The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol Part 22

When they returned to the vestibule they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She rose from her seat at the approach of the two men, a fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the _pervenche_ (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual tears. She was dressed in pale, shadowy blue--graceful, impalpable, like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upwards from a cigarette.

"Reggie has spoken of you many times, monsieur," said Fleurette, after the introduction had been effected.

Aristide was touched. "Fancy him remembering me! _Ce bon vieux Reginald._ Madame," said he, "your husband is the best fellow in the world."

"Feed him with sugar and he won't bite," said Batterby; whereat they all laughed, as if it had been a very good joke.

"Well, what about this Paris of yours?" he asked, after a while. "The missus knows as little of it as I do."

"Really?" asked Aristide.

"I lived all my life in Brest before I went to England," she said, modestly.

"She wants to see all the sights, the Louvre, the Morgue, the Cathedral of What's-its-name that you've got here. I've got to go round, too.

Pleases her and don't hurt me. You must tote us about. We'll have a cab, old girl, as you can't do much walking, and good old Pujol will come with us."

"But that is ideal!" cried Aristide, flying to the door to order the cab; but before he could reach it he was stopped by three or four waiting tourists, who pointed, some to the clock, some to the wagonette standing outside, and asked the director when the personally-conducted party was to start. Aristide, who had totally forgotten the responsibilities attached to the directors.h.i.+p of the Agence Pujol and, but for this reminder, would have blissfully left his sheep to err and stray over Paris by themselves, returned crestfallen to his friends and explained the situation.

"But we'll join the party," said the cheery Batterby. "The more the merrier--good old bean-feast! Will there be room?"

"Plenty," replied Aristide, brightening. "But would it meet the wishes of madame?" Her pale face flushed ever so slightly and the soft eyes fluttered at him a half-astonished, half-grateful glance.

"With my husband and you, monsieur, I should love it," she said.

So Mr. and Mrs. Batterby joined the personally-conducted party, as they did the next morning, and the next, and several mornings after, and received esoteric information concerning the monuments of Paris that is hidden even from the erudite. The evenings, however, Aristide, being off duty, devoted to their especial entertainment. He took them to riotous and perspiring restaurants where they dined gorgeously for three francs fifty, wine included; to open-air _cafes-concerts_ in the Champs Elysees, which Fleurette found infinitely diverting, but which bored Batterby, who knew not French, to stertorous slumber; to crowded bra.s.series on the Boulevard, where Batterby awakened, under a steady flow of whisky, to appreciative contemplation of Paris life. As in the old days of the Rusholme Road, Batterby flung his money about with unostentatious generosity. He was out for a beano, he declared, and hang the expense! Aristide, whose purse, scantily filled (truth to say) by the profits of the Agence Pujol, could contribute but modestly to this reckless expenditure, found himself forced to accept his friend's lavish hospitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening's dissipation.

"But, my good M. Pujol," said Fleurette, with childish tragicality in her _pervenche_ eyes, "without you we shall be lost. We shall not enjoy ourselves at all, at all."

So Aristide, out of love for his friend, and out of he knew not what for his friend's wife, continued to show them the sights of Paris. They went to the cabarets of Montmartre--the _Ciel_, where one is served by angels; the _Enfer_, where one is served by red devils in a Tartarean lighting; the _Neant_, where one has coffins for tables--than all of which vulgarity has imagined no more joy-killing dreariness, but which caused Fleurette to grip Aristide's hand tight in scared wonderment and Batterby to chuckle exceedingly. They went to the Bal Bullier and to various other b.a.l.l.s undreamed of by the tourist, where Fleurette danced with Aristide, as light as an autumn leaf tossed by the wind, and Batterby absorbed a startling a.s.sortment of alcohols. In a word, Aristide procured for his friends prodigious diversion.

"How do you like this, old girl?" Batterby asked one night, at the Moulin de la Galette, a dizzying, not very decorous, and to the unsophisticated visitor a dangerous place of entertainment. "Better than Great Coram Street, isn't it?"

She smiled and laid her hand on his. She was a woman of few words but of many caressing actions.

"I ought to let you into a secret," said he. "This is our honeymoon."

"Who would have thought it?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLEURETTE DANCED WITH ARISTIDE, AS LIGHT AS AN AUTUMN LEAF TOSSED BY THE WIND]

"A fortnight ago she was being killed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house.

There were two of 'em--she and a girl called Carrie. I used to call 'em Fetch and Carrie. This one was Fetch. Well, she fetched me, didn't you, old girl? And now you're Mrs. Reginald Batterby, living at your ease, eh?"

"Madame would grace any sphere," said Aristide.

"I wish I had more education," said Fleurette, humbly. "M. Pujol and yourself are so clever that you must laugh at me."

"We do sometimes, but you mustn't mind us. Remember--at the what-you-call-it--the little shanty at Versailles----?"

"The Grand Trianon," replied Aristide.

"That's it. When you were showing us the rooms. 'What is the Empress Josephine doing now?'" He mimicked her accent. "Ha! ha! And the poor soul gone to glory a couple of hundred years ago."

The little mouth puckered at the corners and moisture gathered in the blue eyes.

"_Mais, mon Dieu_, it was natural, the mistake," cried Aristide, gallantly. "The Empress Eugenie, the wife of another Napoleon, is still living."

"_Bien sur_," said Fleurette. "How was I to know?"

"Never mind, old girl," said Batterby. "You're living all right, and out of that beastly boarding-house, and that's the chief thing. Another month of it would have killed her. She had a cough that shook her to bits. She's looking better already, isn't she, Pujol?"

After this Aristide learned much of her simple history, which she, at first, had been too shy to reveal. The child of Finnish sea-folk who had drifted to Brest and died there, she had been adopted by an old Breton sea-dog and his wife. On their death she had entered, as maid, the service of an English lady residing in the town, who afterwards had taken her to England. After a while reverses of fortune had compelled the lady to dismiss her, and she had taken the situation in the boarding-house, where she had ruined her health and met the opulent and conquering Batterby. She had not much chance, poor child, of acquiring a profound knowledge of the history of the First Empire; but her manners were refined and her ways gentle and her voice was soft; and Aristide, citizen of the world, for whom caste distinctions existed not, thought her the most exquisite flower grown in earth's garden. He told her so, much to her blus.h.i.+ng satisfaction.

One night, about three weeks after the Batterbys' arrival in Paris, Batterby sent his wife to bed and invited Aristide to accompany him for half an hour to a neighbouring cafe. He looked grave and troubled.

"I've been upset by a telegram," said he, when drinks had been ordered.

"I'm called away to New York on business. I must catch the boat from Cherbourg to-morrow evening. Now, I can't take Fleurette with me. Women and business don't mix. She has jolly well got to stay here. I sha'n't be away more than a month. I'll leave her plenty of money to go on with.

But what's worrying me is--how is she going to stick it? So look here, old man, you're my pal, aren't you?"

He stretched out his hand. Aristide grasped it impulsively.

"Why, of course, _mon vieux!_"

"If I felt that I could leave her in your charge, all on the square, as a real straight pal--I should go away happy."

"She shall be my sister," cried Aristide, "and I shall give her all the devotion of a brother.... I swear it--_tiens_--what can I swear it on?"

He flung out his arms and looked round the cafe as if in search of an object. "I swear it on the head of my mother. Have no fear. I, Aristide Pujol, have never betrayed the sacred obligations of friends.h.i.+p. I accept her as a consecrated trust."

"You only need to have said 'Right-o,' and I would have believed you,"

said Batterby. "I haven't told her yet. There'll be blubbering all night. Let us have another drink."

When Aristide arrived at the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse at nine o'clock the next morning he found that Batterby had left Paris by an early train. Fleurette he did not meet until he brought back the sight-seers to the fold in the evening. She had wept much during the day; but she smiled bravely on Aristide. A woman could not stand in the way of her husband's business.

"By the way, what is Reginald's business?" Aristide asked.

She did not know. Reginald never spoke to her of such things; perhaps she was too ignorant to understand.

"But he will make a lot of money by going to America," she said. Then she was silent for a few moments. "_Mon Dieu!_" she sighed, at last.

"How long the day has been!"

It was the beginning of many long days for Fleurette. Reginald did not write from Cherbourg or cable from New York, as he had promised, and the return American mail brought no letter. The days pa.s.sed drearily.

Sometimes, for the sake of human society, she accompanied the tourist parties of the Agence Pujol; but the thrill had pa.s.sed from the Morgue and the glory had departed from Versailles. Sometimes she wandered out by herself into the streets and public gardens; but, pretty, unprotected, and fragile, she attracted the attention of evil or careless men, which struck cold terror into her heart. Most often she sat alone and listless in the hotel, reading the feuilleton of the _Pet.i.t Journal_, and waiting for the post to bring her news.

"_Mon Dieu_, M. Pujol, what can have happened?"

"Nothing at all, _chere pet.i.te madame_"--question and answer came many times a day. "Only some foolish mischance which will soon be explained.

The good Reginald has written and his letter has been lost in the post.

He has been obliged to go on business to San Francisco or Buenos Ayres--_et, que voulez-vous?_ one cannot have letters from those places in twenty-four hours."