The Mountebank | Page 6

person, one found to one's astonishment the most delicately shaped
hands in the world, with long, sensitive, nervous fingers, like those of
the thousands of artists who have lived and died without being able to
express themselves in any artistic medium. In a word, the fingers of the
artiste manqué. I have told you what Ben Flint, shrewd observer, said
about his hands, as a child of eight. They were the same hands thirty
years after. To me, elderly observer of human things, they seemed, as
he moved them so gracefully--the only touch of physical grace about
him--to confer an air of pathos on the ungainly man, to serve as an

index to a soul which otherwise could not be divined.
From this lean length of body rose a long stringy neck carrying a small
head surmounted by closely cropped carotty thatch. His skin was drawn
tight over the framework of his face, as though his Maker had been
forced to observe the strictest economy in material. His complexion
was brick red over a myriad freckles. His features preserved the
irregular ugliness of the child I half remembered, but it was redeemed
by light blue candid eyes set in a tight net of humorous lines, and by a
large, mobile mouth, which, though it could shut grimly on occasions,
yet, when relaxed in a smile, disarmed you by its ear-to-ear kindliness,
and fascinated you by the disclosure of two rows of white teeth
perfectly set in the healthy pink streaks of gum. He had the air of a man
physically fit, inured to hardship; the air, too, in spite of his gentleness,
of a man accustomed to command. In the country house at which we
met it had not occurred to me to speculate on his social standing, as
human frailty determined that one should do in the case of so many
splendid and gallant officers of the New Army. His manners were
marked by shy simplicity and quiet reserve. It was a shock to
preconceived ideas to find him bred in a circus, even in so magnificent
a circus as the Cirque Rocambeau, and brought up by a clown, even by
such a superior clown as Ben Flint,
"And my old friend?" I asked. For I had lost knowledge of Ben
practically from the time I ended my happy vagabondage. Maxima mea
culpa.
"He died when I was about sixteen," replied Colonel Lackaday, "and
his wife a year or so later."
"And then?" I queried, eager for autobiographical revelations.
"Then," said he, "I was a grown up man, able to fend for myself."
That was all I could get out of him, without allowing natural curiosity
to outrun discretion. He changed the conversation to the war, to the
France about which I, a very elderly Captain--have I not confessed to
early twenties thirty years before?--was travelling most uncomfortably,

doing queer odd jobs as a nominal liaison officer on the
Quartermaster-General's staff. His intimacy with the country was
amazing. Multiply Sam Weller's extensive and peculiar knowledge of
London by a thousand, and you shall form some idea of Colonel
Lackaday's acquaintance with the inns of provincial France. He could
even trot out the family skeletons of the innkeepers. In this he became
animated and amusing. His features assumed an actor's mobility foreign
to their previous military sedateness, and he used his delicate hands in
expressive gestures. In parenthesis I may say we had left the week-end
party at their bridge or flirtation (according to age) in the drawing-room,
neither pursuits having for us great attraction, in spite of Lady Auriol
Dayne, of whom more hereafter, and we had found our way to cooling
drinks and excellent cigars in our host's library. It was the first time we
had exchanged more than a dozen words, for we had only arrived that
Saturday afternoon. But after the amazing mutual recognition, we sat
luxuriously chaired, excellent friends, and I, for my part, enjoying his
society.
"Ah!" said he, "Montélimar. I know that hotel. Infect. And the patron,
eh? You remember him. Forty stone. Phoo!"
The gaunt man sat up in his chair and by what mesmeric magic it
happened I know not, but before my eyes grew the living image of the
gross, shapeless creature who had put me to bed in wringing wet sheets.
"And when you complained, he looked like this--eh?"
He did look like that. Bleary-eyed, drooping-mouthed, vacant. I
recollected that the fat miscreant had the middle of his upper lip
curiously sunken into the space of two missing front teeth. The middle
of Colonel Lackaday's upper lip was sucked in.
"And he said: 'What would you have, Monsieur? C'est la guerre?'"
The horrible fat man, hundreds of miles away from the front, with
every convenience for drying sheets, had said those