Simon the Jester Part 16

And will Captain Vauvenarde understand her? Of course he won't. But then he is her husband, and husbands are notoriously and _c.u.m privilegio_ dunder-headed. I make no pretensions to understand her, but as I am neither her lover nor her husband it does not matter. She says nothing diabolical or eerie or fantastic or feline or pre-Adamite or uncanny or spiritual; and yet she _is_, in a queer, indescribable way, all these things.

"_Je le veux_," she said, and we drank in each other's souls, or gaped at each other like a pair of idiots just as you please. I had a horrible, yet pleasurable consciousness that she had gripped hold of my nerves of volition. She was willing me to live. I was a puppet in her hands like the wild tom-cat. At that moment I declare I could have purred and rubbed my head against her knee. I would have done anything she bade me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat in the Orient express.

What would have happened next Heaven alone knows--for we could not have gone on gazing at each other until I backed myself out at the door by way of leave-taking--had not Anticlimax arrived in the person of Mr.

Anastasius Papadopoulos in his eternal frock-coat. But his gloves were black.

As usual he fell on his knees and kissed his lady's hand. Then he rose and greeted me with solemn affability.

"_C'est un privilege de rencontrer den gnadigsten Herrn_," said he.

Confining myself to one language, I responded by informing him that it was an honour always to meet so renowned a professor, and inquired politely after the health of Hephaestus.

"Ah, Signore!" he cried. "Do not ask me. It is a tragedy from which I shall never recover."

He sat down on a footstool by the side of Madame Brandt and burst into tears, which coursed down his cheeks and moustache and hung like drops of dew from the point of his imperial.

"Is he dead?" asked Madame.

"I wish he were! No. It is only the iron self-restraint that I possess which prevented me from slaying him on the spot. But poor Santa Bianca!

My gentle and accomplished Angora. He has killed her. I can scarcely raise my head through grief."

Lola put her great arm round the little man's neck and patted him like a child, while he sobbed as if his heart would break.

When he recovered he gave us the details of the tragic end of Santa Bianca, and wound up by calling down the most ingeniously complicated and pa.s.sionate curses on the head of the murderer. Lola Brandt strove to pacify him.

"We all have our sorrows, Anastasius. Did I not lose my beautiful horse Sultan?"

The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his tears with a n.o.ble gesture of his black-gloved hand.

Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face of her eternal affliction. He turned to me and bade me mark her serene n.o.bility. It was a model and an example for him to follow. He, too, would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.

"Behold! I smile, carissima!" he cried dramatically.

We beheld--and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the deceased Santa Bianca) contorted into a grimace of hideous imbecility.

"Monsieur," said he, a.s.suming his natural expression which was one of pensive melancholy, "let us change the conversation. You are a great statesman. Will you kindly let me know your opinion on the foreign policy of Germany?"

Whereupon he sat down again upon his stool and regarded me with earnest attention.

"Germany," said I, with the solemnity of a Sir Oracle in the smoking-room of one of the political clubs, "has dreams of an empire beyond her frontiers, and with a view to converting the dream into a reality, is turning out battleships nineteen to the dozen."

The Professor nodded his head sagaciously, and looked up at Lola.

"Very profound," said he, "very profound. I shall remember it. I am a Greek, Monsieur, and the Greeks, as you know, are a nation of diplomatists."

"Ever since the days of Xenophon," said I.

"You're both too clever for me," exclaimed our hostess. "Where did you get your knowledge from, Anastasius?"

The Professor, flattered, pa.s.sed his hand over his bulgy forehead.

"I was a great student in my youth," said he. "Once I could tell you all the kings of Rome and the date of the battle of Actium. But pressure of weightier concerns has driven my erudition from me. Pardon me. I have not yet asked after your health. You are looking sad and troubled. What is the matter?"

He sat bolt upright, fingering his imperial and regarding her with the keen solicitude of a family physician. To my amazement, Lola Brandt told him quite simply:

"I am thinking of living with my husband again."

"Has the traitor been annoying you?" he asked with a touch of fierceness.

"Oh, no! It's my own idea. I'm tired of living alone. I don't even know where he is."

"Do you want to know where he is?"

"How can I communicate with him unless I do?"

Anastasius Papadopoulos rose, struck an att.i.tude, and thumped his breast.

"I will seek him for you at the ends of the earth, and will bring him to prostrate himself at your feet."

"That's very kind of you, Anastasius," said Lola gently; "but what will become of your cats?"

The dwarf raised his hand impressively.

"The Almighty will have them in His keeping. I have also my pupil and a.s.sistant, Quast."

Lola smiled indulgently from her cushions, showing her curious even teeth.

"You mustn't do anything so mad, Anastasius, I forbid you."

"Madame," said he in a most stately manner, "when I devote myself, it is to the death. I have the honour to salute you!"--he bowed over her hand and kissed it. "Monsieur." He bowed to me with the profundity of a hidalgo, and trotted magnificently out of the room.

It was all so sudden that it took my breath away.

"Well I'm----" I didn't know what I was, so I stopped. Lola Brandt broke into low laughter at my astonishment.

"That's Anastasius's way," she explained.

"But the little man surely isn't going to leave his cats and start on a wild-goose chase over Europe to find your husband?"

"He thinks he is, but I shan't let him."

"I hope you won't," said I. "And will you tell me why you made so hot-headed a person your confidant?"

I confess that I was wrathful. Here had I been using the wiles of a Balkan chancery to bring the lady to my way of thinking, and here was she, to my face, making a joke of it with this caricature of a Paladin.

"My dearest friend," she replied earnestly, "don't be angry with me.

I've given the poor little man something to think of besides the death of his cat. It will do him good. And why shouldn't I tell him? He's a dear old friend, and in his way was so good to me when I was unhappy. He knows all about my married life. You may think he's half-witted; but he isn't. In ordinary business dealings he's as shrewd as they make 'em.

The manager who beats Anastasius over a contract is yet to be born."