Chapter XXII
Lady Auriol, myself and the car met punctually at the hotel door at ten o'clock. There was also a chasseur with Lady Auriol's dust-coat and binoculars, and a concierge with advice. We waited for Bakkus. 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 Sévigné shop and bought some. This took time, because she lingered over several varieties devastating to the appetite. 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 passed 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 attitude 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 God and man. We ascended to vast tablelands of infinite scrub and yellow broom, and the stern peaks of the Puy de Dôme 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 altitude 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 château, 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 passed 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 Hôtel 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 lustily 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 coupé-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 chasseur 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 Hôtel Moderne, Vichy. Eventually I recognized Lackaday's voice. The preliminaries of fence over, he said:
"I wonder whether it would be trespassing 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.
"I'll tell you when I see you," said he. "I don't know the trains, but I'll come by the first. Your concierge will look it up for you. Thanks very much. Good-bye."'
"But, my dear fellow----" I began.
But I spoke into nothingness. He had rung off.
Auriol and I spent a comfortable evening together. There was no question of Lackaday. For her part, she raised none. For mine--why should I disturb her superbly regained balance with idle chatter about our morrow's meeting? We talked of the past glories of the day; of an almost forgotten day of disastrous picnic in the mountains of North Wales, when her twelve-year-old sense of humour detected the artificial politeness with which I sought to cloak my sodden misery; of all sorts of pleasant far-off things; of the war; of what may be called the war-continuation-work in the devastated districts in which she was at present engaged. I reminded her of our fortuitous meetings, when she trudged by my side through the welter of rain and liquid mud, smoking the fag-end of my last pipe of tobacco.
"One lived in those days," she said with a full-bosomed sigh.
"By the dispensation of a merciful Providence," I said, "one hung on to a strand of existence."
"It was fine!" she declared.
"It was--for the appropriate adjective," said I, "consult any humble member of the British Army."
We had a whole, long evening's talk, which did not end until I left her in the train at Clermont-Ferrand.
On our midnight way thither, she said:
"Now I know you love me, Tony."
"Why now?" I asked.
"How many people are there in the world whom you would see off by a midnight train, three or four miles from your comfortable bed?"
"Not many," I admitted.
"That's why I want you to feel I'm grateful." She sought my hand and patted it. "I've been a dreadful worry to you. I've been through a hard time." This was her first and only reference during the day to the romance. "I had to cut something out of my living self, and I couldn't help groaning a bit. But the operation's over--and I'll never worry you again."
At the station I packed her into the dark and already suffocating compartment. She announced her intention to sleep all night like a dog. She went off, in the best of spirits, to the work in front of her, which after all was a more reasonable cure than tossing about the Outer Hebrides in a five-ton yacht.
I drove home to bed and slept the sleep of the perfect altruist.
I was reading the Moniteur du Puy de Dôme on the hotel terrace next morning, when Lackaday was announced. He looked grimmer and more careworn than ever, and did not even smile as he greeted me. He only said gravely that it was good of me to let him come over. I offered him refreshment, which he declined.
"You may be wondering," said he, "why I have asked for this interview. But after all I have told you about myself, it did not seem right to leave you in ignorance of certain things. Besides, you've so often given me your kind sympathy, that, as a lonely man, I've ventured to trespass on it once more."
"My dear Lackaday, you know that I value your friendship," said I, not wishing to be outdone in courteous phrase, "and that my services are entirely at your disposal."
"I had better tell you in a few words what has happened," said he.
He told me.
Elodie had gone, disappeared, vanished into space, like the pearl necklaces which Petit Patou used to throw at her across the stage.
"But how? When?" I asked, in bewilderment; for Lackaday and Elodie, as Les Petit Patou, seemed as indissoluble as William and Mary or Pommery and Greno.
He had gone to her room at ten o'clock the previous morning, her breakfast hour, and found it wide open and empty save for the femme de chambre making great clatter of sweeping. He stood open-mouthed on the threshold. To be abroad at such an hour was not in Elodie's habits. Their train did not start till the afternoon. His eye quickly caught the uninhabited bareness of the apartment. Not a garment straggled about the room. The toilet table, usually strewn with a myriad promiscuously ill-assorted articles, stared nakedly. There were no boxes. The cage of love-birds, Elodie's inseparable companions, had gone.
"Madame----?"
He questioned the femme de chambre.
"But Madame has departed. Did not Monsieur know?"
Monsieur obviously did not know. The girl gave him the information of which she was possessed. Madame had gone in an automobile at six o'clock. She had rung the bell. The femme de chambre had answered it. The staff were up early on account of the seven o'clock train for Paris.
"Then Madame has gone to Paris," cried Lackaday.
But the girl demurred at the proposition. One does not hire an automobile from a garage, a voiture de luxe, quoi? to go to the railway station, when the hotel omnibus would take one there for a franc or two. As she was saying, Madame rang her bell and gave orders for her luggage to be taken down. It was not much, said Lackaday; they travelled light, their professional paraphernalia having to be considered. Well, the luggage was taken down to the automobile that was waiting at the door, and Madame had driven off. That is all she knew.
Lackaday strode over to the bureau and assailed the manager. Why had he not been informed of the departure of Madame? It apparently never entered the manager's polite head that Monsieur Patou was ignorant of Madame Patou's movements. Monsieur had given notice that they were leaving. Artists like Monsieur and Madame Patou were bound to make special arrangements for their tours, particularly nowadays when railway travelling was difficult. So Madame's departure had occasioned no surprise.
"Who took her luggage down?" he demanded.
The dingy waistcoated, alpaca-sleeved porter, wearing the ribbon of the Médaille Militaire on his breast, came forward. At six o'clock, while he was sweeping the hall, an automobile drew up outside. He said: "Whom are you come to fetch? The Queen of Spain?" And the chauffeur told him to mind his own business. At that moment the bell rang. He went up to the étage indicated. The femme de chambre beckoned him to the room and he took the luggage and Madame took the bird-cage, and he put Madame and the luggage and the birdcage into the auto, and Madame gave him two francs, and the car drove off, whither the porter knew not.
Although he put it to me very delicately, as he had always conveyed his criticism of Elodie, the fact that struck a clear and astounding note through his general bewilderment, was the unprecedented reckless extravagance of the economical Elodie. There was the omnibus. There was the train. Why the car at the fantastic rate of one franc fifty per kilometre, to say nothing of the one franc fifty per kilometre for the empty car's return journey?
"And Madame was all alone in the automobile," said the porter, by way of reassurance. "Pardon, Monsieur," he added, fading away under Lackaday's glare.
"I cut the indignity of it all as short as I could," said Lackaday, "and went up to my room to size things up. It was a knock-down blow to me in many ways, as you no doubt can understand. And then came the femme de chambre with a letter addressed to me. It had fallen between the looking-glass and the wall."
He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to me.
"You had better read it."
I fitted my glasses on my nose and read. In the sprawling, strong, illiterate hand I saw and felt Elodie.
Mon petit André----
But I must translate inadequately, for the grammar and phrasing were Elodesque.
As you no longer love me, if ever you have loved me, which I doubt, for we have made un drôle de ménage ever since we joined ourselves together, and as our life in common is giving you unhappiness, which it does me also, for since you have returned from England as a General you have not been the same, and indeed I have never understood how a General [and then followed a couple of lines vehemently erased]. And as I do not wish to be a burden to you, but desire that you should feel yourself free to lead whatever life you like, I have taken the decision to leave you for ever--pour tout jamais. It is the best means to regain happiness.
For the things that are still at the Cirque Vendramin, do with them what you will. I shall write to Ernestine to send me my clothes and all the little birds I love so much. Your noble heart will not grudge them to me, mon petit André.
Praying God for your happiness, I am always
Your devoted
ELODIE
I handed him back the letter without a word. What could one say?
"The first thing I did," he said, putting the letter back in his pocket, "was to ring up Bakkus, to see whether he could throw any light on the matter."
"Bakkus--why, he cut his engagement with us yesterday."
"The damned scoundrel," said Lackaday, "was running away with Elodie."