Part 10

If she could have been picked up in his arms and carried off this morning, without coming back to the house at all! That would be nice. The girls and Harriet might say what they chose, if she hadn't got to listen to it. But he wouldn't ask her to go like that; she would have to propose it herself. How could she? Besides, when she went out to meet him she couldn't even take a suit-case.... Oh, what good would it do to meet him? Pain for nothing. He thought he would be able to argue her into it, make her promise over again. Wretched. And very likely she _would_ promise--and then what was she going to do? She would feel worse then than she felt now. It would have been far better for them not to see each other. If she told the servant----She couldn't say "Not at home," that would sound dreadful.

He might be here soon, she supposed, unless he had to wait long for the change of trains. If she did mean to go to the station, she ought to go directly she had given orders to the cook. Walking into misery with her eyes open! And walking back with her heart in her shoes. It wouldn't be any easier to say it to them later than it was at this minute--and she would know it even while he was wringing the promise from her. Oh, what was he coming for, to make things worse still? He might have known by her not having written to him----She pushed back her chair with vexation.

After breakfast, when the beds were being made, Mrs. Findon said:

"Doreen, if anybody calls this morning--a gentleman--say we're away from home for a few days. You understand? For a few days--all of us. Oh, and, Doreen, if he asks where we are, you don't know."

* * * * *

More than six years have gone by since Mrs. Findon peeped, breathless, as Mr. Murray got into a cab again and was driven out of her life. And now when she reads in her newspaper, every day, on one page or another, how sublimely mankind has progressed by relapsing into barbarism, and that the new human nature is purged of frailties that were inherent in men and women until the 4th August 1914, she vaguely wonders how it is that her household, and her social circle, and Beckenhampton at large, and she herself have not had their characters regenerated, like the rest of the world. For each morning she goes with the Misses Findon to gaze upon the study, and each Sunday she goes with them to gaze upon the grave; and on their return, while the Misses Findon sit by the fireplace, speaking at long intervals, in subdued tones, their stepmother stares from the window, knowing that her pretence of mourning a husband she did not love will continue as long as she lives. And when she looks back on her romance, she marvels--not at the recreancy of her submission, but that once she briefly dared to dream she would rebel.

IX

THE BOOM

At this time of day I do not mind publishing the facts. It happened a few weeks after those pillars of the State--Thibaudin and Hazard--disappeared from Paris with a couple of million francs. They were leading the police a pretty dance, and people said, "Ah, they are probably at the world's end by this time!" I used to think to myself how securely a man who had a mind to do so might lie hidden within an hour's journey of the Grand Boulevard. It was really the disappearance of Thibaudin and Hazard that originated my Idea.

I was manager at that period of the Théâtre Suprême, where we were very soon to produce Beauregard's play, _Omphale_. I descried a way to attract additional attention to our project. I went to see Beauregard one October morning, and gave him a shock. He was breakfasting in bed.

"Bonjour, maître," I said. "Are you too much occupied to talk business?"

"Panage," exclaimed the dramatist, "if you have come to demand any more mutilations of the manuscript, I tell you without parleying that no consideration on earth will induce me to yield. There is a limit; mon Dieu, there is a limit! Rather than cut another line, or substitute another syllable I will put the contract in the fire."

"Dear friend, you have evidently slept ill and are testy this morning," I said. "Compose yourself. I come to exhilarate you with a great scheme."

He still eyed me apprehensively, and to pacify him I made haste to explain, "It has nothing to do with any alterations in the play."

"Ah!" He breathed relief, and dipped his croissant in his cup.

"It is a scheme for booming it."

My host was forthwith genial. A smile suffused his munching face, and he offered me a cigarette.

"I ask your pardon if I was abrupt," he said. "As you surmise, I passed a bad night. A boom? Well, you know my views on the subject of booming. The ordinary puff preliminary is played out. One needs something novel, Panage, something scholarly. 'Scholarly' is the word. For _Omphale,_ a play of pre-Hellenic times, one needs the boom scholarly, classical, and grandiose."

"You voice my own sentiments," said I. "One needs nothing less than a production of 'unrivalled accuracy'--costumes 'copied from designs discovered in Crete and dating back to the dim days of the Minotaur.' That would look tasteful in print, would it not? Alors, what do you say to our going to Crete and discovering them?"

"Crete?" stammered Beauregard. Have I mentioned that he was fat and indolent and had never travelled further than Trouville?

"What think you of exploring the Minotaur's lair?" I questioned. "Of penetrating to the apartments of Phædra? Of examining with your own eyes the labyrinth of Ariadne?"

"I?" he ejaculated.

"You and I together, my old one! Our adventures would make pretty reading, hein? Would not all Paris be chattering about your _Omphale?_ What a fever of impatience for the first night! Think of the effect such paragraphs would have on the advance booking."

The corpulent Beauregard lay back on the pillows, pale and mute. I had spoken too earnestly for him to suspect that I was pulling his leg, and I could see that he was very seriously perturbed. His mind was torn in halves between his longing for the advertisement and his horror of the exertion and expense. After a moment he sat up, perspiring, and wrung my hand.

"Panage," he cried, "you are a man of genius! Your idea is most brilliant; I have never heard its equal. With all my heart I congratulate you. I, alas! cannot accompany you on account of my wife's ill-health, but _you_ are free. Go, mon ami! Your inspiration will crowd your theatre."

His wife's health was offensively robust. I shook with laughter so unrestrained that the cigarette fell out of my mouth.

"Let me be a trifle more explicit," I said. "It is not essential to my scheme that either you or I should actually go to Crete. It is only essential that we should be reported to have gone there. I propose that we should blazon our departure in all the journals--we might give them interviews in the midst of our packing--and that we should then retire for two or three months to some secluded spot near at hand where there will be nobody to recognise us. I shall confide only in Verdeille, my secretary; I can rely on him, and he will keep the Press well supplied with anecdotes of our vicissitudes during our absence. Mon Dieu! We will make Paris bubble and boil with anticipation."

He was admiring, but timid. "Don't you think it would be very risky?" he demurred. "If our imposture were found out? It would be ruin. For example, what spot?"

"Well, I am not prepared with spots at the instant; I came to you on the effervescence of the notion. But somewhere off the beaten track. One can hide very effectually without going far--I would not mind wagering that Thibaudin and Hazard are lying low in some hamlet. While the police are watching Marseilles and Havre, or picturing them already in South America, they are probably concealed within an easy run of the gare St. Lazare, waiting till the search is relaxed. What about one of the little seaside places in Normandy--have you ever stumbled on one of them a day after the season finished? There is nobody left but the garde-champêtre."

He shivered. "Three months of it?" he queried piteously.

"Our investigations, which we undertake 'to complete the previous labours of the archæologists,' ought to be thorough," I pointed out.

"Is it not worth our while to suffer a little tedium for such an end? Lift your gaze to the cash that will accrue, Beauregard. Dwell upon the box-office besieged. Positively we shall double the value of your play. Also you can take plenty of exercise and improve your figure."

"I abhor exercise," he murmured.

"And you could keep early hours and prolong your life."

"My life is a series of vexations--to prolong it would be fatuous."

"Further, everybody will say what a conscientious artist you are; I don't mind asserting that your passion for accuracy is sweeping me to the Minotaur's lair against my will."

"Well, I will think about it," he said heavily.

He promised to write to me on the morrow.

There was no difficulty about finding a summer resort forsaken enough in October--the difficulty was to find one sufficiently animated to boast an hotel that remained open; and at last I authorised Verdeille to provide us with a furnished chalet. Of these he had reported an unlimited choice everywhere. The resort finally approved for our purpose contained thirty furnished chalets, and they were all to be let with alacrity until the following July. We took ours until February. I had extracted Beauregard's consent, and a fortnight later I hustled him into a cab. He looked as if he were being removed for a kill-or-cure operation, and I am sure he had half a mind to break his word even when we were in the train. On the journey I perused with pleasure _Le Matin_, and the current issue of _L'Illustration_, in which the programme of our imaginary trip was set forth with a wealth of invention that did me credit. The deception, in fact, had been engineered so eloquently that at moments I had almost begun to fancy we were really bound for Crete.

We travelled to Dieppe, and then a cab crawled into a void with us--the motor service, we learnt, was discontinued for the next nine months. The chalet was a high, gaunt house called "Les Myosotis." A peasant, who represented the agence de location, stood at her door to wonder at our arrival. A primitive bonne, whom Verdeille had engaged to attend upon us, appeared to entertain doubts of our sanity. We entered the scene as messieurs "Poupard," and "Bachelet." It was _my_ precaution to choose names beginning with a P and a B; I thought of the initials on our luggage, and our washing--the dramatist had overlooked that point.

Well, I shall not pretend that I was in for a rollicking time. I have a high esteem for Beauregard in the theatre, but Beauregard in a village was unspeakable. His lamentations linger with me yet. We had nothing to do, except to walk in the mud and regard the shutters of the twenty-nine other chalets. At seven o'clock in the evening, the distant lighthouse, and the lamp in our own salon afforded the only lights discoverable for miles round. That fat Parisian's melancholy, his reproaches, his attitudes of despair, defy description. Even when the weather improved, he would perceive no virtue in it. I exclaimed once, "What a beautiful sky to-night!" He replied, "It _would_ be beautiful from the Place de la Concorde!" He had brought a cartload of novels--and before we had been in the place a week he was complaining that he had nothing to read.

"I shall die if I remain any longer," he declared. "I shall be buried here, I foresee it. The climate doesn't agree with me. Honestly, I feel very unwell. I ought to return to Paris, it is my duty--I have my wife to consider."

"You were never so well in your life," I remonstrated sharply. "Rubbish! there's no escape now, you've got to see it through. Foretaste the triumph of _Omphale_ and be blithe."

"How much will a triumph be worth to me if I am dead?" he wailed. "Mon Dieu! what an existence, what demoniac desolation! I shudder when I wake in the morning; the thought of the terrible day before me weighs me down. I have scarcely the energy to put on my socks. To wash my neck exhausts me. Is there nothing, nothing to be done for an hour's respite--is there no entertainment within reasonable distance?"

"My beloved 'Bachelet,'" I said, "you forget; at a place of entertainment we might be recognised. Besides, there isn't any."

He threw up his arms. "It is like being in gaol, word of honour! Who directed you to this fatal hole, where a postman collects letters only when he pleases--this desert, where Monday's _Matin_ drifts by Tuesday night? By what perverse ingenuity did you contrive to find it? How long have we endured it now?"

"Ten days," I told him cheerfully. "Why, we have only got about eighty more!"

He groaned. "It seems like centuries. My misgiving, of course, is that it will drive me to intemperance: such ordeals as this develop the vice. The natives themselves are staggered by our presence; they whisper about me as I pass. Children follow me up the roads, marvelling; if the population sufficed, I should be followed by crowds. I tell you, we are objects of suspicion; we are a local mystery; they conclude we must have 'done something.' Also the laundress here is a violent savage--she is not a laundress at all. I had six new collars when we came, six collars absolutely new from the box--and this devil has frayed them already. I would never have believed it could be accomplished in the time, but she has managed it. Six collars absolutely new from the box!"

Don't imagine that he had finished! don't suppose that it was merely a bad mood. It was the kind of thing I had to bear from him daily, hourly--from the early coffee to the latest cigarette.

One afternoon, when I had gone for a stroll without him, a contretemps occurred. I had entered the outfitter's, and stationer's, and tobacconist's and provision merchant's--the miniature shop was the only one in the place that had not closed until the following summer--to obtain a pair of shoelaces. That the clod-hoppers cackled about our sojourn was a small matter to me, and I paid no more heed to the woman's curious stare to-day than usual. But I was to meet another stare!

As I waited for my change, a shabby young man came in to ask for a copy of _Le Petit Journal_, and a toy for five sous. _Le Petit Journal_, which I had just read, contained the latest details of my explorations in Crete, and instinctively I looked round. His eyes widened. I did not know him from Adam; but it was evident that _he_ knew _me_, at least by sight! I turned hot and cold with confusion.

Grabbing at my coppers, I hurried out, wondering what I had better do if he addressed me. Before I had time to solve the question I heard him striding at my heels. With a deprecating bow that told me he had favours to solicit, he exclaimed, "Monsieur Panage!"

"You are mistaken," I said promptly.

"Oh, monsieur, I beg you to hear me," he cried, "I entreat you! In the theatre you are for ever inaccessible--will you not spare an instant to me here?"

He was so sure of my identity that I realised it would be indiscreet of me to deny it any longer. Since I could not deceive, my only course was to ingratiate him.

"What do you want?" I asked, fuming.

"Monsieur," he broke out, "I am an actor. I have been acting in the provinces since I was a boy. I have played every kind of part from farce to tragedy. I have talent, but I have no influence, and the stage doors of Paris are shut and barred against me! No manager will listen to me, because I am too obscure to obtain an introduction to him; no one will believe that I have ability, because I cannot get a chance to prove it. Oh, I know very well what a liberty I have taken in speaking to you, but I want to get on, I want to get on--I implore you to give me a trial!"

He had me in a nice fix. Apparently he was unaware that I was believed to be in Crete, but he would soon learn it by the newspaper in his pocket, and if I snubbed him he would certainly give me away. He could hold me up to ridicule--I should be the laughing-stock of Paris. It was a fine situation for me. I, the director of the Théâtre Suprême, was compelled to temporise with this provincial mummer!

I scrutinised him in encouraging silence, as if mentally casting him for a part. I saw hope bounding in him.

"Ah!" I said thoughtfully. "Y-e-s.... What is your favourite line?"

"Character, monsieur," he panted. "And, of course, I would accept a very small salary, a very small salary indeed."

I did not doubt it. I could picture him strutting and ranting on the boards of a booth for a louis a week, and holding himself lucky when he earned that.

"Walk on a little way with me," I said graciously; "we can talk as we go along. I should have to see you do something before I could consider you, you know; I must be sure that you are capable. Even the gentleman who plays the servant at the Suprême and hasn't a single word to utter is an experienced comedian. You are not playing any-where in the neighbourhood? you are not in a travelling theatre about here?"

"No, monsieur," he sighed, "I am out of an engagement; I am here because this is where I live."

"Rather remote from the dramatic world?" I suggested, smiling; "something of a drawback, is it not?" His simplicity in crediting me with the notion of recruiting the Suprême from a travelling theatre tickled me nearly to death.

"A grave drawback, monsieur," he agreed. "But I am not alone--I have a child, and she is too delicate to thrive in a city."

"A good many delicate children have thriven in Paris," I remarked.

"In thriving households, monsieur--in healthy quarters. Paris is dear, and I am poor--_my_ child would be condemned to a slum. I should see her lade away. Better to be a barnstormer all my life than lose my child. She is all I have left to love."

"There is your art," I said, humbugging him.

"My art?" He gave an hysterical laugh. A nervous, jumpy fellow, without a particle of repose. "Listen, monsieur, listen. I am an actor, and if I could demolish the barrier that keeps me out, I might be a great one; but I confess to you that I would abandon art and cast figures on an office stool, or break flints on a road, and thank God for the exchange, if it would buy my child a home! I want money. I want to give my child the comforts that other children have. That's _my_ ambition. I have no loftier pose than fatherhood. My prayer is, not applause, and compliments, and notoriety, not the petty pleasure of hearing I have equalled one favourite or eclipsed another; my prayer is--to give things to my child! I want to buy her nourishing food, and a physician's advice, and the education of a gentlewoman. I want the money to send her to the South when it snows, and to the mountains when it's hot. I want to see her laughing in a garden, like the rich men's children in Paris that you spoke of. I stand and watch them sometimes--when I go there to beg at stage doors till an understrapper kicks me out."

"Well, well, the sort of things you desire are not so expensive," I said suavely. "Some day your salary may provide them all."

"You think it possible, monsieur? Really?" His haggard eyes devoured me.

"You have only to make one success. After that, you will be grossly overpaid, like every other star."

"If I could but do it!" he gasped. "If I could only convince a Paris manager that I have it in me! Year after year I've hoped, and tried, and failed to get a hearing. You may judge my desperation by my audacity in stopping you in the streets. What course is open to me--what steps can I take? Even now, when I am pouring out my heart to monsieur Panage himself, how much does it advance me?"

He was not so simple as I had thought.

"Enfin--by the way, what is your name?"

"My name is Paul Manesse, monsieur."

"Well, monsieur, you must surely understand that until I have seen you act I cannot be of any service to you?"

"I could rehearse on approval," he pleaded.

"Moreover," I added hastily, "all my arrangements are made for some time to come. Later on, when an opportunity arises, we shall see what we shall see." I halted. "Write to me during the run of _Omphale_. I shall not forget our little chat. A propos, I am starting to-morrow for Crete; I see the papers are reporting that I am already there, so you need not mention that you have met me--it is never policy to contradict the Press. Yes, I shall bear your name in mind, I assure you."

He did not look assured, however; he stood silent, and his lips were trembling. Heaven knows what solid help my amiability had led him to expect, but it was plain that honeyed phrases were a meagre substitute.

"You have been most courteous to me," he stammered, "you have done me a great honour--as long as I live I shall remember that I have talked with monsieur Panage; but you are leaving what you found, monsieur--a desperate man!"

"Bah! who knows when an opening may occur?" I said, a shade embarrassed. "I may see a chance for you sooner than you think. When I want you I shall send for you."

I little dreamt in what strange circumstances I was to send for him.

Beauregard was snoring on the sofa when I burst into the room.

"Well, you can bestir yourself and pack!" I volleyed. "The place is too hot to hold us; we have to get out!"

"Hein?"

"There is a pro here who knows me, confound him! I had to tell him we were leaving for Crete in the morning--he mustn't see me here again."

The playwright shifted his slippered feet to the floor and sat up. "We go back to Paris?" he inquired, beaming.

"How can that be? Of course not! We must discover another retreat."

"Fugitives!" moaned Beauregard. "Nomads! Do you not think, Panage, that _I_ might go back to Paris--I could remain cautiously in the house? The truth is, my wife is of a very high-minded character, and it distresses her to have to address tender letters to a monsieur 'Bachelet': she feels that it is not correct."

I was in no mood to be tolerant of his subterfuges. He wept.

I determined to effect our departure the same evening while he was still intimidated--and if only I had been able to accelerate his movements, my change of intentions would have spared us much. His dilatoriness exposed us to a thunderbolt. We had pealed the bell in his bedroom for the lamp, and when the door was opened at last, I turned to utter a sharp complaint of the delay. To my surprise, I saw that a stranger was walking in. There was a fraction of a second in which I stared indignantly, waiting for an apology for his blunder. Then it was as if my heart slipped slowly to my stomach, and I felt catastrophe in the air, even before I heard his rustic, official tones. He arrested us as Thibaudin and Hazard!

Behind me I heard Beauregard's dressing-case drop with a thud.

Our eyes met, and we stood petrified, realising the impossibility of concealing our names. In my terror of the public scandal that was imminent, my clothes stuck to my skin. Curs, as well as criminals, we looked. I rather fancied that our provincial captor was relieved to see what knock-kneed miscreants he had to deal with.

"You bungling idiot!" I gasped. "I am monsieur Panage, of the Théâtre Suprême; this gentleman is monsieur Beauregard, of the Académie Francaise. You shall suffer for this outrage!"

He shifted his feet slightly. It was the least bit in the world, but that motiveless movement betrayed misgiving; I deduced from it that, in his eagerness to distinguish himself, he had taken more responsibility upon his bucolic shoulders than sat quite comfortably on them. I flung my card to him. "Look!"

"What of it?" he said surlily. "What evidence is this? I see you were preparing for flight. No violence!"--Beauregard had impotently wrung his hands--"I have men in the passage. You will offer your explanations in the proper quarter. Come!" He advanced upon me.