The Mountebank Part 46

Auriol, suddenly bethinking herself of plain chocolate, to the consumption of which she was addicted on the grounds of its hunger-satisfying qualities, although I guaranteed her a hearty midday meal on the occasion of the present adventure, we went down the street to the _Marquise de Sevigne_ shop and bought some. This took time, because she lingered over several varieties devastating to the appet.i.te. I paid gladly. If we all had the same ideas as to the employment of a happy day, it would be a dull world. We went back to the car. Still no Bakkus. We waited again. I railed at the artistic temperament. Pure, sheer bone idleness, said I.

"But what can he be doing?" asked Auriol.

I, who had received through Lackaday many lights on Bakkus's character, was at no loss to reply.

"Doing? Why, snoring. He'll awake at midday, stroll round here and expect to find us smiling on the pavement. We give him five more minutes."

At the end of the five minutes I sent the _concierge_ off for a guide-book; much more accurate, I declared, than Bakkus was likely to be, and at half-past ten by my watch we started. Although I railed at the sloth of Bakkus, I rejoiced in his absence. My over-night impression had not been dissipated by slumber.

"I'm not sorry," said I, as we drove along. "Our friend is rather too much of a professed conversationalist."

"You also have a comfortable seat which possibly you would have had to give up to your guest," said Auriol.

"How you know me, my dear," said I, and we rolled along very happily.

I think it was one of the pleasantest days I have ever pa.s.sed in the course of a carefully spent life. Auriol was at her best. She had thrown off the harried woman of affairs. She had put a nice little tombstone over the grave of her romance, thus apparently reducing to beautiful simplicity her previous complicated frame of mind. For aught I could have guessed, not a cloud had ever dimmed the Diana serenity of her soul. If I said that she laid herself out to be the most charming of companions, I should be accusing her of self-consciousness. Rather, let me declare her to have been so instinctively. Vanity apart, I stood for something tangible in her life. She could not remember the time when I had not been her firm friend.

Between my first offering of chocolates and my last over a quarter of a century had lapsed. As far as a young woman can know a middle-aged man, she knew me outside in. If she came to me for my sympathy, she knew that she had the right. If she twitted me on my foibles, she knew that I granted her the privilege, with affectionate indulgence.

Now, perhaps you may wonder why I, not yet decrepit, did not glide ever so imperceptibly in love with Lady Auriol, who was no longer a dew-besprinkled bud of a girl and therefore beyond the pale of my sentimental inclinations.

Well, just as she had avowed that she could not fall in love with a man of my type, so was it impossible for me to fall in love with a woman of hers.

Perhaps some dark-eyed devil may yet lure me to destruction, or some mild, fair-haired, comfortable widow may entice me to domesticity. But the joy and delight of my att.i.tude towards Auriol was its placid and benignant avuncularity. We were the best and frankest friends in the world.

And the day was an August hazy dream of a day. We wound along the mountain roads, first under overhanging greenery and then, almost suddenly, remote, in blue ether. We hung on precipices overlooking the rock-filled valleys of old volcanic desolation. Basaltic cliffs rose up from their bed of yellow cornfields, bare and stark, yet, in the noontide shimmer, hesitating in their eternal defiance of G.o.d and man. We ascended to vast tablelands of infinite scrub and yellow broom, and the stern peaks of the Puy de Dome mountains, a while ago seen like giants, appeared like rolling hillocks; but here and there a little white streak showed that the snow still lingered and would linger on until the frosts of autumn bound it in chains to await the universal winding-sheet of winter. Climate varied with the varying alt.i.tude of the route. Here, on a last patch of mountain ground, were a man or two and a woman or two and odd children, reaping and binding; there, after a few minutes' ascent, on another sloping patch, a solitary peasant ploughed with his team of oxen. Everywhere on the declivitous waysides, tow-haired, blue-eyed children guarded herds of goats, as their forbears had done in the days of Vercingetorix, the Gaul. Nowhere, save in the dimly seen remotenesses of the valleys, where vestiges of red-roofed villages emerged through the fertile summer green, was there sign of habitation. Whence came they, these patient humans, wresting their life from these lonely spots of volcanic wildernesses?

Now and then, on a lower hump of mountain, appeared the ruined tower of a stronghold fierce and dominating long ago. There the lord had all the rights of the _seigneur_, as far as his eye could reach. He had men-at-arms in plenty, and could ride down to the valley and could provision himself with what corn and meat he chose, and could return and hold high revel. But when the winter came, how cold must he have been, for all the wood with its stifling smoke that he burned in his crude stone hall. And Madame the Countess, his wife, and her train of highborn young women--imagine the cracking chilblains on the hands of the whole fair community.

"Does the guide-book say that?" asked Auriol, on my development of this pleasant thesis.

"Is a guide-book human?"

"It doesn't unweave rainbows. As a _cicerone_ you're impossible. I regret Horatio Bakkus."

Still, in spite of my prosaic vision, we progressed on an enjoyable pilgrimage. I am not giving you an itinerary. I merely mention features of a day's whirl which memory has recaptured. We lunched in that little oasis of expensive civilization, Mont Dore. Incidentally we visited Orcival, with its Romanesque church and chateau, the objective of our expedition, and found it much as Bakkus's glowing eloquence had described. From elderly ladies at stalls under the lee of the church we bought picture post cards.

We wandered through the deeply shaded walks of the _charmille_, as trimly kept as the maze of Hampton Court and three times the height. We did all sorts of other things. We stopped at wild mountain gorges alive with the rustle of water and aglow with wild-flowers. We went on foot through one-streeted, tumble-down villages and pa.s.sed the time of day with the kindly inhabitants. And the August sun shone all the time.

We reached Royat at about six o'clock and went straight up to our rooms.

On my table some letters awaited me; but instead of finding among them the apology from Bakkus which I had expected, I came across a telephone memorandum asking me to ring up Monsieur Patou at the Hotel Moderne, Vichy, as soon as I returned.

After glancing through my correspondence, I descended to the bureau and there found Auriol in talk with the _concierge_. She broke off and waved a telegram at me.

"The end of my lotus-eating. The arrangements are put through and I'm no longer hung up. So"--she made a little grimace--"it's the midnight train to Paris."

"Surely to-morrow will do," I protested.

"To-morrow never does," she retorted.

"As you will," said I, knowing argument was hopeless.

Meanwhile the _concierge_ was 'allo'-ing l.u.s.tily into the telephone.

"I ought to have stuck to head-quarters," she said, moving away into the lounge. "It's the first time I've ever mixed up business and--other things.

Anyhow," she smiled, "I've had an adorable day. I'll remember it in Arras."

"Arras?"

"Roundabout." She waved vaguely. "I'll know my exact address to-morrow."

"Please let me have it."

"What's the good unless you promise to write to me?"

"I swear," said I.

"Pardon, Miladi," called the _concierge_, receiver in hand. "The _gare de Clermont-Ferrand_ says there is no _place salon-lit_ or _coupe-lit_ free in the train to-night. But there is _one place de milieu_, _premiere_, not yet taken."

"Reserve it then and tell them you're sending a _cha.s.seur_ at once with the money." She turned to me. "My luck's in."

"Luck!" I cried. "To get a middle seat in a crowded carriage, for an all-night journey, with the windows shut?"

She laughed. "Why is it, my dear Tony, you always seem to pretend there has never been anything like a war?"

She went upstairs to cleanse herself and pack. I remained master of the telephone. In the course of time I got on to the Hotel Moderne, Vichy.

Eventually I recognized Lackaday's voice. The preliminaries of fence over, he said:

"I wonder whether it would be trespa.s.sing too far on your friendship to ask you to pay your promised visit to Vichy to-morrow?"

The formality of his English, which one forgot when talking to him face to face, was oddly accentuated by the impersonal tones of the telephone.

"I'll motor over with pleasure," said I. The prospect pleased me. It was only sixty kilometres. I was wondering what the deuce I should do with myself all alone.

"You're sure it wouldn't be inconvenient? You have no other engagement?"

I informed him that, my early morning treatment over, I was free as air.

"Besides," said I, "I shall be at a loose end. Lady Auriol's taking the midnight train to Paris."

"Oh!" said he.

There was a pause.

"'Allo!" said I.

His voice responded: "In that case, I'll come to Clermont-Ferrand by the first train and see you."

"Nonsense," said I.

But he would have it his own way. Evidently the absence of Lady Auriol made all the difference. I yielded.

"What's the trouble?" I asked.