The Mountebank Part 38

Elodie looked incredulous. "One has always one's _moments perdus._"

"One doesn't marry in odd moments," said I.

"You and Horace are old bachelors who know nothing at all about it. Tell me. Is she very rich?"

"None of our old families are very rich nowadays," I replied, rather at a loss to account, save on the score of feminine curiosity, for this examination. If it had not been for her mother who left her a small fortune of a thousand or so a year, Auriol would have been as penniless as her two married sisters. Her brother, Lord Vintrey, once a wastrel subaltern of Household Cavalry, and, after a dashing, redeeming war record, now an expensive Lieutenant-Colonel, ate up all the ready money that Lord Mountshire could screw out of his estates. With Elodie I could not enter into these explanations.

"All the same she is pa.s.sably rich," Elodie persisted. "One does not buy a costume like that under five hundred francs."

The crimson vested and sashed and tarbooshed Algerian negro brought the coffee, and poured out the five cups. We sipped. I noticed Elodie's hand shake.

"If their coffee gets cold, so much the worse."

Bakkus, who had maintained a discreet silence hitherto, remarked:--

"Unless Andrew's head is particularly thick, he'll get a sunstroke in this blazing sun."

"That's true," cried Elodie and, rising with a great sc.r.a.ping of chair, she rushed to the bal.u.s.trade and addressed him shrilly.

"_Mais dis donc Andre, tu veux attraper un coup de soleil?_"

We heard his voice in reply: "_Nous rentrons_."

A few moments afterwards they mounted from the lower terrace and came towards us. Lackaday's face was set in one of its tight-lipped expressionless moods. Lady Auriol's cheek was flushed, and though she smiled conventional greeting, her eyes were very serious.

"I am sorry to have put into danger the General's health, madame," said she in her clear and British French. "But when two comrades of the Great War meet for the first time, one is forgetful."

She gave me a little sign rejecting the offered coffee. Lackaday took his cup and drank it off at one gulp. He looked at his wrist watch, the only remaining insignia of the British soldier.

"Time for our tram, Elodie."

"_C'est vrai?_" He held his wrist towards her. "_Oui, mon Dieu!

Miladi--_" She funked the difficult "Lady Auriol."

"_Au revoir, Madame,_" said Auriol shaking hands.

"_Trop honoree,_" said Elodie, somewhat defiantly. "_Au revoir, Miladi._" She made an awkward little bow. "_Et toi,_" she extended a careless left hand to Bakkus.

"I will see you to the lift," said I.

We walked down the terrace in silence to the _salon_ door just inside which was the lift which took one down some four stories to the street.

Two things were obvious: the perturbation of the simple Lackaday and the jealousy of Elodie.

"_Au revoir, monsieur, et merci,_" she said, with over emphasized politeness, as we stood at the lift gates.

"Good-bye, old chap," said Lackaday and gripped my hand hard.

As soon as I returned to the end of the terrace, Bakkus rose and took his leave. Auriol and I were alone. Of course other humans were cl.u.s.tering round tables all the length of the terrace. But we had our little end corner to ourselves. I sat down next to her.

"Well?" said I.

She bent forward, and her face was that of the woman whom I had met in the rain and mud and stark reality of the war.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Chapter XX

If a glance could destroy, if Lady Auriol had been a Gorgon or a basilisk or a c.o.c.katrice, then had I been a slain Anthony Hylton.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The far-flung gesture of her arm ending in outspread fingers might have been that of Elodie.

"Tell you what, my dear?" said I.

"The whole wretched tragedy. I came to you a year ago with my heart in my hand--the only human creature living who I thought could help me. And you've let me down like this. It's d.a.m.nable!"

"An honourable man," said I, nettled, "doesn't betray confidences."

"An honourable man! I like that! I gave you my confidences. Haven't you betrayed them?"

"Not a bit," said I. "Not the faintest hint of what you have said to me have I whispered into the ear of man or woman."

She fumed. "If you had, you would be--unmentionable."

"Precisely. And I should have been equally undeserving of mention, if I had told you of the secret, or double, or ex-war--however you like to describe it--life of our friend."

"The thing is not on all fours," she said with a snap of her fingers. "You could have given me the key to the mystery--such as it is. You could have prevented me from making a fool of myself. You could, Tony. From the very start."

"At the very start, I knew little more than you did. Nothing save that he was bred in a circus, where I met him thirty years ago. I knew nothing more of his history till this April, when he told me he was Pet.i.t Patpu of the music-halls. His confidence has been given me bit by bit. The last time I saw you I had never heard of Madame Patou. It was you that guessed the woman in his life. I had no idea whether you were right or wrong."

"Yet you could have given me a hint--the merest hint--without betraying confidences--as you call it," she mouthed my phrase ironically. "It was not playing the game."

"I gathered," said I, "that playing the game was what both of you had decided to do, in view of the obviously implied lady in the background."

"Well?" she challenged.

"If it's a question of playing the game"--I had carried the war into the enemy's quarters--"may I repeat my original rude question this morning?

What the devil are you doing here?"

She turned on me in a fury. "How dare you insinuate such a thing?"

"You've not come to Royat for the sake of my beautiful eyes."