The Mountebank Part 31

"So am I. Till my boat sails. I thought before I left I'd look at a merrier end of France. By Gosh! They're a happy crowd"--he pointed to the packed ma.s.s on board the ancient tub of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique.

"You share their feelings," said Andrew.

Arbuthnot glanced at him keenly.

"I heard they made you a Brigadier. Yes? And you've chucked it?"

"I'm a civilian, even as you are," said Andrew.

Arbuthnot pushed back his hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"For goodness' sake let us get out of this and sit down somewhere and have a talk."

He moved away, Andrew following, and hailed a broken down cab, a victoria which had just deposited a pa.s.senger by the steamer's side.

"To the Cannebiere," said he, and they drove off. "If you have anything to do, please tell me. But I know n.o.body in this furnace of a town. You're a G.o.dsend."

A while afterwards they were seated beneath the awning of a crowded cafe on the Cannebiere. Ceaseless thousands of the globe's population pa.s.sed by, from the bare-headed, impudent work girls of Ma.r.s.eilles, as like each other and the child Elodie as peas in a pod, to the daintily costumed maiden; from the feathered, flashing quean of the streets to the c.r.a.pe enc.u.mbered figure of the French war-widow; from the abject shuffler clad in flapping rags and frowsy beard to the stout merchant dressed English fashion, in grey flannels and straw hat, with two rolls of comfortable fat above his silk collar; from the stray British or American private perspiring in khaki to splendid officers, French, Italian, Roumanian, Serbian, Czecho-Slovak, be-medalled like the advertis.e.m.e.nts of patent foods; from the middle aged, leaden pipe laden Ma.r.s.eilles plumber, in his blue smock, to the blue-uniformed Senegalese private, staring with his childish grin, at the mult.i.tudinous hurrying sights of an unfamiliar crowd. Backwards and forwards they pa.s.sed in two thick unending streams. And the roadway clashed with trams following each other, up and down, at fraction of a second intervals, and with a congestion of waggons, carts, cabs, automobiles, waiting patiently on the pleasure of these relentless, strident symbols of democracy.

In his troubled mood, Andrew found Arbuthnot also a G.o.dsend. It was good to talk once more with a man of his own calibre about the things that had once so intensely mattered. He lost his shyness and forgot for a time his anxieties. The rushing life before him had in its way a soothing charm to one resting, as it were, on the quiet bank. It was good, too, to talk English--or listen to it; for much of the talking was done by his companion. Arbuthnot was full of the big, beloved life that lay before him.

Of the wife and children whom he had not seen for four years. Of his home near Sydney. Of the Solomon Islands, where he spent the few healthy months of the year growing coco-nuts for copra and developing a pearl fishery.

A glorious, free existence, said he. And real men to work with. Every able-bodied white in the Solomon Islands had joined up--some hundred and sixty of them. How many would be going back, alas! he did not yet know.

They had been distributed among so many units of the Australian Forces. But he was looking forward to seeing some of the old hard-bitten faces in those isles of enchantment.

"I thought," said Andrew, "that it rained all the year round on the Solomon Islands; that they were so depressing, in fact, that the natives ate each other to keep up their spirits."

Arbuthnot protested vehemently. It was the loveliest climate in the world during the time that white folk stayed there. Of course, there was a rainy season, but then everybody went back to Australia. As for cannibals--he laughed.

"If you're at a loose end," said he, "come out with me and have a look round. It will clear the war out of your system."

Andrew held a cigarette between the tips of his fingers and looked at the curling smoke. The picture of the reefs and surfs and white sands and palm-trees of these far off islands rose, fascinating, before his eyes. And then he remembered that he had once a father and mother--and a birth-place.

"Curiously enough," said he, "I am Australian born."

He had scarcely ever realized the fact.

"All the more reason," said Arbuthnot heartily. "Come with me on the Osway.

The captain's a pal of mine. He'll fix up a bunk for you somewhere."

He offered boundless hospitality. Andrew grew more wistful. He thanked Arbuthnot. But----

"I'm a poor man," said he, "and have to earn my living at my old job."

"And what's that?"

"I'm a music-hall artist," said Andrew.

"You? Good Lord! I thought you had been a soldier all your life. One of the old contemptibles."

"I enlisted as a private in the Grenadier Guards," smiled Andrew.

"And came to be a General in a bra.s.s hat--and now you're back on the stage.

Somehow it doesn't fit. Do you like it?"

Andrew winched at the intimate question of the frank and direct Australian.

Last night's scene swept across his vision, hateful and humiliating.

"I have no choice," said he.

As before, on the quay, Arbuthnot looked at him, keenly.

"I don't think you do like it. I've met hundreds of fellows who feel just the same as you. I'm different, as I told you. But I can understand the other point of view. Perhaps I should kick if I had to go back to a poky office, instead of a free, open-air life. After all, we're creatures of circ.u.mstance."

He paused to light a cigar. Andrew made no reply, and the conversational topic died a natural death. They talked of other things--went back to Arras, the Somme, Saint Quentin. Presently Arbuthnot, pulling out his watch, suggested lunch. Andrew rose, pleading an engagement--his daily engagement with Elodie at the stuffy little hotel table d'hote. But the other begged him for G.o.d's sake not to desert him in this lonely mult.i.tude.

It would not be the act of a Christian and a comrade. Andrew was tempted, feeling the charm and breeziness of the Australian like a breath of the free air of Flanders and Picardy. He went indoors to the telephone. Elodie, eventually found, responded. Of course, her poor Andre must have his little pleasure. He deserved it, _mon Dieu!_ It was _gentil_ of him to consult her. And it had fallen out quite well, for she herself could not eat. The stopping had dislodged itself from one of her teeth which was driving her mad with pain and she was going to a dentist at one o'clock.

He commiserated with her on her misadventure. Elodie went into realistic details of the wreck of the gold stopping on the praline stuffing of a chocolate. Then an anguished "_Ne me coupez pas, Mademoiselle_."

But Mademoiselle of the Exchange cut ruthlessly, and Andrew returned to Arbuthnot.

"I'm at your service," said he.

Arbuthnot put himself into Lackaday's hands. The best place. The best food. It was not often he had the honour of entertaining a British General unawares. Andrew protested. The other insisted. The General was his guest.

Where should they go? Somewhere characteristic. He was sick of the food at grand hotels. It was the same all the world over--Stockholm, Tokio, Scarborough, Melbourne, Ma.r.s.eilles.

"Ma.r.s.eilles has nothing to boast of in the way of cookery," said Andrew, "save its bouillabaisse."

"Now what's that?" cried Arbuthnot. "I've sort of heard of it."

"My dear fellow," said Andrew, with his ear-to-ear grin. "To live in Ma.r.s.eilles and be innocent of bouillabaisse is like having gone through the war without tasting bully beef."

He was for dragging him to the little restaurant up a side street in the heart of the town which is the true shrine of bouillabaisse. But Arbuthnot had heard vaguely of another place, celebrated for the dish, where one could fill one's lungs as well as one's stomach.

"The Reserve."

"That's it. Taxi!" cried Arbuthnot.

So they drove out and sat in the cool gallery of the Reserve, by a window table, and looked on the blue Mediterranean, and the wonderous dish was set before them and piously served by the maitre d'hotel. Rasca.s.se, Loup-de-mer, mostelle, langouste ... a studied helping of each in a soup plate, then the sodden toast from the tureen and the ladles of clear, rich, yellow liquid flavoured with saffron and with an artist's inspiration of garlic, the essence of the dozen kinds of fish that had yielded up their being to the making of the bouillabaisse. The perfect serving of it is a ceremonial in the grand manner.

Arbuthnot, regarding his swimming plate, looked embarra.s.sed.

"Knife, fork and spoon," said Andrew.

They ate for a while in silence. Then Arbuthnot said:

"Do you remember that wonderful chapter in Meredith's _Egoist_ when Sir Willoughby Patterne offers the second bottle of the Patterne Port to Doctor Middleton, Clara's father--and the old fellow says: 'I have but a girl to give?' Well, I feel like that. This is the most wonderful eating that humanity has ever devised. I'm not a glutton. If I were I should have sampled this before. I'm just an uncivilized man from the bush overwhelmed by a new sensation. I'm your debtor, General, to all eternity. And your genius in recommending this wine"--he filled Andrew's gla.s.s with Cinzano's Asti Spumante--"is worthy of the man who saw us out at Bourdon Wood. By the way," he added, after a pause, "what really happened afterwards? I knew you got through. But we poor devils of gunners--we do our job--and away we go to loose off h.e.l.l at another section and we never get a clear knowledge of the results."

"I'll tell you in a minute," said Andrew, emptying the salt cellars and running a trench-making finger through the salt, and disposing pepper pots, knives and spoons and supplementing these material objects with lead pencil lines on the table-cloth--all vestiges of the bouillabaisse had been cleared away--"You see, here were the German lines. Here were their machine-guns."

"And my little lot," said Arbuthnot, tapping a remote corner, "was somewhere over here."