The Mountebank Part 3

"Do have a bite. It's lovely. And I've left you the blushy side."

What could I do? There she stood, fair, slim, bobbed-haired, green-kirtled, serious-eyed, carelessly juicy-lipped, holding up the peach. I, to whom all wall-fruit is death, bit into the side that blushed. She anxiously watched my expression.

"Topping, isn't it?"

"Yum, yum," said I.

"Isn't it?" she said, taking back the peach.

That's the beauty of childhood. It demands no elaborate expression.

Simplicity is its only coinage. A rhapsody on the exquisiteness of the fruit's flavour would have bored Evadne stiff. Her soul yearned for the establishment between us of a link of appreciation. "Yum, yum," said I, and the link was instantly supplied.

She threw away a peach stone and sighed.

"Let's go."

"Why?" I asked.

"I'm not looking for any more trouble," she replied.

We returned to the lawn and Lady Auriol and Colonel Lackaday. Not a hole could be picked in the perfect courtesy of their greeting; but it lacked pa.s.sionate enthusiasm. Evadne and I sat down, and our exceedingly dull conversation was soon interrupted by the advent of the church goers.

Towards lunch time Lackaday and I, chance companions, strolled towards the house.

"What a charming woman," he remarked.

"Lady Verity-Stewart," said I, with a touch of malice--our hostess was the last woman with whom he had spoken--"is a perfect dear."

"So she is, but I meant Lady Auriol."

"I've known her since she was that high," I said spreading out a measuring hand. "Her development has been most interesting."

A shade of annoyance pa.s.sed over the Colonel's ugly good-humoured face.

To treat the radiant creature who had swum into his ken as a subject for psychological observation savoured of profanity. With a smile I added:

"She's one of the very best."

His brow cleared and his teeth gleamed out my tribute.

"I've met very few English ladies in the course of my life," said he half apologetically. "The other day, a brother officer finding me fooling about Pall Mall insisted on my lunching with him at the Carlton. He had a party.

I sat next to a Mrs. Tankerville, who I gather is a celebrity."

"She is," said I. "And she said, 'You must really come and have tea with me to-morrow. I've a crowd of most interesting people coming.'"

"She did," cried Lackaday, regarding me with awestricken eyes, as Saul must have looked at the Witch of Endor. "But I didn't go. I couldn't talk to her. I was as dumb as a fish. Oh, d.a.m.ned dumb! And the dumber I was the more she talked at me. I had risen from the ranks, hadn't I? She thought careers like mine such a romance. I just sat and sweated and couldn't eat.

She made me feel as if she was going to exhibit me as the fighting skeleton in her freak museum. If ever I see that woman coming towards me in the street, I'll turn tail and run like h.e.l.l."

I laughed. "You mustn't compare Mrs. Tankerville with Lady Auriol Dayne."

"_Mon Dieu!_ I should think not!" he cried with a fervent gesture.

"Lady Auriol----"

Our pa.s.sage from the terrace across the threshold of the drawing-room cut short a possible rhapsody.

Later in the afternoon, in the panelled Elizabethan entrance hall, I came across Lady Auriol in tweed coat and skirt and business-like walking boots, a felt hat on her head and a stout stick in her hands.

"Whither away?" I asked.

"Colonel Lackaday and I are off for a tramp, over to Glas...o...b..ry." Her lips moved ironically. "Like to come?"

"G.o.d forbid!" I cried.

"Thought you wouldn't," she said, drawing on a wash-leather gauntlet, "but when I'm in Society, I do try to be polite."

"My teaching and example for the last twenty years," said I, "have not been without effect."

"You're a master of deportment, my dear Tony." I was old enough to be her father, but she had always called me Tony, and had no more respect for my grey hairs than her cousin Evadne. "Tell me," she said, with a swift change of manner, "do you know anything about Colonel Lackaday?"

"We met here as strangers," said I, "and I can only say that he impresses me as being a very gallant gentleman."

Her face beamed. She held out her hand. "I'm so glad you think so." She glanced at the clock.

"Good Lord! I'm a minute late. He's outside. I loathe unpunctuality. So long, Tony."

She waved a careless farewell and strode out.

In the evening she gave Sir Julius to understand that, for aught she cared, he could go into a corner and play Bridge by himself, thus holding herself free, as it appeared to my amused fancy, for any pleasanter eventuality. In a few moments Colonel Lackaday was sitting by her side. I drew a chair to a bridge-table, and idly looked over my hostess's hand. Presently, being dummy, she turned to me, with a little motion of her head towards the pair and whispered:

"Those two--Auriol and ---- don't you think it's rather rapid?"

"My dear Selina," said I. "What would you have? '_C'est la guerre_.'"

Chapter III

It was rather rapid, this intimacy between the odd a.s.sorted pair--the high-bred woman of fervid action and the mild and gawky Colonel born in a travelling circus. Holding the key to his early life, and losing myself in conjecture as to his subsequent career until he found himself possessed of the qualities that make a successful soldier, I could not help noticing the little things, unperceived by a generous war society, which pathetically proved that his world and that of Lady Auriol, for all her earth-wide Bohemianism, were star distances apart. Little tiny things that one feels ashamed to record. His swift glance round to a.s.sure himself of the particular knife and fork he should use at a given stage of the meal--the surrept.i.tious pushing forward on the plate, of the knife which he had leaned, French fashion, on the edge; his queer distress on entering the drawing-room--his helplessness until the inevitable and unconscious rescue, for he was the honoured guest; the restraint, manifest to me, which he imposed on his speech and gestures. Everyone loved him for his simplicity of manners. In fact they were natural to the man. He might have saved himself a world of worry. But his trained observation had made him aware of the existence of a thousand social solecisms, his sensitive character shrank from their possible committal, and he employed his mimetic genius as an instrument of salvation. And then his English--his drawing-room English--was not spontaneous. It was thought out, phrased, excellent academic English, not the horrible ordinary lingo that we sling at each other across a dinner-table; the English, though without a trace of foreign accent, yet of one who has spent a lifetime in alien lands and has not met his own tongue save on the printed page; of one, therefore, who not being sure of the shade of slang admissible in polite circles, carefully and almost painfully avoids its use altogether.

Yet all through that long weekend--we were pressed to stay till the Wednesday morning--no one, so far as I know, suspected that Colonel Lackaday found himself in an unfamiliar and puzzling environment.

His appointment to the Brigade came on the Tuesday. He showed me the letter, during a morning stroll in the garden.

"Don't tell anybody, please," said he.

"Of course not." I could not repress an ironical glance, thinking of Lady Auriol. "If you would prefer to make the announcement your own way."