United States or Democratic Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here we are, we three, and it is Andre, Horace, Elodie and here we are, we four, and it is Monsieur Bakkus, and Lackaday never will I be able to pronounce that word and Madame Patou and Monsieur le Capitaine Hylton. Look. To my friends I am Elodie tout court and you?" It was an embarrassing moment. Andrew's mug of a face was as expressionless as that of a sphinx.
Elodie can scarcely put up with herself. She gives orders in writing to tradesmen now and subscribes herself 'Madame La Colonelle Patou. She has turned down a bird engagement offered by Moignon, as beneath her present dignity. You had better come home as soon as you can." Andrew laughed and threw the letter away. He had far more serious things to attend to than Elodie's pretty foibles.
Of his private history I knew nothing, save his beginnings in the Cirque Rocambeau and his identity with a professional mountebank known as Petit Patou. Soon afterwards I spent a week-end with the Verity-Stewarts.
I doubt whether she understood herself. Her emotions were literally going round and round in a circle, a hideous merry-go-round with fixed staring features, to be passed and repassed in the eternal gyration. Horror of Petit Patou. Her love for Lackaday. Madame Patou. Hatred of Lacka-day. Scorching self-contempt for seeking him out. Petit Patou and Madame Patou. Lackaday crucified.
He would rather die than appear before her imagination in the green silk tights of Petit Patou. I asked tentatively whether he had spoken much of his civilian life. "Very little. Except of his knowledge of Europe. He has travelled a great deal. But of his occupation, family and the rest, I know nothing.
Towards the end of our talk it entered the head of Madame Patou that she would do the same. I pointed out the anomaly of the interval between the two visits. But the head of a Marseillaise is an obstinate one. She dressed, put on her best hat there is much that is symbolical in a woman's best hat, as doubtless a man of the world like yourself has observed and took the tram with me to Royat.
Yet she dominated her fears and showed a brave face. Often a neighbour, meeting her in the quarter, would say: "You are fortunate, Madame. You will not lose your husband." To the quarter, as indeed to all the world, they were Monsieur and Madame Patou. "He is an Englishman and won't be called up." She would flash with proud retort: "In England men are not called up. They go voluntarily.
Although she could not accept Lackaday as Petit Patou, she seemed to accept Bakkus, without question, as a professional singer. The concert over, he joined us at our little japanned 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.
No one recognized in the Petit Patou of provincial fame the lank failure of many years ago. Besides, this time, he played not at the wretched music-hall without the walls, but at the splendid Palace of Varieties in the Boulevard de la Gare. He was a star en vedette, and he had a dressing-room to himself. He stayed at the Hotel d'Europe, the famous hostelry by the great entrance gates.
The public demanded the particular antics with which the name of Les Petit Patou was identified. Thus life was reduced to terms of beautiful simplicity. Yet, perhaps, after all, their sentimental relations did undergo an imperceptible development, as subtle as that which led in the first place to their union. This union had its original promptings in a not unromantic chain of circumstances.
Word Of The Day