United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I, who had received through Lackaday many lights on Bakkus's character, was at no loss to reply. "Doing? Why, snoring. He'll awake at midday, stroll round here and expect to find us smiling on the pavement. We give him five more minutes."
I can't write this to Lackaday, who no doubt is saying all the dreadful things that he learned with our armies in Flanders. He would not understand. He would not understand the magic of romance, the secrecy, the thrill of the dawn elopement, the romance of the coup de theatre by which alone I was able to induce Elodie to co-operate in the part payment of my infinite debt of gratitude.
Lackaday, go home, let Maudie tie a warm nightcap on thy head, get thee a warm breakfast and a cup of distilled waters, and thou wilt be in ease tomorrow to fight thy wooden dromond, or soldan, as thou call'st him, the only thing thou wilt ever lay downright blow upon." "Ay, say'st thou so, comrade?" answered Oliver, much relieved, yet deeming it necessary to seem in part offended.
Now, Lackaday in his manuscript relates this English episode, not so much as an appeal to pity for the straits to which he was reduced, although he winces at its precarious mountebankery, and his sensitive and respectable soul revolts at going round with the mendicant's hat and thanking old women and children for pennies, as in order to correlate certain influences and coincidences in his career.
They were circus folk, English, trapeze artists, come, they said, from a long tour in Australia, where Andrew was born, and their first European engagement was in the Cirque Rocambeau. Their stay was brief; their end tragic. Lackaday Pere took to drink, which is the last thing a trapeze artist should do.
General Lackaday was the best of fellows -so simple, so sincere such a damned fine soldier such a gentle, kindly creature so scurvily treated by a disgraceful War Office just the husband for Auriol etcetera, etcetera in strophe and antistrophe of eulogy. All this was by way of beginning. Then came the point of the conclave.
Well, the luggage was taken down to the automobile that was waiting at the door, and Madame had driven off. That is all she knew. Lackaday strode over to the bureau and assailed the manager. Why had he not been informed of the departure of Madame? It apparently never entered the manager's polite head that Monsieur Patou was ignorant of Madame Patou's movements.
As a record of dog and man sympathy it is of remarkable interest; it has indeed a touch of rare beauty; but as it is a detailed history of Prepimpin rather than an account of a phase in the career of Andrew Lackaday, I must wring my feelings and do no more than make a passing reference to their long and, from my point of view, somewhat monotonous partnership.
I laid down my book and lit a cigar. "Go ahead," said I. It was then that she told me of her last interview with Lackaday. Remember I had not yet read his version. "It's all pretty hopeless," she concluded. For myself I knew nothing of the reasons that bade him adopt the attitude of the Mysterious Unknown except his sensitiveness on the point of his profession.
"The first thing I did," he said, putting the letter back in his pocket, "was to ring up Bakkus, to see whether he could throw any light on the matter." "Bakkus why, he cut his engagement with us yesterday." "The damned scoundrel," said Lackaday, "was running away with Elodie."
Word Of The Day