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The hotels are perched around on the slopes of the hills, so that you may enter stately portals among the shops, but shall be whirled upwards in a lift to the main floor, whence you look down on the green and tidy miniature place. From my room in the Royat Palace Hotel I had a view across the Park, beyond which I could see the black crowds pouring out of the Clermont-Ferrand trams.
But I reflected that as the showman makes up on the swings what he loses on the roundabouts, so I made up on the filthy water what I lost on the cigars. How I provided myself with excellent corona-coronas in Royat, under the Paris price, I presume, of ten francs apiece, wild reporters will never drag out of me.
I made a casual reference to the beauty of the night. "It ought to be still raining," said Lady Auriol. We drove back to Royat in silence. I racked my brains for something to say, but everything that occurred to me seemed the flattest of uncomforting commonplaces. Well, it was her affair entirely. If she had given me some opening I might have responded sympathetically.
If there had been no bogies about, and Royat had been the Golgotha of my picture, would not my well-known selfishness, when I heard she was at a loose end in August Paris, have summoned her with a "Do for Heaven's sake come and save me from these selected candidates for burial?" I had done it before, in analogous circumstances, I at Nauheim, she at Nuremberg. No.
She seemed to be hovering over that vast extent of country like a mournful ghost, and I asked him abruptly: "What has become of the husband?" My friend seemed rather surprised, but after a few moments' hesitation, he replied: "He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they made him, and is quite happy; he leads a very fast life."
The reason for this frenzied going and coming of human beings between Clermont-Ferrand and Royat, I could never understand. I believe tram-riding is a hideous vice.
"If it's a question of playing the game" I had carried the war into the enemy's quarters "may I repeat my original rude question this morning? What the devil are you doing here?" She turned on me in a fury. "How dare you insinuate such a thing?" "You've not come to Royat for the sake of my beautiful eyes." "I'm under no obligation to tell you why I've come to Royat.
It pleased him to talk, and he spoke fluently in a voice that was musical. He touched a hundred subjects; he developed a theory of matriarchy. Men loved to steal; women were naturally receivers. They adored property; their minds ran on possession; they were domestic materialists. We talked of socialism, of Bully Hayes, of Royat, of Rudyard Kipling.
Eventually he threatened to spin me out to Royat, but I pleaded the certainty that Lady Turnour would wish to change into her smartest tea-gown for "feef oclocky" and that I must be there to assist at the ceremony.
I read Lackaday's letter again. There it was as clear as print. "So we proceed on our pilgrimage; we are booked for Clermont-Ferrand for the third week in August. I hate it because I hate it. But I'm looking forward to it because my now prosperous friend Bakkus has arranged to sing during my stay there, at the Casino of Royat."
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