A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Mountebank

W >> William J. Locke >> The Mountebank




I informed him that, my early morning treatment over, I was free as air.

"Besides," said I, "I shall be at a loose end. Lady Auriol's taking the
midnight train to Paris."

"Oh!" said he.

There was a pause.

"'Allo!" said I.

His voice responded: "In that case, I'll come to Clermont-Ferrand by the
first train and see you."

"Nonsense," said I.

But he would have it his own way. Evidently the absence of Lady Auriol made
all the difference. I yielded.

"What's the trouble?" I asked.

"I'll tell you when I see you," said he. "I don't know the trains, but I'll
come by the first. Your _concierge_ will look it up for you. Thanks
very much. Good-bye."'

"But, my dear fellow----" I began.

But I spoke into nothingness. He had rung off.

Auriol and I spent a comfortable evening together. There was no question of
Lackaday. For her part, she raised none. For mine--why should I disturb her
superbly regained balance with idle chatter about our morrow's meeting?
We talked of the past glories of the day; of an almost forgotten day of
disastrous picnic in the mountains of North Wales, when her twelve-year-old
sense of humour detected the artificial politeness with which I sought to
cloak my sodden misery; of all sorts of pleasant far-off things; of the
war; of what may be called the war-continuation-work in the devastated
districts in which she was at present engaged. I reminded her of our
fortuitous meetings, when she trudged by my side through the welter of rain
and liquid mud, smoking the fag-end of my last pipe of tobacco.

"One lived in those days," she said with a full-bosomed sigh.

"By the dispensation of a merciful Providence," I said, "one hung on to a
strand of existence."

"It was fine!" she declared.

"It was--for the appropriate adjective," said I, "consult any humble member
of the British Army."

We had a whole, long evening's talk, which did not end until I left her in
the train at Clermont-Ferrand.

On our midnight way thither, she said:

"Now I know you love me, Tony."

"Why now?" I asked.

"How many people are there in the world whom you would see off by a
midnight train, three or four miles from your comfortable bed?"

"Not many," I admitted.

"That's why I want you to feel I'm grateful." She sought my hand and patted
it. "I've been a dreadful worry to you. I've been through a hard time."
This was her first and only reference during the day to the romance. "I had
to cut something out of my living self, and I couldn't help groaning a bit.
But the operation's over--and I'll never worry you again."

At the station I packed her into the dark and already suffocating
compartment. She announced her intention to sleep all night like a dog. She
went off, in the best of spirits, to the work in front of her, which after
all was a more reasonable cure than tossing about the Outer Hebrides in a
five-ton yacht.

I drove home to bed and slept the sleep of the perfect altruist.

I was reading the _Moniteur du Puy de Dôme_ on the hotel terrace next
morning, when Lackaday was announced. He looked grimmer and more careworn
than ever, and did not even smile as he greeted me. He only said gravely
that it was good of me to let him come over. I offered him refreshment,
which he declined.

"You may be wondering," said he, "why I have asked for this interview. But
after all I have told you about myself, it did not seem right to leave you
in ignorance of certain things. Besides, you've so often given me your
kind sympathy, that, as a lonely man, I've ventured to trespass on it once
more."

"My dear Lackaday, you know that I value your friendship," said I, not
wishing to be outdone in courteous phrase, "and that my services are
entirely at your disposal."

"I had better tell you in a few words what has happened," said he.

He told me.

Elodie had gone, disappeared, vanished into space, like the pearl necklaces
which Petit Patou used to throw at her across the stage.

"But how? When?" I asked, in bewilderment; for Lackaday and Elodie, as Les
Petit Patou, seemed as indissoluble as William and Mary or Pommery and
Greno.

He had gone to her room at ten o'clock the previous morning, her breakfast
hour, and found it wide open and empty save for the _femme de chambre_
making great clatter of sweeping. He stood open-mouthed on the threshold.
To be abroad at such an hour was not in Elodie's habits. Their train did
not start till the afternoon. His eye quickly caught the uninhabited
bareness of the apartment. Not a garment straggled about the room. The
toilet table, usually strewn with a myriad promiscuously ill-assorted
articles, stared nakedly. There were no boxes. The cage of love-birds,
Elodie's inseparable companions, had gone.

"Madame----?"

He questioned the _femme de chambre_.

"But Madame has departed. Did not Monsieur know?"

Monsieur obviously did not know. The girl gave him the information of which
she was possessed. Madame had gone in an automobile at six o'clock. She had
rung the bell. The _femme de chambre_ had answered it. The staff were
up early on account of the seven o'clock train for Paris.

"Then Madame has gone to Paris," cried Lackaday.

But the girl demurred at the proposition. One does not hire an automobile
from a garage, _a voiture de luxe, quoi?_ to go to the railway
station, when the hotel omnibus would take one there for a franc or two. As
she was saying, Madame rang her bell and gave orders for her luggage to be
taken down. It was not much, said Lackaday; they travelled light, their
professional paraphernalia having to be considered. Well, the luggage was
taken down to the automobile that was waiting at the door, and Madame had
driven off. That is all she knew.

Lackaday strode over to the bureau and assailed the manager. Why had he not
been informed of the departure of Madame? It apparently never entered the
manager's polite head that Monsieur Patou was ignorant of Madame Patou's
movements. Monsieur had given notice that they were leaving. Artists like
Monsieur and Madame Patou were bound to make special arrangements for their
tours, particularly nowadays when railway travelling was difficult. So
Madame's departure had occasioned no surprise.

"Who took her luggage down?" he demanded.

The dingy waistcoated, alpaca-sleeved porter, wearing the ribbon of the
Médaille Militaire on his breast, came forward. At six o'clock, while he
was sweeping the hall, an automobile drew up outside. He said: "Whom are
you come to fetch? The Queen of Spain?" And the chauffeur told him to
mind his own business. At that moment the bell rang. He went up to the
_étage_ indicated. The _femme de chambre_ beckoned him to the
room and he took the luggage and Madame took the bird-cage, and he put
Madame and the luggage and the birdcage into the auto, and Madame gave him
two francs, and the car drove off, whither the porter knew not.

Although he put it to me very delicately, as he had always conveyed his
criticism of Elodie, the fact that struck a clear and astounding note
through his general bewilderment, was the unprecedented reckless
extravagance of the economical Elodie. There was the omnibus. There was the
train. Why the car at the fantastic rate of one franc fifty per kilometre,
to say nothing of the one franc fifty per kilometre for the empty car's
return journey?

"And Madame was all alone in the automobile," said the porter, by way of
reassurance. "Pardon, Monsieur," he added, fading away under Lackaday's
glare.

"I cut the indignity of it all as short as I could," said Lackaday, "and
went up to my room to size things up. It was a knock-down blow to me in
many ways, as you no doubt can understand. And then came the _femme
de chambre_ with a letter addressed to me. It had fallen between the
looking-glass and the wall."

He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to me.

"You had better read it."

I fitted my glasses on my nose and read. In the sprawling, strong,
illiterate hand I saw and felt Elodie.

_Mon petit André_----

But I must translate inadequately, for the grammar and phrasing were
Elodesque.

As you no longer love me, if ever you have loved me, which I doubt, for
we have made _un drôle de ménage_ ever since we joined ourselves
together, and as our life in common is giving you unhappiness, which it
does me also, for since you have returned from England as a General you
have not been the same, and indeed I have never understood how a General
[and then followed a couple of lines vehemently erased]. And as I do not
wish to be a burden to you, but desire that you should feel yourself free
to lead whatever life you like, I have taken the decision to leave you for
ever--_pour tout jamais_. It is the best means to regain happiness.

For the things that are still at the Cirque Vendramin, do with them what
you will. I shall write to Ernestine to send me my clothes and all the
little birds I love so much. Your noble heart will not grudge them to me,
_mon petit André_.

Praying God for your happiness, I am always

Your devoted

ELODIE

I handed him back the letter without a word. What could one say?

"The first thing I did," he said, putting the letter back in his pocket,
"was to ring up Bakkus, to see whether he could throw any light on the
matter."

"Bakkus--why, he cut his engagement with us yesterday."

"The damned scoundrel," said Lackaday, "was running away with Elodie."




Chapter XXIII



He banged his hand on the little iron table in front of us and started to
his feet, exploding at last with his suppressed fury.

"The infernal villain!"

I gasped for a few seconds. Then I accomplished my life's effort in
self-control. My whole being clamoured for an explosion equally violent of
compressed mirth. I ached to lie back in my chair and shriek with laughter.
The _dénouement_ of the little drama was so amazingly unexpected, so
unexpectedly ludicrous. A glimmer of responsive humour in his eyes would
have sent me off. But there he stood, with his grimmest battle-field face,
denouncing his betrayer. Even a smile on my part would have been insulting.

Worked up, he told me the whole of the astonishing business, as far as he
knew it. They had eloped at dawn, like any pair of young lovers. Of
that there was no doubt. The car had picked up Bakkus at his hotel in
Royat--Lackaday had the landlord's word for it--and had carried the pair
away, Heaven knew whither. The proprietor of the Royat garage deposed that
Mr. Bakkus had hired the car for the day, mentioning no objective. The
runaways had the whole of France before them. Pursuit was hopeless. As
Lackaday had planned to go to Vichy, he went to Vichy. There seemed nothing
else to do.

"But why elope at dawn?" I cried. "Why all the fellow's unnecessary
duplicity? Why, in the name of Macchiavelli, did he seize upon my ten
o'clock invitation with such enthusiasm? Why his private conversation with
me? Why throw dust into my sleepy eyes? What did he gain by it?"

Lackaday shrugged his shoulders. That part of the matter scarcely
interested him. He was concerned mainly with the sting of the viper Bakkus,
whom he had nourished in his bosom.

"But, my dear fellow," said I at last, after a tiring march up and down the
hot terrace, "you don't seem to realize that Bakkus has solved all your
difficulties, _ambulando_, by walking off, or motoring off, with your
great responsibility."

"You mean," said he, coming to a halt, "that this has removed the reason
for my remaining on the stage?"

"It seems so," said I.

He frowned. "I wish it could have happened differently. No man can bear to
be tricked and fooled and made a mock of."

"But it does give you your freedom," said I.

He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. "I suppose it does," he
admitted savagely. "But there's a price for everything. Even freedom can be
purchased too highly."

He strode on. I had to accompany him, perspiringly. It was a very hot day.
We talked and talked; came back to the startling event. We had to believe
it, because it was incredible, as Tertullian cheerily remarked of
ecclesiastical dogma. But short of the Archbishop of Canterbury eloping
with the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour nothing could seem less
possible. If Bakkus had nurtured nefarious designs, Good Heavens! he could
have executed them years before. Well, perhaps not. When one hasn't a penny
in one's pocket even the most cynical pauses ere he proposes romantic
flight with a lady equally penniless. But since April, Bakkus had been
battening on the good Archdeacon, his brother's substantial allowance. Why
had he tarried?

"His diabolical cunning lay in wait for a weak moment," growled Lackaday.

All through this discussion, I came up against a paradox of human nature.
Although it was obvious that the unprincipled Bakkus had rendered my good
friend the service of ridding him of the responsibility of a woman whom he
had ceased to love, if ever he had loved her at all, a woman, who, for all
her loyal devotion through loveless years, had stood implacably between him
and the realization of his dreams, yet he rampaged against his benefactor,
as though he had struck a fatal blow at the roots of his honour and his
happiness.

"But after all, man, can't you see," he cried in protest at my worldly and
sophistical arguments, "that I've lost one of the most precious things in
the world? My implicit faith in a fellow-man. I gave Bakkus a brother's
trust. He has betrayed it. Where am I? His thousand faults have been
familiar to me for years. I discounted them for the good in him. I thought
I had grasped it." He clenched his delicate hand in a passionate gesture.
"But now"--he opened it--"nothing. I'm at sea. How can I know that you,
whom I have trusted more than any other man with my heart's secrets------?"

The _concierge_ with a dusty chauffeur in tow providentially cut short
this embarrassing apostrophe.

"Monsieur le Capitaine Hylton?" asked the chauffeur.

"_C'est moi_."

He handed me a letter. I glanced at the writing on the envelope.

"From Bakkus!" I said. "Tell me"--to the chauffeur--"how did you come by
it?"

"Monsieur charged me to deliver it into the hands of Monsieur le Capitaine.
I have this moment returned to Royat."

"Ah," said I. "You drove the automobile? Where is Monsieur Bakkus?"

"That," said he, "I have pledged my honour not to divulge."

I fished in my pocket for some greasy rags of paper money which I pressed
into his honourable hand. He bowed and departed. I tore open the envelope.

"You will excuse me?"

"Oh, of course," said Lackaday curtly. He lit a cigarette and stalked to
the end of the terrace.

The letter bore neither date nor address. I read:

MY DEAR HYLTON,

You have heard of Touchstone. You have heard of Audrey. Shakespeare has
doubtless convinced you of the inevitability of their mating. I have always
prided myself of a certain Touchstone element in my nature. There is much
that is Audrey-esque in the lady whose disappearance from Clermont-Ferrand
may be causing perturbation. As my Shakespearian preincarnation scorned
dishonourable designs, so do even I. The marriage of Veuve Elodie Marescaux
and Horatio Bakkus will take place at the earliest opportunity allowed
by French law. If that delays too long, we shall fly to England where an
Archbishop's special licence will induce a family Archdeacon to marry us
straight away.

My flippancy, my dear Hylton, is but a motley coat.

If there is one being in this world whom I love and honour, it is Andrew
Lackaday. From the first day I met him, I, a cynical disillusioned wastrel,
he a raw yet uncompromising lad, I felt that here, somehow, was a sheet
anchor in my life. He has fed me when I have been hungry, he has lashed me
when I have been craven-hearted, he has raised me when I have fallen. There
can be only three beings in the Cosmos who know how I have been saved times
out of number from the nethermost abyss--I and Andrew Lackaday and God.

I passed my hand over my eyes when I read this remarkable outburst of
devoted affection on the part of the seducer and betrayer for the man he
had wronged. I thought of the old couplet about the dissembling of love
and the kicking downstairs. I read on, however, and found the mystery
explained.

The time has come for me to pay him, in part, my infinite debt of
gratitude.

You may have been surprised when I wrung your hand warmly before
parting. Your words removed every hesitating scruple. Had you said,
"there is nothing between a certain lady and Andrew Lackaday," I should
have been to some extent nonplussed. I should have doubted my judgment.
I should have pressed you further. If you had convinced me that the
whole basis of my projected action was illusory, I should have found
means to cancel the arrangements. But remember what you said. "There
can't by any possibility be anything between Lady Auriol Dayne and
Petit Patou."

"Damn the fellow," I muttered. "Now he's calmly shifting the responsibility
on to me."

And I swore a deep oath that nevermore would I interfere in anybody else's
affairs, not even if Bolshevist butchers were playing with him before my
very eyes.

There, my dear Hylton (the letter went on), you gave away the key of
the situation. My judgment had been unerring. As Petit Patou, our
friend stood beyond the pale. As General Lackaday, he stepped into all
the privileges of the Enclosure. Bound by such ties to Madame Patou as
an honourable and upright gentleman like our friend could not d
of severing, he was likewise bound to his vain and heart-breaking
existence as Petit Patou. A free man, he could cast off his mountebank
trappings and go forth into the world, once more as General Lackaday,
the social equal of the gracious lady whom he loved and whose feelings
towards him, as eyes far less careless than ours could see at a glance,
were not those of placid indifference.

The solution of the problem dawned on me like an inspiration. Why not
sacrifice my not over-valued celibacy on the altar of friendship? For
years Elodie and I have been, _en lout bien et tout honneur_, the
most intimate of comrades. I don't say that, for all the gold in the
Indies, I would not marry a woman out of my brother's Archdeaco
If she asked me, I probably should. But I should most certainly, such
being my unregenerate nature, run away with the gold and leave the
lady. For respectability to have attraction you must be bred in
You must regard the dog collar and chain as the great and God-given
blessing of your life. The old fable of the dog and the wolf. But I've
lived my life, till past fifty, as the disreputable wolf--and so,
please God, will I remain till I die. But, after all, being human, I'm
quite a kind sort of wolf. Thanks to my brother--no longer will hunger
drive the wolf abroad. You remember Villon's lines:

"Necessité fait gens mesprendre
Et faim sortir le loup des boys."

I shall live in plethoric ease my elderly vulpine life. But the elderly
wolf needs a mate for his old age, who is at one with him in his
(entirely unsinful) habits of disrepute. Where in this universe, then,
could I find a fitter mate than Elodie?

Which brings me back, although I'm aware of glaring psychological
flaws, to my Touchstone and Audrey prelude.

Writing, as I am doing, in a devil of a hurry, I don't pretend to
Meredithean analysis.

Elodie's refusal to marry Andrew Lackaday had something to do
a woman's illusions. She is going to marry me because there's no
possibility of any kind of illusion whatsoever. My good brother whom, I
grieve to say, is in the very worst of health, informs me that he has
made a will in my favour. Heaven knows, I am contented enough as I am.
But, the fact remains, which no doubt will ease our dear frie
mind, that Elodie's future is assured. In the meanwhile we will devote
ourselves to the cultivation of that peculiarly disreputable sloth
which is conducive to longevity, _relevé_ (according to the
gastronomic idiom) on my part, with the study of French Heraldry which
in the present world upheaval, is the most futile pursuit conceivable
by a Diogenic philosopher.

I can't write this to Lackaday, who no doubt is saying all the dreadful
things that he learned with our armies in Flanders. He would not
understand. He would not understand the magic of romance, the secrecy,
the thrill of the dawn elopement, the romance of the _coup de
théâtre_ by which alone I was able to induce Elodie to co-operate in
the part payment of my infinite debt of gratitude.

I therefore write to you, confident that, as an urbane citizen of the
world you will be able to convey to the man I love most on earth, the
real essence of this, the apologia of Elodie and myself. What more can
a man do than lay down his bachelor life for a friend?

Yours sincerely,

Horatio Bakkus

P.S.--If you had convinced me that I was staring hypnotically at a
mare's nest, I should have had much pleasure in joining you on your
excursion. I hope you went and enjoyed it and found Orcival exceeding
my poor dithyrambic.

I had to read over this preposterous epistle again before I fully grasped
its significance. On the first reading it seemed incredible that the man
could be sincere in his professions; on the second, his perfect good faith
manifested itself in every line. Had I read it a third time, I, no doubt,
should have regarded him as an heroic figure, with a halo already beginning
to shimmer about his head.

I walked up to Lackaday at the end of the terrace and handed him the
letter. It was the simplest thing to do. He also read it twice, the
first time with scowling brow, the second with a milder expression of
incredulity. He looked down on me--I don't stand when a handy chair invites
me to sit.

"This is the most amazing thing I've ever heard of."

I nodded. He walked a few yards away and attacked the letter for the third
time. Then he gave it back to me with a smile.

"I don't believe he's such an infernal scoundrel after all."

"Ah!" said I.

He leaned over the balustrade and plunged into deep reflection.

"If it's genuine, it's an unheard of piece of Quixotism."

"I'm sure it's genuine."

"By Gum!" said he. He gazed at the vine-clad hill in the silence of
wondering admiration.

At last I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Let us lunch," said I.

We strolled to the upper terrace.

"It is wonderful," he remarked on the way thither, "how much sheer goodness
there is in humanity."

"Pure selfishness on my part. I hate lunching alone," said I.

He turned on me a pained look.

"I wasn't referring to you."

Then meeting something quizzical in my eye, he grinned his broad ear-to-ear
grin of a child of six.

We lunched. We smoked and talked. At every moment a line seemed to fade
from his care-worn face. At any rate, everything was not for the worst in
the worst possible of worlds. I think he felt his sense of freedom steal
over him in his gradual glow. At last I had him laughing and mimicking, in
his inimitable way--a thing which he had not done for my benefit since the
first night of our acquaintance--the elderly and outraged Moignon whom he
proposed to visit in Paris, for the purpose of cancelling his contracts.
As for Vichy--Vichy could go hang. There were ravening multitudes of
demobilized variety artists besieging every stage-door in France. He was
letting down nobody; neither the managements nor the public. Moignon would
find means of consolation.

"My dear Hylton," said he, "now that my faith in Bakkus is not only
restored but infinitely strengthened, and my mind is at rest concerning
Elodie, I feel as though ten years were lifted from my life. I'm no longer
Petit Patou. The blessed relief of it! Perhaps," he added, after a pause,
"the discipline has been good for my soul."

"In what way?"

"Well, you see," he replied thoughtfully, "in my profession I always was a
second-rater. I was aware of it; but I was content, because I did my best.
In the Army my vanity leads me to believe I was a first-rater. Then I had
to go back, not only to second-rate, but to third-rate, having lost a lot
in five years. It was humiliating. But all the same I've no doubt it has
been the best thing in the world for me. The old hats will still fit."

"If I had a quarter of your vicious modesty," said I, "I would see that I
turned it into a dazzling virtue. What are your plans?"

"You remember my telling you of a man I met in Marseilles called
Arbuthnot?"

"Yes," said I, "the fellow who shies at coco-nuts in the Solomon Islands."

He grinned, and with singular aptness he replied:

"I'll cable him this afternoon and see whether I can still have three shies
for a penny."

We discussed the proposal. Presently he rose. He must go to Vichy, where he
had to wind up certain affairs of Les Petit Patou. To-morrow he would start
for Paris and await Arbuthnot's reply.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.