The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol Part 16

"Alas!" said Aristide, cheered by the charming spectacle before him. "I don't know when we can get away. My auto has broken down hopelessly. I ought to go at once to my firm in Ma.r.s.eilles"--he spoke as if he were a partner in the Maison Hieropath--"but I don't quite know what to do with Jean."

"Oh, I'll look after Jean."

"But you said you were leaving for Avignon to-day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE LITTLE GIRLS IN PIGTAILS WAS HOLDING HIM, WHILE MISS ANNE ADMINISTERED THE FEEDING-BOTTLE]

She laughed, holding the feeding-bottle. "The Palace of the Popes has been standing for six centuries, and it will be still standing to-morrow; whereas Jean----" Here Jean, for some reason known to himself, grinned wet and wide. "Isn't he the most fascinating thing of the twentieth century?" she cried, logically inconsequential, like most of her s.e.x. "You go to Ma.r.s.eilles, M. Pujol."

So Aristide took the train to Ma.r.s.eilles--a half-hour's journey--and in a quarter of the city resembling a fusion of Jarrow, an unfas.h.i.+onable part of St. Louis, and a brimstone-manufacturing suburb of Gehenna, he interviewed the high authorities of the Maison Hieropath. His cajolery could lead men into diverse lunacies, but it could not induce the hard-bitten manufacturer of quack remedies to provide a brand-new automobile for his personal convenience. The old auto had broken down.

The manufacturer shrugged his shoulders. The mystery was that it had lasted as long as it did. He had expected it to explode the first day. The idea had originally been that of the junior partner, a scatter-brained youth whom at times they humoured. Meanwhile, there being no beplacarded and beflagged automobile, there could be no advertis.e.m.e.nt; therefore they had no further use for M. Pujol's services.

"Good," said Aristide, when he reached the evil thoroughfare. "It was a degraded occupation, and I am glad I am out of it. Meanwhile, here is Ma.r.s.eilles before me, and it will be astonis.h.i.+ng if I do not find some fresh road to fortune before the day is out."

Aristide tramped and tramped all day through the streets of Ma.r.s.eilles, but the road he sought he did not find. He returned to Aix in dire perplexity. He was used to finding himself suddenly cut off from the means of livelihood. It was his chronic state of being. His gay resourcefulness had always carried him through. But then there had been only himself to think of. Now there was Jean. For the first time for many years the dragon-fly's wings grew limp. Jean--what could he do with Jean?

Jean had already gone to sleep when he arrived. All day he had been as good as gold, so Miss Anne declared. For herself, she had spent the happiest day of her life.

"I don't wonder at your being devoted to him, M. Pujol," she said. "He has the most loving ways of any baby I ever met."

"Yes, mademoiselle," replied Aristide, with an unaccustomed huskiness in his voice, "I am devoted to him. It may seem odd for a man to be wrapped up in a baby of nine months old--but--it's like that. It's true. _Je l'adore de tout mon coeur, de tout mon etre_," he cried, in a sudden gust of pa.s.sion.

Miss Anne smiled kindly, not dreaming of his perplexity, amused by his Southern warmth. Miss Janet joined them in the hall. They went in to dinner, Aristide sitting at the central _table d'hote_, the ladies at a little table by themselves. After dinner they met again outside the hotel, and drank coffee and talked the evening away. He was not as bright a companion as on the night before. His gaiety was forced. He talked about everything else in the world but Jean. The temptation to pour his financial troubles into the sympathetic ears of these two dear women he resisted. They regarded him as on a social equality, as a man of means engaged in some sort of business at Ma.r.s.eilles; they had invited him to bring Jean to see them at Chislehurst when he should happen to be in England again. Pride forbade him to confess himself a homeless, penniless vagabond. The exquisite charm of their frank intimacy would be broken. Besides, what could they do?

They retired early. Aristide again sought the message of the stars; but the sky was clouded over, and soon a fine rain began to fall. A bock at a cafe brought him neither comfort nor inspiration. He returned to the hotel, and, eluding a gossip-seeking landlady, went up to his room.

What could be done? Neither the sleeping babe nor himself could offer any suggestion. One thing was grimly inevitable. He and Jean must part.

To carry him about like an infant prince in an automobile had, after all, been a simple matter; to drag him through Heaven knew what hards.h.i.+ps in his makes.h.i.+ft existence was impossible. In his childlike, impulsive fas.h.i.+on he had not thought of the future when he adopted Jean.

Aristide always regarded the fortune of the moment as if it would last forever. Past deceptions never affected his incurable optimism. Now Jean and he must part. Aristide felt that the end of the world had come. His pacing to and fro awoke the child, who demanded, in his own way, the soothing rocking of his father's arms. There he bubbled and "goo'd" till Aristide's heart nearly broke.

"What can I do with you, _mon pet.i.t Jean_?"

The Enfants Trouves, after all? He thought of it with a shudder.

The child asleep again, he laid it on its bed, and then sat far into the night thinking barrenly. At last one of his sudden gleams of inspiration illuminated his mind. It was the only way. He took out his watch. It was four o'clock. What had to be done must be done swiftly.

In the travelling-basket, which had been sent from the garage, he placed a pillow, and on to the pillow he transferred with breathless care the sleeping Jean, and wrapped him up snug and warm in bedclothes. Then he folded the tiny day-garments that lay on a chair, collected the little odds and ends belonging to the child, took from his valise the rest of Jean's little wardrobe, and laid them at the foot of the basket. The most miserable man in France then counted up his money, divided it into two parts, and wrote a hasty letter, which, with the bundle of notes, he enclosed in an envelope.

"My little Jean," said he, laying the envelope on the child's breast.

"Here is a little more than half my fortune. Half is for yourself and the little more to pay your wretched father's hotel bill. Good-bye, my little Jean. _Je t'aime bien, tu sais_--and don't reproach me."

About an hour afterwards Miss Anne awoke and listened, and in a moment or two Miss Janet awoke also.

"Janet, do you hear that?"

"It's a child crying. It's just outside the door."

"It sounds like Jean."

"Nonsense, my dear!"

But Anne switched on the light and went to see for herself; and there, in the tiny anteroom that separated the bedroom from the corridor, she found the basket--a new Pharoah's daughter before a new little Moses in the bulrushes. In bewilderment she brought the ark into the room, and read the letter addressed to Janet and herself. She burst into tears.

All she said was:--

"Oh, Janet, why couldn't he have told us?"

And then she fell to hugging the child to her bosom.

Meanwhile Aristide Pujol, clad in his goat-skin cap and coat, valise in hand, was plodding through the rain in search of the elusive phantom, Fortune; gloriously certain that he had a.s.sured Jean's future, yet with such a heartache as he had never had in his life before.

V

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PIG'S HEAD

Once upon a time Aristide Pujol found himself standing outside his Paris residence, No. 213 _bis_, Rue Saint Honore, without a penny in the world. His last sou had gone to Madame Bidoux, who kept a small green grocer's shop at No. 213 _bis_ and rented a ridiculously small back room for a ridiculously small weekly sum to Aristide whenever he honoured the French capital with his presence. During his absence she forwarded him such letters as might arrive for him; and as this was his only permanent address, and as he let Madame Bidoux know his whereabouts only at vague intervals of time, the transaction of business with Aristide Pujol, "Agent, No. 213 _bis_, Rue Saint Honore, Paris," by correspondence was peculiarly difficult.

He had made Madame Bidoux's acquaintance in the dim past; and he had made it in his usual direct and electric manner. Happening to walk down the Rue Saint Honore, he had come upon tragedy. Madame Bidoux, fat, red of face, tearful of eye and strident of voice, held in her arms a little mongrel dog--her own precious possession--which had just been run over in the street, and the two of them filled the air with wailings and vociferation. Aristide uncovered his head, as though he were about to address a d.u.c.h.ess, and smiled at her engagingly.

"Madame," said he, "I perceive that your little dog has a broken leg. As I know all about dogs, I will, with your permission, set the limb, put it into splints and guarantee a perfect cure. Needless to say, I make no charge for my services."

s.n.a.t.c.hing the dog from the arms of the fascinated woman, he darted in his dragon-fly fas.h.i.+on into the shop, gave a hundred orders to a stupefied a.s.sistant, and--to cut short a story which Aristide told me with great wealth of detail--mended the precious dog and gained Madame Bidoux's eternal grat.i.tude. For Madame Bidoux the world held no more remarkable man than Aristide Pujol; and for Aristide the world held no more devoted friend than Madame Bidoux. Many a succulent meal, at the widow's expense--never more enjoyable than in summer time when she set a little iron table and a couple of iron chairs on the pavement outside the shop--had saved him from starvation; and many a gewgaw sent from London or Ma.r.s.eilles or other such remote lat.i.tudes filled her heart with pride. Since my acquaintance with Aristide I myself have called on this excellent woman, and I hope I have won her esteem, though I have never had the honour of eating pig's trotters and chou-croute with her on the pavement of the Rue Saint Honore. It is an honour from which, being an una.s.suming man, I shrink.

Unfortunately Madame Bidoux has nothing further to do with the story I am about to relate, save in one respect:--

There came a day--it was a bleak day in November, when Madame Bidoux's temporary financial difficulties happened to coincide with Aristide's.

To him, unsuspicious of coincidence, she confided her troubles. He emptied the meagre contents of his purse into her hand.

"Madame Bidoux," said he with a flourish, and the air of a prince, "why didn't you tell me before?" and without waiting for her blessing he went out penniless into the street.

Aristide was never happier than when he had not a penny piece in the world. He believed, I fancy, in a dim sort of way, in G.o.d and the Virgin and Holy Water and the Pope; but the faith that thrilled him to exaltation was his faith in the inevitable happening of the unexpected.

He marched to meet it with the throbbing pulses of a soldier rus.h.i.+ng to victory or a saint to martyrdom. He walked up the Rue Saint Honore, the Rue de la Paix, along the Grands Boulevards, smiling on a world which teemed with unexpectednesses, until he reached a cafe on the Boulevard des Bonnes Filles de Calvaire. Here he was arrested by Fate, in the form of a battered man in black, who, springing from the solitary frostiness of the terrace, threw his arms about him and kissed him on both cheeks.

"_Mais, c'est toi, Pujol!_"

"_C'est toi, Roulard!_"

Roulard dragged Aristide to his frosty table and ordered drinks. Roulard had played the trumpet in the regimental band in which Aristide had played the kettle drum. During their military service they had been inseparables. Since those happy and ear-splitting days they had not met.

They looked at each other and laughed and thumped each other's shoulders.

"_Ce vieux Roulard!_"

"_Ce sacre Pujol._"