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The Mountebank

W >> William J. Locke >> The Mountebank




"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 circuses. There's always the top row at the back, next
the canvas...."

"My dear good child," I cried, "you couldn't go up there among the lowest
rabble of Clermont-Ferrand!"

She glanced at me in pity and sighed indulgently.

"You talk as if you had 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
Clermont-Ferrand?"

That she would walk undismayed into a den of hyenas or Bolsheviks or
Temperance Reformers or any other benighted savages I was perfectly aware.
That she would be perfectly able to fend for herself I have no doubt.
But still, among the uneducated dregs of the sugar-less, match-less,
tobacco-less populace of a French provincial town who attributed most
of their misfortunes to the grasping astuteness of England, we were not
peculiarly 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
Auriol, 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
am 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 Royat.

"It's going to rain," I said.

"Let it," said Auriol unconcerned.

Then began as dreary an evening as I ever have spent.

We dined, long before anybody else, in a tempest of rain which sent down
the thermometer Heaven knows how many degrees. Half-way through dinner we
were washed from the terrace into the empty dining-room. There was thunder
and lightning _ad libitum._

"A night like this--it's absurd," said I.

"The absurder the better," she replied. "You stay at home, Tony dear.
You're a valetudinarian. I'll look after myself."

But this could not be done. I have my obstinacies as mulish as other
people's.

"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 peace time one demands
a compensating leisure. But this would be comprehensible only to a
well-trained married woman. My misery would have been outside Auriol's
ken. I meekly said nothing. The world of young women knows nothing of its
greatest martyrs.

When it starts thundering and lightening in Royat, 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 has 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 scuttled from the hired car to the pay-desk of
the circus. We were disguised in caps and burberrys, and Lady Auriol had
procured a black veil from some shop in Royat. We paid our fifty centimes
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 super-saturated tent above us descended on our heads and down
our necks. Auriol buttoned the collar of her burberry and smiled through
her veil.

"It's like old times."

"Old times be anythinged," 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 have 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 bout 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. But 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 fastidious
would prefer the chance of perils. And there were many steaming warriors
around us.

There we sat, at any rate, wedged in a mass as vague and cohesive as
chocolate creams running into one another. I had beside me a fat, damp lady
whose wet umbrella dripped into my shoes. Lady Auriol 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-franc
seats. The dreadful circus band began to blare. The sudden and otherwise
unheralded entrance of a lady on a white horse followed by the ring master
made us realize 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 acrobats 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
Orcagnesque prelude to a bizarre tragedy. I, who had gone through the
programme before, yet suffered the spell of Auriol's suspense. Long before
she had thrown aside the useless veil. In these dim altitudes no one could
be recognized 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 finger tips, 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 Auriol still sat in her bemused attitude of suspense. I watched her
perplexedly for a second or two, and then I saw she had not recognized him.
I said:

"That's Lackaday."

She gasped. Sat bolt upright, and uttered an "Oh-h!" a horrible little
moan, not quite human, almost that of a wounded animal, and her face was
stricken into tense ugliness. Her hand, stretched out instinctively, found
mine and held it in an iron grip. She said in a quavering voice:

"I wish I hadn't come."

"I wish I could get you out," said I.

She shook her head.

"No, no. It would be giving myself away. I must see it through."

She drew a deep breath, relinquished my hand, turned 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 had seen a few days before. It seemed to fail
not only in the magnetic contact between artist and audience, but in
technical perfection. And Elodie, whom I had admired as a vital element in
this combination, so alive, so smiling, so reponsive, 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 Auriol as the
triumphant, exquisite artist, there might, in spite of the unheroic
travesty of a man in which he was invested, 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 Auriol Dayne only visited in 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 had 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 Auriol.

We threaded our way down the break-neck tiers of seats and eventually
emerged into the open air. Our hired car was waiting. The full moon shone
down in a clear sky in the amiable way that the moon has--as though she
said with an intimate smile--"My dear fellow--clouds? Rain? I never heard
of such a thing. You must be suffering from some delusion. I've been
shining on you like this for centuries." I made a casual reference to the
beauty of the night.

"It ought to be still raining," said Lady Auriol.

We drove back to Royat in silence. I racked my brains for something to say,
but everything that occurred to me seemed the flattest of uncomforting
commonplaces.

Well, it was her affair entirely. If she had 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 iron
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 the picture of Mrs. Siddons as the
Tragic Muse. The lift stopped at my floor. Her room was higher.

I bade her good night.

She wrung my hand. "Good night, Tony, and my very grateful thanks."

I slipped out and watched her whisked, an inscrutable mystery, upwards.




Chapter XXI



The first sign of commotion in the morning was a note from Bakkus, whose
turn it was to act as luncheon host. Our friends at Clermont-Ferrand, said
he, had cried off. They had also asked him to go over and see them. Would
I be so kind as to regard this as a _dies non_ in the rota of our
pleasant gatherings?

I dressed and bought some flowers, which I sent up to Lady Auriol with a
polite message. The chasseur returned saying that Miladi had gone out about
half an hour before.

"You don't mean that she has left the hotel with her luggage?"

The boy smiled reassurance. She had only gone for a walk. I breathed
freely. It would have been just like her to go off by the first train.

I suffered my treatment, drank my glasses of horrible water and again
enquired at the hotel for Lady Auriol. She had not yet returned. Having
nothing to do, I took my _Moniteur du Puy de Dôme_, which I had not
read, to the café which commands a view of the park gates and the general
going and coming of Royat. Presently, from the tram terminus I saw
advancing the familiar gaunt figure of Lackaday. I was glad, I scarcely
knew why, to note that he wore a grey soft felt instead of the awful straw
hat. I rose to greet him, and invited him to my table.

"I would join you with pleasure," said he, "but I am thinking of paying my
respects to Lady Auriol."

When I told him that he would not find her, he sat down. We could keep an
eye on the hotel entrance, I remarked.

"Our lunch with Bakkus is off," said I.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I rang him up early this morning. Elodie isn't quite
herself to-day."

"The thunder last night, perhaps."

He nodded. "Women have nerves."

That something had happened was obvious. I remembered last night's
half-hearted performance.

"By the way," said I, "Bakkus mentioned in his note that he was going over
to Clermont-Ferrand to see you."

"Yes," said Lackaday, "I left him there. He has marvellous tact and
influence when he chooses to exert them. A man thrown away on the
trivialities of life. He was born to be a Cardinal. I'm so glad you have
taken to him."

I murmured mild eulogy of Bakkus. We spoke idly of his beautiful voice.
Conversation languished, Lackaday's eyes being turned to the entrance of
the hotel some fifty yards away up the sloping street.

"I'm anxious not to miss Lady Auriol," he said at last. "It will be my only
chance of seeing her. We're off to-morrow."

"To-morrow?"

"Our engagement ends to-night. We're due at Vichy next week."

I had not realized the flight of the pleasant days. But yet--I was puzzled.
Yesterday there had been no talk of departure. I mentioned my surprise.

"I have ended the engagement of my own accord," said he. "The management
had engaged another star turn for to-day--overlapping mine. A breach of
contract which gave me the excuse for terminating it. I don't often stand
on the vain dignity of the so-called artist, but this time I've been glad
to do so."

"The atmosphere of the circus is scarcely congenial," said I.

"That's it. I'm too big for my boots, or my head's too big for my hat. And
the management are not sorry to save a few days' salary."

"But during these few days----?"

"We wait at Vichy."

He spoke woodenly, his lined face set hard.

"I shall miss you tremendously, my dear fellow," said I.

"I shall miss your company even more," said he.

"We won't, at any rate, say good-bye to-day," I ventured. "There are cars
to be hired, and Vichy from the car point of view is close by."

"You, my dear Hylton, I shall be delighted to see."

The emphasis on the pronoun would have rendered his meaning clear to even a
more obtuse man than myself. No Lady Auriols flaunting over to Vichy.

"May I ask when you came to this decision?" I enquired. "Bakkus's note
suggested only a postponement of our meeting."

"Last night," said he. "That's one reason why I sent for Bakkus."

"I see," said I. But I did not tell him what I saw. It looked as though the
gallant fellow were simply running away.

Soon afterwards, to my great relief, there came Lady Auriol swinging along
on the other side of the pavement. The café, you must know, forms a corner.
To the left, the park and the tram terminus; to the right, the street
leading to the post office and then dwindling away vaguely up the hill. It
was along this street that Lady Auriol came, short-skirted, flushed with
exercise, rather dusty and dishevelled. I stood and waved an arresting
hand. She hesitated for a second and then crossed the road and met us
outside the café. I offered a seat at our table within. She declined with a
gesture. We all stood for a while and then went diagonally over to the park
entrance.

"I've been such a walk," she declared. "Miles and miles--through beautiful
country and picturesque villages. You ought to explore. It's worth it."

"I know the district of old," said Lackaday.

"I'm tremendously struck with the beauty of the women of Auvergne."

"They're the pure type of old Gaul," said Lackaday.

She put up a hand to straying hair. "I'm falling to pieces. I have but two
desires in the world--a cold bath and food. Perhaps I shall see you later."

He stood unflinching, like a soldier condemned for crime. I wondered at her
indifference. He said:

"Unfortunately I can't have that pleasure. My engagements take up the rest
of the day, and tomorrow I leave Clermont-Ferrand. I shan't have another
opportunity of seeing you."

Their eyes met and his, calm yet full of pain, dominated. She thrust her
hand through my arm.

"Very well then, let us get into the shade."

We entered the park, found an empty bench beneath the trees and sat down,
Auriol between us. She said:

"Do you mean at Royat or in the world in general?"

"Perhaps the latter."

She laughed queerly. "As chance has thrown us together here, it will
possibly do the same somewhere else."

"My sphere isn't yours," said he. "If it hadn't been for the accident of
Hylton being here, we should not have met now."

"Captain Hylton had nothing to do with it," she said warmly. "I had no
notion that you were at Clermont-Ferrand."

"I'm quite aware of that, Lady Auriol."

She flushed, vexed at having said a foolish thing.

"And Captain Hylton had no notion that I was coming."

"Perfectly," said Lackaday.

"Well?" she said after a pause.

"I came over to Royat, this morning," said Lackaday, "to call on you and
bid you good-bye."

"Why?" she asked in a low voice.

"It appeared to be ordinary courtesy."

"Was there anything particular you wanted to say to me?"

"Perhaps to supplement just the little I could tell you yesterday
afternoon."

"Captain Hylton supplemented it after you left. Oh, he was very discreet.
But there were a few odds and ends that needed straightening out. If you
had been frank with me from the beginning, there would have been no need
of it. As it was, I had to clear everything up. If I had known exactly. I
should not have gone to the circus last night."

His eyelids fluttered like those of a man who has received a bullet through
him, and his mouth set grimly.

"You might have spared me that," said he. He bent forward. "Hylton, why did
you let her do it?"

"I might just as well have tried to stop the thunder," said I, seeing no
reason why this young woman should not bear the blame for her folly.

"A circus is a comfortless place of entertainment," he said, in the
familiar, even voice. "I wish it had been a proper theatre. What did you
think of the performance?"

She straightened herself upright, turned and looked at him; then looked
away in front of her: a sharp breath or two caused a little convulsive
heave of her bosom; to my astonishment I saw great tears run down her
cheeks on to her hands tightly clasped on her lap. As soon as she realized
it, she dashed her hands roughly over her eyes. Lackaday ventured the tip
of his finger on her sleeve.

"It's a sorry show, isn't it? I'm not very proud of myself. But perhaps you
understand now why I left you in ignorance."

"Yet you told Anthony. Why not me?"

I was about to rise, this being surely a matter for them to battle out
between themselves, but I at once felt her powerful grip on my arm. Whether
she was afraid of herself or of Lackaday, I did not know. Anyway, I seemed
to represent to her some kind of human dummy which could be used, at need,
as a sentimental buffer.

"I presume," she continued, "I was quite as intimate a friend as Anthony?"

"Quite," said he. "But Hylton's a man and you're a woman. There can be no
comparison. You are on different planes of sentiment. For instance, Hylton,
loyal friend as he is, has not to my knowledge done me the honour of
shedding tears over Petit Patou."

I felt horribly out of place on the bench in this public leafy park, beside
these two warring lovers. But it was most humanly interesting. Lackaday
seemed to be reinvested with the dignity of the man as I had first met him,
a year ago.

"Anthony--" I could not help feeling that her repeated change of her term
of reference to me, from the formal Captain Hylton to my Christian name,
sprang from an instinctive desire to put herself on more intimate terms
with Lackaday--"Anthony," she said in her defiant way, "would have cried,
if he could."

Lackaday's features relaxed into his childlike smile.

"Ah," said he, "'The little more and how much it is. The little less and
how far away.'"

She was silent. Although the situation was painful, I could not help
feeling the ironical satisfaction that she was getting the worst of the
encounter. I was glad, because I thought she had treated him cruelly. The
unprecedented tears, however, were signs of grace. Yet the devil in her
suggested a _riposte_.

"I hope Madame Patou is quite well."

Lackaday's smile faded into the mask.

"Last night's thunderstorm upset her a little--but otherwise--yes--she is
quite well."

He rose. Lady Auriol cried:

"You're not going already?"

His ear caught a new tone, for he smiled again.

"I must get back to Clermont-Ferrand. Goodbye, Hylton."

We shook hands.

"Good-bye, old chap," said I. "We'll meet soon."

Auriol rose and turned on me an ignoring back. As I did not seem to exist
any longer, I faded shadow-like away to the park gate, where I hung about
until Auriol should join me.

As to what happened between them then, I must rely on her own report,
which, as you shall learn, she gave me later.

They stood for a while after I had gone. Then he held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Lady Auriol," said he.

"No," she said. "There are things which we really ought to say to each
other. You do believe I wish I had never come?"

"I can quite understand," said he, stiffly.

"It hurts," she said.

"Why should it matter so much?" he asked.

"I don't know--but it does."

He drew himself up and his face grew stern.

"I don't cease to be an honourable man because of my profession; or to be
worthy of respect because I am loyal to sacred obligations."

"You put me in the wrong," she said. "And I deserve it. But it all hurts.
It hurts dreadfully. Can't you see? The awful pity of it? You of all men to
be condemned to a fife like this. And you suffer too. It all hurts."

"Remember," said he, "it was the life to which I was bred."

She felt hopeless. "It's my own fault for coming," she said. "I should have
left things as they were when we parted in April. There was beauty--you
made it quite clear that our parting was final. You couldn't have acted
otherwise. Forgive me for all I've said. I pride myself on being a
practical woman; but--for that reason perhaps--I'm unused to grappling with
emotional situations. If I've been unkind, it's because I've been stabbing
myself and forgetting I'm stabbing you at the same time."

He walked a pace or two further with her. For the first time he seemed to
recognize what he, Andrew Lackaday, had meant to her.

"I'm sorry," he said gravely. "I never dreamed that it was a matter of such
concern to you. If I had, I shouldn't have left you in any doubt. To me you
were the everything that man can conceive in woman. I wanted to remain in
your memory as the man the war had made me. Vanity or pride, I don't
know. We all have our failings. I worshipped you as the _Princesse
Loinlaine_. I never told you that I am a man who has learned to keep
himself under control. Perhaps under too much control. I shouldn't tell you
now, if----"

"You don't suppose I'm a fool," she interrupted. "I knew. And the
Verity-Stewarts knew. And even my little cousin Evadne knew."

They still strolled along the path under the trees. He said after a while:

"I'm afraid I have made things very difficult for you."

She was pierced with remorse. "Oh, how like you! Any other man would have
put it the other way round and accused me of making things difficult for
him. And he would have been right. For I did come here to get news of you
from Anthony Hylton. He was so discreet that I felt that he could tell me
something. And I came and found you and have made things difficult for
you."

He said in his sober way: "Perhaps it is for the best that we have met and
had this talk. We ought to have had it months ago, but--" he turned his
face wistfully on her--"we couldn't, because I didn't know. Anyhow, it's
all over."

"Yes," she sighed. "It's all over. We're up against the stone wall of
practical life."

"Quite so," said he. "I am Petit Patou, the mountebank; my partner is
Madame Patou, whom I have known since I was a boy of twenty, to whom I am
bound by indissoluble ties of mutual fidelity, loyalty and gratitude; and
you are the Lady Auriol Dayne. We live, as I said before, in different
spheres."

"That's quite true," she said. "We have had our queer romance. It won't
hurt us. It will sweeten our lives. But, as you say, it's over. It has to
be over."

"There's no way out," said he. "It's doubly locked. Good-bye."

He bent and kissed her hand. To the casual French valetudinarians sitting
and strolling in the park, it was nothing but a social formality. But to
Auriol the touch of his lips meant the final parting of their lives, the
consecrated burial of their love.

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