The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Ariesenne
THE ADVENTURE OF
THE ARLESIENNE
Aristide Pujol bade me a sunny farewell at the door of the Hôtel du Luxembourg at Nimes, and, valise in hand, darted off, in his impetuous fashion, across the Place de l'Esplanade. I felt something like a pang at the sight of his retreating figure as, on his own confession, he had not a penny in the world. I wondered what he would do for food and lodging, to say nothing of tobacco, apéritifs and other such necessaries of life. The idea of so gay a creature starving was abhorrent. Yet my invitation to stay as my guest at the hotel until he saw an opportunity of improving his financial situation he had courteously declined. I spent an absurdly depressed evening.
Early next morning I found him awaiting me in the lounge and smoking an excellent cigar. He explained that so dear a friend as myself ought to be the first to hear the glad tidings. Last evening, by the grace of Heaven, he had run across a bare acquaintance, a manufacturer of nougat at Montélimar; had spent several hours in his company, with the result that he had convinced him of two things: first, that the dry, crumbling, shortbread-like nougat of Montélimar was unknown in England, where the population subsisted on a sickly glutinous mess whereto the medical faculty had ascribed the prevalent dyspepsia of the population; and, secondly, that the one heaven-certified apostle who could spread the glorious gospel of Montélimar nougat over the length and breadth of Great Britain and Ireland was himself, Aristide Pujol. A handsome salary had been arranged, of which he had already drawn something on account—hinc ille colorado—and he was to accompany his principal the next day to Montélimar, en route for the conquest of Britain. In the meantime he was as free as the winds, and would devote the day to showing me the wonders of the town, with which he professed himself to be peculiarly intimate.
I congratulated him on his almost fantastic good fortune and gladly accepted his personal conduct.
“There is one thing I should like to ask you,” said I, “And it is this. Yesterday afternoon you refused my cordially offered hospitality, and went away without a sou to bless yourself with. What did you do? I ask out of curiosity. How does a man set about trying to subsist on nothing at all?”
“It is very simple,” he replied. “Haven't I told you, and haven't you seen for yourself, that I never lose an opportunity? More than that. It has been my rule in life either to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness—he's a muddle-headed ass, is Mammon, and you can steer clear of his unrighteousness if you're sharp enough—or else to cast my bread upon the waters in the certainty of finding it again after many days. In the case in question I took the latter course. I cast my bread a year or two ago upon the waters of the Roman Baths, which I will have the pleasure of showing you this morning, and I found it again last night at the obscure and—to your aristocratic British nose—smelly Hôtel de la Curatterie, which is somewhere up there”—he waved a designating hand—“between the Cathédral Saint Castor and the Porte d'Auguste.”
In the course of the day he related to me the following artless history.
And here, as I have nothing more to do, save in the most external manner, with the fortunes of Aristide Pujol, I take the opportunity of withdrawing my unimportant and uninteresting personality from these chronicles.
Aristide Pujol arrived at Nimes one blazing day in July. He had money in his pocket and laughter in his soul. He had also deposited his valise at the Hôtel du Luxembourg, which, as all the world knows, is the most luxurious hotel in the town. Never had Fortune smiled on him so seductively. The smile was, if anything, too seductive—the great, shameless smile of a wanton hussy, who grants her favors with ridiculous facility. The future shimmered in a haze of gold. Joyousness of heart impelled him to a course of action which the good Nimois regard as maniacal in the sweltering July heat—he walked about the baking streets for his own good pleasure.
Aristide Pujol was floating a company, a process which afforded him as much delirious joy as the floating, for the first time, of a toy yacht affords a child. It was a company to build a hotel in Perpignan, where the recent demolition of the fortifications erected by the Emperor Charles the Fifth had set free a vast expanse of valuable building ground on the other side of the little river on which the old town is situated. The best hotel In Perpignan being one to get away from as soon as possible, owing to restriction of site, Aristide conceived the idea of building a spacious and palatial hostelry in the new part of the town, which should allure all the motorists and tourists of the globe to that Pyrenean Paradise. By sheer audacity he had contrived to interest an eminent Paris architect in his project. I think he had compiled from the Bottin (or Paris directory) a list of architects “diplômés parle gouvernement,” and had called hopefully on one man after the other until he found one who would listen to his tale. Now the man who listened to Aristide Pujol was lost. With the glittering eye of the ancient mariner he combined the winning charm of a woman. For salvation, you either had to refuse to see him, as all the architects to the end of the R's in the alphabetical list had done, or put wax, Ulysses-like, in your ears, a precaution neglected by the eminent Monsieur Say. Monsieur Say went to Perpignan and returned in a state of subdued enthusiasm, as becomes an architect diplomated by the Government and a member of the Institute of France. A limited company was formed, of which Aristide Pujol, man of vast experience in affairs, was managing director. But money came in slowly. A financier was needed. Aristide looked through his collection of visiting cards, and therein discovered that of a deaf ironmaster at Saint-Etienne, whose life he had once saved at a railway station, by dragging him, as he was crossing the line, out of the way of an express train that came thundering through. Aristide, man of impulse, went straight to Saint-Etienne, to work upon the ironmaster's sense of gratitude. Meanwhile, Monsieur Say, man of more sober outlook, bethought him of a client, an American millionaire, passing through Paris, who had speculated considerably in hotels. The millionaire, having confidence in the eminent Monsieur Say, thought well of the scheme. He was just off to Japan, but would drop down to the Pyrenees the next day and look at the Perpignan site before boarding his steamer at Marseilles. If his inquiries satisfied him, and he could arrange matters with the managing director, he would not mind putting a million dollars or two into the concern. You must kindly remember that I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of everything told me by Aristide Pujol.
The question of the all-important meeting between the millionaire and the managing director then arose. As Aristide was at Saint-Etienne, as cross-country train service in France is slow, and as the millionaire's time was limited, it was arranged that they should meet at a halfway stage on the latter's journey from Perpignan to Marseilles. The Hôtel du Luxembourg at Nimes was the place, and two o'clock on Thursday the time appointed.
Meanwhile, Aristide had found that the deaf ironmaster had died months ago. This was a disappointment, but fortune compensated him. This part of his adventure is somewhat vague, but I gathered that he was lured by a newly made acquaintance into a gambling den, where he won the prodigious sum of two thousand francs. With this wealth jingling and crinkling in his pockets he fled the town and arrived in Nimes on Wednesday morning, a day before bis appointment.
“'MADAME,' SAID HE. 'YOU ARE ADORABLE, AND I LOVE YOU
TO DISTRACTION'”
“'I LOVED HER SO TENDERLY, MONSIEUR,' SAID HE”
That was why he walked joyously about the blazing streets. The tide had turned at last. Whatever he touched would now turn to gold. Of the success of his interview with the millionaire he had not the slightest doubt. He walked about, building gorgeous castles in Perpignan—which, by the way, is not very far from Spain. At last he reached the Jardin de la Fontaine, the great, stately garden laid out in complexity of terrace and bridge and balustraded parapet over the waters of the old Roman Baths, by the master hand to which Louis the Fourteenth had entrusted the Garden of Versailles. The group of statuary and the urns on the parapet and the flights of steps baked in the sunshine. But beneath the great trees in the avenues was welcome shade. Aristide threw himself on a bench and fanned himself with his straw hat.
“Mon Dieu! it's hot!” he remarked to another occupant of the seat.
This was a woman, and, as he saw when she turned her face toward him, an exceedingly handsome woman. Her white lawn and black silk head-dress coming to a tiny crown, just covering the parting of her full wavy hair, proclaimed her of the neighboring town of Arlés. She had all the Arlésienne's Roman beauty—the finely chiseled features, the calm, straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She turned them on him only for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. He drew nearer.
“Why, you're crying, Madame,” said he.
“Evidently,” murmured the lady.
“To cry scalding tears in this weather! It's too hot! Now if you could only cry iced water there would be something refreshing in it.”
“You jest, Monsieur,” said the lady, drying her eyes.
“By no means,” said he. “The sight of so beautiful a woman in distress is painful.”
“Ah!” she sighed. “I am very unhappy.”
Aristide was impressionable. He drew nearer still.
“Who,” said he, “is the wretch that has dared to make you so?”
“My husband,” replied the lady, swallowing a sob.
“The scoundrel!” said Aristide.
The lady shrugged her shoulder, and looked down at her wedding ring, which gleamed on a slim, brown, perfectly kept hand. Aristide prided himself on being a connoisseur in hands. This one pleased him mightily.
“There never was a husband yet,” he added, “who appreciated a beautiful wife. Husbands only deserve harridans.”
“That's true,” said the Arlésienne, “for when the wife is good-looking they are jealous.”
“Ah! That is the trouble, is it?” said Aristide. “Tell me all about it.”
The beautiful Arlésienne again contemplated her slender fingers.
“I don't know you, Monsieur.”
“But you soon will,” said Aristide in his pleasant voice, and with a laughing, challenging glance in his bright eyes. She met it swiftly and sidelong.
“Monsieur,” she said, “I have been married to my husband for four years and have always been faithful to him.”
“That's praiseworthy,” said Aristide.
“And I love him very much.”
“That's unfortunate!” said Aristide.
“Unfortunate?”
“Parbleu!” said Aristide.
Their eyes met. They burst out laughing. The lady quickly recovered and the tears sprang again.
“One can't jest with a heavy heart. And mine is very heavy.” She broke down through self-pity. “Oh, I am ashamed!” she cried.
She turned away from him, burying her face in her hands. Her dress, cut low, showed the nape of her neck as it rose gracefully from her shoulders. Two little curls had rebelled against being drawn up with the rest of her hair. The back of a dainty ear set close to the head was provoking in its pink loveliness. Her attitude, that of a youthful Niobe, all tears, but at the same time all curves and delicious contours, would have played the deuce with an anchorite.
Aristide, I would have you remember, was a child of the south. A child of the north regarding a bewitching woman thinks how nice it would be to make love to her, and wastes his time in wondering how he can do it. A child of the south neither thinks nor wonders; he makes love straightway. He can't help it. Aristide leaned forward over the delicious curves and whispered in the provoking ear.
“Madame,” said he, “you are adorable, and I love you to distraction.”
She started up. “Monsieur, you forget yourself.”
“'AND YOU!' SHOUTED BOCARDON, FALLING ON ARISTIDE. 'I MUST EMBRACE YOU ALSO'”
“If I remember anything else in the wide world but you, it would be a poor compliment. I forget everything. You turn my head, you ravish my heart and you put joy into my soul.”
He meant it—intensely—for the moment.
“I ought not to listen to you,” said the lady, “especially when I am so unhappy.”
“All the more reason to seek consolation,” replied Aristide.
“Monsieur,” she said, after a short pause, “you look good and loyal. I will tell you what is the matter. My husband accuses me wrongfully, although I know that appearances are against me. He only allows me in the house on sufferance and is taking measures to procure a divorce.”
“A la bonne heure!” cried Aristide, excitedly casting away his straw hat, which an unintentional twist of the wrist caused to skim horizontally and nearly decapitate a small and perspiring soldier, who happened to pass by. “A la bonne heure! Let him divorce you. You are then free. You can be mine without any further question.”
“But I love my husband,” she smiled sadly.
“Bah!” said he, with the scepticism of the lover and the Provençal. “And, by the way, who is your husband?”
“He is Monsieur Emile Bocardon, proprietor of the Hôtel de la Curatterie.”
“And you?”
“I am Madame Bocardon,” she replied, with the faintest touch of roguery.
“But your Christian name? How is it possible for me to think of you as Madame Bocardon?”
“I don't see why it should be necessary for you to think of me at all,” she retorted.
They argued the question. Eventually she confessed to the name of Zette.
Her confidence not stopping there, she told him how she came by the name; how she was brought up by her Aunt Léonie at Raphele, some five miles from Arles, and many other unexciting particulars of her early years. Her baptismal name was Louise. Her mother, who died when she was young, called her Louisette. Aunt Léonie, a very busy woman with no time for superfluous syllables, called her Zette.
“Zette!” He cast up his eyes as if she had been canonized and he was invoking her in rapt worship. “Zette, I adore you.”
Zette was extremely sorry. She, on her side, adored the cruel Monsieur Bocardon. Incidentally she learned Aristide's name and quality. He was an agent d'affaires, extremely rich—had he not two thousand francs and an American millionaire in his pocket?—and able to lay at her feet all the luxuries of the earth.
“Monsieur Pujol,” she said, “the earth holds but one thing that I desire, the love and trust of my husband.”
“The good Bocardon is becoming tiresome,” said Aristide.
Zette's lips parted, as she peered between the overhanging greenery and the tops of the stone parapets. Then she pointed to a black speck at the iron entrance gates.
“Mon Dieu! there he is!”
“He has become tiresome,” said Aristide.
She rose, displaying to its full advantage her supple and stately figure. She had a a queenly poise of the head. Aristide contemplated her with the frankest admiration.
“One would say Juno was walking the earth again.”
Although Zette had never heard of Juno, and was as miserable and heavy-hearted a woman as dwelt in Nimes, a flush of pleasure rose to her cheeks. She, too, was a child of the south, and female children of the south love to be admired, no matter how frankly. I have heard of daughters of the snows not quite averse to it. She sighed.
“I must go now, Monsieur. He must not find me here with you. I am suffering enough already from his reproaches. Ah! it is unjust, unjust!” she cried, clenching her hands, while the tears again started into her eyes, and the corners of her pretty lips twitched with pain. “Indeed,” she added, “I know it has been wrong of me to talk to you like this. But que voulez-vous? It was not my fault. Adieu, Monsieur.”
At the sight of her standing before him in her woeful beauty, Aristide's pulses throbbed.
“It is not adieu, it is au revoir, Madame Zette,” he cried.
She protested, tearfully. It was farewell.
Aristide darted off to his rejected hat and clapped it on the back of his head. He joined her and swore that he would see her again. It was not Aristide Pujol who would allow her to be rent in pieces by the jaws of that crocodile, Monsieur Bocardon. Faith, he would defend her to the last drop of his blood. He would do all manner of gasconading things.
“But what can you do, my poor Monsieur Pujol?” she asked.
“You will see,” he replied.
They parted. He watched her until she became a speck and having joined the other speck, her husband, passed out of sight. Then he set out through the burning gardens toward the Hôtel du Luxembourg, at the other end of the town.
Aristide had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with Provençal fury. He had done the same thing a hundred times before; but this, he told himself, was the coup de foudre, the thunderbolt. The beautiful Arlésienne filled his brain and his senses. Nothing else in the wide world mattered. Nothing else in the wide world occupied his mind. He sped through the hot streets like a meteor in human form. A stout man, sipping syrup and water in the cool beneath the awning of the Café de la Bourse, rose, looked wonderingly after him, and resumed his seat, wiping perspiring brow.
A short while afterward Aristide, valise in hand, presented himself at the bureau of the Hôtel de la Curatterie. It was a dingy little hotel, with a dingy little oval sign outside, and was situated in the narrow street of the same name. Within, it was clean and well kept. On the right of the little dark entrance hall was the salle-à-manger, on the left the bureau and an unenticing hole labeled salon de correspondance. A very narrow passage led to the kitchen, and the rest of the hall was blocked by the staircase. An enormous man, with A simple, woe-begone fat face and a head of hair like a circular machine-brush, was sitting by the bureau window In his shirt-sleeves. Aristide addressed him.
“Monsieur Bocardon?”
“At your service, Monsieur.”
“Can I have a bedroom?”
“Certainly.” He waved a hand toward a set of black sample boxes studded with brass nails and bound with straps that lay in the hall. “The omnibus has brought your boxes. You are Monsieur Lambert?”
“Monsieur Bocardon,” said Aristide in a lordly way, *I am Monsieur Aristide Pujol and not a commercial traveler. I have come to see the beauties of Nimes and have chosen this hotel because I have the honor to be a distant relation of your wife, Madame Zette Bocardon, whom I have not seen for many years. How is she?”
“Her health is very good,” replied Monsieur Bocardon shortly. He rang a bell.
A dilapidated man in a green baize apron emerged from the dining room and took Aristide's valise.
“No. 24,” said Monsieur Bocardon. Then swinging his massive form halfway through the narrow bureau door, he called down the passage. “Euphémie!”
A woman's voice responded, and in a moment the woman herself appeared, a pallid, haggard, though more youthful, replica of Zette, with the dark rings of sleeplessness or illness beneath her eyes, which looked furtively at the world.
“Tell your sister,” said Monsieur Bocardon, “that a relation of yours has come to stay at the hotel.”
He swung himself back into the bureau and took no further notice of the guest.
“A relation?” echoed Euphémie, staring at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering. how he could mystify this unwelcome and unexpected sister.
“Why, yes. Aristide, cousin to your good Aunt Léonie at Raphele. Ah—but you are too young to remember me.”
“I will tell Zette,” she said, disappearing down the narrow passage.
Aristide went to the doorway, and stood there looking out into the not too savory street. On the opposite side, which was in the shade, the tenants of the modest little shops sat by their doors or on chairs on the pavement. There was considerable whispering among them and various glances were cast at him. Presently footsteps behind caused him to turn. There was Zette. She had evidently been weeping since they had parted, for her eyelids were red. She started on beholding him.
“You?”
He laughed and shook her hesitating hands.
“It is I, Aristide. But you have grown! Pécaïre! How you have grown!” He swung her hands apart and laughed merrily in her bewildered eyes. “To think that the little Zette in pigtails and short check skirt should have grown into this beautiful woman. I compliment you on your wife, Monsieur Bocardon.”
Monsieur Bocardon did not reply, but Aristide's swift glance noticed a spasm of pain shoot across his broad face.
“And the good Aunt Léonie? Is she well? And does she still make her matelotes of eels? Ah, they were good, those matelotes.”
“Aunt Léonie died two years ago,” said Zette.
“The poor woman! And I who never knew. Tell me about her.”
The salle-à-manger door stood open. He drew her thither by his curious fascination. They entered and he shut the door behind them.
Voila!” said he. “Didn't I tell you I should see you again?”
“Vous avez un fameux toupet, vous!” said Zette, half angrily.
He laughed, having been accused of confounded impudence many times before in the course of his adventurous life.
“If I told my husband, he would kill you.”
“Precisely. So you're not going to tell him. I adore you. I have come to protect you. Foi de Provençal.”
“The only way to protect me is to prove my innocence.”
And then?”
She drew herself up and looked him straight between the eyes.
“I'll recognize that you have a loyal heart and will be your very good friend.”
“Madame Zette,” cried Aristide, “I will devote my life to your service. Tell me the particulars of the affair.”
“Ask Monsieur Bocardon.” She left him and sailed out of the room and past the bureau with her proud head in the air.
If Aristide Pujol had the rapturous idea of proving the innocence of Madame Zette, triumphing over the fat pig of a husband, and eventually, in a fantastic fashion, carrying off the insulted and spotless lady to some bower of delight (the castle in Perpignan—why not?) you must blame, not him, but Provence, whose sons, if not devout, are frankly pagan. Sometimes they are both.
Monsieur Bocardon sat in his bureau, pretending to do accounts and tracing columns of figures with a huge, trembling forefinger. He looked the picture of woe. Aristide decided to bide his opportunity. He went out into the streets again, now with the object of killing time. The afternoon had advanced and trees and buildings cast cool shadows in which one would walk with comfort; and Nimes, clear, bright city of wide avenues and broad open spaces, instinct too with the grandeur that was Rome's, is an idler's Paradise. Aristide knew it well; but he never tired of it. He wandered round the Maison Carrée, his responsive nature delighting in the splendor of the Temple, with its fluted Corinthian columns, its noble entablature, its massive pediment, its perfect proportions; reluctantly turned down the Boulevard Victor Hugo, past the Lycée and the Bourse, made the circuit of the mighty double-arched oval of the Arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, Monsieur Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named Monsieur Bocardon's habitual café. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Aristide found the huge man gloomily contemplating an absurdly small glass of the bitters known as Dubonnet. Aristide raised his hat, asked permission to join him, and sat down.
“Monsieur Bocardon,” said he, carefully mixing the absinthe which he had ordered, “I learn from my fair cousin that there is between you a regrettable misunderstanding, for which I am sincerely sorry.”
“She calls it a misunderstanding?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir. There is infamy between us. When a wife betrays a man like me, kind, indulgent, trustful, who has worshiped the ground she treads on, it is not a question. of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head I would turn her out of doors to-night. But she has not. You, who are her relative, know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive.”
It was on the tip of Aristide's impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her; but, prudently, he refrained.
“She has broken my heart,” continued Bocardon.
Aristide asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion; but, fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes, he launched with southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveler in buttons—buttons! To be wronged by a traveler in diamonds might have its compensations—but buttons! Linen buttons, bone buttons, brass buttons, trousers buttons! To be a traveler in the inanity of buttonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bondon—he uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client!—who never ordered a bottle of vin cacheté or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, of whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zette gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zette's room. He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide.
It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely damning epistle. Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of his absinthe and wished it were Bondon's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face, and, gathering at the ends of his scrubby mustache, dripped in splashes on the marble table.
“I loved her so tenderly, Monsieur,” said he.
The cry, so human, went straight to Aristide's heart. A sympathetic tear glistened in his bright eyes. He was suddenly filled with an immense pity for this grief-stricken, helpless giant. An odd, feminine streak ran through his nature and showed itself in queer places. Impulsively he stretched out his hand.
“You're going?” asked Bocardon.
“Mo. A sign of good-fellowship.”
They gripped hands across the table. A new emotion thrilled through the facile Aristide.
“Bocardon, I devote myself to you,” he cried with a flamboyant gesture. “What can I do?”
“Alas, nothing,” replied the other, miserably.
“And Zette? What does she say to it all?”
The mountainous shoulders heaved with a shrug. “She denies everything. She had never seen the letter until I showed it to her. She did not know how it came into her room. As if that were possible!”
“It's improbable,” said Aristide gloomily.
They talked. Bocardon, in a choky voice, told the simple tale of their married happiness. It had been a love match, different from the ordinary marriages of reason and arrangement. Not a cloud since their wedding day. They were called the turtle doves of the Rue de la Curatterie. He had not even manifested the jealousy justifiable in the possessor of so beautiful a wife. He had trusted her implicitly. He was certain of her love. That was enough.... They had had one child who died. Grief had brought them even nearer each other. And now this stroke had been death. It was a knife being turned round in his heart. It was agony.
They walked back to the hotel together. Zette, who was sitting by the desk in the bureau, rose and, without a word or look, vanished down the passage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner-time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting to wash their hands at the primitive lavabo by the foot of the stairs. Aristide accompanied them into the salle-à-manger, where he dined in solemn silence. The dinner over he went out again, passing by the bureau where Bocardon, in its dim recesses, was eating a sad meal brought to him by the melancholy Euphémie. Zette, he conjectured, was dining in the kitchen. An atmosphere of desolation impregnated the place, as though a corpse were somewhere in the house.
Aristide drank his coffee at the nearest café in a complicated state of mind. He had fallen furiously in love with the lady, believing her to be the victim of a jealous husband. In an outburst of generous emotion he had taken the husband to his heart, seeing that he was a good man stricken to death. Now he loved the lady, loved the husband, and hated the villain Bondon. What Aristide felt, he felt fiercely. He would reconcile these two people he loved and then go and, if not assassinate Bondon, at least do him some bodily injury. With this idea in his head, he paid for his coffee and went back to the hotel.
He found Zette taking her turn at the bureau, for clients have to be attended to, even in the most distressing circumstances. She was talking to a new arrival, trying to smile a welcome. Aristide, loitering near, watched her beautiful face, to which the perfect classic features gave an air of noble purity. His soul revolted at the idea of her mixing herself up with a sordid wretch like Bondon. It was unbelievable.
“Eh, bien?” she said as soon as they were alone.
“Madame Zette, to-day I called your husband a scoundrel and a crocodile. I was wrong. I find him a man with a beautiful nature.”
“You needn't tell me that, Monsieur Aristide.”
“You are breaking his heart, Madame Zette.”
“And is he not breaking mine? He has told you, I suppose. Am I responsible for what I know nothing more about than a babe unborn? You don't believe I am speaking the truth? Bah! And your professions this afternoon? Wind and gas, like the words of all men.”
“Madame Zette,” cried Aristide, “I said I would devote my life to your service, and so I will. I'll go and find Bondon and kill him.”
He watched her narrowly, but she did not grow pale like a woman whose lover is threatened with mortal peril. She said dryly:
“You had better have some conversation with him first.”
“Where is he to be found?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “How do I know? Tiens. He left by the early train this morning that goes in the direction of Tarascon.”
“Then to-morrow,” said Aristide, who knew the ways of commercial travelers, “he will be at Tarascon, or at Avignon, or at Arles.”
“I heard him say that he had just done Arles.”
“Tant mieux. I shall find him either at Tarascon or Avignon. And by the Tarasque of Sainte-Marthe, I'll bring you his head and you can put it up outside as a sign and call the hotel the Hôtel de la Tête de Bondon.”
Early the next morning Aristide started on his quest, without informing the good Bocardon of his intentions. He would go straight to Avignon, as the more likely place. Inquiries at the various hotels would soon enable him to hunt down his quarry; and then—he did not quite know what would happen then, but it would be something picturesque, something entirely unforeseen by Bondon, something to be thrillingly determined by the inspiration of the moment. In any case he would wipe the stain from the family escutcheon. By this time he had quite convinced himself that he belonged to the Bocardon family.
The only other occupant of the first-class compartment was an elderly Englishwoman of sour aspect. Aristide, his head full of Zette and Bondon, scarcely noticed her. The train started and sped through the sunny land of vine and olive.
They had almost reached Tarascon when a sudden thought hit him between the eyes, like the blow of a fist. He gasped for a moment, then he burst into shrieks of laughter, kicking his legs up and down and waving his arms in maniacal mirth. After that he rose and danced. The sour-faced Englishwoman, in mortal terror, fled into the corridor. She must have reported Aristide's behavior to the guard, for in a minute or two that official appeared at the doorway.
“Qu'est-ce qu' il y a?”
Aristide paused in his demonstrations of merriment.
“Monsieur,” said he, “I have just discovered what I am going to do to Monsieur Bondon.”
Delight bubbled out of him as he walked from the Avignon railway station up the Cours de la République. The wretch Bondon lay at his mercy. He had not proceeded far, however, when his quick eyes caught sight of an object in the ramshackle display of a curiosity dealer's. He paused in front of the window, fascinated. He rubbed his eyes.
“No,” said he. “It is not a dream. Le bon Dieu is on my side.”
He went into the shop and bought the object. It was a pair of handcuffs.
At a little after three o'clock, the small and dilapidated hotel omnibus drove up before the Hôtel de la Curatterie, and from it descended Aristide Pujol, radiant-eyed, and a scrubby little man with a goatee beard, pince-nez and a domelike forehead, who, pale and trembling, seemed stricken with a great fear. It was Bondon. Together they entered the little hall. As soon as Bocardon saw his enemy his eyes blazed with fury and, uttering an inarticulate roar, more like that of an infuriated elephant than a man, he rushed out of the bureau with clenched fists murderously uplifted. The terrified Bondon shrank into a corner, protected by Aristide, who, smiling like an angel of peace, intercepted the onslaught of the huge man.
“Be calm, my good Bocardon, be calm.”
But Bocardon could not be calm. He found his voice.
“Ah, scoundrel! Miscreant! Wretch! Traitor!” When his vocabulary of vituperation and his breath failed him he paused and mopped his forehead.
Bondon came a step or two forward.
“I know, Monsieur, I have all the wrong on my side. Your anger is justifiable. But I never dreamed of the disastrous effect of my acts. Let me see her, my good Monsieur Bocardon, I beseech you.”
“Let you see her?” said Bocardon, growing purple in the face.
At this moment Zette came running up the passage.
“What is all this noise about?”
“Ah, madame!” cried Bondon, eagerly. “I am heartbroken. You, who are so kind—let me see her.”
“Hein?” exclaimed Bocardon in stupefaction.
“See whom?” asked Zette.
“My dear dead one. My dear Euphémie, who has committed suicide.”
“But he's mad!” shouted Bocardon, in his great voice. “Euphémie! Euphémie! come here.”
At the sight of Euphémie, pale and shivering with apprehension, Bondon sank upon a bench by the wall. He stared at her as if she, were a ghost.
“I don't understand,” he murmured faintly, looking like a trapped hare at Aristide Pujol, who, debonair, hands on hips, stood a little way apart.
“Nor I, either,” cried Bocardon.
A great light dawned on Zette's beautiful face. “I do understand.” She exchanged glances with Aristide. He came forward.
“It's very simple,” said he, taking the stage with childlike exultation. “I go to find Bondon this morning to kill him. In the train I have a sudden inspiration, a revelation from Heaven. It is not Zette but Euphémie that is the bonne amie of Bondon. I laugh and frighten a long-toothed English old maid out of her wits. Shall I get out at Tarascon and return to Nimes and tell you, or shall I go on? I decide to go on. I make my plan. Ah, but when I make a plan, it's all in a second, a flash, pfuit! At Avignon I see a pair of handcuffs. I buy them. I spend hours tracking that animal there. At last I find him at the station about to start for Lyon. I tell him I am a police agent. I let him see the handcuffs, which convinced him. I tell him Euphémie, in consequence of the discovery of his letter, has committed suicide. There is a procès-verbal at which he is wanted. I summon him to accompany me in the name of the law—and there he is.”
“Then that letter was not for my wife?” said Bocardon, who was not quick-witted.
“But, no, imbecile!” cried Aristide.
Bocardon hugged his wife in his vast embrace. The tears ran down his cheeks.
“Ah, my little Zette, my little Zette, will you ever pardon me?”
“Oui, je le pardonne, gros jaloux,” said Zette.
“And you!” shouted Bocardon, falling on Aristide. “I must embrace you also.” He kissed him on both cheeks, in his expansive way, and thrust him toward Zette. “You can also kiss my wife. It is I, Bocardon, who command it.”
The fire of a not ignoble pride raced through Aristide's veins. He was a hero. He knew it. It was a moment worth living.
The embraces and other expressions of joy and gratitude being temporarily suspended, attention was turned to the unheroic couple who, up to then, had said not one word to each other. The explanation of their conduct, too, was simple, apparently. They were in love. She had no dowry. He could not marry her, as his parents would not give their consent. She, for her part, was frightened to death by the discovery of the letter, lest Bocardon should turn her out of the house.
“What dowry will satisfy your parents?”
“Nothing less than twelve thousand francs.”
“I give it,” said Bocardon, reckless in his newly found happiness. “Marry her.”
The clock in the bureau struck four. Aristide pulled out his watch.
“Saperlipopette!” he cried, and disappeared like a flash into the street.
“But what's the matter with him?” shouted Bocardon in amazement.
Zette went to the door. “He's running as if he had the devil at his heels.”
“Was he always like that?” asked her husband.
“How, always?”
“Parbleu! when you used to see him at your Aunt Léonie's.”
Zette flushed red. To repudiate the savior of her entire family were an act of treachery too black for her ingenuous heart.
“Ah, yes,” she replied calmly, coming back into the hall. “We used to call him Cousin Quicksilver.”
In the big avenue Aristide hailed a passing cab.
“To the Hôtel du Luxembourg, at a gallop.”
In the joyous excitement of the past few hours, this child of impulse and sunshine, this dragon-fly of a man, had entirely forgotten the appointment at two o'clock with the American millionaire and the fortune that depended on it. He would be angry at being kept waiting. Aristide had met Americans before. His swift brain invented an elaborate excuse.
He leaped from the cab and entered the vestibule of the hotel.
“Can I see Monsieur Congleton?” he asked at the bureau.
“An American gentleman? He has gone, Monsieur. He left by the three-thirty train. Are you Monsieur Pujol? There is a letter for you.”
With a sinking heart he opened it and read:
Dear Sir:
I was at this hotel at two o'clock, according to arrangement. As my last train to Japan leaves at three-thirty I regret I cannot await your convenience. The site of the hotel is satisfactory. Your business methods are not. I am sorry, therefore, not to be able to entertain the matter further.
William B. Congleton.
He stared at the words for a few paralyzed moments. Then he stuffed the letter into his pocket and broke into a laugh.
“Zut!” said he, using the inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most adequately expresses his scorn of circumstance. “Zut! If I have lost a fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on the day's work.”
Whereupon he returned gaily to the bosom of the Bocardon family and remained there, its Cousin Quicksilver and its entirely happy and idolized hero until the indignation of the eminent Monsieur Say summoned him to Paris.
And that is how Aristide Pujol could live thenceforward, on nothing at all, at Nimes, whenever it suited him to visit that historic town.
The next story in this series, “The Adventure of the Foundling,” will appear in an early issue