Part 45 (1/2)

She was quite right. Although I may not have sound convictions, thank Heaven I've sacred prejudices. They have kept me more or less straight in my unimaginative British fas.h.i.+on during a respectable lifetime. So far am I from being a Pharisee, that I exclaim: ”Thank G.o.d I am as other decent fellows are.”

We circled pleasantly round the point until she returned to her original proposition--her wonder that she had never been able to fall in love with a man of my type.

”It's very simple,” said I. ”You distrust us. You know that if you suddenly said to one of us, 'Let us go to Greenland and wear bearskins and eat blubber'; or, 'Let us fit up the drawing-room with incubators for East-end babies doomed otherwise to die,' he would vehemently object. And there would be rows and the married life of cat and dog.”

She said: ”Am I really as bad as that, Tony?”

”You are,” said I.

She shook her head. ”No,” she replied, after a pause. ”In the depths of myself I'm as conventional as you are. That's why I said I was puzzled to know why I had never fallen in love with any one of you. I had my deep reasons, my dear Tony, for saying it. I'm bound to my type and my order.

G.o.d knows I've seen enough and know enough to be free. But I'm not. Last night showed me that I'm not.”

”And that's final, my dear?” said I.

She helped herself to salad with an air of bravura. She helped herself, to my surprise, to a prodigious amount of salad.

”As final as death,” she replied.

There had been billed about the place a Grand Concert du Soir in the Casino de Royat. The celebrated tenor, M. Horatio Bakkus. The Casino having been burned down in 1918, the concerts took place under the bandstand in the park.

After dinner we found places, among the mult.i.tude, on the Casino Cafe Terrace overlooking the bandstand, and listened to Bakkus sing. I explained Bakkus, more or less, to Auriol. Although she could not accept Lackaday as Pet.i.t Patou, she seemed to accept Bakkus, without question, as a professional singer. The concert over, he joined us at our little j.a.panned iron table, and acknowledged her well-merited compliments--I tell you, he sang like a minor Canon in an angelic choir--with, well, with the well-bred air of a minor Canon in an angelic choir. With easy grace he dismissed himself and talked knowledgeably and informatively of the antiquities and the beauties of Auvergne. To most English folk it was an undiscovered country. We must steal a car and visit Orcival. Hadn't I heard of it?

France's gem of Romanesque churches? And the Chateau--ages old---with its _charmille_--the towering maze-like walks of trees kept clipped in scrupulous formality by an old gardener during the war--the _charmille_ designed by no less a genius than Le Notre, who planned the wonders of Versailles and the exquisite miniature of the garden of Nimes? To-morrow must we go.

This white-haired, luminous-eyed ascetic--he drank but an orangeade through post-war straws--had kept us spellbound with his talk. I glanced at Auriol and read compliance in her eye.

”Will you accompany us ignorant people and act as cicerone?”

”With all the pleasure in life,” said Bakkus.

”What time shall we start?”

”Would ten be too early?”

”Lady Auriol and I are old campaigners.”

”I call for you at ten. It is agreed?”

We made the compact. I lifted my gla.s.s. He sputtered response through the post-war straws resting in the remains of his orangeade. He rose to go, pleading much correspondence before going to bed. We rose too. He accompanied us to the entrance to our hotel. At the lift, he said:

”Can you give me a minute?”

”As many as you like,” said I, for it was still early.

We sped Lady Auriol upwards to her repose, and walked out through the hall into the soft August moonlight.

”May I tread,” said he, ”on the most delicate of grounds?”