CHAPTER V

GUERRILLA

“Why, Monty!” he cried delightedly.

For, yes, it was Monty Wytham, of all people! The fastest of the Mongoons!

“You’re dining here, Gav?” asked the other with easy calm.

“Why, of course, if you are.”

“I always dine here.” Monty spoke with a certain solemnity.

“I’d heard that, Monty, but I didn’t know whether----”

“No,” smiled Monty, a little sadly. “People never _will_ believe the worst of me. That’s my tragedy, Gav.”

“And they never believe the best of me,” said Gaveston. “That’s mine, you know.”

“You’ll go down well in the Café, Gav. Your wit is so Gyp-like, _mon brave_.”

“Well, oughtn’t we to dine together?” Gav asked.

“Perhaps we ought: it seems an ideal combination somehow. We might work out a synthetic creed of the Best and the Worst,” he added over his shoulder, turning to lead the way towards the dining tables at the further end of the room.

“It would pass the evening, at any rate.”

“And it might amuse Raoul,” said Monty, rather tentatively.

“Might it?”

“Possibly. He needs amusing, especially just now, you know. But I forgot--you don’t know Raoul?”

“Not from Wallace, is he?”

“Heavens, no!” and Monty smiled. “Oh, he’s--well, I’ve known him about the smoke-room for years back.”

Gaveston could scarcely have borne the tone of superiority in his friend’s voice had these words been uttered in less unfamiliar surroundings. But here Monty was evidently a _par excellence habitué_, and in the frankly Bohemian atmosphere, Gaveston was ready to make allowances.

“I must introduce you then.”

They had come to a corner table where a plump young man of twenty-two or twenty-three was seated, poring over the gilt-edged price-list.[10] As the pair stopped in front of him, he slowly raised his crisp, curly hair, and peered over the top of the card with the characteristic black beady eyes of a Frenchman.

[10] Mr. Budd has employed an expressive anglicization of the customary but hackneyed “menu.” (LIT. EXEC.)

“An Oxford friend of mine, Raoul,” said Wytham. “Mr. Gaveston ffoulis. Monsieur Raoul du Val.…”

A queer prescience made Gaveston refrain from proffering his hand. He only bowed to the rising figure of Monty’s friend. Somehow that name seemed familiar … somehow.… Where could he have heard it? Had Uncle Wilkie got a new story? Or what was it?

They sat down. A waiter hovered expectant. The _maître d’hôtel_ stood near by watching them, stroking his beard in his nervousness. Gav’s personality was compelling in the most unlikely surroundings.

“This is my friend’s first dinner here, Raoul,” said Monty. “So I’d better leave it to you. You’re so good at ordering a dinner, you know.”

And Gaveston remembered. Of course! Of course! Du Val! He saw again his mother’s eyelids fluttering under the lamps of the flitting Bayswater streets as the Rolls Royce purred through the foggy December morning only a few weeks ago. Poor Mums!

Well, he would say nothing. But he could watch; it was a great opportunity. Perhaps he had been too filially swift in acquiescing so easily to his mother’s choice?

“I must think it out carefully, then,” said du Val with a quick smile as he resumed his study of the card.

“Do,” was Gaveston’s neatly ironic reply.

And meantime, while du Val’s attention roved about the amazing dishes set forth for his choice, Monty did not hesitate to point out to Gaveston some few of the famous figures of this new and delirious world upon which he had now stumbled.

“That’s Adolphus Jack, of course, and Aaron Einstein further over. And there’s little Chou-chou Wilkins: such a dear! She always wears those black earrings since she did in poor Boris Zemstvo after the Victory Ball--you remember.”

Gaveston nodded. The ffoulises took pride in their knowledge of things _mondains_.

“And behind Jack, who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s the painter fellow, Tierra del Fuego--you know.”

Gaveston nodded. He was calm, but it was profoundly moving to a man of his sensitive social perceptibilities thus to see gathered together in so small a space so many of the world’s master minds. Yet already his own personality was making itself felt. From the crowded tables he could hear murmurs of delighted surprise floating across.

“_Qui est-ce qui que ça?_” came the gay inquiry of a marvellous _coquette_ whose wild _capriccii_ had been the _thème_ of every _boulvardier_ for _maint jour_.

“_Kolossal! Ach, was für gemütlichkeit!_” came the guttural answer of her cavalier.

“_Chout katinka petroushka!!_” muttered a famous Muscovite ikonographer in open-eyed admiration, and pointed a stubby forefinger towards Gaveston in his simple _moujik_ manner.

“Ready yet, Raoul?” asked Monty, raising his voice to be audible above the veritable Babel of praising tongues.

“It’s ze fish I’m puzzled about, Monty,” said du Val. “_Ortolans à la Milanaise_ are excellent here, but isn’t it just a shade early in the year to get zem at zeir best? A fisherman at Capri told me once that before February zey.…”

But Gaveston did not listen to what the fisherman had said. This was enough for him. All he knew was that his mother simply hated _ortolans à la Milanaise_. (“So cloying, Gav dearest,” he remembered her wistful expression when he had suggested them once in Monte--or was it Mentone--and how the scented wind from the terrace had stirred his golden locks: he couldn’t have been more than four at the time.) No, this must be the test for Raoul du Val. If the fellow were really in love with poor Mums, he could not possibly eat _ortolans à la Milanaise_. And with stepfathers, reflected Gav, one cannot be too careful.

“Well, let Gaveston decide,” said Monty, and there was a moment of pregnant silence.

Gaveston smiled at his companions.

“Do you like them, Monsieur du Val?” he asked, with every appearance of disinterestedness.

“Passionately, Monsieur ffoulis,” replied the Frenchman.

“I,” said Gaveston, “cannot eat them.” And after a pause he added, simply, “My mother hates them.”

Du Val looked surprised.

“But I zink we’ll risk zem, all ze same,” he said, and gave his order to the waiter.

Instantly Gaveston beckoned to the _maître d’hôtel_.

“Two telegraph forms and a sheet of carbon paper,” he ordered, with quiet, determined voice.

“Certainly, sir.”

They were brought.

“You excuse me a moment,” said Gaveston, and, adjusting the carbon with his own hands, scribbled a few lines with his gold-mounted pencil.

“Take this,” he said to the _maître d’hôtel_. “See that it’s sent off at once. Eighteen words--that’ll be one and sixpence. You can keep the change.” He handed him the topmost form, and the borrowed carbon paper, and folding up the duplicate placed it in his breast pocket.

“And now let us proceed with the feast,” he said brightly, as the waiter set out the _hors d’œuvres_ on the table.

The feast proceeded. The fate-laden _ortolans_ appeared in due course, and disappeared. Du Val was delighted with them, and invoked curses upon the foreboding Capriote, but Gaveston contented himself filially with a simple dish of cod. Whilst the party were dallying over the delicious _croûte-au-pot_ which du Val had chosen as a savoury, a broad-shouldered attendant struggled painfully up to their corner, now the cynosure of every eye,[11] bearing the marble top of a table.

[11] The phrase is borrowed from the writings of J. Milton (1608-1674). (LIT. EXEC.)

“For you, sir,” he gasped to Gaveston, who looked up with that indefinable air of one long bred to face the adulations of the public. The fellow held the table-top mirror-wise to the young man.

What was his delight to see pencilled upon it three altogether admirable drawings of himself, profile, full-face and abstract, and signed each, with a few words of homage, by an artist whose slightest brushstroke was law. A simple, but touching, tribute.

“More here, sir,” said another waiter, who bore manfully an even larger marble slab.

Gaveston leaned forward. Yes, it was gratifying. Two poems were pencilled upon it, addressed to the beautiful stranger in the midst, a ballade by a poet whose name had been on every lip full thirty years agone, the other a _vers libre_, by one whose fame and fortune are safe for full thirty years to come.

Turning, Gaveston smiled and waved a kindly gesture of gratitude to his admirers, and calmly stirred his coffee. The waiter bore off his precious burdens to the cloak-room.

“You must have them packed up and sent down to Lady Penhaligon,” laughed Monty.

Du Val started.

“Lady Penhaligon!” he cried hoarsely, “Lady Penhaligon? And what may she be to you, sir?”

A scene seemed inevitable, but the ffoulis tact came to save the terrifying situation.

“My mother, sir,” Gaveston answered with quiet dignity. “My mother,” he repeated.

Monty’s laugh had frozen when he grasped the position.

“Then you … you … you are my stepson-to-be?” gasped the fortunate one of seven potentials.

“Keep calm, sir, I beg,” said Gaveston sternly. “Let us have no scenes in so public a place.”

“But you are, aren’t you?”

“The relationship is unlikely,” Gav replied, with an oh! how characteristically faint smile. “My mother almost always follows my advice. Would you like to see it? Here it is.”

And drawing from his pocket the duplicate telegram, he passed it to du Val.

_Lady Penhaligon Grand Hotel Bournemouth try Spirella instead Du Val wont do passionately fond Ortolans letter follows Love Gav._

Du Val grew sickly pale.

“But it is nineteen words, Monsieur ffoulis. You said eighteen,” he ventured, but he assumed phlegm poorly.

“Duval counts as one,” replied Gaveston frigidly.

It was crushing.

Ortolans … ortolans … the wretched fellow saw his life crashing about him, here in this gilded, glittering Palace of Pleasure.

“Ze boat-train,” he muttered faintly as he rose. He rammed a broad-rimmed sombrero on his head and hurried from the Café.

“Huh!” said Gaveston, looking at his wrist-watch. “He has still time.” And with no tremor of emotion he bade the waiter bring another Bronx.