Part 28 (1/2)
”What the devil----? Is this the relaxation of the great or the aberrations of the asylum?”
Andrew grinned and shook hands. ”My dear old chap. I'm so glad you've come back. Sit down.” He s.h.i.+fted the table which blocked the way to the two arm-chairs by the stove. ”Elodie and I are getting into training for the next campaign.” He mopped his forehead, wiped his hands and, with the old acrobat instinct, jerked the handkerchief across the room. ”You're looking very well,” said he.
”I'm splendid,” said Bakkus.
The singer indeed had a curiously prosperous and distinguished appearance, due not only to a new brown suit and clean linen and well-fitting boots, but also to a sleekness of face and person which suggested comfortable living. His hair, now quite white, brushed back over the forehead, was neatly trimmed. His sallow cheeks had lost their gaunt hollows, his dark eyes, though preserving their ironical glitter, had lost the hunger-lit gleam of wolfishness.
”Have you signed a Caruso contract for Covent Garden?” laughed Andrew.
”I've done better. At Covent Garden you've got to work like the devil for your money. I've made a contract with my family--no work at all. Agreement--just to bury the hatchet. Theophilus--that's the Archdeacon--performed the Funeral Service. He has had a stroke, poor chap.
They sent for me.”
”Elodie told me,” said Andrew.
”He has been very good to me during the war. Otherwise I should have been reduced to picking up cigar ends with a pointed stick on the Boulevards--and a d.a.m.n precarious livelihood too, considering the shortage of tobacco in this benighted country. He took it into his venerable head that he was going to die and desired to see me. Voltaire remorse on his death-bed, you know.”
”I fail to follow,” said the literal Andrew.
”All his life he had lived an unbeliever in ME. Now your military intelligence grasps it. My brother Ronald, the runner of the p.a.w.nee Indian, head-flattening system of education, and his wife, especially his wife, the daughter of a lay brother of a bishop who has got a baronetcy for making an enormous fortune out of the war, wouldn't have me at any price. But Theophilus must have muttered some incantation which frightened them, so they surrendered. Poor old Theophilus and I had a touching meeting. He's about as lonely a thing as you could wish to meet. He married an American heiress, who died about eight years ago, and he's as rich as Croesus. We're bosom friends now. As for Mrs. Ronald I sang her songs of Araby including Gounod's 'Ave Maria' with lots of tremolo and convinced her that I'm a saintly personage. It's my proud boast that, on my account, Ronald and herself never spoke for three days. I spent a month in the wilds of Westmorland with them, and as soon as Theophilus got on the mend--he's already performing semi-Archidiaconal functions--I put my hands over my eyes and fled. My G.o.d, what a crowd! Give me a drink. I've got four weeks'
arrears to make up.”
Andrew went into the _salle a manger_ and returned with brandy, syphon and gla.s.ses. Helping Bakkus he asked:
”And now, what are you going to do?”
”Nothing, my friend, absolutely nothing. I wallow in the ill-gotten matrimonial gains of Theophilus and Ronald. I wallow modestly, it is true.
The richer strata of mire I leave to hogs with whom I'm out of sympathy.
You'll have observed that I'm a man of nice discrimination. I choose my hogs. It is the Art of Life.”
”Well, here's to you,” said Andrew, lifting up his gla.s.s.
”And to you.”
Bakkus emptied his gla.s.s at a draught, breathed a sigh of infinite content and held it out to be refilled.
”And now that I've told you the story of my life, what about you? What's the meaning of this--” he waved a hand--”this reversion to type?”
”You behold Pet.i.t Patou redivivus,” said Andrew.
Bakkus regarded him in astonishment.
”But, my dear fellow, Generals can't do things like that.”
”That's the cry of Elodie.”
”She's a woman with whom I'm in perfect sympathy,” said Bakkus.