiasm? Why his private conversation with me? Why throw dust into my sleepy eyes? What did he gain by it?"
Lackaday shrugged his shoulders. That part of the matter scarcely interested him. He was concerned mainly with the sting of the viper Bakkus, whom he had nourished in his bosom.
"But, my dear fellow," said I at last, after a tiring march up and down the hot terrace, "you don't seem to realize that Bakkus has solved all your difficulties,ambulando, by walking off, or motoring off, with your great responsibility."
"You mean," said he, coming to a halt, "that this has removed the reason for my remaining on the stage?"
"It seems so," said I.
He frowned. "I wish it could have happened differently. No man can bear to be tricked and fooled and made a mock of."
"But it does give you your freedom," said I.
He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. "I suppose it does," he admitted savagely. "But there's a price for everything. Even freedom can be purchased too highly."
He strode on. I had to accompany him, perspiringly. It was a very hot day. We talked and talked; came back to the startling event. We had to believe it, because it was incredible, as Tertullian cheerily remarked of ecclesiastical dogma. But short of the Archbishop of Canterbury eloping with the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour nothing could seem less possible. If Bakkus had nurtured nefarious designs, Good Heavens! he could have executed them years before. Well, perhaps not. When one hasn't a penny in one's pocket even the most cynical pauses ere he proposes romantic flight with a lady equally penniless. But since April, Bakkus had been battening on the good Archdeacon, his brother's substantial allowance. Why had he tarried?
"His diabolical cunning lay in wait for a weak moment," growled Lackaday.
All through this discussion, I came up against a paradox of human nature. Although it was obvious that the unprincipled Bakkus had rendered my good friend the service of ridding him of the responsibility of a woman whom he had ceased to love, if ever he had loved her at all, a woman, who, for all her loyal devotion through loveless years, had stood implacably between him and the realization of his dreams, yet he rampaged against his benefactor, as though he had struck a fatal blow at the roots of his honour and his happiness.
"But after all, man, can't you see," he cried in protest at my worldly and sophistical arguments, "that I've lost one of the most precious things in the world? My implicit faith in a fellow-man. I gave Bakkus a brother's trust. He has betrayed it. Where am I? His thousand faults have been familiar to me for years. I discounted them for the good in him. I thought I had grasped it." He clenched his delicate hand in a passionate gesture. "But now"--he opened it--"nothing. I'm at sea. How can I know that you, whom I have trusted more than any other man with my heart's secrets------?"
Theconciergewith a dusty chauffeur in tow providentially cut short this embarrassing apostrophe.
"Monsieur le Capitaine Hylton?" asked the chauffeur.
"C'est moi."
He handed me a letter. I glanced at the writing on the envelope.
"From Bakkus!" I said. "Tell me"--to the chauffeur--"how did you come by it?"
"Monsieur charged me to deliver it into the hands of Monsieur le Capitaine. I have this moment returned to Royat."
"Ah," said I. "You drove the automobile? Where is Monsieur Bakkus?"
"That," said he, "I have pledged my honour not to divulge."
I fished in my pocket for some greasy rags of paper money which I pressed into his honourable hand. He bowed and departed. I tore open the envelope.
"You will excuse me?"
"Oh, of course," said Lackaday curtly. He lit a cigarette and stalked to the end of the terrace.
The letter bore neither date nor address. I read:
MY DEAR HYLTON,
You have heard of Touchstone. You have heard of Audrey. Shakespeare has doubtless convinced you of the inevitability of their mating. I have always prided myself of a certain Touchstone element in my nature. There is much that is Audrey-esque in the lady whose disappearance from Clermont-Ferrand may be causing perturbation. As my Shakespearian preincarnation scorned dishonourable designs, so do even I. The marriage of Veuve Elodie Marescaux and Horatio Bakkus will take place at the earliest opportunity allowed by French law. If that delays too long, we shall fly to England where an Archbishop's special licence will induce a family Archdeacon to marry us straight away.
My flippancy, my dear Hylton, is but a motley coat.
If there is one being in this world whom I love and honour, it is Andrew Lackaday. From the first day I met him, I, a cynical disillusioned wastrel, he a raw yet uncompromising lad, I felt that here, somehow, was a sheet anchor in my life. He has fed me when I have been hungry, he has lashed me when I have been craven-hearted, he has raised me when I have fallen. There can be only three beings in the Cosmos who know how I have been saved times out of number from the nethermost abyss--I and Andrew Lackaday and God.
I passed my hand over my eyes when I read this remarkable outburst of devoted affection on the part of the seducer and betrayer for the man he had wronged. I thought of the old couplet about the dissembling of love and the kicking downstairs. I read on, however, and found the mystery explained.
The time has come for me to pay him, in part, my infinite debt of gratitude.
You may have been surprised when I wrung your hand warmly before parting. Your words removed every hesitating scruple. Had you said, "there is nothing between a certain lady and Andrew Lackaday," I should have been to some extent nonplussed. I should have doubted my judgment. I should have pressed you further. If you had convinced me that the whole basis of my projected action was illusory, I should have found means to cancel the arrangements. But remember what you said. "There can't by any possibility be anything between Lady Auriol Dayne and Petit Patou."
"Damn the fellow," I muttered. "Now he's calmly shifting the responsibility on to me."
And I swore a deep oath that nevermore would I interfere in anybody else's affairs, not even if Bolshevist butchers were playing with him before my very eyes.
There, my dear Hylton (the letter went on), you gave away the key of the situation. My judgment had been unerring. As Petit Patou, our friend stood beyond the pale. As General Lackaday, he stepped into all the privileges of the Enclosure. Bound by such ties to Madame Patou as an honourable and upright gentleman like our friend could not d of severing, he was likewise bound to his vain and heart-breaking existence as Petit Patou. A free man, he could cast off his mountebank trappings and go forth into the world, once more as General Lackaday, the social equal of the gracious lady whom he loved and whose feelings towards him, as eyes far less careless than ours could see at a glance, were not those of placid indifference.
The solution of the problem dawned on me like an inspiration. Why not sacrifice my not over-valued celibacy on the altar of friendship? For years Elodie and I have been,en lout bien et tout honneur, the most intimate of comrades. I don't say that, for all the gold in the Indies, I would not marry a woman out of my brother's Archdeaco If she asked me, I probably should. But I should most certainly, such being my unregenerate nature, run away with the gold and leave the lady. For respectability to have attraction you must be bred in You must regard the dog collar and chain as the great and God-given blessing of your life. The old fable of the dog and the wolf. But I've lived my life, till past fifty, as the disreputable wolf--and so, please God, will I remain till I die. But, after all, being human, I'm quite a kind sort of wolf. Thanks to my brother--no longer will hunger drive the wolf abroad. You remember Villon's lines:
"Necessité fait gens mesprendreEt faim sortir le loup des boys."
I shall live in plethoric ease my elderly vulpine life. But the elderly wolf needs a mate for his old age, who is at one with him in his (entirely unsinful) habits of disrepute. Where in this universe, then, could I find a fitter mate than Elodie?
Which brings me back, although I'm aware of glaring psychological flaws, to my Touchstone and Audrey prelude.
Writing, as I am doing, in a devil of a hurry, I don't pretend to Meredithean analysis.
Elodie's refusal to marry Andrew Lackaday had something to do a woman's illusions. She is going to marry me because there's no possibility of any kind of illusion whatsoever. My good brother whom, I grieve to say, is in the very worst of health, informs me that he has made a will in my favour. Heaven knows, I am contented enough as I am. But, the fact remains, which no doubt will ease our dear frie mind, that Elodie's future is assured. In the meanwhile we will devote ourselves to the cultivation of that peculiarly disreputable sloth which is conducive to longevity,relevé(according to the gastronomic idiom) on my part, with the study of French Heraldry which in the present world upheaval, is the most futile pursuit conceivable by a Diogenic philosopher.
I can't write this to Lackaday, who no doubt is saying all the dreadful things that he learned with our armies in Flanders. He would not understand. He would not understand the magic of romance, the secrecy, the thrill of the dawn elopement, the romance of thecoup de théâtreby which alone I was able to induce Elodie to co-operate in the part payment of my infinite debt of gratitude.
I therefore write to you, confident that, as an urbane citizen of the world you will be able to convey to the man I love most on earth, the real essence of this, the apologia of Elodie and myself. What more can a man do than lay down his bachelor life for a friend?
Yours sincerely,
Horatio Bakkus
P.S.--If you had convinced me that I was staring hypnotically at a mare's nest, I should have had much pleasure in joining you on your excursion. I hope you went and enjoyed it and found Orcival exceeding my poor dithyrambic.
I had to read over this preposterous epistle again before I fully grasped its significance. On the first reading it seemed incredible that the man could be sincere in his professions; on the second, his perfect good faith manifested itself in every line. Had I read it a third time, I, no doubt, should have regarded him as an heroic figure, with a halo already beginning to shimmer about his head.
I walked up to Lackaday at the end of the terrace and handed him the letter. It was the simplest thing to do. He also read it twice, the first time with scowling brow, the second with a milder expression of incredulity. He looked down on me--I don't stand when a handy chair invites me to sit.
"This is the most amazing thing I've ever heard of."
I nodded. He walked a few yards away and attacked the letter for the third time. Then he gave it back to me with a smile.
"I don't believe he's such an infernal scoundrel after all."
"Ah!" said I.
He leaned over the balustrade and plunged into deep reflection.
"If it's genuine, it's an unheard of piece of Quixotism."
"I'm sure it's genuine."
"By Gum!" said he. He gazed at the vine-clad hill in the silence of wondering admiration.
At last I tapped him on the shoulder.
"Let us lunch," said I.
We strolled to the upper terrace.
"It is wonderful," he remarked on the way thither, "how much sheer goodness there is in humanity."
"Pure selfishness on my part. I hate lunching alone," said I.
He turned on me a pained look.
"I wasn't referring to you."
Then meeting something quizzical in my eye, he grinned his broad ear-to-ear grin of a child of six.
We lunched. We smoked and talked. At every moment a line seemed to fade from his care-worn face. At any rate, everything was not for the worst in the worst possible of worlds. I think he felt his sense of freedom steal over him in his gradual glow. At last I had him laughing and mimicking, in his inimitable way--a thing which he had not done for my benefit since the first night of our acquaintance--the elderly and outraged Moignon whom he proposed to visit in Paris, for the purpose of cancelling his contracts. As for Vichy--Vichy could go hang. There were ravening multitudes of demobilized variety artists besieging every stage-door in France. He was letting down nobody; neither the managements nor the public. Moignon would find means of consolation.
"My dear Hylton," said he, "now that my faith in Bakkus is not only restored but infinitely strengthened, and my mind is at rest concerning Elodie, I feel as though ten years were lifted from my life. I'm no longer Petit Patou. The blessed relief of it! Perhaps," he added, after a pause, "the discipline has been good for my soul."
"In what way?"
"Well, you see," he replied thoughtfully, "in my profession I always was a second-rater. I was aware of it; but I was content, because I did my best. In the Army my vanity leads me to believe I was a first-rater. Then I had to go back, not only to second-rate, but to third-rate, having lost a lot in five years. It was humiliating. But all the same I've no doubt it has been the best thing in the world for me. The old hats will still fit."
"If I had a quarter of your vicious modesty," said I, "I would see that I turned it into a dazzling virtue. What are your plans?"
"You remember my telling you of a man I met in Marseilles called Arbuthnot?"
"Yes," said I, "the fellow who shies at coco-nuts in the Solomon Islands."
He grinned, and with singular aptness he replied:
"I'll cable him this afternoon and see whether I can still have three shies for a penny."
We discussed the proposal. Presently he rose. He must go to Vichy, where he had to wind up certain affairs of Les Petit Patou. To-morrow he would start for Paris and await Arbuthnot's reply.
"And possibly you'll see Lady Auriol," I hazarded, this being the first time her name was mentioned.
His brow clouded and he shook his head sadly.
"I think not," said he. And, as I was about to protest, he checked me with a gesture. "That's all done with."
"My dear, distinguished idiot," said I.
"It can never be," he declared with an air of finality.
"You'll break Bakkus's heart."
"Sorry," said he.
"You'll break mine."
"Sorrier still. No, no, my dear friend," he said gently, "don't let us talk about that any more."
After he had gone I experienced a severe attack of anticlimax, and feeling lonely I wrote to Lady Auriol. In the coarse phraseology of the day, I spread myself out over that letter. It was a piece of high-class descriptive writing. I gave her a beautiful account of the elopement and, as an interesting human document, I enclosed a copy of Bakkus's letter. As I had to wait a day or two for her promised address--her letter conveying it gave me no particular news of herself--I did not receive her answer until I reached London.
It was characteristic:
My Dear Tony,
Thanks for your interesting letter. I've adopted a mongrel Irish Terrier--the most fascinating skinful of sin the world has ever produced. I'll show him to you some day.
Yours,
Auriol
I wrote back in a fury: something about never wanting to see her or her infernal dog as long as I lived. I was angry and depressed. I don't know why. It was none of my business. But I felt that I had been scandalously treated by this young woman. I felt that I had subscribed to their futile romance an enormous fund of interest and sympathy. This chilly end of it left me with a sense of bleak disappointment. I was not rendered merrier a short while afterwards by an airy letter from Horatio Bakkus enclosing a flourishing announcement in French of his marriage with the Veuve Elodie Marescaux, née Figasso. "Behold me," said the fellow, "cooing with content in the plenitude of perfect connubiality." I did not desire to behold him at all. His cooing left me cold. I bore on my shoulders the burden of the tragio-comedy of Auriol and Lackaday.
If she had never seen him as Petit Patou, all might have been well, in spite of Elodie who had been somewhat destructive of romantic glamour. But the visit to the circus, I concluded, finished the business. Beneath the painted monster in green silk tights the dignified soldier whom she loved was eclipsed for ever. And then a thousand commonplace social realities arose and stood stonily in her path. And Lackaday--well! I suppose he was faced with the same unscalable stone wall of convention.
Lackaday's letters were brief, and, such as they were, full of Arbuthnot. He was sailing as soon as he could find a berth. I gave the pair up, and went to an elder brother's place in Inverness-shire for rest and shooting and rain and family criticism and such-like amenities. Among my fellow-guests I found young Charles Verity-Stewart and Evadne nominally under governess tutelage. The child kept me sane during a dreadful month. Having been sick of the sound of guns going off during the war, I found, to my dismay, scant pleasure in explosions followed by the death of little birds. And then--I suppose I am growing old--the sport, in which I once rejoiced, involved such hours of wet and weary walking that I renounced it without too many sighs. But I had nothing to do. My pre-war dilettante excursions into the literary world had long since come to an end. I was obsessed by the story of Lackaday; and so, out of sheertædium vitæ, and at the risk of a family quarrel, I shut myself up with the famous manuscript and my own reminiscences, and began to reduce things to such coherence as you now have had an opportunity of judging.
It was at breakfast, one morning in November, that the butler handed me a telegram. I opened the orange envelope. The missive, reply paid, ran:
Will you swear that there are real live cannibals in the SolomonIslands? If not, it will be the final disillusion of my life.--Auriol
I passed the paper to my neighbour Evadne, healthily deep in porridge. She glanced at it, glass of milk in one hand, poised spoon in the other. With the diabolical intuition of eternal woman and the ironical imperturbability of the modern maiden, she raised her candid eyes to mine and declared:
"She's quite mad. But I told you all about it years ago."
This lofty calmness I could not share. I suddenly found myself unable to stand another minute of Scotland. Righteous indignation sped me to London.
I found the pair together in Lady Auriol's drawing-room. Without formal greeting I apostrophized them.
"You two have behaved disgracefully. Here have I been utterly miserable about you, and all the time you've left me in the dark."
"Where we were ourselves, my dear Hylton, I assure you," said Lackaday.
"I shed light as soon as I could," said Auriol. "We bumped into each other last Monday evening in Bond Street and found it was us."
"I told her I was going to the Solomon Islands."
"And I thought I wanted to go there too."
"From which I gather," said I, "that you are going to get married."
Lady Auriol smiled and shook her head.
"Oh dear no."
I was really angry. "Then what on earth made you drag me all the way from the North of Scotland?"
"To congratulate us, my dear friend," said Lackaday. "We were married this morning."
"I think you're a pair of fools," said I later, not yet quite mollified.
"Why--for getting married?" asked Auriol.
"No," said I. "For putting it off to a fortuitous bump in Bond Street."
The End