Part 37 (1/2)

”Ah!” said Lady Auriol. ”I never thought of it.” She translated her remark.

”I'm afraid my French is that of the British Army, where I learned most of it. But if people are kind and patient I can make myself understood.”

”Mademoiselle speaks French very well,” replied Elodie politely.

”You are very good to say so, Madame.”

I caught questioning, challenging glances flas.h.i.+ng across the table, each woman hostilely striving to place the other. You see, we originally sat: Elodie on my right hand, then Bakkus facing straight down the terrace, then Lackaday, then myself. It occurred to me at once that, with her knowledge of my convention-trained habits, she would argue that, at a luncheon party, either I would not have placed the lady next the man to whom she belonged, or that she was a perfectly independent guest, belonging, so to speak, to n.o.body. But on the latter hypothesis, what was she doing in this galley? I swear I saw the wrinkle on Lady Auriol's brow betokening the dilemma. She had known me from childhood's days of lapsed memory. I had always been.

Romantically she knew Lackaday. Horatio Bakkus, with his sacerdotal air and well-bred speech and manner, evidently belonged to our own social cla.s.s.

But Madame Patou, who mopped up the sauce on her plate with a bit of bread, and made broad use of a toothpick, and leaned back and fanned herself with her napkin and breathed a ”_Mon Dieu, qu'ilfait chaud_” and contributed nothing intelligent to the conversation, she could not accept as the detached lady invited by me to charm my two male guests. She was then driven to the former hypothesis. Madame Patou belonged in some way to the man by whose side she was not seated.

Of course, there was another alternative. I might have been responsible for the poor lady. But she was as artless as a poor lady could be. Addressing my two friends it was always Andre and Horace, and instinctively she used the familiar ”_tu_.” Addressing me she had affrightedly forgotten the pact of Christian names, and it was ”Monsieur le Capitaine” and, of course, the ”_vous_” which she had never dreamed of changing. Even so poor a French scholar as Lady Auriol could not be misled into such absurd paths of conjecture.

She belonged therefore, in some sort of fas.h.i.+on, to General Lackaday. An elderly man of the world, with his nerves on edge, has no need of wizardry to divine the psychology of such a situation.

Mistress of social forms, Lady Auriol, after sweeping Elodie into her net, caught Horatio Bakkus and through reference to her own hospital experiences during the war, wrung from him the avowal of his concerts for the wounded in Paris.

”How splendid of you! By the way, how do you spell your name? It's an uncommon one.”

”With two k's.”

”I wonder if you have anything to do with an old friend of my fattier, Archdeacon Bakkus?”

”My eldest brother.”

”No, really? One of my earliest recollections is his buying a prize boar from my father.”

”Just like the dear fellow's prodigality,” said Bakkus. ”He had a whole Archdeaconry to his hand for nothing. I've lately spent a couple of months with him in Westmorland, so I know.”

”How small the world is,” said Lady Auriol to Lackaday.

”Too small,” said he.

”Oh,” said Auriol blankly.

”Have you seen our good friends, the Verity-Stewarts lately?”

She had. They were in perfect health. They were wondering what had become of him.

”And indeed, General,” she flashed, ”what _has_ become of you?”

”It is not good,” said Elodie, in quick antic.i.p.ation, ”that the General should neglect his English friends.”

There sounded the note of proprietors.h.i.+p, audible to anybody. Auriol's eyes dwelt for a second on Elodie; then she turned to Lackaday.

”Madame Patou is quite right.”

Said he, with one of his rare flights into imagery, ”I was but a shooting star across the English firmament.”

”Encore une etoile qui file, File, file et disparait!”