The Mountebank Part 30

Reaction followed swift on her lightning speech. The French audience, sensitive to the dramatic and the patriotic, burst into tumultuous acclamation. Elodie smiled at them triumphantly and turned to Andrew, who stood at the back of the stage, petrified, his chin in the air, at the full stretch of his inordinate height, his eyes gleaming, his long thin lips tightened so that they broke the painted grin, his hands on his hips.

Now if Elodie had carried out the plan developed during the night she could then and there have died happily. Exulting in her success, she tripped up the stage to Andrew, the clasp of the decoration between finger and thumb, hoping to pin it on his breast. The applause dropped, the house hovering for an instant on the verge of anti-climax. But Andrew, with a flash of rage and hatred, waved her away, and strode down to the footlights, tearing off his grotesque wig and revealing his shock of carroty hair. His soul was sick with horror. Only the swift silence made him realize that he was bound to address the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I thank you for your generosity to me as a soldier. But I am here to try to merit your approbation as an artist. For what has just happened I must ask you to pardon a woman's heart."

He remaned for a while glaring at them. Then, when the applause came to an end, he bowed, half ironically and gave a quick, imperious order, at which the curtain was rung down amid an uproar of excitement. He strode into the wings followed by Elodie starry-eyed, and stood panting. The curtain rose as if automatically. The manager thrust him towards the stage.

"They want you," he cried.

"They can go to the devil," said Andrew.

Regardless of the clamour, he stalked with Elodie to the foot of the iron stairs. On their way they pa.s.sed the waxed moustachioed trainer of the performing dogs.

"A good _coup de theatre_, Madame," he remarked jealously.

Andrew glowered down on him.

"You say, Monsieur----?"

But the dog trainer meeting the eyes burning in the painttd face, thought it best to say nothing, and Andrew mounted the stairs. Elodie followed him into his dressing-room palpitating with excitement and perplexity and clutching both his arms looked wildly into his face.

"You are not pleased with me?"

For a moment or two he regarded her with stupid hostility; then, getting a grip on himself, he saw things from her point of view and realized her wit and her courage and her devotion. It was no fault of hers that she had no notion of his abhorrence of the scene.

He smiled.

"It is only you who could have dared," he said.

"I told you last night they should applaud you."

"And last night I told you you are always my mascot."

"If it only weren't true that you love me no longer," said Elodie.

The dresser entered. Elodie slipped out. Andrew made a step, after her to the threshold.

"What the devil did she mean by that?" said he, after the manner of men.

Chapter XVI

She did not repeat the reproach, nor did Andrew put to her the question which he had asked himself. The amicable placidity unruffled by quarrel, which marked their relations, was far too precious to be disturbed by an unnecessary plumbing of emotional depths. As far as he could grapple with psychological complexities, there had been nothing between them, through all the years, of the divine pa.s.sion. She had come to him disillusioned and weary. He had come to her with a queer superst.i.tious grat.i.tude for help in the past and a full recognition of present sympathy and service. As the French say, they had made together _un bon menage_. Save for a few half-hysterical days during the war--and in that incomprehensible pre-war period at the end of which the birds came to her rescue, there had been little talk of love and dreams of delight and the rest of the vaporous paradise of the mutually infatuated. He could not manifest, nor did she demand, a lover's ardour. It had all been as comfortable and satisfactory as you please. And now, at the most irrelevant moment, according to his masculine mind, came this cry of the heart.

But was it of the heart? Did it not rather proceed from childish disappointment at his lack of enthusiastic praise of her splendid exploit?

As I say, he judged it prudent to leave the problem unsolved. Of the exploit itself, needless to remark, she talked interminably. Generous and kind-hearted, he agreed with her arguments. Of the humiliation she had wrought for him, he allowed her to have no notion.

He s.h.i.+vered all night at the degradation of his proudest honour. It had been gained, not as one of a batch of crosses handed over to the British military authorities for distribution, but on the field. He had come, with a handful of men, to the relief of a sorely pressed village held by the French; somehow he had rallied the composite force, wiped out two or three nests of machine guns and driven out the Germans; as officer in command he had consolidated the village, so that, when the French came up, he had handed it over to them as a victor. A French general had pinned the cross on his breast on a day of wind and rain and bursting sh.e.l.l, on a vast plain of unutterable devastation. The upholding of it before the mob of Ma.r.s.eilles had been a profanation. In these moments of anguished amazement he had suffered as he had never suffered in his life before. And he had been helpless. Before he realized what was being done, Elodie, in her tempestuous swiftness, had done it. It was only when she came to fix the cross on his breast that his soul sprang to irresistible revolt. He could have taken her by the throat and wrung it, and flung her away dead.

Thus, they were infinite leagues asunder. She met what amounted to wearily indulgent forgiveness when she had fully expected to reap the golden meed of heroism.

The next morning, she went about silent, perplexed, unhappy. By her stroke of genius she had secured for him a real success. If he had allowed her to crown the dramatic situation by pinning on the cross, his triumph had been such as the stage had never seen.

"Why didn't you let me do it?" she asked.

"To complete a work of art," said he, "is always a mistake. You must leave something to the imagination."

"But I did right. Tell me I did right."

Denial would have been a dagger thrust through a loyal heart.

"You acted, my dear," said he, "like a n.o.ble woman."

And she was aware of a sh.e.l.l which she could not pierce. From their first intimate days, she had always felt him aloof from her; as a soldier during the war she had found him the counterpart of the millions of men who had heroically fought; as an officer of high rank, as a General, she had stood, in her att.i.tude towards him, in uneducated awe; as a General demobilized and a reincarnation of Pet.i.t Patou, he had inspired her with a familiarity bred not of contempt--that was absurd--but of disillusion. And now, to her primitive intelligence, he loomed again as an incomprehensible being actuated by a moral network of motives of which she had no conception.

He escaped early from the little hotel and wandered along the quays enc.u.mbered with mountains of goods awaiting transport, mighty crates of foodstuffs, bales of hay, barrels of wine from Algiers. Troops and sailors of all nations mingled with the dock employees who tried to restore order out of chaos. Calm goods trains whistled idly by the side of s.h.i.+ps or on sidings, the engine drivers lounging high above the crowd in Olympian indifference. The broken down organization had nothing to do with them.

Here, in the din and the clatter and the dust and the smell of tar and other sea-faring things reeking sh.o.r.ewards under the blazing sun, Andrew could hide himself from the reputable population of the town. In the confusion of a strange world he could think. His life's unmeaningness overwhelmed him; he moved under the burden of its irony. In that she had hurled insulting defiance at a vast, rough audience, Elodie had done a valiant thing. She had done it for love of him. His failure to respond had evoked her reproach. But the very act for which she claimed due reward was a stab to the heart of any lingering love.

And yet, he must go on. There was no way out. He had faced facts ever since the days of Ben Flint--and Elodie was a fact, the princ.i.p.al fact in his life. Curious that she should have faded into comparative insignificance during the war--especially during the last two years of it when he had not seen her. She seemed to have undergone a vehement resurrection. The shadow of the war had developed into the insistent flesh and blood of peace.

He wandered far over the quay, where the ancient Algiers boat was on the point of departure, crammed with red-tarbooshed troops, zouaves, colonials, swarthy Turcos and Spahis, grinning blacks with faces like polished boots, all exultant in the approaching demobilization. The grey-blue ma.s.s glistened with medals. The blacks were eating--with the contented merriment of children at a Sunday School treat. Andrew smiled at many memories.

Black troops seemed always to be eating. As he stood watching, porters and pack-laden blue helmeted poilus jostled him, until he found a small oasis of quiet near the bows. Here a hand was clapped on his shoulder and a voice said:

"Surely you're Lackaday?"

He turned and beheld the clean-cut bronzed face of a man in civilian dress.

As often happens, what he had sought to avoid in the streaming streets of the town, he had found in the wilderness--an acquaintance. It was one Arbuthnot, an Australian colonel of artillery who, through the chances of war, had rendered his battalion great service. A keen, sparely built man made of leather and whipcord, with the Australian's shrewd blue eyes.

They exchanged the commonplaces of greeting.

"Demobilized?" said Andrew.

"Thank Heaven."

"You seem glad."

"Good Lord! I should think so. Aren't you glad it's all over?"

"I don't quite know," said Andrew, smiling wistfully.

"Well, I am," declared Arbuthnot. "It was a beastly mess that had to be cleared up, and now it's done as far as my little responsibility is concerned. I'm delighted. I want to get back to my wife and family and lead the life of a human being. War's a dog's life. It has nothing to recommend it. It's as stupid and senseless as a typhoon." He laughed. "What are you doing here?"

Andrew waved a hand. "Putting in time."