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The Englishman in Andrew stood hurt and helpless before this morbid, convulsive nationalism. Like a woman in certain emotional states she were better left alone for awhile, till she recovered and smiled her benevolent graciousness again. Yet if he remained Petit Patou he must stay in France, the land of his professional adoption.
All this by way of preamble to the statement that I had comfortably settled down in Royat a week before Les Petit Patou were billed to appear in Clermont-Ferrand.
The interior backcloth and wings provided for Les Petit Patou were let down, stage hands set the table and properties, Andrew and Elodie anxiously supervising, and when all was clear the curtain went up. Andrew went on alone and grinned familiarly, his old tradition, before the sea of faces. A few faint hand-claps instead of the old expectant laughter welcomed him.
"You flatter me," grinned Andrew, "but I don't see what the necessity of earning bread and butter has to do with a reinforced-concrete mind." "It's such an undignified way of earning it," protested Elodie. "I think," said Bakkus, "it will take as much courage for our poor friend to re-become Petit Patou, as it took for him to become General Lackaday."
Henceforth he would exist solely as Petit Patou, flinging General Lackaday dead among the dead things of war.... Besides, the great hotels of Marseilles cost the eyes of your head. The good old days of the comfortable car and inexpensive lodging had gone apparently for ever, and he had to fall back on the travel and accommodation of his early struggling days.
"The deuce you do!" said I, thinking of Petit Patou and wondering how she had guessed. "What is it?" "A woman of course." "Did he tell you?" I asked, startled, for that shed a new light on the matter. "No." She boomed the word at me. "What on earth do you suppose was the meaning of our talk about playing the game?"
Monsieur Patou goes to join the English army." She was not going to make her sacrifice for nothing. To Bakkus Andrew confided the general charge of Elodie. "My dear fellow," said the cynic, "isn't it rather overdoing your saintly simplicity? Do you remember the farce 'Occupe-toi d'Amelie? Do I appeal to you as a squire of deserted dames, grass-widows endowed with plenty?
If you had convinced me that the whole basis of my projected action was illusory, I should have found means to cancel the arrangements. But remember what you said. "There can't by any possibility be anything between Lady Auriol Dayne and Petit Patou." "Damn the fellow," I muttered. "Now he's calmly shifting the responsibility on to me."
Comes on again immediately, Petit Patou, apparently seven foot high, in the green silk tights reaching to the arm-pit waist, a low frill round his neck, his hair up to a point, a perpetual grin painted on his face. On the other side enters Prepimpin on hind legs, bearing an immense envelope. Petit Patou opens it shows the audience an invitation to a ball. "Ah! dress me, Prepimpin."
Months passed of fierce fighting and incessant strain, and he covered himself with glory and completed the rainbow row of ribbons on his breast, until Petit Patou and Elodie and Bakkus and the apartment in the Faubourg Saint-Denis became things of a far-off dream. And before he saw Elodie again, he had met Lady Auriol Dayne. That was the devil of it. He had met Lady Auriol Dayne.
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