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Mountebank

<h1>Chapter VII</h1> It was a successful combination. Bakkus sang his ballads and an occasional humorous song of the moment to Andrew's accompaniment on mandolin or one-stringed violin, and Andrew conjured and juggled comically, using Bakkus as his dull-witted foil. A complete little performance, the patter and business artistically thought out and perfectly rehearsed. They wore the conventional Pierrot costume with whited faces and black skull caps. Bakkus, familiar with English customs, had undertaken to attend to the business side of their establishment on the sands of the great West Coast resort, Andrew providing the capital out of his famous hundred louis. But it came almost imperceptibly to pass that Andrew made all the arrangements, drove the bargains and kept an accurate account of their varying finances. "You'll never be a soldier of fortune, my dear fellow," said Bakkus once, when, returning homewards, he had wished to dip his hand into the leather bag containing the day's takings in order to supply himself lavishly with comforting liquid. "It's the very last thing I want to be," replied Andrew, hugging the bag tight under his long arm. "You're bourgeois to your finger-tips, your ideal of happiness is a meek female in a parlour and half a dozen food-sodden brats." Andrew hunched his shoulders good-naturedly at the taunt. A home, and wife and offspring seemed rather desirable of attainment. "You've lots of money in your pocket to pay for a drink," said he. "It's mere perversity that makes you want to touch the takings. We haven't counted them." "Perversity is the only thing that makes this rotten life worth living," retorted Bakkus. It was his perversity, thus exemplified, which compelled Andrew to constitute himself the business manager of the firm. He had a sedate, inexorable way with him, a grotesque dignity, to which, for all his gibes, Bakkus instinctively submitted. Bakkus might provide ideas, but it was the lank and youthful Andrew who saw to their rigid execution. "You've no more soul than a Prussian drill sergeant," Bakkus would say. "And you've no more notion of business than a Swiss Admiral," Andrew would reply. "Who invented this elegant and disgustingly humiliating entertainment?" Andrew would laugh and give him all the credit. But when Bakkus, in the morning, clamouring against insane punctuality, and demanding another hour's sloth, refused to leave his bed, he came up against an incomprehensible force, and, entirely against his will, found himself on the stroke of eleven ready to begin the performance on the sands. Sometimes he felt an almost irresistible desire to kick Andrew, so mild and gentle, with his eternal idiotic grin; but he knew in his heart that Andrew was not one of the idiots whom people kicked with impunity. He lashed him, instead, with his tongue, which Andrew, within limits, did not mind a bit. To Bakkus, however, Andrew owed the conception of their adventure. He also owed to him the name of the combination, and also the name which was to be professionally his for the rest of his stage career. It all proceeded from the miraculous winning of the mare Elodie. Bakkus had made some indiscreet remark concerning her namesake. Andrew, quick in his dignity, had made a curt answer. Ironical Bakkus began to hum the old nursery song: <blockquote> Il était une bergère Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon.</blockquote> Suddenly he stopped. "By George! I have it! The names that will épater the English bourgeois. Ron-ron-ron and Petit Patapon. I'll be Ron-ron-ron and you'll be dear little Patapon." As the English seaside public, however, when he came to think of it, have never heard of the shepherdess who guarded her muttons and still less of the refrain which illustrated her history, he realized that the names as they stood would be ineffective. Ron-ron and Patapon therefore would they be. But Andrew, remembering Elodie's wise counsel, stuck to the "petit." His French instinct guiding him, he rejected Patapon. Bakkus found Ron-ron an unmeaning appellation. At last they settled it. They printed it out in capital letters. THE GREAT PATAPON AND LITTLE PATOU So it came to pass that a board thus inscribed in front of their simple installation on the sands advertised their presence. 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. Elodie seems to haunt him. So he narrates what seems to be another trivial incident. Andrew was a lusty swimmer. In the old circus summer days Ben Flint had seen to that. Whenever the Cirque Rocambeau pitched its tent by sea or lake, Ben Flint threw young Andrew into the water. So now every morning, before the world was awake, did Andrew go down to the sea. Once, a week after their arrival, did he, by some magnetic power, drag the protesting Bakkus from his bed and march him down, from the modest lodgings in a by-street, to the sea front and the bathing-machines. Magnetic force may bring a man to the water, but it can't make him go in. Bakkus looked at the cold grey water--it was a cloudy morning--took counsel with himself and, sitting on the sands, refused to budge from the lesser misery of the windy shore. He smoked the pipe of disquiet on an empty stomach for the half-hour during which Andrew expended unnecessary effort in progressing through many miles in an element alien to man. In the cold and sickly wretchedness of a cutting wind, he cursed Andrew with erudite elaboration. But when Andrew eventually landed, his dripping bathing-suit clinging close to his gigantic and bony figure, appearing to derisive eyes like the skin covered fossil of a prehistoric monster of a man, his bushy hair clotted, like ruddy seaweed, over his staring, ugly face, Bakkus forgot his woes and rolled on his back convulsed with vulgar but inextinguishable laughter. "My God!" he cried later, when summoned by an angry Andrew to explain his impolite hilarity. "You're the funniest thing on the earth. Why hide the light of your frame under a bushel of clothing? My dear boy, I'm talking sense"--this was at a hitherto unfriendly breakfast-table--"You've got an extraordinary physique. If I laughed, like a rude beast, for which I apologize, the public would laugh. There's money in it. Skin tights and your hair made use of, why--you've got 'em laughing before you even begin a bit of business. Why the devil don't you take advantage of your physical peculiarities? Look here, don't get cross. This is what I mean." He pulled out a pencil and, pushing aside plates and dishes, began to sketch on the table-cloth with his superficial artistic facility. Andrew watched him, the frown of anger giving way to the knitted brow of interest. As the drawing reached completion, he thought again of Elodie and her sage counsel. Was this her mental conception which he had been striving for years to realize? He did not find the ideal incongruous with his lingering sense of romance. He could take a humorous view of anything but his profession. That was sacred. Everything did he devote to it, from his soul to his skinny legs and arms. So that, when Bakkus had finished, and leaned back to admire his work, Andrew drew a deep breath, and his eyes shone as if he had received an inspiration from on High. He saw himself as in an apotheosis. There he was, self-exaggeratingly true to life, inordinately high, inordinately thin, clad in tights that reached to a waistband beneath his armpits giving him miraculous length of leg, a low-cut collar accentuating his length of neck, his hair twisted up on end to a fine point. "And I could pad the feet of the tights and wear high heels that would give me another couple of inches," he cried excitedly. "By Gum!" said he, clutching Bakkus's shoulder, a rare act of demonstrativeness, "what a thing it is to have imagination." "Ah!" said Bakkus, "what a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" "What the devil do you mean?" asked Andrew. Bakkus waved a hand towards the drawing. "If only I had your application," said he, "I should make a great name as an illustrator of Hamlet." "One of these days," said Andrew, the frown of anger returning to his brow, "I'll throw you out of the window." "Provided it is not, as now, on the ground floor, you would be committing an act of the loftiest altruism." Andrew returned to his forgotten breakfast, and poured out a cup of tepid tea. "What would you suggest--just plain black or red--Mephisto--or stripes?" He was full of the realization of the Elodesque idea. His brain became a gushing fount of inspiration. Hundreds of grotesque possibilities of business, hitherto rendered ineffective by flapping costume, appeared in fascinating bubbles. He thought and spoke of nothing else. "Once I denied you the rank of artist," said Bakkus. "I retract. I apologize. No one but an artist would inflict on another human being such intolerable boredom." "But it's your idea, bless you, which I'm carrying out, with all the gratitude in the world." "If you want to reap the tortures of the damned," retorted Bakkus, "just you be a benefactor." Andrew shrugged his shoulders. That was the way of Horatio Bakkus, perhaps the first of his fellow-creatures whom he had deliberately set out to study, for hitherto he had met only simple folk, good men and true or uncomplicated fools and knaves, and the paradoxical humour of his friend had been a puzzling novelty demanding comprehension; the first, therefore, who put him on the track of the observation of the twists of human character and the knowledge of men. That was the way of Bakkus. An idea was but a toy which he tired of like a child and impatiently broke to bits. Only a week before he had come to Andrew: "My dear fellow, I've got a song. I'm going to write it, set it and sing it myself. It begins:-- <blockquote> I crept into the halls of sleep And watched the dreams go by.</blockquote> I'll give you the accompaniment in a day or two and we'll try it on the dog. It's a damned sight too good for them--but no matter." Andrew was interested. The lines had a little touch of poetry. He refrained for some time from breaking through the gossamer web of the poet's fancy. At last, however, as he heard nothing further, he made delicate enquiries. "Song?" cried Bakkus. "What song? That meaningless bit of moonshine ineptitude I quoted the other day? I have far more use for my intellect than degrading it to such criminal prostitution." Yes, he was beginning to know his Bakkus. His absorption in his new character was not entirely egotistic. Both his own intelligence and his professional experience told him that here, as he had worked out-the business in his mind, was an entirely novel attraction. In his young enthusiasm he saw hundreds crowding round the pitch on the sands. It was as much to Bakkus's interest as to his own that the new show should succeed. And even before he had procured the costume from Covent Garden, Bakkus professed intolerable boredom. He shrugged his shoulders. Bored or not, Bakkus should go through with it. So again under the younger man's leadership Bakkus led the strenuous life of rehearsal. It took quite a day for their fame to spread. On the second day they attracted crowds. Money poured in upon them. Little Patou, like a double-tailed serpent rearing himself upright on his tail tips, appeared at first a creature remote, of some antediluvian race--until he talked a familiar, disarming patter with his human, disarming grin. The Great Patapon, contrary to jealous anticipation, saw himself welcomed as a contrast and received more than his usual meed of applause. This satisfied, for the time, his singer's vanity which he professed so greatly to despise. They entered on a spell of halcyon days. The brilliant sunny season petered out in hopeless September, raw and chill. A week had passed without the possibility of an audience. Said Bakkus: "Of all the loathsome spots in a noisome universe this is the most purulent. In order to keep up our rudimentary self-respect we have done our best to veil our personal identity as images of the Almighty from the higher promenades of the vulgar. Our sole associates have been the blatant frequenters of evil smelling bars. We've not exchanged a word with a creature approaching our intellectual calibre. I am beginning to conceive for you the bitter hatred that one of a pair of castaways has for the other; and you must regard me with feelings of equal abhorrence." "By no means," replied Andrew. "You provide me with occupation, and that amuses me." As the occupation for the dismal week had mainly consisted in dragging a cursing Bakkus away from public-house whisky on damp and detested walks, and in imperturbably manoeuvring him out of an idle--and potentially vicious--intrigue with the landlady's pretty and rather silly daughter, his reply brought a tragic scowl to Bakkus's face. "There are times when I lie awake, inventing lingering deaths for you. You occupy yourself too much with my affairs. It's time our partnership in this degrading mountebankery should cease." "Until it does, it's going to be efficient," said Andrew. "It's a come down for both of us to play on the sands and pass the hat round. I hate it as much as you do, but we've done it honourably and decently--and we'll end up in the same way." "We end now," said Bakkus, staring out of their cheap lodging house sitting-room window at the dismal rain that veiled the row of cheap lodging houses opposite. Andrew made a stride across the room, seized his shoulder and twisted him round. "What about our bookings next month?" For their success had brought them an offer of a month certain from a northern Palladium syndicate, with prospects of an extended tour. "Dust and ashes," said Bakkus. "You may be dust," cried Andrew hotly, "but I'm damned if I'm ashes." Bakkus bit and lighted a cheap cigar and threw himself on the dilapidated sofa. "No, my dear fellow, if it comes to that, I'm the ashes. Dead! With never a recrudescent Phoenix to rise up out of them. You're the dust, the merry sport of the winds of heaven." "Don't talk foolishness," said Andrew. "Was there ever a man living who used his breath for any other purpose?" "Then," said Andrew, "your talk about breaking up the partnership is mere stupidity." "It is and it isn't," replied Bakkus. "Although I hate you, I love you. You'll find the same paradoxical sentimental relationship in most cases between man and wife. I love you, and I wish you well, my dear boy. I should like to see you Merry-Andrew yourself to the top of the Merry-Andrew tree. But for insisting on my accompanying you on that uncomfortable and strenuous ascent, without very much glory to myself, I frankly detest you." "That doesn't matter a bit to me," said Andrew. "You've got to carry out your contract." Bakkus sighed. "Need I? What's a contract? I say I am willing to perform vocal and other antics for so many shillings a week. When I come to think of it, my soul revolts at the sale of itself for so many shillings a week to perform actions utterly at variance with its aspirations. As a matter of fact I am tired. Thanks to my brain and your physical cooperation, I have my pockets full of money. I can afford a holiday. I long for bodily sloth, for the ragged intellectual companionship that only Paris can give me, for the resumption of study of the philosophy of the excellent Henri Bergson, for the absinthe that brings forgetfulness, for the Tanagra figured, broad-mouthed, snub-nosed shrew that fills every day with potential memories." "Oh that's it, is it?" cried Andrew, with a glare in his usually mild eyes and his ugly jaw set. They had had many passages at arms. Bakkus's sophistical rhetoric against Andrew's steady common sense; and they had sharpened Andrew's wit. But never before had they come to a serious quarrel. Feeling his power he had hitherto exercised it with humorous effectiveness. But now the situation appeared entirely devoid of humour. He was coldly and sternly angry. "That's the beginning and end of the whole thing? It all comes down to a worthless little Montmartroise? For a little thing of rien du tout, the artist, the philosopher, the English public school man will throw over his friend, his partner, his signed word, his honour? Mon Dieu! Well go--I can easily--No, I'll not say what I have in my mind." Bakkus turned over on his side, facing his adversary, his under arm outstretched, the cigar in his fingers. "I love to see youth perspiring--especially with noble rage. It does it good, discharges the black humours of the body. If I could perspire more freely I should be singing in Grand Opera." "You can break your contract and I'll do without you," cried the furious Andrew. "I'm not going to break the contract, my young friend," replied Bakkus, peering at him through lowered eyelids. "When did I say such a thing? We end the damp and dripping folly of the sands." "We don't," said Andrew. "As you will," said Bakkus. "Again I prophesy that you'll be drilling awkward squads in barrack yards before you've done. It's all you're fit for." Andrew smiled or grinned with closed lips. It was his grim smile, many years afterwards to become familiar to larger bodies of men than awkward squads. Once more he had won his little victory. So peace was made. They finished up the miserable fag end of the season and with modest success carried out their month's contract in the northern towns. But even Andrew's drastic leadership could not prevail on Bakkus's indolence to sign an extension. Montmartre called him. An engagement. He also spoke vaguely of singing lessons. Now that Parisians had returned to Paris, he could not afford to lose his connections. With cynical frankness he also confessed his disinclination to be recognized in a music-hall Punch and Judy show by his brother the Archdeacon. "Archdeacons," said Andrew--he had a confused idea of their prelatical status, "don't go to music-halls." "They do in this country," said Bakkus. "They're everywhere. They infest the air like microbes. You only have to open your mouth and you get your lungs filled with them. It's a pestilential country and I've done with it." "All right," replied Andrew, "I'll run the show on my own." But the Palladium syndicate, willing to book "The Great Patapon and Little Patou" for a further term, declined to rebook Little Patou by himself. He returned to Paris, where he found Bakkus wallowing in absinthe and philosophic sloth. "We might have made our fortune in England," said he. Said Bakkus coolly sipping his absinthe, "I have no desire to make my fortune. Have you?" "I should like to make my name and a big position," replied Andrew. "And I, my young friend? As the fag end of the comet's tail should I have made my name and a big position? Ah egotist! Egotist! Sublime egotist! The true artist using human souls as the rungs of his ladder! Well, go your ways. I have no reproach against you. Now that I'm out of your barrack square, my heart is overflowing with love for you. You have ever a friend in Horatio Bakkus. When you fall on evil days and you haven't a sou in your pocket, come to me--and you'll always find an inspiration." "I wish you would give me one now," said Andrew, who had spent a fruitless morning at the Agence Moignon. "You want a foil, an intelligent creature who will play up to you--a creature far more intelligent than I am. A dog. Buy a dog. A poodle." "By Gum!" cried Andrew, "I believe you're right again." "I'm never wrong," said Bakkus. "Garcon!" He summoned the waiter and waved his hand towards the little accusing pile of saucers. "Monsieur always pays for my inspirations." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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