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:
_Il était une bergère
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon_.
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:--
_I crept into the halls of sleep
And watched the dreams go by._
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."