Foe-Farrell Part 21

NIGHT THE TENTH.

PILGRIMAGE OF HATE.

"A map scored with the zigzags of our route would suggest the wanderings of a couple of lunatics. But that was the way of it.

I would turn up at breakfast any morning and propound some plan for a new divagation. Farrell never failed to fall in with it.

For a time, of course, I had him in places whence, with his ignorance of France, he might have found it hard to escape back to his own form of civilisation. But even when he had picked up enough of the language to ask for a railway ticket and something to eat, his reliance on me continued to be pathetic, dog-like.

"I know something of dogs. I have no experience of marriage.

But from time to time I put this question to myself: 'Here is a widower--free, as he tells me, after twenty-seven years of married life almost entirely spent at Wimbledon. It is inconceivable that he did not, during that considerable period, look at least once or twice across the table at the late Mrs.

Farrell and ask himself if the business was to go on for ever.'

I supposed, Roddy, that the two had been in love, as such creatures feel the emotion. 'Well then,' thought I, 'here are we two, the one hating and hiding his hate, thrown together in constant companions.h.i.+p. How long will it take the other, who has never cut an inch of the ice encasing that hatred, before he finds my society intolerable?'

"That was the question; and I had the answer to-day.

"From Genoa we actually harked back to Cahors, for an aimless two weeks among the upper waters of the Lot and the Tarn. I led him over the roof of France, as they call it. I sweated him down valleys to Ambialet, to Roc-Amadour, I threaded him through limestone caverns wherein I could have cut his throat and left him, never to be missed. We struck up for the provincial gaieties of Toulouse. We attended the Opera there-- _Il Trovatore_--and Farrell wept in his seat. I can see the tears now--oozing out between the finger-stalls of a pair of white-kid gloves he had been inspired to buy at the _Bon Marche_. We also went to the theatre, where the company performed _Les Vivacites du Capitaine Tic_.

"At the conclusion of this harmless comedy, Farrell said a really good thing. He said it was funny enough and even instructive if you looked at it from the right point of view; but for his part (and I might call him advanced if I chose) he liked the sort of musical comedy in which you spice a chicken to make 'em all fall in love when they've eaten it; or at least, if it's to be legitimate comedy, one in which they take off their clothes and go to bed by mistake.

"So we came on to Paris, and here we are at the Grand Hotel.

Farrell's notion of Paris, was of course, the Moulin Rouge, and the kind of place on Montmartre where they sing some kind of blasphemy while a squint-eyed waiter serves you c.o.c.ktails on a coffin.

"We were solemnly giving way to this libidinous humbug last night when he leaned back and said to me, 'This is all very well, Doctor; and I'm glad to have had the experience. But do you know what I want at this moment?'

"'Say on,' said I, looking up to return the nod of an acquaintance--a young American, Caffyn by name--who had risen from a table not far from ours and was making his way out.

On a sudden impulse I called after him, 'Hi! Caffyn!'

"'Hallo!' Caffyn turned about and came strolling back. He is a long lantern-jawed lad with a sardonic drawl of speech. He has spent two years in the _ville lumiere_, having come to it moth-like from somewhere afar in Texas. His ambition--no, wait!--the ambition of his father, a 'cattle king,' is that he should acquire the difficult art of painting in oils.

'Want me?' asked Caffyn, as I pushed a chair for him.

'What for? If it's to admire the 'rainbow' you've been mixing, I'm a connoisseur and I don't pa.s.s it. Your hand's steady enough, one or two lines admirably defined, but you've gotten the pink noyau and the _parfait amour_ into their wrong billets.

If, on the other hand, you want me to drink it, I'll see you to h.e.l.l first." . . . Then, as I introduced him, "Good evening, Mr. Farrell. I am pleased to meet you in this meretricious haunt of gaiety. If I may be allowed to say so, you set it off, sir.'

"'Sit down a moment,' said I. 'We didn't intrude upon your solitary table, thinking--'

"'I know,' he caught me up. 'Natural delicacy of Britishers-- 'Here's a fellow learning to take his pleasures sadly.

We'll give him time.' And I, gentlemen, allowed that it was 'way down in Cupid's garden--Damon and Pythias discovered hand in hand--no gooseberries, by request. . . . If you'd like to be told how I was occupied, I was chewing--ay, marry and go to-- I was one with my distant father's most fatted calf--fed up and chewing.'

"'And if you'd like to know how we were occupied,' said I, 'we were both wanting something--and the same thing. We haven't told one another what it is, and you are called in to guess.'

"'Oh, a thought-reading _seance_. Right.' He turned the chair about, sat on it straddle-wise and crossed his arms over the curved top bar. 'Let me see,' he mused, leaning forward, pulling at his cigar and bringing his eyes, after they had travelled over the crowd, back firmly to us. ''Two souls with but a single thought,'' he quoted, ''two hearts that beat as one.' . . . Well, now, if you were of my country and from my parts I'd string you like two jays on one perch--How say'st, prithee, and in sooth yes, sure! I'd sing you _The Cowpuncher's Lament_, sweet and low, with tears in my voice. As it is, I'll be getting the local colour a bit smudged, maybe: but I guess-- I guess,' said Caffyn--and his gaze seemed to turn inward and become far withdrawn--'I guess--'O Hardy, kiss me ere I die!'-- No, that's wrong: it isn't the c.o.c.kpit of the _Victory_.

It's the after-saloon of the Calais-Dover packet--shortest route--and I see you two there at table, eating cold roast beef, underdone, with plain boiled potatoes. With plain boiled potatoes--yes, and mixed pickles.' He pa.s.sed a hand over his eyes. 'Excuse me, gentlemen; the vision is blurred just here-- if someone would kindly shoot that lady on the stage and stop her--it's not much to ask, when she's exposing so much of her personality--How the devil can I tell the difference between mixed pickles and piccalilli while she's committing murder on the high C? _Pa.s.sez outre_. . . . I see you eating like men who haven't seen Christian food for years; yet you are swallowing it in a hurry that almost defeats the blessed taste; because one of you has just shouted up, with his mouth full, a command to be informed as soon as ever the white sh.o.r.e of Albion can be spied from deck. It is a race with Time--Shakespeare's Cliff against a pickled onion. . . . Oh, have done! have done!'

"'Thank you, Caffyn,' said I. 'You may come out of your trance.

You have done admirably.'

"'Wonderful,' breathed Farrell; and he breathed it heavily.

'I won't say I'd actually arrived at a plain-boiled potato--'

"'But it was floating in your brain,' I chimed him down.

'Such is the province of imaginative art, of poetry, as defined by that great Englishman, Samuel Johnson. It reproduces our common thoughts with a great increase of sensibility.'

"'Mr. Caffyn has put it rightways, anyhow,' Farrell insisted.

'Look here, Doctor'--he calls me by that t.i.tle and none other-- 'What's the programme for to-morrow.'

"'Versailles,' said I.

"'Then we'll make it so. But, the day after, I'm for England.

. . . I don't mind telling you, Mr. Caffyn, that the Doctor and me hit it off first-cla.s.s.'

"'I've noted it,' said Caffyn quietly.

"'And it's the rummier,' Farrell pursued, 'because him and me-- or, as I should say, he and I--started this tour upon what you might call a mutual--what's the word? misunderstanding?--no, I have it--antipathy. Is that correct, Doctor?'

"'Perfectly,' I agreed.

"'T'tell the truth,' confessed Farrell, 'I've always been up against schoolmasters; yes, all my life. They've such a--such a--well, as this ain't Wimbledon, one may speak it out--such a b.l.o.o.d.y superior way of giving you information. Now if there's one thing in th' world I 'bominate, it's information.' Farrell threw a fierce glance around the dining tables as if defiantly making sure of his ground. 'But I'll say this for the Doctor; he never gives you any. That is, you have to pump for it. . . .

But we've had, we two, a daisy of a time. The great thing about travel, Mr. Caffyn, is that it enlarges the mind. Yes, sir, and in Doctor Foe's company you positively can't help it.'

"'I'm sorry, Farrell,' said I.

"'Sorry?' he exclaimed. 'Why should you be sorry? I _like_ having a--a wider outlook on things, provided it ain't banged in a man's eye. In fact, I don't mind confessing to you, Mr.

Caffyn, here in the Doctor's presence, that this has been a great experience for me. I've had a good time, as I believe, sir, they say in your country. But I look around me'--here Farrell looked again and almost theatrically around the feast of Comus--'and I say that, be it never so homely, give me Wimbledon to wind up. You and me, Doctor--or, as I might say, you and I, are for home, after all--and the old cooking. Our ways henceforth may lie separate; but we've a bond in common and any time you care to look me up at Wimbledon I shall be most happy.

We'll crack a bottle to our travels.'

"'Right,' I agreed. 'Caffyn, will you make a note of at too?'

"'And Mr. Caffyn--at any time--Goes without saying,' pursued Farrell.

"'Right,' agreed Caffyn."

"That was yesterday, Roddy. This morning, as ever is, Farrell and I started, according to programme, for Versailles. I could see that his mind had been running on Caffyn's words; that he was dying to get back to Wimbledon; yes, and almost dying to be quit of me.

"I had been waiting for this. I had known that the moment would come, and wondered a score of times that it took so long in coming. As unmarried men, Roddy, you and I are out of our depth here. But surely--I hark back to it--it _must_ happen to one or other of every married couple to look across the table and realise the words _Till death us do part_. When it happens to both simultaneously I suppose murder follows; or, at least, divorce.

"Talking about murder, I've to confess that at Versailles I felt the impulse again. You know that infernal Galerie des Glaces?

Well, of a sudden the multiplication of Farrell's face and the bald spot at the back of his head came near to overpowering me.

We had escaped, too, from the wandering sightseers, and stood isolated at the end of the vast hall. . . . High sniffing dilettanti may say what they like, but Versailles is what Jimmy would call a 'knock-out.' The very first view of the Grand Avenue had knocked Farrell out, at all events, and he had stared at the great fountains, and followed me through courts and galleries in mere bedazement, speechless, with eyes like a fish's, round and bulging and gla.s.sy. . . . He looked so funny, standing there . . . so small . . . and yet actually, I suppose, taller than the late King Louis Quatorze by three inches.

. . . Somewhere outside on a terrace a band was playing things from the _Mariage de Figaro_--Figaro, at Versailles of all places! . . . In short the world had gone pretty mad for a moment, and for that moment I felt that, in this _bizarrerie_ of contrast it might dignify our quarrel if Farrell died amid such magnificent surroundings. . . . But I conquered the impulse all right: and this, the third time, was the easiest."

"I got him away to the Little Trianon: and there in its gardens-- as you would lay in the shade a patient suffering from sunstroke--I conducted him to a seat under the spring boughs beside the little lake that reflects the Hameau. He stared on the green turf at our feet, and across at the grouped rustic buildings, all as pretty as paint, and came out of his stupor with a long sigh.

"'A-ah!' he murmured. 'That's better! That does me good.'

"Then I knew that it was coming: that I must break his fate to him. I even gave him the prompt-word.

"'Homelike,' I suggested.