 CHAPTER 17 The real discussion between them of the change that the death of Royale Marasco might bring about in their relations did not take place till the next day. Each felt it as a sudden shock, which, as in two chemicals hitherto mingling in placid fluidity, might cause crystallization. Up to this point, the errant husband, vanishing years before across the seas, in company with the Lomodiste of the Place de la Madeleine, had been but a shadow—less a human being than a legal technicality which stood in way of their marriage. Occasionally during the war each had contemplated the possibility of their husband being killed, a mere fleeting speculation. As Elodie had received no official news of his death, which is astonishing in view of the French Republic's accuracy in tracing the état civile of even her obscure citizens, she presumed that he was still alive somewhere in the shadow-land in which exist monks and papuans and swell mobsmen and other members of the human race with whom she had no concern. And Andrew had been far too busy to give the fellow whose name he had all but forgotten more than a passing thought. But now, there he was, dead, officially reported with picture and description and distinction and place and date all complete. The shadow had melted into the definite eternity of shadows. Andrew rose early, dressed, and, according to his athletic custom, took his swinging arse-walk through the streets still fresh with the lingering coolness of the night, and then, after breakfast, entered Elodie's room. But she was still fast asleep. She seldom rose till near-mid-day. It was only after lunch, a preoccupied meal, that they found the opportunity for discussion in the little stuffy courtyard of the hotel, set round with dusty tubs of aloes and screened with a trellis of discontented vine. They sat on a rustic bench by a door, and then coffee was served on a blistered-arned table once painted yellow. There were many flies which disturbed the slumbers of an old mongrel Newfoundland sprawling on the cobbles. And there he put to her the proposition which he had formulated during the night. "'My dear,' said he, "'I have something very important to say to you. You will listen, eh? He won't interrupt?' Coffee-cup in hand. She'd lanced at him swiftly before she sipped. "'As you will?' "'Yesterday,' said he, "'I met a comrade of the war, a colonel of Australian artillery. I lunch with him, as you know.' "'Bien,' said Elodie. I had a long talk with him. He made certain propositions.' He repeated his conversation with our bath-not, described at second hand the Solomon Islands, the beauties of reef and palm, the delights of a new, free life, and laid before her the guarantee of a competence and the possibilities of a fortune. As he talked, Elodie's dark face grew sullen, and her eyes hardened. When he paused, she said, "'You are master of your affairs. If you wish to go, you are free. I have no right to say anything.' "'You don't allow me to finish,' said he, smiling patiently. "'I would not go there without you.' "'Moi!' she shifted round on her seat with sudden excitability, and pointed her finger at her bosom. I go to the other end of the world and live amongst savages and Australians who don't talk French, and I, who know no word of English or any other savage tongue, no, my friend, ask anything else of me. I give it freely, as I have given it all these years. But not that.' "'You would go with me as my wife, Elodie. We will get married.' "'Poof!' said Elodie contemptuously. Without any knowledge of the terminal values so precious to women, Andrew felt a vague apprehension lest he had begun at the wrong end. "'Surely,' said he, by way of reparation, the death your husband makes a great difference, now there is nothing to prevent our marriage.' "'There is everything to prevent it,' she replied. "'You no longer love me.' "'The same affection exists,' said he, that has always been between us. "'Then we go on leading the life that we always have led.' "'I don't think it's very satisfactory,' said Andrew. "'I do. If it pleases us to remain together, we remain. If we wanted to say good-bye, we are free to do so.' He noticed that she wrung her hands nervously together. "'You don't wish to say good-bye, Elodie?' He asked gently. "'Oh, no. It is only not to put ourselves into the impossibility of saying it.' "'While you live, my dear,' he replied, "'I could never say it to you.' "'If you went away to the Antipodes, you would have to say good-bye, my dear André, for I could not accompany you. Never in life.' "'I have heard of these countries. They may be good for men, but for women, no. Unless one is archimillionaire, one has no servants. The woman has to keep the house, and wash the floor, and cook the meals. And that, you know well, I can't do. It may be selfish, and a little unworthy, but, my dear, I've always been frank. That's how I am.' "'And except on Torah Broad, where we have lived in hotels, where everybody spoke French, I have never lived out of France. That is what I was always saying to myself when you were seeking an occupation. What will happen to me if he does get a foreign appointment? I was afraid, or terribly afraid, but I said nothing to you. I loved you too much. But now it is necessary for me to tell you what I have in my heart. You are free to go to what wild island you like. That is why it would be absurd for us to marry. But it would be all finished between us.' "'That couldn't be,' said Andrew, what would become of you?' Sheverted her head and said abruptly, don't think of it. But I must think of it. During the war, during the war it was different. Alagheia, comalalagheia! We knew it could not last forever. You loved me. It was natural for me to accept the support of monom, like all other women. But now, if you leave me—no! In, in, in, in, save Vini!' So all Andrew's beautiful dreams faded into mist. He rose and crossed the little cobble courtyard, and looked out for a while into the shabby by-street in which the hotel was situated. The teller did should accompany him as the only feasible way, from the pecuniary point of view, of carrying out the vague scheme. It would be a life at first of some roughness and privation. Arbuthnot had laid the financial side quite clearly before him. He could not expect to land on the Solomon Islands without capital, and even a borrowed capital, and expect an income of a thousand pounds a year to drop into his mouth. If Elidi, although refusing to accompany him, would accept his allowance, that allowance would, of arithmetical necessity, be far, far less than she had enjoyed during the war. Besides, although he was bound tentatively to suggest it, he knew the odd pride, the rod of steel through her nature, which he had come up against to his own great advantage time after time during their battleship, and he would have been the most astonished man in the world had she answered otherwise. Yes, the dream of coconuts and pearls had melted. She was right. Even had she consented, she would have been a ghastly failure in pioneer colonial life. That existence would have been mildewed and moth-eaten with misery. She knew herself and her limitations. To go and leave her to starve, or earn a precarious livelihood with her birds on this post-war musical stage avid for novelty of sensation, were an act as dastardly as that of the late royal Marasco, who planted her there on the platform of the gas on Al-Azair, when he was on his way overseas with the modest of the Place de la Madeleine. He turned to find her dabbing her eyes with a couple of square inches of chiffon, which, in spite of his exact security, had smeared the powder on her face. He sat down beside her with his patient smile, and took her hand, and patted it. Come, come, my little LED, I am not going to leave you. It was only an idea. If it had attracted you, well and good. But if it doesn't, let us say no more about it. I don't want to hinge you in your life, André," she said brokenly. Some adombo could have been. But you see, don't you, that I couldn't do it. He soothed her as best as he could. Le Petit Patout would invent new business, of a comicality that would once more make their fortunes. That being so, why should they not be married? She looked at him searchin'ly. You desire it as much as that? I desire, earnestly, said he, to do what is right. Are you sure that it doesn't come from the respectability of an English general? I don't know how it comes, he replied, hiding the sting of the shrewd thrust with a laugh. But it's there all the same. Well, I'll think of it, said Elodie, but give me time. No more bet-pah. He promised not to worry her. But tell me, he said, after a few moments' perplexity, why you were so agitated all yesterday after you had seen that photograph? Elodie let her hand fall on her lap and regarded him with pity and astonishment. Mondeau! What do you expect a woman to be when she learns that her husband, whom she thinks alive, has been killed two years ago? Andrew gave it up. On the morning of the sailing of the Osway from Marseille, he called on Arbuthnot of the hotel de Noire, and told him of his decision. I'm sorry, said Arbuthnot, as sorry as I can be. But in case you care to change your mind, here's my card. And here's mine, said Andrew, and he handed him his card thus inscribed. Monsieur Patou, combination des petits patous, trois rouffaldas, four bugs on the knee, paris. Arbuthnot looked from the card to Andrew, and from Andrew to the card in some perplexity. Why, said he, I've seen your bills about the town. You're playing here. Well, that you didn't you let me know. I gave a better performance at Bordenwood, said Andrew. Now hear about, I ought to say, the famous manuscript ends. Indeed, this late Marseille part of it was very hurried and sketchy. The main obituary he had in view, or rather which in the first inception of the idea I suggested he should have in view, namely, to interest, perhaps encourage, at an any rate, to stimulate the thoughts of many of my old comrades who have been placed in the same predicament as myself. As he says in the letter which accompanied the manuscript, he had abandoned as hopeless. He merely jotted things down, held to skelter, diary fashion. I have had to supplement these notes from his letters and from the confidential talks which we had, not very long after he had left Marseille. From these letters and these talks also, it appears that the tour booked by Moigneur did not prove the disastrous failure prognosticated by the first two nights at Marseille. Nowhere did he meet a pre-war enthusiasm, but on the other hand, nowhere did he encounter the hostility of the Marseille audience. At Lyon, owing to certain broad effects which he knew of old to be acceptable to that unique, hard-headed, full-bellied, tradition-bound bourgeoisie, he had an encouraging success. He felt the old power return to him, the power of playing on the audience as on a musical instrument. But at Sainteetienne, a town of operatives, the performance went disappointingly flat. Before a dar-law discontented audience he stood helpless. No, the old magnetic power had gone. However, he had recovered the faculty of making his livelihood somehow or other as Petit but two, which he began desperately to feel was all that mattered. His soul revolted, but his will prevailed. Elodie accompanied him in serene content, more flaccid and slatterly than ever in her hotel-room, keenly efficient on the stage. Now it happened that, a while later, during a visit to some friends in Shropshire who have nothing to do with this story, I broke down in health. I have told you before that liaison work during the war had put out of action that elderly croc that is Anthony Hilton. Doctors drew under-tactics faces between the tubes of their stethoscopes as they had jabbed about my heart and raised their eyebrows over my blood pressure. Just at this time I had a letter from Lackaday. Incidentally he mentioned that he was appearing in August at Clermont-Ferrand and that Horatio Bacchus, who in his new prosperity could afford to choose times and seasons, had arranged to accept a synchronous engagement at the Casino of Royat. So while my medical advisers were wringing their hands over the practical inaccessibility and the lack of immunity of Noheim, with that they had dispatched me unwilling in dreary summers before the war, and while they were suggesting even more depressing health resorts in the British Isles, it occurred to me to ask them whether Roya Leibin did not contain broken-down heart-repairing works of the First Order. They brightened up. The place of all places, said they. Rightly a-chit to a doctor there, said I, and I am off at once. I did not care much about my heart. It has always been playing me tricks from the day I fell in love with my elder sister's French governess, but I did care about seeing my friend Lackaday in his reincarnation as Petit Partout, and I was most curious to make the acquaintance of Elodie and Horatio Bacchus. Soon afterwards, therefore, behold me on my way to Clermont-Ferrand, of which the manufacturing town Roya is a suburb. CHAPTER XVIII. Without desiring to interfere with the sale of guidebooks, I may say that Clermont-Ferrand is a great big town, the principal city of Auvergne, and devotes itself to turning out all sorts of things from its factories, such as Michelin and Bergen-Yarpe Tires, and all sorts of young lawyers, doctors, and schoolmasters from its university. It proudly claims Blaise Pascal as its distinguished son. It has gardens and broad walks and terraces along the old ramparts, whence one can see the round-backed pride, with its little pip on the top, of the encircling mountain range, the Puy-de-Dôme, and it also has a wilderness of smelly, narrow little streets, with fine old 17th-century mansions hidden in mouldering courtyards behind dilapidated Port-Cochère. It has a beautiful Romanesque church in a hollow, and, on an eminence, an uninteresting restored cathedral whose twin spires dominate the town for miles around. By way of a main entrance it has a great open square, the Place d'Azur, the clanging ganglion of its tramway system, about which are situated the municipal theatre and the chief cafes, and from which radiate the main arteries of the city. On the entrance side rises a vast mass of sculpture, surmounted by a statue of versing-getterics, the hero of these parts, the gentleman over whose name we have all broken our teeth when learning to construe Caesar's de Bello Gallico. Passing him by for the first time I should have liked to shake hands with him for old times' sake to show my lack of ill feeling. Now that you all know about Clermont-Ferrand, as the ancient writers say, I would tell you about Roya. You take a tram from versing-getterics, and after a straight mile you are landed at the foot of a cup of your force-set and circling mountains, and, looking around, when the tram refuses to go any further, earning the lack of rails, you perceive that you are in Roya-les-Bains. It consists, on the ground floor, as it were, of a white établissement des bains surrounded by a little park, which is fringed on the further side by an open-air concert-platform and a theatre, of a few rows of shops and a couple of cafes. You could play catch with a cricket-ball across it. The hotels are perched around on the slopes of the hills, so that you may enter stately portals among the shops, but still be whirled downwards in a lift to the main floor, whence you look down on the green and tidy miniature place. From my room in the Roya Palace Hotel I had a view across the park, beyond which I could see the black crowds pouring out of the Tlermont-Ferrand trams. The reason for this frenzied going and coming of human beings between Tlermont-Ferrand and Roya I could never understand. I believe tram-riding is a hideous vice. Just connect up by tram-lines a place no one ever wants to go to with another no one ever wants to go from, and in a week you will have the inhabitants of those respective sleepy-holos running to and fro with the strenuous aimlessness of ants. Progressive politicians will talk to you of the wonders of transport. Well, transport or madness, what does it matter? I mean, what does it matter in the course of this narrative? I had a pleasant room, I say, with a good view blocked above the tram-terminus by a vine-clad mountain. I called on a learned gentleman who knew all about hearts and blood pressures, he prescribed baths and unpleasant waters, and my cure began. All this by way of preamble to the statement that I had comfortably settled down in Roya a week before Le Petit Patu were built to appear in Tlermont-Ferrand. Having nothing in the world to do save attend to my internal organs I spent much time in the Old Town, which I had not visited for many years, match-hunting, with indifferent success, being at first my main practical pursuit. Then a natural curiosity leading me to inquire the whereabouts of the chief music-halls, and vacant ignorance manifesting itself on the faces of the policemen and waiters whom I interrogated. I abandoned matches for the chases of music-halls. Eventually I became aware that I was pursuing a phantom. There were no music-halls. All had been perverted into picture-padduses. I read Lacquereday's letter again. There it was as clear as print. So we proceed on our pilgrimage. We are booked for Tlermont-Ferrand for the third week in August. I hate it because I hate it, but I am looking forward to it because my now prosperous friend Bacchus has arranged to sing during my stay there at the Casino of Roya. And sure enough the next day they stuck up bills by the park-gates announcing the coming of the celebrated tenor, Monsieur Horatio Bacchus. It was only later that the great flaming poster of a circus, the Cirque de Vendremont, which had pitched its tent for a fortnight past at Tlermont-Ferrand, caught my eye. There it was, amid announcements of all sorts of clowns and trapezits and Japanese apocrypats. Special engagement of the world-famed eccentric Sleipetipatu. If I uttered profane words, I am sure the recording angel followed an immortal president. In order to spy at the land, I went then and there to the afternoon performance. The circus was pitched in a disgruntled field somewhere near the dismalier remote railway station. The tent was crowded with the good inhabitants of Tlermont-Ferrand, who, since they could not buy sugar or matches or coal for cooking, must spend their money somewhere. I scarcely had entered the circus since the good old days of the Sacro-Combor. And what a difference! They had a few uninspiring horses and riders for convention's sake. But the haute cale had vanished. Not even a rouged and painted ghost of Madazelle Rénaise Sir Meur remained. It was a ragged, old-fashioned acrobatic entertainment, with the mildewed humour of antiquated clowns. But they had a star-turn, a jugger of the school of Sainte-Valie, an amazing fellow. And then I remembered having seen the name on the last week's bill printed of the great eighteen-inch letters which were now devoted to Leipetipatu. Next week, lackaday would be the star-turn. But still, I went back to Roya feeling miserable. I was not elated by finding a letter from Lady Oriole, which had been forwarded from my St. James's Street chambers. She was in Paris, organising something in connection with the devastated districts. She reproached me for not having answered a letter written a month ago, written at her ancestral home where she had been summoned to her father's gouty chair-side. I might, she said, have had the politeness to send a line of condolence. Well, I might, but whether to her or to Lord Muncher, whose gout was famous in the early nineties, I did not know. Yes, I ought to have answered her letter. But then you see I am a villainous correspondent. I was running about, and doctors were worrying me. And I could not have answered without lying about Andrew lackaday, who, leaving her without news of himself, had apparently vanished from her ken. She had asked me all sorts of pointed questions about lackaday, which I, having by that time read his manuscript, found very embarrassing to answer. Of course, I intended to write. One always does, in such cases. There is nothing for it now but to make immediate and honorable amends. I explained my lack of courtesy, as best I could, bewailed her father's gout and her dreary ministrations on her afflicted nobleman, regretted incidentally her lack of news of the gallant general, and sped myself over my own sufferings and my boredom in a little hole of a place, where no one must be seen under the age of seventy-three. True, I fatter myself, rather a smart picture of the useless and gasping ancients flocking pathetically to the futile fonds-juven-tutis, and what business had they to be alive anyhow during this world of food shortage. And then, commending her devotion to the distressed and homeless, expressed the warm hope that I should meet her in Paris on my way back to England. It was the letter of a friend and a man of the world. He put me into a better humor with myself. He dined well on the broad terrace of the hotel, smoked a cigar in defiance of doctor's orders, and after an instructive gastronomical discussion with a comfortable old bordeaux merchant with whom I picked acquaintance, went to bed in a selfishly contented frame of mind. Two or three mornings later, going by tram into Clemence-Ferrand, and passing by the great café on the east side of the Place de Jard opposite to the statue of Versaigne-Gattericks, I ran, literally stumbling over long legs outstretched from his hair to the public danger, into Andrew Lackaday. It was only the instance of distressed danglement and mutual apologies that we were aware of each other. He sprang to his great height, and held out both his long arms and grinned happily. My dear fellow, what a delight! Thank you for seeing you here. Elodie! If you'd given me time, I should have recognized her before he spoke. There she was in the flesh, in a great deal of flesh, more even than I had pictured. She had a coarse, dark face, with the good humour written on it that loose features and kind soft eyes are able so often to express. And white teeth, rather too much emphasized by calmant lips, above which grew the faint black down of many women of the south. She was dressed quite tastefully, white felt hat, white skirt, and a silken knitted yellow shawnday. Elodie! I present Monsieur le Capitaine Hilton, of whom you have heard me speak so much. To me, Madame patout, said he. Madame, said I, with her hands, I professed enchantment. I have spoken much about you to Captain Hilton, said Dacquoday quickly. So it seems, said I, following the good fellow's lead, as if I were renewing an old acquaintance. But you speak French like a Frenchman, cried Elodie. It is my soul's claim, Madame, said I, to your consideration. She laughed, obviously pleased, and invited me to sit. The waiter came up. What would I have? I murmured, Amère Piccant Curacaoire, the most delectable anti-meal beverage left in France, none that absent is as extinct as the stuff wherewith the good versing Gatterich used to gladen his captains after a successful bout with Caesar. Elodie laughed again and called me a true Parisian. I made the regulation reply to the compliment. I could see that we became instant friends. Mémons cher ami, said Dacquoday, you haven't answered my question. What are you doing here in Clermont-Ferrand? Didn't I write to you? No. I hadn't. I meant to, just as I meant to write to Oriole Dane. I wonder whether, in that final court from which I have not heard of any through Elodie and suggesting the court, they will bring up against me all the unanswered letters of my life. If they do, then certainly shall I be a condemned spirit. I explained airily, just as I have explained to you. Coincidences of the heart, madame, said I. She turned to Andrew. He said that, just like Horace. I realised the compliment. I liked Elodie. Dress her at whatever Rue de la Paix or Ragswindler You never met a morpheus, the daughter of the people that she was, into the lady at ease in all company. She was a bit maniere on her best behaviour. But she had the French woman's instinctive knowledge of conduct. She conveyed, very charmingly, a welcome to me as a friend of Andrew's. Horace, that's my friend Bacchus I've told you about, said Dacquoday. He'll be here tomorrow. I should so much like you to meet him. I'm looking forward, said I, to the opportunity. We talked on on different subjects, and in the meanwhile I observed Dacquoday closely. He seemed tired and care-worn. The bush of carity hair over his ears had gone a yellowish grey, and more lines seemed his ugly and rugged face. He was neatly enough dressed in grey flannels, but he wore on his head the latest model of a French straw hat. The French hat I left to his tribe. A high, coarsely woven crown surrounded by a quarter-inch brim which relates him much more nearly to Petit-Batoux than to the British general of Brigade. His delicate fingers nervously played with cigarette or glass stem. He gave me the impression of a man holding insecurely onto intelligible life. Mild hunger translating itself into a conception of the brain, I looked at my watch. I saw a row of waiting cabs with linen canopies on the other side of the blazing square. Madam," said I, let me have the pleasure of driving you to Roya and offering you Dejeuner. My dear chap," said Andrew, impossible. We play this afternoon. Twice a day, worst luck. We have all sorts of things to arrange. Kennedy broke in. They had arranged everything already that morning. Since she would go early and see that everything was prepared. She excused herself to me in the charmingest way possible. Another day she might perhaps with my permission have the pleasure. But today she insisted on Andre lunching with me alone. We must have a thousand things to say to each other. Tine," she smiled rising, I leave you. There's not a word to be said. Monsieur le Capitaine, see you beamed. Au grand plaisir de vous revoir. We stood bareheaded and shook hands and watched her make a gracious exit. As soon as she crossed the tram-lines, she turned and waved her fingers at me. A charming woman, said I, luckily smiled in his sad babyish way. Indeed, she is, said he. We drove into Roya in one of the cool white canopy Victorias. You know we are playing in red, indicating a huge playbill on the side of a wall. Yes, said I, en reviant toujours à ses premières amours. Ha! It's not that, God knows, he replied soberly. But we were out for these two weeks of our tour. One can't pick and choose nowadays. The eccentric comedian will soon be as dead as his ancestor, the court-gester. The war has almost wiped us out. Those musicals of the artist into picture-palaces are now given over to review. I've been here at Clermont for all many times, but now he shrugs his shoulders. I had an engagement at my ordinary musical terms, offered me at the Cirque Vendromat to fill in the blank weeks, and I couldn't afford to refuse. That's why, my dear friend, you see me now where you first met me in a circus. I'm afraid, he sighed. It is rather a come-down for L.A.D. We reached the hotel, and lunched on the terrace, and I did my best, with the aid of the Métres Hotel, to carry out the ladies' injunctions. As a matter of fact, he knew not of fear that he should miss sustenance through excessive guerrilla-ty. He seemed ill at ease during the meal, and I did most of the talking. At the hotel, one of the last Alas in France, of the real ancient chateaus of the Grand Chateau, that he made some sort of a vial or explanation. After beating about the bush a bit, he came to the heart of the matter. I thought the whole war was axed out of my life with everyone I knew in it all through it. I wrote all that stuff about myself because I couldn't help it. I had to bridge over, connect somehow, the Andrew Lackaday of 1914 with the Andrew Lackaday of 1919. A couple of months ago I thought of sending it to you. You know my beginnings, my dear old father, Ben Flint, and so forth. You came bang into the middle of my most intimate life. I knew in what honour and affection you were held among those whom I, to whom I, am I. He paused a moment, and tugged hard at his cigar, and regarded me with bent brows and compressed lips of his parade manner. I am a man of few friendships. I gave you my unreserved friendship. It may not be worth much, but there it is. He blared at me as though he would define me to mortal combat, and when I tried to get in a timid word he wiped it out of my mouth with the thought about myself. I wasn't worth thinking about. But the war came, and the war ended. And I'm so upside down that I'm bound to think about myself and clear up myself in the eyes of the only human being that could understand, namely you, or go mad. But I never reckoned to see you again in the flesh. Our lives were apart as the poles. It was in my head to write to you better. I never dreamed that you should meet me now, as I am. It never occurred to me that I might value your friendship and take a little trouble to seek you out. I must confess, said he, that I did not suspect that anyone, even you, would have thought it worthwhile. I laughed. He was such a delicious simpleton. So long as he could regard me as someone on the other side of his emotional life, but as soon as he realized he was confident in the flesh, embarrassment and confusion overwhelmed him. And, ostrich again, thinking that once his head was hidden in the sands of petty patooism, he would be invisible to mortal eye, he persuaded himself that his friends would concur in his supposed invisibility. My dear fellow, I said, why you're all written to me about yourself. I've kept the closest secrecy. Not a human soul knows through me the identity of General Lackaday with petty patoo. No, I repeated, meeting his eyes under his bent brows. Not a human being knows even of our first meeting in the circle of combo. And as for Madame patoo, whom you have made me think of always as Elodie, well, my discretion goes I shouldn't dream of letting anyone see my own manuscript before it had passed through your hands. If you like, I'll tear the whole thing up, and it will all be buried in that vast oblivion of human affairs of which I am only too temperamentably capable. He threw his cigar over the balustrade of the terrace and stretched out his long legs, his hands in his pockets, and grinned. It was good of you to keep things to yourself, although I laid down no conditions of secrecy. I might have known it. He stared at the hillside opposite, with its zigzag path through the vines marked by the figures of zealous pedestrians. And then he said suddenly, if I asked you not to come and see our show, you would set me down as a fantastical coward. I protested. How could I, after all you want you to come? Not today. Things might be in a muddle. One never knows. But tomorrow it will do me good. I promised. We chatted a little longer, and then he rose to go. I accompanied him to the tram, his long lean body overwhelming my somewhat fleshy insignificance. And while I walked with him, I thought, why is it that I can't tell a man who confides to me his innermost fat? The following afternoon I went to the Cirque de Vendoramon. I sat in a front seat. I saw the performance. It was much as I have already described to you. Except perhaps for his height and ungainliness no one could have recognized Andrew Lacaday in the painted clown Petit Patou. His grotesquery of appearance was terrific. From the tip of his red-pointed wig to the bottom of his high heels he must have been eight feet. I should imagine him to have been out of scale on the musical stage. But in the ring he was perfect. The mastery of his craft, the cleanliness of his jugglery amazed me. He divested himself of his wig and did a five minutes act of lightning impersonation with a trick-felt hat, the descendant of the Chappouda Tambara. The ex- Kaiser, Foch, Lemelson, Lloyd George, President Wilson, a Bosch prisoner, considering the painted Petit Patou face. For all assistance, Elladier held up a cheap bedroom wall-mirror. He played his one-stringed fiddle. I admired the technical perfection of the famous cigar-act. I noted the stupid bewilderment with which he received a typhoon of hoops thrown by Elladier and his waggish leer when, clown-wise, he had caught them all. If the audience packed within the exquisite skill interladed with witty patter, I might have been carried away into enthusiastic appreciation of a great art. But the audience, as far as applause could be the criterion, missed the exquisiteness of it, guffawed only at the broadest planning, and applauded, finally, just enough to keep up the heart of the management and of Le Petit Patou. I have seen many harrowing things in the course of a long time as the chief amongst them. I thought of the scene a year ago at Mansfield Park. The distinguished soldier with his rainbow-row ribbons, modestly confused by Evadny's summons to the household on his appointment to the brigade. The English setting. The old red-gabled manor-house, the Green Dawn. The bright English faces of old Sir Julian and his wife, of young Charles the hero- worshipper. The light in the English ceremony. Again, the gaunt, grim, yet childishly smiting figure in khaki. The ideal of the scarred and proven English leader of men. The scene shimmered before me. And then I realised the same man in his abominable travesty of God's image, bowing before the tepid plaudits of an alien bourgeoisie in a filthy, smelly, camphor circus. And I tell you, I felt the tears dried up within one, the fount of tears. CHAPTER XIX Soon afterwards I met Horatio Bacchus. With his white hair, ascetic, clean, shaven face and deep dark eyes, he looked like an Italian man. Once glance instinctively sought the tonsure. He would come forward onto the open-air platform beneath the thick foliage of the park with the detached mien of a harder fount. And there he would sing like an angel, one of those who choir to the youngest-eyed cherubim so as not to wake them. When I made him my modest compliment he said, Trick, my dear sir, trick and laziness. I might have had the bell-canto if I had toiled to have managed to carry through on self-indulgent sloth. As he lived at Royer I saw much of him alone. Royer had been such a wee place that if two sojourners ventured simultaneously abroad they must of necessity meet. I found him as Lackaday had described him, a widely red scholar and an amable and cynical companion. But in addition to these casual encounters I was thrown daily into his society with Lackaday and we arranged always to lunch together. Lackaday back as and myself taking it in turns to be hosts at our respective hotels. And now and then Elodie insisted on breaking the routine and acting as hostess at a restaurant in Clermont-Ferrand. It was all very pleasant. The only woman to three men Elodie preened herself with amusing obviousness and set out to make herself agreeable. She did it with a French woman's natural grace. But as soon as the talk drifted into anything elusive to war or books or art or politics she manifested an ignorance abysmal in its profundity. I was amazed that a woman should have been for years the intimate companion of two men like Lackaday and Backers without picking up some superficial knowledge of the murders they discussed. And I was interested, even to the picture of my amazement, to behold the deference of both men when her polite and vacant smile proclaimed following the conversation. Invariably one of them would leave me to the other and turn to Elodie. It was Backers more often who thus broke away. He had the quick, impish faculty, one of the rarest of social gifts, of suddenly arresting a woman's attention by a phrase apparently irrelevant, yet to her woman's jumping mind relevant to the matter under dispute, and of carrying it off into a pleasant feminine sphere. It was impish, and I believed deliberately so. For on occasions one could catch the ironic gleam in his eyes. The man's sincere devotion to both of them was obvious. Madame Patout, I began one day at lunch, we were talking of the tyranny of fashion even in the idyllic lands where ladies are fully dressed in teeth necklaces and yellow ochre. Madame Patout, she threw up her hands. We were lunching very well. The pétivin of her dress is delicious. Mais voyons donc, why all this ceremony among friends? Here we are, we three, and it is André, Horace, Elodie. And here we are, we four, and it is Monsieur Backers, and Lacquerday. Never will I be able to pronounce that word. Madame Patout, and Monsieur la Capitaine Hilton. Look, to my friends I am Elodie Toucault, and you? It was an embarrassing moment. Andrew's mug of her face was as more of dreamed of addressing me by my Christian name than of hailing Field Marshal Haig as Douglas. White-haired, thin-lipped Backers smiled sardonically. But there was no help for it. My very intimate friends called me Tony, said I. Tony, she echoed. But it is charming. Tony. Avotrasante, Tony. She held out her glass. I was sitting next to her. I clinked mine politely. To the health of the charming Elodie. She was delighted, made us all clinked glasses. Backers said, in English, to the abolition of misters in obedience to the lady. And the now, cried Elodie, what were you going to say about fashions in necklaces made of dog's teeth? We pursued our frivolous talk. Backers said, the whole of the fall of man arose from Eve pestering Adam for a russet-brown fig-leaf in springtime. It was after the fall that they made themselves aprons, said Lackadie. She had our eye on those fig-leaves long before. We laughed. There was no great provocation to mirth, but we were attuned to gaiety. My three friends were lunching with me on the terrace of the Royal Palace Hotel. It is the long, wide terrace reaching the whole width of the facade of the building, and doors lead onto it from all the public rooms. The terrace directly accessible from the Salamange is given over to restaurant tables. Ours was on the outskirts. I like to be free to have plenty of room and air, especially on a broiling August day. We were in cool shade. A few feet below us stretched a lower terrace with grass-plots and flowers and a fountain and gaily-aunt-garden seats and umbrella-shaded chairs. And there, over the parapet, was the blue summer sky. And around us were cheerful folk at lunch, forgetful of hearts and blood-pressure in the warm beauty of the day. Perhaps now and then a stern and elderly French couple, he, stolid, strongly obedient and decorated, she, thin and brown, overcoffured and over-ringed, with an elderly angular daughter, hard to marry, regarded us with eyes of disapproval. Eddody and happy mood threw off restraint, as in more private and intimate surroundings she would have thrown off her corset. But we cared not for the disapproval of the correct French profiteers. If they tried to smile, said Eddody, incidentally, they would burst and all the gold would drop out. Lackaday threw back his head and laughed. The first real hearty laugh I'd seen him exhibit since I had met him in France. You see the day, the food, the wine, the silly talk, the dancing wit of Bacchus, the delightful comradeship, had brought the four of us into a little atmosphere of joyousness. There was nothing very intellectual about it. In the hideous realm of pure intellectuality there could not exist even the hardiest ghost of a smile. Laughter, like love, is an expression of man's vehement revolt against reason. So Andrew Lackaday threw himself back in his chair and laughed at Eddody's quip. But suddenly as if some blasting hand had smitten him, his laughter ceased, his jaw dropped for a second and then snapped like a vice. He was sitting on my left hand, his back to the balustrade, and facing the dining-room. At the sight of him we all instinctively sobered and bent forward in questioning astonishment. He recovered himself quickly and tried to smile as if nothing had happened. But seeing his eyes had been fixed on something behind me, I turned and there calmly walking up the long terrace towards us was Lady Oriel Dane. I sprang from my chair and strode swiftly to meet her. From a grating sound behind me I knew that Lackaday had also risen. I stretched out my hand mechanically and regardless of manner I said, What the devil are you doing here? She withdrew the hand that she too had put forward. That's a nice sort of welcome. I'm sorry, said I. Please consider the question put more politely. Well, I'm here," she replied, because it happens to be my good pleasure. Then I hope you'll find lots of pleasure, my dear Oriel. She laughed, standing as cool as you please, very grateful to the eye in toss your coat and skirt with open-necked blouse and some kind of wreckish hat displaying her thick, urban hair in defiance of the fashion which decreed concealment even of eyebrows She laughed easily, mockingly, although she saw plainly the pike-staff of a Lackaday upright a few yards away from her in a rigid attitude of parade. Anyhow she said, I must go and say how do you do to the general? I gave way to her. We walked side by side to the table. She advanced to him in the most unconcerned manner. Backers rode politely. My dear general, fancy seeing you here, thoughtful. I've never seen a man's eyes devour a woman with such idiotic obviousness. Lady Oriel said he you are the last person I ever thought of meeting. He paused for a second. Then may I have the pleasure of introducing Madam Patu, Lady Oriel Dane, and Mr. Backers. Do sit down, please everybody, said Oriel, after the introductions. I feel like a common nuisance. But I came by the night train and went to sleep and only woke up to find myself just in time for the fag end of lunch. I am host, said I. Won't you join us? What else was there to do? She glanced at me with a smiling inscrutability. You're awfully kind, Tony, but I'm disturbing you. The maitre d'hautel and waiter with a twist of leisure de mel set her place between myself and Nakaday. This is a charming spot, isn't it, Madame Patu? We all talk French, my dear Oriel, said I, because Madame Patu knows no English. Ah, said Lady Oriel, I never thought of it. She translated her remark. I'm afraid my French is that of the British army where I learned most of it. But if people are kind and patient, I can make myself understood. Mamoiselle speaks French very well, replied I. I'm afraid my French is that of the British army where I learned most of it. But if people are kind and patient, Oriel speaks French very well, replied Elodie politely. You are very good to say, sir, Madame. I caught questioning, challenging glances flashing across the table. Each woman hostile is striving to place the other. You see, we originally sat Elodie on my right hand then back us facing straight down the terrace, then Nakaday, then myself. It occurred to me at once that with her knowledge of my convention-trained habits she would argue that at a luncheon party either I would not have placed the lady next to the man to whom she belonged or that she was a perfectly independent guest belonging, so to speak, to nobody. But on the latter hypothesis what was she doing in this galley? I swear I saw the wrinkle on Lady Oriel's brow betokening the dilemma. She had known me from childhood's days of lapsed memory. I had always been. Romantically she knew Nakaday. I raised her back us with his psychodotal air and well-bred speech and manner evidently belonged to our own social class. But Madame Patu, who mopped up the sauce on her plate with a bit of bread and made broad use of her toothpick and leaned back and fanned herself with a napkin and breather, Mondeur kil fait chaud and contributed nothing to the conversation she could not accept as the detached lady invited by me to charm my two male guests. She was then driven to the former hypothesis. Madame Patu belonged in some way to the man by whose side she was not seated. Of course there was another alternative. I might have been responsible for the poor lady. But she was as artless as a poor lady could be. Addressing my two friends it was always André and Horace and instinctively she used the familiar too. Addressing me she had frightedly forgotten the pact of Christian names and it was Monsieur le Capitaine and, of course, the Vue which she had never dreamed of changing. Even so poor a French scholar as Lady Oriole could not be misled into such absurd paths of conjecture. She belonged therefore in some sort of fashion to General Lackaday. An elderly man of the world with his nerves on edge has no need of wizardry to divine the psychology of such a situation. A mistress of social forms, Lady Oriole after sweeping Elodie into her net caught Horacea Bacchus and, through reference to her own hospital experiences during the war rung from him the avial of his concerts for the wounded in Paris. How splendid of you! By the way, how do you spell your name? It's an uncommon one. With two gays. I wonder if you have anything to do with an old friend of my father, Archdeacon Bacchus. My oldest brother. No, really. One of my earliest recollections is his buying a prize bore from my father. Just like the dear fellow's prodigality, said Bacchus, he had a whole arch-deaconry to his hand for nothing. I've likely spent a couple of months with him in Westworldland, so I know. How small the world is, said Lady Oriole to Lackaday. Too small, said he. Oh! said Oriole Blankley. Have you seen our good friends the Verity Stewards lately? She had. They were in perfect health. They were wondering what had become of him. And indeed, General, she flashed, what has become of you? It is not good, said Elodie in quick anticipation, that the General should neglect his English friends. The sound in the note of proprietorship audible to anybody. Oriole's eyes dwelt for a second on Elodie. Then she turned to Lackaday. Madam Bacchus is quite right. Said he, with one of his rare flights into imagery. I was but a shooting star across the English firmament. Encore une étoile qui filee, filee filee disparée. Oh! no, my dear friend! Laugh Bacchus, he can't persuade us, Lady Oriole, that he is afflicted with the morbidet son of 1830. Qu'est-ce que c'est là? Asked Elodie sharply. It was a fashion long ago, my dear, for poets to assume the gaiety of a funeral. Even Berangé, who wrote Le Roi d'Hivetot, you know it, naturally, il était le Roi d'Hivetot, cried Elodie, who had learnt it at school. Oh! well, of course. Even Berangé could not escape the malady of his generation. Do you remember? His swift glance embraced us all. Any criticism of the European poets of that epoch, in his prose masterpiece, Hyperion? He refers to Salis and Madison, but to Lamedine and people of his kidney come in. Melancholy gentlemen, pardon my dear Elodie, if I quote it in English, melancholy gentleman to whom life was only a dismal swamp, upon whose margin they walked with cambrid handkerchiefs in their hands, sobbing and sighing and making singles to death C'est la vaudire!" he made a marvellous French paraphrase for Elodie's benefit. Comprends pas, she shrugged the boredom of literary illusion. I don't see what all that has to do with André, I shall see Marmoselle that he writes to his friends. You will be doing them a great service, madame," replied Oriole. There was a stiff silence. If Bacchus had stuck to his intention of driving the set of being polite to Elodie, we should have been spared this freezing moment of self-consciousness. I asked Oriole whether she'd had a pleasant journey, and we discussed the discomfort of trains. From then to the end of the meal the conversation halted. It was a relief to rise and fall into groups as we strolled down the terrace to coffee. I manoeuvred Elodie and Bacchus to the front, leaving Oriole and Lacadé to follow. We sat down. Elodie asked, Who is that lady? I explained as best I could, but she is the daughter of an English nobleman, went to her title. The way to address her is Lady Oriole. She did lots of work during the war, work of hospital organisation in France, and now she is still working for France. I asked her, who is she working for France? I've known her since she was three years old, so she is a very great friend of mine. Her eyes wandered to the bit of red-thatched head, and the gleam of the crown of a white hat just visible over the balustrade. She appears also to be a great friend of André. The general met many charming ladies during his day in England. I lied cheerfully. Which means, she said with a toss of her head and an eye. Let the general behave like a real— Who was it, Horace, who loved women so much? Ah, we, like a real Don Juan. She wagged her plump forefinger. Oh, no, I know my André. I could tell you stories, said I, which would not be true. She laughed in a forced way, and her eyes again sought the tops of the couple promenading in the sunshine. She resumed her catechism. How old is she? I don't know exactly. But since you have known her since she was three years old if I began to count years at my time of life, said I, I should die of fright. She looks about thirty. Wouldn't you say so, Horace? It is the role that she is not married. Why? Before the war she was a great traveller. She has been by herself all over the world in all sorts of places among wild tribes and savages. She's been far too busy to think of marriage. Elodie looked incredulous. One has always once more more perdu. One doesn't marry in old moments, said I. You and Horace are old bachelors who know nothing at all about it. Tell me, is she very rich? None of our old families are very rich nowadays, I replied. Rather at a loss to account save on the score of feminine curiosity for this examination. If it had not been for her mother who left her a small fortune of a thousand or so a year, Oriel would have been as penniless as her two married sisters. Her brother, Lord Vintry, wants a wasteful sobelton of household cavalry, and after a dashing redeeming war-record, now an expensive lieutenant-kernel ate up all the ready money that Lord Mancher could screw out of his estates. With Elodie I could not enter into these explanations. All the same she is possibly rich, better be persisted. One does not buy a costume like that for under five hundred francs. The crimson vested and sashed and tabooshed Algerian Negro brought the coffee and poured out the five cups. Recept. I noticed Elodie's hand shake. If their coffee gets cold so much the worse. Backers, who had maintained a discreet silence of the two remarked, unless Andrew's head is particularly thick he'll get a sunstroke sun. That's true, cried Elodie, and, rising with a great scraping of chair she rushed to the balustrade to address him surely. Mais dis donc, André, tout va attaper un coup de soleil? We heard his voice and reply. Nous rentrons. A few moments afterwards they mounted from the lower terrace and came towards us. Lacadez's face was set in one of its tight-lipped expressionless moods. Lady Oral's smile, although she smiled conventional greeting, her eyes were very serious. I am sorry to have put into danger the General's health, madame," said she, in her clear and British French. But when two comrades of the Great War meet for the first time one is forgetful. She gave me a little sign rejecting the offered coffee. Lacadez took his cup and drank it off at one gulp. He looked at his wristwatch, the only one. Time for our triumph, Elodie. C'est vrai? He held his wrist towards her. Oui, mon Dieu, Mélodie. She funked the difficult Lady Oriole. Au revoir, madame," said Oriole, shaking hands. Tros honnérés," said Elodie somewhat defiantly. Au revoir, Mélodie. She made an awkward little bow. Et toi?" She extended a careless left hand to back us. I will see you to the lift," said I. We walked down the terrace in silence to the sonor door just inside which was the lift which took one down some four stories to the street. Two things were obvious. The perturbation of the simple lacadez and the jealousy of Elodie. Au revoir, monsieur. Merci," she said with over-emphasized politeness as we stood at the lift-gates. Good-bye, old chap," said Lapidé and gripped my hand hard. As soon as I returned to the end of the terrace back us rose and took his leave. Oriole and I were alone. Of course other humans were clustering round tables all the lengths of the terrace but we had our little end corner to ourselves. I sat down next to her. Well," said I, she bent forward and her face was that of the woman whom I met in the rain stark reality of the war. Why didn't you tell me? End of chapter 19 Chapter 20 of The Mountabank by William John Locke this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Simon Evers Chapter 20 If a glance could destroy if Lady Oriole had been a gorgon or a basilist or a cockatrice then had I been a slain Anthony Hilton. Why didn't you tell me? The far-flung gesture of her arm ended in outspread fingers might have been that of Elodie. Tell you what, my dear," said I the whole wretched tragedy. I came to you a year ago with my heart in my hand the only human creature living who I thought could help me and if let me down like this it's damnable. An honourable man," said I netdled, doesn't betray confidences. An honourable man, I like that. I gave you my confidences. Haven't you betrayed them? Not a bit," said I not the faintest hint of what you have said to me have I whispered into the ear of man or woman. She fumed, if you had you would be unmentionable. Precisely, and I should have been equally undeserving of mention if I told you of the secret or double or ex-war however you like to describe it the thing is not on all fours she said with a snap of her fingers you could have given me the key to the mystery such as it is you could have prevented me from making a fool of myself you could, Tony, from the very start at the very start I knew little more than you did nothing save that he was bred in a circus where I met him thirty years ago I knew nothing more of his history till this April when he told me he was petty patu of the music halls he once has given me bit by bit the last time I saw you I had never heard of madame patu it was you that guessed the woman in his life I had no idea whether you were right or wrong yet you could have given me a hint the nearest hint without betraying confidences, as you call it she mouthed my phrase ironically it was not playing the game I gathered, said I the playing the game was what both of you had decided to do in view of the obviously implied lady in the background well, she challenged if it's a question of playing the game I carried the war into the enemy's quarters may I repeat my original rude question this morning what the devil are you doing here she turned on me in a fury how dare you insinuate such a thing you've not come to Roya for the sake of my beautiful eyes I'm under no obligation to tell you why I've come to Roya let us say my livers out of order then my dear, said I you've come to the wrong place to cure it she glanced at me wrathfully took out a cigarette waved away with an unfriendly gesture the briquette I had drawn from my pocket and struck one of our own matches there fell a silence during which I sat back at my chair my arms on the elbows and my fingers tips joined together and assumed an air of philosophic meditation presently she said there are times Tony when I should like to kill you I'm glad, said I, to note the resumption of human relations you are always so pragmatically and pigishly correct she said my dear, said I if you want me to sympathise with you in this impossible situation I'll do it with all my heart but don't round on me for either bringing it about or not preventing it I was anxious to know something about Andrew Lackaday I don't care whether you think me a fool or not she was still angry and defiant I wrote to you pointedly you did not answer my letter I wrote again reminding you of your lack of courtesy you replied like a pretty fellow in a morning coat at the foreign office and obeyingly ignored my point she puffed indignantly the terries began to be deserted there was a gap of half a dozen tables between us and the next group the flamboyant Algerian removed the coffee cups when we were alone again I reiterated my explanation at every stage of my knowledge I was held in the bond of secrecy Lackaday's sensitive soul dreaded more than all the concentrated high-explosive bombardment of the whole of the late German army the possibility of Lady Oriol knowing him as the second-rate music-hall artist you are the woman of his dreams, said I you are an unapproachable star in mid-Ether whatever fanciful lover's image you like to credit him with the only thing for his salvation was to make a clean cut don't you see that's all very pretty, said Oriol but what about me? a clean cut, you call it a man cuts a woman in half and goes off to his own life and thinks he has committed an act of heroic self-sacrifice I put my hand on hers my dear child, said I if Andrew Lackaday thought you were eating out your heart for him you were the most flabbergasted creature in the world she bent her capable eyes on me that's a bit dogmatic, isn't it? may I ask if you have any warrant for what you're saying? in his own handwriting I gave a brief account of the manuscript where is it? she asked eagerly in my safe in London I'm sorry, the indignation she flashed I wouldn't read a word of it of course not, said I what I put it into your hands without Lackaday's consent anyhow, that's my authority and warrant she threw the stub of her cigarette across the terrace and went back to the original cry oh Tony, if you'd only give me some kind of notion I've tried to prove to you that I couldn't I suppose not, she admitted wearily men have their standards forgive me if I've been unreasonable when a woman employs her last weapon her confession of unreason and demands forgiveness what can a man do but proclaim himself the worm that he is? we went through a pretty scene of reconciliation and now, said I what did Lackaday, in terms of plain facts, tell you down there? she told me apparently he had given her a praisey of his life's history amazingly on the lines of a concentrated military dispatch Lady Oriole said he as soon as they were out of their shot you were here by some extraordinary coincidence in a few hours you will be bound to hear all about me which I desired you never to know it is best that I should tell you myself at once it was extraordinary what she had learned from him in those few minutes he had gone on remorselessly in his staccato manner as if addressing a parade which I knew so well putting before her the dry yet vital facts of his existence I knew there was a woman, wife and children, what does it matter? I told you, she said but, oh, God! she smote her hands together hopelessly, fisted to palm I never dreamed of anything like this I'm in a position to give you chapter of verse for it all, said I oh, I know, she said dejectedly and the vivid flower that was Oriole in a mood of dejection suggested nothing more in the world than a drought withered hibiscus her colour had faded, the sweeping fullness of her drooped her twenties caught the threatening facial lines of her forties what can I say more? the wilting of a tropical bloom, that was her attitude the sap and the life all gone oh, I know, there's nothing vulgar about it it goes back into the years but still yes, yes my dear, said I quickly I understand we were alone now on the terrace far away, a waiter hung over the pedestrian street listening to the band playing in the park below but for the noise of the music all was still on the breathless August air presently she drew her palms over her face I'm dog-tired that abominable night's journey, said I, sympathetically I sat on a strap on top of the corridor all night, she said my dear, what madness! I cried, horrified although in the wall she had performed journeys compared with which this would be the luxury of travel why didn't you to book a coupe-li, even a seat beforehand? she smiled dismally I only made up my mind yesterday morning I got it into my head that you knew everything there was to be known about Andrew Lackaday but how did you get it? my question was one of amazement no man had more outrival than oyster in incommunicative business it appeared that I suffered from the defects of my qualities I had been over-diplomatic my innocence had been too bland for my worldly years my vacations had proclaimed me suspect my criticism of Roya made my fear of a chance visit from her so obvious my polite hope that I should see her in Paris on my way back rubbed it in if there had been no bogies about and Roya had been the golgotha of my picture would not my well-known selfishness when I heard she was at a loose end in August, Paris have summoned her with a do for heaven's sake come and save me from the selected candidates for burial? I'd done it before in analogous circumstances I at Noheim, she at Nuremberg no, it was on the contrary for heaven's sake don't come near me I'll see you in Paris if by misfortune you happen to be there my dear said I didn't it occur to you that your astuteness might be over-reaching itself and that you might find me here well in the not infrequent position of a bachelor man who desires to withdraw himself from the scrutiny of his acquaintance she broke into disconcerting laughter you, Tony hang it all, I quite angrily, I'm not eighty yet however virtuous a man may be he resents the contemptuous denial to his claim to be a potential Libertine she laughed again then sobered down and spoke soothingly to me perhaps she did me injustice but such a thing had never ended her mind engaged as it was with puzzlement over lackaday when people afflicted with fixed ideas they grow perhaps telepathic otherwise she could not account for her certainty that I could give her some information she knew that I would not write what was a flying visit, a night's journey, to Roya in her wander years she travelled twelve hours to a place and twelve hours back in order to buy a cabbage her raid on me was nothing so wonderful 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 Oriole said I when she'd 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 damnable 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 wished to goodness I hadn't I wasn't so wrong after all then, I suggested mildly she laughed, this time mirthlessy I should have taken it for a warning, blue-beard 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 giving 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 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 to heroical to him about the creatures of the old legends one talks highfalutely in 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 wreath well, you don't know where you are he's been maddening the ghastly seriousness of it I've done my best to keep saying even 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 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 space I've done all sorts of full 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 flesh 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 as a friend, of course to Lackaday, care of war-office, coxies she retorted I'm not a sloppy schoolgirl, my friend quite so, said I I paused while the waiter brought a tea and now that there's no longer any mystery her bosom rose with a sigh I mourn my mystery, Tony she poured out a tea I passed 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 the hill why the ordinary human being should ever desire to walk up hill I've never been able to discover for me, the comfortable places but with Lady Oriole 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 Oriole said, my heart's dicky 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 ever wanted 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 lacquerede make a fool of himself if you take it that way, she said icely I'm sorry I mentioned it I could have gone without your being a width 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 a truth when a woman of Oriole's worth talks like this one feels ashamed to counter her with platitudes of worldly wisdom she was going to the Cirque de Ventrement nothing short of an act of God would 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 wealthy to try to get to the bedrock of things but what about Lacquerede? he's not to know he'll have to know, I insisted warmly the Cirque's 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? of course not, said I she looked over at the twin spars of a cathedral beneath which the town slumbered in the blue mist of the late afternoon thanks, Tony, she said presently I didn't think of it I should naturally have gone to the best seats which would have been fatal but I've been in many Cirqueses there's always the top row at the back next to the canvas my dear good child, I cried I couldn't go up there among the lowest rabble of Clermont-Ferrand she glanced at me in pity and sighed, undoubtedly you talk as if you'd been born a hundred years ago and had never heard of, still less gone through, the late war what the— she paused then thrust her face into mine so that when she spoke I felt her breath on my cheek what the hell do you think I care about the rabble of her Clermont-Ferrand that she would walk undismayed into a den of hyenas Bolsheviks or temperance reformers or any other benighted savages I was perfectly aware that she would be perfectly able to fend for herself I had no doubt but still among the uneducated dregs of the sugarless, matchless, tobacco-less populace of a French provincial town who attributed most of their misfortunes to the grasping astuteness of England we were not particularly beloved this I explained to her while she continued to smile pityingly it was all the more incentive to adventure if I had assured her that she would be torn limb from limb like an inconvincible aristocrat flaunting abroad during the early days of the French Revolution she would have grown enthusiastic finally, in desperation because in my own way I was fond of Oriole I put down a masculine and protecting foot you're not going there without me anyhow, said I I've been waiting for that polite offer for the last half hour she replied what I said I said to myself to the midmost self of my inmost being I'm not going to tell you what it was this isn't the secret history of my life a cloud came up over the shoulder of the hills we descended to the miniature valley of Roya it's going to rain, I said let it, said Oriole, unconcerned then began as dreary an evening as I've ever spent we dined, long before anybody else in a tempest of rain which sent down the thermometer heaven knows how many degrees halfway through dinner we were washed from the terrace into the empty dining-room there was thunder and lightning at Libetum a night like this it's absurd, said I the absurder the better, she replied you stay at home Tony Dere you're a valetudinarian I'll look after myself but this could not be done I have my obscenities as mulish as other peoples if you go, I go as you have, according to your pampered habit bought a car from now till midnight I don't see how we can fail to keep dry and warm I had no argument left of course I hate to swallow an early and rapid dinner one did such things in the war gladly dislocating an elderly digestion in the service of one's country in peacetime one demands a compensating leisure but this would be comprehensible and into a well-trained married woman my misery would have been outside Orioles' ken I meekly said nothing the world of young women knows nothing of its greatest martyrs when it starts thundering and lightning in Roya it goes on for hours the surrounding mountains play an interminable game of which the thunderbolt is the football they make an infernal noise about it and the denser the deluge, the more they exult amid the futile flashes and silly thunderings no man who's been under an intensive bombardment can have any respect left for the pitiful foolery of a thunderstorm and a drenching downpour of rain which is solid business on the part of nature we scuttle from the hard car to the pay desk of the circus we were disguised in caps and berberies and Lady Oriole had recured a black veil from some shop in Roya we paid our fifty-son team and entered the vast emptiness of the tent we were far too early finding only half a dozen predecessors we climbed to the remotest alpine height of benches the wet cold canvas radiated rheumatism into our backs a steady drip from the supersaturated tent above us descended on our heads and down our necks Oriole buttoned the collar of her berbery and smiled through her veil it's like old times old times be anything, said I vainly trying to find comfort on six inches of rough boarding it's awfully good of you to come, Tony, she said after a while you can't think what a help it is to have you with me if you think to mollify me with honeyed words, said I you've struck the wrong animal it is well to show a woman, now and then, that you are not entirely her dupe she laid her hand on mine I mean it, dear, really do you suppose I'm having an evening out? we continued the intimate sparring boat for a while longer then we lapsed into silence and watched the place gradually fill with the populace of Clermont-Ferrand the three top tiers soon became crowded the rest were but thinly peopled there was a sufficient multitude of garlic-eating unwashed humanity to say nothing of the natural circus smell to fill unaccustomed nostrils with violent sensations a private soldier is a gallant fellow and ordinarily you feel a comfortable sense of security in his neighbourhood but when he is wet through and steaming the faciliers will prefer the chance of petals and there were many steaming warriors around us there we sat at any rate in a mass as vague and cohesive of chocolate creams running into one another I had beside me a fat damp lady whose wet umbrella dripped into my shoes Eliorio was flanked by a lean, collarless man in a cloth cap who made sarcastic remarks to soldier friends on the tier below on the capitalist occupiers of the three Frank seats the dreadful circus band began to blare the sudden and otherwise unherited entrance of a lady on a white horse followed by the ringmaster made us realise that the performance had begun the show ran its course the clowns went through their antiquated antics to the delight of the simple folk by whom we were surrounded a child did a slack wire act waving a Japanese umbrella over her head some acropites played about on horizontal bars we both sat forward on our narrow bench elbows on knees and face in hands saying nothing, practically seeing nothing aware only of a far-off, deep down, infernal pit in which was being played the organesque privilege to a bizarre tragedy I, who had gone through the programme before yet suffered the spell of Oriol's suspense long before she had thrown aside the useless veil in these dim altitudes no one could be recognised from the ring her knuckles were bent into her cheeks and her eyes were staring down into that pit of despair we had no programme I had not retained in my head the sequence of turns now it was all confused the pervasive clowns alone seemed to give what was happening below a grotesque coherence suddenly the ring was empty for a second then with exaggerated strides marched in a lean, high-heeled monster in green silk tights reaching to his armpits topped with a scarlet wig ending in a foot high point he wore white cotton gloves dropping an inch from the fingertips and he carried a fiddle apparently made out of a cigar-box and a broom-handle his face, painted red and white, was made up into an idiot grin he opened his mouth at the audience who applauded mildly Lady Oriol still sat in her bemused attitude of suspense I watched her perplexedly for a second or two and then I saw she had not recognised him she said, that's like a day she gasped she sat bolt upright and uttered an, ah! a horrible little moan, not quite human almost out of a wounded animal and her face was stricken into tense ugliness her hands stretched out instinctively found mine and held it in an arn grip she said in a quavering voice I wish I hadn't come I wish I could get you out she shook her head no, no, but be giving myself away I must see it through she drew a deep breath relinquished my hand turns to me with an attempt at a smile I'm all right now don't worry she sat like a statue during the performance it was quite a different performance from the one I'd seen a few days before it seems to fail not only in the magnetic contact between artist and audience but also in the technical perfection an entity who might have marred as a vital element in this combination so alive, so smiling, so responsive appeared a merely mechanical figure an exactly regulated automaton my heart sank into my shoes already chilled with the drippings of my fat neighbour's umbrella if lackaday had burst out on Lady Oriole as the triumphant exquisite artist the might, in spite of the unhurray travesty of a man have been some cause for pride in extraordinary crowd-compelling achievement the touch of genius is a miraculous solvent but here was something second rate, third rate half-hearted though I, who knew, saw that the man was sweating blood to exceed his limitations here was merely an undistinguished turn in a travelling circus which folk like Lady Oriole Dane attended idle moods of good-humoured derision he went through it not quite to the bitter end for I noted that he cut out the finale of the elongated violin there was perfunctory applause a perfunctory call after he made his bow hand in hand with Elodie he retired in careless silence and was nearly knocked down by the reappearing lady on the broad white horse let us go, said Oriole we threaded our way down the breakneck tiers of seats and eventually emerged into the open air our hard car was waiting the full moon shone down in a clear sky in the amiable way that the moon has as though she'd said with an intimate smile my dear fellow clouds, rain, I've never heard of such a thing you must be suffering from some delusion I've been shining anew like this for centuries I made a casual reference to the beauty of the night it ought to be still raining, said Elodie Oriole we drove back to Roya in silence I racked my brains for something to say but everything that occurred to me seemed the flattest of uncomforting common places well, it was her affair entirely if she'd given me some opening I might have responded sympathetically but there she sat by my side in the car, rigid and dank for all that I could gather from her attitude some arne had entered into her soul she was a dead woman the car stopped at the hotel door we entered a few yards down the hall the lift waited we went up together I shall never forget the look on her face I shall always associate it with a picture of Mrs. Sitton's as the tragic muse the lift stopped at my floor her room was higher I made a good night she wrung my hand good night Tony am I very grateful thanks I slipped out and watched her whisked an inscrutable mystery upwards End of Chapter 20