Simon the Jester

CHAPTER XIII

You could have knocked me down with a feather. It is a trite metaphor, I know; but it is none the less excellent. I repeat, therefore, unblushingly—you could have knocked me down with a feather. I gasped. The little man wiped his eyes. He was the tearfullest adult I have ever met, and I once knew an Italian prima donna with a temperament.

“Captain Vauvenarde? The man with the shoebrush hair and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck? Are you sure?”

The dwarf nodded. “I set out from England to find him. I swore to the carissima signora that I would do so. I have done it,” he added, with a faint return of his self-confidence.

“Well, I'm damned!” said I, in my native tongue.

I don't often use strong language; but the occasion warranted it. I was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted, incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore summed them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of my absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet of a fellow, while I, Simon de Gex, erstwhile M.P., was fooling about War Offices and regiments! It was grotesque. It was monstrous. It ought not to have been allowed. And yet it saved me a vast amount of trouble.

“I'm damned!” said I.

Anastasius had just enough English to understand. I suppose, such is mortal unregeneracy, that it is the most widely understood word in the universe.

“And I,” said he, “am eternally beaten. I am trampled under foot and shall never be able to hold up my head again.”

Whereupon he renewed his lamentations. For some time I listened patiently, and from his disconnected remarks I gathered that he had gone to the Cercle Africain in view of his gigantic combinations, but that the demon of gambling taking possession of him had almost driven them from his mind. Eventually he had lost control of his nerves, a cloud had spread over his brain, and he had committed the unspeakable blunder which led to disaster.

“To think that I should have tracked him down—for this!” he exclaimed tragically.

“What beats me,” I cried, “is how the deuce you managed to track him down. Your magnificent intellect, I suppose”—I spoke gently and not in open sarcasm—“enabled you to get on the trail.”

He brightened at the compliment. “Yes, that was it. Listen. I came to Algiers, the last place he was heard of. I go to the cafes. I listen like a detective to conversation. I creep behind soldiers talking. I find out nothing. I ask at the shops. They think I am crazy, but Anastasius Papadopoulos has a brain larger than theirs. I go to my old friend the secretary of the theatre, where I have exhibited the marvellous performance of my cats. I say to him, 'When have you a date for me?' He says, 'Next year.' I make a note of it. We talk. He knows all Algiers. I say to him, 'What has become of Captain Vauvenarde of the Chasseurs d'Afrique?' I say it carelessly as if the Captain were an old friend of mine. The secretary laughs. 'Haven't you heard? The Captain was chased from the regiment——'”

“The deuce he was!” I interjected.

“On account of something,” said Anastasius. “The secretary could not tell what. Perhaps he cheated at cards. The officers said so.

“'Where is he now?' I ask. 'Why, in Algiers. He is the most famous gambler in the town. He is every night at the Cercle Africain, and some people believe that it belongs to him.' My friend the secretary asks me why I am so anxious to discover Captain Vauvenarde. I do not betray my secret. When I do not wish to talk I close my lips, and they are sealed like the tomb. I am the model of discretion. You, Monsieur, with the high-bred delicacy of the English statesman, have not questioned me about my combination. I appreciate it. But, if you had, though it broke my heart, I should not have answered.”

“I am not going to pry into your schemes,” I said, “but there are one or two things I must understand. How do you know the banker was Captain Vauvenarde?”

“I saw him several times in Marseilles with the carissima signora.”

“Then how was it he did not recognise you to-night?”

“I was then but an acquaintance of Madame; not her intimate friend, counsellor, champion, as I am now. I did not have the honour of being presented to Captain Vauvenarde. I went to-night to make sure of my man, to play the first card in my gigantic combination—but, alas! But no!” He rose and thumped his little chest. “I feel my courage coming back. My will is stiffening into iron. When the carissima signora arrives in Algiers she will find she has a champion!”

“How do you know she is coming to Algiers?” I asked startled.

“As soon as I learned that Captain Vauvenarde was here,” he replied proudly, “I sent her a telegram. 'Husband found; come at once.' I know she is coming, for she has not answered.”

An idea occurred to me. “Did you sign your name and address on the telegram?”

He approached me confidentially as I sat, and wagged a cunning finger.

“In matters of life and death, never give your name and address.”

As Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos was himself again, and as I began to sneeze—for the night was chilly—I rose and suggested that we might adjourn this conference till the morrow. He acquiesced, saying that all was not lost and that he still had time to mature his combinations. We crossed the road, and I hailed a cab standing by the Cafe d'Alger. I offered Anastasius to drive him to his hotel, but he declined politely. We shook hands.

“Monsieur,” said he, “I have to make my heartfelt apologies for having caused you so painful, so useless, and so expensive an evening. As for the last aspect I will repay you.”

“You will do no such thing, Professor,” said I. “My evening has, on the contrary, been particularly useful and instructive. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”

And I drove off homewards, glad to be in my own company.

Here was an imbroglio! The missing husband found and, like most missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola, obviously imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment speeding hither as fast as the Marechal Bugeaud could carry her. If I had discovered Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have anathematised him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that ever looked like Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the discovery belonged to him and not to me, I could only anathematise myself for my dilettanteism in the capacity of a private inquiry agent.

I went to bed and slept badly. The ludicrous scenes of the evening danced before my eyes; the smoke-filled, sordid room, the ignoble faces round the table, the foolish hullaballoo, the collapse of Anastasius, my melodramatic intervention, and the ironical courtesy of the fleshy Captain Vauvenarde. Also, in the small hours of the night, Anastasius's gigantic combinations assumed a less trivial aspect. What lunatic scheme was being hatched behind that dome-like brow? His object in taking me to the club was obvious. He could not have got in save under my protection. But what he had reckoned upon doing when he got there Heaven and Anastasius Papadopoulos only knew. I was also worried by the confounded little pain inside.

On the following afternoon I went down to meet the steamer from Marseilles. I more than expected to find the dwarf on the quay, but to my relief he was not there. I had purposely kept my knowledge of Lola's movements a secret from him, as I desired as far as possible to conduct affairs without his crazy intervention. I was not sorry, too, that he had not availed himself of my proposal to visit me that morning and continue our conversation of the night before. The grotesque as a decoration of life is valuable; as the main feature it gets on your nerves.

I stood on the sloping stone jetty among the crowd of Arab porters and Europeans and watched the vessel waddle in. Lola and I, catching sight of each other at the same time, waved handkerchiefs in an imbecile manner, and when the vessel came alongside, and during the tedious process of mooring, we regarded each other with photographic smiles. She was wearing a squirrel coat and a toque of the same fur, and she looked more like a splendid wild animal than ever. Something inside me—not the little pain—but what must have been my heart, throbbed suddenly at her beauty, and the throb was followed by a sudden sense of shock at the realisation of my keen pleasure at the sight of her. A wistful radiance shone in her face as she came down the gangway.

“Oh, how kind, how good, how splendid of you to meet me!” she cried as our hands clasped. “I was dreading, dreading, dreading that it might be some one else.”

“And yet you came straight through,” said I, still holding her hand—or, rather, allowing hers to encircle mine in the familiar grip.

“Didn't you command me to do so?”

I could not explain matters to her then and there among the hustle of passengers and the bustle of porters. Besides, Rogers, who had come down with the hotel omnibus, was at my side touching his hat.

“I have ordered you a room and a private sitting-room with a balcony facing the sea. Put yourself in charge of me and your luggage in charge of Rogers and dismiss all thoughts of worry from your mind.”

“You are so restful,” she laughed as we moved off.

Then she scanned my face and said falteringly. “How thin and worn you look! Are you worse?”

“If you ask me such questions,” said I, “I'll leave you with the luggage in charge of Rogers. I am in resplendent health.”

She murmured that she wished she could believe me, and took my arm as we walked down the jetty to the waiting cab.

“It's good to hear your voice again,” I said. “It's a lazy voice and fits in with the lazy South.” I pointed to the burnous-enveloped Arabs sleeping on the parapet. “It's out of place in Cadogan Gardens.”

She laughed her low, rippling laugh. It was music very pleasant to hear after the somewhat shrill cachinnation of the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I was so pleased that I gave half a franc to a pestilential Arab shoeblack.

“That was nice of you,” she said.

“It was the act of an imbecile,” I retorted. “I have now rendered it impossible for me to enter the town again. How is Dale?”

She started. “He's well. Busy with his election. I saw him the day before I left. I didn't tell him I was coming to Algiers. I wrote from Paris.”

“Telling him the reason?”

She faced me and met my eyes and said shortly: “No.”

“Oh!” said I.

This brought us to the cab. We entered and drove away. Then leaning back and looking straight in front of her, she grasped my wrist and said:

“Now, my dear friend, tell me all and get it over.”

“My dear Madame Brandt—” I began.

She interrupted me. “For goodness' sake don't call me that. It makes a cold shiver run down my back. I'm either Lola to you or nothing.”

“Then, my dear Lola,” said I, “the first thing I must tell you is that I did not send for you.”

“What do you mean? The telegram?”

“It was sent by Anastasius Papadopoulos.”

“Anastasius?” She bent forward and looked at me. “What is he doing here?”

“Heaven knows!” said I. “But what he has done has been to find Captain Vauvenarde. I am glad he has done that, but I am deeply sorry he sent you the telegram.”

“Sorry? Why?”

“Because there was no reason for your coming,” I said with unwonted gravity. “It would have been better if you had stayed in London, and it will be best if you take the boat back again to-morrow.”

She remained silent for a while. Then she said in a low voice:

“He won't have me?”

“He hasn't been asked,” I said. “He will, as far as I can command the situation, never be asked.”

On that I had fully determined; and, when she inquired the reason, I told her.

“I proposed that you should reunite yourself with an honourable though somewhat misguided gentleman. I've had the reverse of pleasure in meeting Captain Vauvenarde, and I regret to say, though he is still misguided, he can scarcely be termed honourable. The term 'gentleman' has still to be accurately defined.”

She made a writhing movement of impatience.

“Tell me straight out what he's doing in Algiers. You're trying to make things easy for me. It's the way of your class. It isn't the way of mine. I'm used to brutality. I like it better. Why did he leave the army and why is he in Algiers?”

“If you prefer the direct method, my dear Lola,” said I—and the name came quite trippingly on my tongue—“I'll employ it. Your husband has apparently been kicked out of the army and is now running a gambling-hell.”

She took the blow bravely; but it turned her face haggard like a paroxysm of physical pain. After a few moments' silence, she said:

“It must have been awful for him. He was a proud man.”

“He is changed,” I replied gently. “Pride is too hampering a quality for a knight of industry to keep in his equipment.”

“Tell me how you met him,” she said.

I rapidly sketched the whole absurd history, from my encounter with Anastasius Papadopoulos in Marseilles to my parting with him on the previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself to be abortive.

“He must be pretty miserable,” said Lola.

“Devil a bit,” said I.

She did not answer, but settled herself more comfortably in the carriage and relapsed into mournful silence. I, having said my say, lit a cigarette. Save for the clanging past of an upward or downward tram, the creeping drive up the hill through the long winding street was very quiet; and as we mounted higher and left the shops behind, the only sounds that broke the afternoon stillness were the driver's raucous admonition to his horses and the wind in the trees by the wayside. At different points the turns of the road brought to view the panorama of the town below and the calm sweep of the bay.

“Exquisite, isn't it?” I said at last, with an indicative wave of the hand.

“What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?”

“It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will go on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from the world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion.”

“If so,” she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod argument, “how can it touch human mouldiness?”

“I don't know,” said I. “The poets will tell you. All you have to do is to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted with heartache.”

“Is that true?” she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.

I smiled and nodded.

“I'm glad on your account,” she said sincerely. “It's the very devil of an ache. I've always had it.”

“Poor Lola,” said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety. “I wish I could cure you.”

“You?” She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.

“I had a very comfortable crossing,” she remarked a moment later.

I gave her into the keeping of the manager of the hotel and did not see her again until she came down somewhat late for dinner. I met her in the vestibule. She wore a closely fitting brown dress, which in colour matched the bronze of her hair and in shape showed off her lithe and generous figure.

I thought it my duty to cheer her by a well-deserved compliment.

“Are you aware,” I said, with a low bow, “that you're a remarkably handsome woman?”

A perfectly unnecessary light came into her eyes and a superfluous flush to her cheeks. “If I'm at least that to you, I'm happy,” she said.

“You're that to the dullest vision. Follow the maitre d'hotel,” said I, as we entered the salle a manger, “and I'll walk behind in reflected glory.”

We made an effective entrance. I declare there was a perceptible rattle of soup-spoons laid down by the retired Colonels and maiden ladies as we passed by. Colonel Bunnion returned my nod of greeting in the most distracted fashion and gazed at Lola with the frank admiration of British Cavalry. I felt foolishly proud and exhilarated, and gave her at my table the seat commanding a view of the room. I then ordered a bottle of champagne, which I am forbidden to touch.

“It isn't often that I have the pleasure of dining with you,” I said by way of apology.

“This is the very first time,” she said.

“And it's not going to be the last,” I declared.

“I thought you were going to ship me back to Marseilles to-morrow.”

She laughed lazily, meeting my eyes. I smiled.

“It would be inhuman. I allow you a few day's rest.”

Indeed, now she was here I had a curious desire to keep her. I regarded the failure of my eumoirous little plans with more than satisfaction. I had done my best. I had found (through the dwarf's agency) Captain Vauvenarde. I had satisfied myself that he was an outrageous person, thoroughly disqualified from becoming Lola's husband, and there was an end of the matter. Meanwhile Fate (again through the agency of Anastasius) had brought her many hundreds of miles away from Dale and had moreover brought her to me. I was delighted. I patted Destiny on the back, and drank his health in excellent Pommery. Lola did not know in the least what I meant, but she smiled amiably and drank the toast. It was quite a merry dinner. Lola threw herself into my mood and jested as if she had never heard of an undesirable husband who had been kicked out of the French Army. We talked of many things. I described in fuller detail my adventure with Anastasius and Saupiquet, and we laughed over the debt of fifteen sous and the elaborate receipt.

“Anastasius,” she said, “is childish in many ways—the doctors have a name for it.”

“Arrested development.”

“That's it; but he is absolutely cracked on one point—the poisoning of my horse Sultan. He has reams of paper which he calls the dossier of the crime. You never saw such a collection of rubbish in your life. I cried over it. And he is so proud of it, poor wee mite.” She laughed suddenly. “I should love to have seen you hobnobbing with him and Saupiquet.”

“Why?”

“You're so aristocratic-looking,” she did me the embarrassing honour to explain in her direct fashion. “You're my idea of an English duke.”

“My dear Lola,” I replied, “you're quite wrong. The ordinary English duke is a stout, middle-aged gentleman with a beard, and he generally wears thick knickerbockers and shocking bad hats.”

“Do you know any?”

“Two or three,” I admitted.

“And duchesses, too?”

I again pleaded guilty. In these democratic days, if one is engaged in public and social affairs one can't help running up against them. It is their fault, not mine.

“Do tell me about them,” said Lola, with her elbows on the table.

I told her.

“And are earls and countesses just the same?” she asked with a disappointed air.

“Just the same, only worse. They're so ordinary you can't pick them out from common misters and missuses.”

Saying this I rose, for we had finished our dessert, and proposed coffee in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in the pocket of his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a striking-looking lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the stage in South Shields in melodrama, and they are the goings-on of the villain. In the eyes of the gentle ladies my reputation was gone. I was trying to rehabilitate myself when the chasseur brought me a telegram. I asked permission to open it, and stepped aside.

The words of the telegram were like a ringing box on the ears.

“Tell me immediately why Lola has joined you in Algiers. —KYNNERSLEY.”

Not “Dale,” mark you, as he has signed himself ever since I knew him in Eton collars, but “Kynnersley.” Why has Lola joined you? Why have you run off with Lola? What's the reason of this treacherous abduction? Account for yourself immediately. Stand and deliver. I stood there gaping at the words like an idiot, my blood tingling at the implied accusation. The peremptoriness of it! The impudence of the boy! The wild extravagance of the idea! And yet, while my head was reeling with one buffet a memory arose and gave me another on the other side. I remembered the preposterous attitude in which Dale had found us when he rushed from Berlin into Lola's drawing-room.

I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge, like a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the humour of the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I been in sound health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola would have been absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous disposition of mind; for me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast all vain and disturbing human emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on-Sea; for me who had a spirit's calm disregard for the petty passions and interests of mankind and walked through the world with no other object than healing a few human woes; for me who already saw death on the other side of the river and found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to think of running hundreds of miles from home with—to say the least of it—so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea was inexpressibly and weirdly comic.

I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.

“Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs. Avoid lunacy save for electioneering purposes.—SIMON.”

Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale Kynnersley.

Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel for bridge. He rose reluctantly.

“I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?” she asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.

“I'm afraid not,” I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat by her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired.

“Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?”

“I? What can I have taught you?”

“The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale abominably. I didn't realise it before.”

Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.

“Indeed?” said I.

She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice:

“He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you think so?”

“You know my opinions,” I said.

“If I had followed your advice at first,” she continued, “we needn't have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry.”

“What do you propose to do?” I asked.

“Before deciding, I shall see my husband.”

“You shall do no such thing.”

She smiled. “I shall.”

I protested. Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale. He was not fit to associate with decent women. What object could she have in meeting him?

“I want to judge for myself,” she replied.

“Judge what? Surely not whether he is eligible as a husband!”

“Yes,” she said.

“But, my dear Lola,” I cried, “the notion is as crazy as any of Anastasius Papadopoulos's. Of course, as soon as he learns that you're a rich woman, he'll want to live with you, and use your money for his gaming-hell.”

“I am going to meet him,” she said quietly.

“I forbid it.”

“You're too late, dear friend. I wrote him a letter before dinner and sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger. I also wrote to Anastasius. I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning. That's why I've been so gay this evening.”

At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her movements rose from her chair. I rose too.

“Are you angry with me?”

“I thought I had walked out of a nightmare,” I said. “I find I'm still in it.”

“But don't be angry with me. It was the only way.”

“The only way to, or out of, what?” I asked, bewildered.

“Never mind.”

She looked at me with a singular expression in her slumbrous eyes. It was sad, wistful, soothing, and gave me the idea of a noble woman making a senseless sacrifice.

“There is no earthly reason to do this on account of Dale,” I protested.

“Dale has nothing to do with it.”

“Then who has?”

“Anastasius Papadopoulos,” she said with undisguised irony.

“I beg your pardon,” I said rather stiffly, “for appearing to force your confidence. But as I first put the idea of joining your husband into your head and have enjoyed your confidence in the matter hitherto, I thought I might claim certain privileges.”

As she had done before, she laid her hands on my shoulders—we were alone in the alcove—and looked me in the eyes.

“Don't make me cry. I'm very near it. And I'm tired to-night, and I'm going to have a hellish time to-morrow. And I want you to do me a favour.”

“What is that?”

“When I'm seeing my husband, I'd like to know that you were within call—in case I wanted you. One never knows what may happen. You will come won't you, if I send for you?”

“I'm always at your service,” I said.

She released my shoulders and grasped my hand.

“Good-night,” she said, abruptly, and rushed swiftly out of the room, leaving me wondering more than I had ever wondered in my life at the inscrutable ways of women.