The Mountebank Part 13

"Song?" cried Bakkus. "What song? That meaningless bit of moonshine inept.i.tude I quoted the other day? I have far more use for my intellect than degrading it to such criminal prost.i.tution."

Yes, he was beginning to know his Bakkus. His absorption in his new character was not entirely egotistic. Both his own intelligence and his professional experience told him that here, as he had worked out-the business in his mind, was an entirely novel attraction. In his young enthusiasm he saw hundreds crowding round the pitch on the sands. It was as much to Bakkus's interest as to his own that the new show should succeed.

And even before he had procured the costume from Covent Garden, Bakkus professed intolerable boredom. He shrugged his shoulders. Bored or not, Bakkus should go through with it. So again under the younger man's leadership Bakkus led the strenuous life of rehearsal.

It took quite a day for their fame to spread. On the second day they attracted crowds. Money poured in upon them. Little Patou, like a double-tailed serpent rearing himself upright on his tail tips, appeared at first a creature remote, of some antediluvian race--until he talked a familiar, disarming patter with his human, disarming grin. The Great Patapon, contrary to jealous antic.i.p.ation, saw himself welcomed as a contrast and received more than his usual meed of applause. This satisfied, for the time, his singer's vanity which he professed so greatly to despise.

They entered on a spell of halcyon days.

The brilliant sunny season petered out in hopeless September, raw and chill. A week had pa.s.sed without the possibility of an audience. Said Bakkus:

"Of all the loathsome spots in a noisome universe this is the most purulent. In order to keep up our rudimentary self-respect we have done our best to veil our personal ident.i.ty as images of the Almighty from the higher promenades of the vulgar. Our sole a.s.sociates have been the blatant frequenters of evil smelling bars. We've not exchanged a word with a creature approaching our intellectual calibre. I am beginning to conceive for you the bitter hatred that one of a pair of castaways has for the other; and you must regard me with feelings of equal abhorrence."

"By no means," replied Andrew. "You provide me with occupation, and that amuses me."

As the occupation for the dismal week had mainly consisted in dragging a cursing Bakkus away from public-house whisky on damp and detested walks, and in imperturbably manoeuvring him out of an idle--and potentially vicious--intrigue with the landlady's pretty and rather silly daughter, his reply brought a tragic scowl to Bakkus's face.

"There are times when I lie awake, inventing lingering deaths for you. You occupy yourself too much with my affairs. It's time our partnership in this degrading mountebankery should cease."

"Until it does, it's going to be efficient," said Andrew. "It's a come down for both of us to play on the sands and pa.s.s the hat round. I hate it as much as you do, but we've done it honourably and decently--and we'll end up in the same way."

"We end now," said Bakkus, staring out of their cheap lodging house sitting-room window at the dismal rain that veiled the row of cheap lodging houses opposite.

Andrew made a stride across the room, seized his shoulder and twisted him round.

"What about our bookings next month?"

For their success had brought them an offer of a month certain from a northern Palladium syndicate, with prospects of an extended tour.

"Dust and ashes," said Bakkus.

"You may be dust," cried Andrew hotly, "but I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm ashes."

Bakkus bit and lighted a cheap cigar and threw himself on the dilapidated sofa. "No, my dear fellow, if it comes to that, I'm the ashes. Dead! With never a recrudescent Phoenix to rise up out of them. You're the dust, the merry sport of the winds of heaven."

"Don't talk foolishness," said Andrew.

"Was there ever a man living who used his breath for any other purpose?"

"Then," said Andrew, "your talk about breaking up the partnership is mere stupidity."

"It is and it isn't," replied Bakkus. "Although I hate you, I love you.

You'll find the same paradoxical sentimental relationship in most cases between man and wife. I love you, and I wish you well, my dear boy. I should like to see you Merry-Andrew yourself to the top of the Merry-Andrew tree. But for insisting on my accompanying you on that uncomfortable and strenuous ascent, without very much glory to myself, I frankly detest you."

"That doesn't matter a bit to me," said Andrew. "You've got to carry out your contract."

Bakkus sighed. "Need I? What's a contract? I say I am willing to perform vocal and other antics for so many shillings a week. When I come to think of it, my soul revolts at the sale of itself for so many shillings a week to perform actions utterly at variance with its aspirations. As a matter of fact I am tired. Thanks to my brain and your physical cooperation, I have my pockets full of money. I can afford a holiday. I long for bodily sloth, for the ragged intellectual companionship that only Paris can give me, for the resumption of study of the philosophy of the excellent Henri Bergson, for the absinthe that brings forgetfulness, for the Tanagra figured, broad-mouthed, snub-nosed shrew that fills every day with potential memories."

"Oh that's it, is it?" cried Andrew, with a glare in his usually mild eyes and his ugly jaw set. They had had many pa.s.sages at arms. Bakkus's sophistical rhetoric against Andrew's steady common sense; and they had sharpened Andrew's wit. But never before had they come to a serious quarrel. Feeling his power he had hitherto exercised it with humorous effectiveness. But now the situation appeared entirely devoid of humour. He was coldly and sternly angry.

"That's the beginning and end of the whole thing? It all comes down to a worthless little Montmartroise? For a little thing of _rien du tout,_ the artist, the philosopher, the English public school man will throw over his friend, his partner, his signed word, his honour? _Mon Dieu!_ Well go--I can easily--No, I'll not say what I have in my mind."

Bakkus turned over on his side, facing his adversary, his under arm outstretched, the cigar in his fingers.

"I love to see youth perspiring--especially with n.o.ble rage. It does it good, discharges the black humours of the body. If I could perspire more freely I should be singing in Grand Opera."

"You can break your contract and I'll do without you," cried the furious Andrew.

"I'm not going to break the contract, my young friend," replied Bakkus, peering at him through lowered eyelids. "When did I say such a thing? We end the damp and dripping folly of the sands."

"We don't," said Andrew.

"As you will," said Bakkus. "Again I prophesy that you'll be drilling awkward squads in barrack yards before you've done. It's all you're fit for."

Andrew smiled or grinned with closed lips. It was his grim smile, many years afterwards to become familiar to larger bodies of men than awkward squads. Once more he had won his little victory.

So peace was made. They finished up the miserable f.a.g end of the season and with modest success carried out their month's contract in the northern towns. But even Andrew's drastic leadership could not prevail on Bakkus's indolence to sign an extension. Montmartre called him. An engagement. He also spoke vaguely of singing lessons. Now that Parisians had returned to Paris, he could not afford to lose his connections. With cynical frankness he also confessed his disinclination to be recognized in a music-hall Punch and Judy show by his brother the Archdeacon.

"Archdeacons," said Andrew--he had a confused idea of their prelatical status, "don't go to music-halls."

"They do in this country," said Bakkus. "They're everywhere. They infest the air like microbes. You only have to open your mouth and you get your lungs filled with them. It's a pestilential country and I've done with it."

"All right," replied Andrew, "I'll run the show on my own."

But the Palladium syndicate, willing to book "The Great Patapon and Little Patou" for a further term, declined to rebook Little Patou by himself.

He returned to Paris, where he found Bakkus wallowing in absinthe and philosophic sloth.

"We might have made our fortune in England," said he.

Said Bakkus coolly sipping his absinthe, "I have no desire to make my fortune. Have you?"

"I should like to make my name and a big position," replied Andrew.

"And I, my young friend? As the f.a.g end of the comet's tail should I have made my name and a big position? Ah egotist! Egotist! Sublime egotist! The true artist using human souls as the rungs of his ladder! Well, go your ways. I have no reproach against you. Now that I'm out of your barrack square, my heart is overflowing with love for you. You have ever a friend in Horatio Bakkus. When you fall on evil days and you haven't a sou in your pocket, come to me--and you'll always find an inspiration."

"I wish you would give me one now," said Andrew, who had spent a fruitless morning at the Agence Moignon.

"You want a foil, an intelligent creature who will play up to you--a creature far more intelligent than I am. A dog. Buy a dog. A poodle."

"By Gum!" cried Andrew, "I believe you're right again."

"I'm never wrong," said Bakkus. "Garcon!" He summoned the waiter and waved his hand towards the little accusing pile of saucers. "Monsieur always pays for my inspirations."

Chapter VIII