The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Fair Patronne
In narrating these few episodes in the undulatory, not to say switchback, career of my friend Aristide Pujol, I can pretend to no chronological sequence. Some occurred before he (almost literally) crossed my path for the first time, some afterward. They have been related to me haphazard, together with a hundred other incidents, at odd times during the space of three or four years, just as a chance tag of association recalled them to his swift and picturesque memory. He would indeed make a show of fixing dates by reference to his temporary profession; but so Protean seem to have been his changes of fortune in their number and rapidity that I could never keep count of them or their order. Nor does it matter. The man's life was as disconnected as a pack of cards.
“THE INSTANT PEACE WAS ESTABLISHED OUR RESCUER DARTED UP TO WITH THE DIRECTNESS OF A DRAGON FLY”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE FAIR PATRONNE
My first meeting with him happened in this wise:
I had been motoring in a listless, solitary fashion about Languedoc. A friend who had stolen a few days from anxious business in order to accompany me from Boulogne through Touraine and Guienne had left me at Toulouse; another friend whom I had arranged to pick up at Avignon on his way from Monte Carlo was unexpectedly delayed. I was therefore condemned to a period of solitude somewhat irksome to a man of a gregarious temperament. At first, for company's sake, I sat in front by my chauffeur, McKeogh. But McKeogh, an atheistical Scotch mechanic, with his soul in his cylinders, being as communicative as his own differential, I soon relapsed into the equal loneliness and greater comfort of the back.
In this fashion I left Montpellier one morning on my leisurely eastward journey, deciding to break off from the main road, striking due south, and visit Aigues-Mortes on the way.
Aigues-Mortes was once a flourishing Mediterranean town. St. Louis and his Crusaders sailed thence twice for Palestine. Charles the Fifth and Francis the First met there and filled the place with glittering state. But now its glory has departed. The sea has receded three or four miles, and left it high and dry in the middle of bleak, salt marshes, useless, dead and desolate, swept by the howling mistral and scorched by the blazing sun. The straight white ribbon of road which stretched for miles through the plain, between dreary vineyards—some under water, the black shoots of the vines appearing like symmetrical wreckage above the surface—was at last swallowed up by the grim central gateway of the town, surmounted by its frowning tower.
At some distance from the gate appeared the usual notice as to speed limit. McKeogh, most scrupulous of drivers, obeyed. As there was a knot of idlers underneath and beyond the gate he slowed down to a crawl, sounding a patient and monotonous horn. We advanced; the peasant folk cleared the way sullenly and suspiciously. Then, deliberately, an elderly man started to cross the road, and on the sound of the horn stood stock-still, with resentful defiance on his weather-beaten face. McKeogh jammed on the brakes. The car halted. But the infinitesimal fraction of a second before it came to a dead stop the wing over the near front wheel touched the elderly person and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car, to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated crowd, which seemed to gather from all the quarters of the broad, decaying square. The elderly man, helped to his feet by sympathetic hands, shook his knotted fists in my face. He was a dour and ugly peasant, of splendid physique, as hard and discolored as the walls of Aigues-Mortes; his cunning eyes were as clear as a boy's; his lined, clean-shaven face as rigid as a gargoyle; and the back of his neck, above the low collar of his jersey, showed itself seamed into glazed, irregular lozenges, like the hide of a crocodile. He cursed me and my kind healthily in very bad French and apostrophized his friends in Provençal, who in Provençal and bad French made responsive clamor. I had knocked him down on purpose. He was crippled for life. Who was I to go tearing through peaceful towns with my execrated locomotive and massacring innocent people? I tried to explain that the fault was his, and that, after all, to judge by the strength of his lungs, no great damage had been inflicted. But no. They would not let it go like that. There were the gendarmes—I looked across the square and saw two gendarmes hurrying toward the scene—they would see justice done. The law was there to protect poor folk. For a certainty I would not get off easily.
I knew what would happen. The gendarmes would submit McKeogh and myself to a procès-verbal. They would impound the car. I should have to go to the Mairie and make endless depositions. I should have to wait, Heaven knows how long, before I would appear before the juge de paix. I should have to find a solicitor to represent me. In the end I should be fined for furious driving—at the rate, when the accident happened, of a mile an hour—and probably have to pay a heavy compensation to the wilful and uninjured victim of McKeogh's unimpeachable driving. And, all the time, while waiting for injustice to take its course, I should be the guest of a hostile population. I grew angry. The crowd grew angrier. The gendarmes approached with an air of Majesty and Fate. But just before they could be acquainted with the brutal facts of the disaster, a singularly bright-eyed man, wearing a hard felt hat and a blue serge suit, flashed like a meteor into the midst of the throng, glanced with an amazing swiftness at me, the car, the crowd, the gendarmes, and the victim, ran his hands up and down the person of the last mentioned, and then, with the frenzied action of a figure in a bad cinematograph rather than that of a human being, subjected the inhabitants to an infuriated philippic in Provençal, of which I could not understand one word. The crowd, with here and there a murmur of remonstrance, listened to him in silence. When he had finished they hung their heads, the gendarmes shrugged their majestic and fateful shoulders and lit cigarettes, and the gargoyle-visaged ancient with the neck of crocodile hide turned grumbling away. I have never witnessed anything so magical as the effect produced by this electric personage. Even McKeogh, who during the previous clamor had sat stiff behind his wheel, keeping expressionless eyes fixed on the radiator, turned his head two degrees of a circle and glanced at his surroundings.
The instant peace was established our rescuer darted up to me with the directness of a dragon fly, and shook me warmly by the hand. As he had done me a service, I responded with a grateful smile; besides, his aspect was peculiarly prepossessing. I guessed him to be about five and thirty. He had a clear olive complexion, black mustache and short silky Vandyke beard, and the most fascinating, the most humorous, the most mocking, the most astonishingly bright eyes I have ever seen in my life. I murmured expressions of thanks while he prolonged the handshake with the fervor of a long-lost friend.
“It's all right, my dear sir. Don't worry any more,” he said in excellent English, but with a French accent curiously tinged with Cockney. “The old gentleman's as sound as a bell—not a bruise on his body.” He pushed me gently to the step of the car. “Get in and let me guide you to the only place where you can eat in this accursed town.”
Before I could recover from my surprise, he was by my side in the car shouting directions to McKeogh.
“Ah! These people!” he cried, shaking his hands with outspread fingers in front of him. “They have no manners, no decency, no self-respect. It's a regular trade. They go and get knocked down by automobiles on purpose so that they can claim indemnity. They breed dogs especially and train them to commit suicide under the wheels so that they can get compensation. There's one now—ah! sacréé bête!” He leaned over the side of the car and exchanged violent objurgation with the dog. “But never mind. So long as I am here you can run over anything you like with impunity.”
“I'm very much obliged to you,” said I. “You've saved me from a deal of unpleasantness. From the way you handled the old gentleman, I should guess you to be a doctor.”
“That's one of the few things I've never been,” he replied. “No, I'm not a doctor. One of these days I'll tell you all about myself”—he spoke as if our sudden acquaintance would ripen into lifelong friendship. “There's the hotel, the Hotel Saint Louis,” he pointed to the sign a little way up the narrow, old-world, cobble-paved street we were entering. “Leave it all to me; I'll see that they treat you properly.”
The car drew up at the doorway. My electric friend leaped out and met the emerging landlady.
“Bon jour, madame. I've brought you one of my very good friends, an English gentleman of the most high importance. He will have dejeuner—tout ce qu'il y a de mieux. None of your cabbage soup and eels and andouilles—but a good omelette, some fresh fish and a bit of very tender meat. Will that suit you?” he asked, turning to me.
“'BON JOUR, MADAME. I'VE BROUGHT YOU ONE OF MY VERY GOOD FRIENDS, AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN OF THE MOST HIGH IMPORTANCE”
“Excellently,” said I, smiling. “And since you've ordered me so charming a dejeuner, perhaps you'll do me the honor of helping me to eat it.”
“With the very greatest pleasure,” said he, without a second's hesitation.
We entered the small, stuffy salle-à-manger, where a dingy waiter with a dingier smile showed us to a small table by the window. At the long table in the middle of the room sat the half dozen frequenters of the house, their napkins tucked under their chins, eating, in gloomy' silence, a dreary meal of the kind my new friend had deprecated.
“What shall we drink?” I asked, regarding with some disfavor the thin red and white wines in the decanters.
“Anything,” said he, “but this piquette du pays. It tastes like a mixture of sea-water and vinegar. It produces the look of patient suffering that you see on those gentlemen's faces. You who are not used to it had better not venture. It would excoriate your throat, dislocate your pancreas. It would play the very devil with you. Adolphe—” he beckoned the waiter—“there's a little white wine of the Côtes du Rhone—” He glanced at me.
“I'm in your hands,” said I.
As far as eating and drinking went I could not have been in better. Nor could anyone desire a more entertaining chance companion of travel. That he had thrust himself upon me in the most brazen manner and taken complete possession of me there could be no doubt. But it had all been done in the most irresistibly charming manner in the world. One entirely forgot the impudence of the fellow. I have since discovered that he did not lay himself out to be agreeable. The flow of talk and anecdote, the bright laughter that lit up a little joke, making it appear a very brilliant joke indeed, were all spontaneous. He was a man, too, of some cultivation. He knew France thoroughly; England pretty well; he had a discriminating taste in architecture, and waxed poetical over the beauties of nature.
“It strikes me as odd,” said I at last, somewhat ironically, “that so vital a person as yourself should find scope for your energies in this dead-and-alive place.”
He threw up his hands. “I live here? I crumble and decay in Aigues-Mortes? For whom do you take me?”
I replied that not having the pleasure of knowing his name and quality I could only take him for an enigma.
He selected a card from his letter case and handed it to me across the table. It bore the legend.
“Aristide Pujol.
Agent.
27 bis Rue St. Honoré, Paris.”
“That address will always find me,” he said.
Civility bade me give him my card, which he put carefully in his letter case.
“I owe my success in life,” said he, “to the fact that I have never lost an opportunity nor a visiting-card.”
“Where did you learn your perfect English?” I asked.
“First,” said he, “among English tourists at Marseilles. Then in England. I was professor of French at an academy for young ladies.”
“I hope you were a success,” said I.
He regarded me drolly.
“Yes—and no,” said he.
The meal over, we left the hotel.
“Now,” said he, “you would like to visit the towers on the ramparts. I should dearly love to accompany you, but I have business in the town. I will take you, however, to the gardien and put you in his charge.”
He raced me to the gate by which I had entered. The gardien des remparts issued from his lodge at Aristide Pujol's summons, and listened respectfully to his exhortation in Provençal. Then he went for his keys.
“I'll not say good-by,” Aristide Pujol declared amiably. “I'll get through my business long before you've done your sight-seeing, and you'll find me waiting for you near the hotel. Au revoir, cher ami.”
He smiled, lifted his hat, waved his hand in a friendly way and darted off across the square. The old gardien came out with the keys and took me off to the Tour de Constance, where Protestants were pell-mell imprisoned after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; thence to the Tour des Bourguinons where I forget how many hundred Burgundians were massacred and pickled in salt, and, after these cheery exhibitions, invited me to walk round the ramparts and inspect the remaining eighteen towers of the enceinte. As the mistral, however, had sprung up and was shuddering across the high walls, I declined, and, having feed him, descended to the comparative shelter of the earth.
There I found Aristide Pujol awaiting me at the corner of the narrow street in which the hotel was situated.
He was wearing—like most of the young bloods of Provence in winter time—a short, shaggy, yet natty goatskin coat, ornamented with enormous bone buttons, and a little cane valise stood near by on the curb.
He was not alone. Walking arm in arm with him was a stout, elderly woman of swarthy complexion and forbidding aspect. She was attired in a peasant's or small shop keeper's rusty Sunday black and an old-fashioned, black bonnet, prodigiously adorned with black plumes and black roses. Beneath this bonnet her hair was tightly drawn up from her forehead; heavy eyebrows overhung a pair of small, crafty eyes, and a tuft of hair grew on the corner of a prognathous jaw. She might have been about seven and forty.
Aristide Pujol, unlinking himself from this unattractive female, advanced and saluted me with considerable deference.
“Monseigneur—” said he.
As I am neither a duke nor an archbishop, but a humble member of the lower automobiling classes, the high-flown title startled me.
“Monseigneur, will you permit me,” said he in French, “to present to you Madame Gougasse? Madame is the patronne of the Café de l'Univers at Carcassonne, and she is going to do me the honor of marrying me to-morrow.”
The unexpectedness of the announcement took my breath away.
“Good Lord!” said I in a whisper.
Anyone less congruous as the bride elect of the debonair Aristide Pujol it was impossible to imagine. However, it was none of my business. I raised my hat politely to the lady.
“ARISTIDE PUJOL, UNLINKING HIMSELF FROM THIS UNATTRACTIVE FEMALE, ADVANCED AND SALUTED ME WITH CONSIDERABLE DEFERENCE”
“Madame, I offer you my sincere felicitations. As an entertaining husband I am sure you will find Monsieur Aristide Pujol without a rival.”
“Je vous remercie, Monseigneur,” she replied, in what was obviously her best company manner. “And if ever you will deign to come to the Café de l'Univers we shall esteem it a great honor.”
“And so you're going to get married to-morrow?” I remarked, by way of saying something—to congratulate Aristide Pujol on his choice lay beyond my power of hypocrisy.
“To-morrow,” said he, “my dear Amélie will make me the happiest of men!”
“We start for Carcassonne by the three-thirty train,” said Madame Gougasse, pulling a great silver watch from some fold of her person.
“Then there is time,” said I, pointing to a little weather-beaten café in the square, “to drink a glass to your happiness.”
“Bien volontiers,” said the lady.
“Pardon, chère amie,” Aristide interposed quickly, “unless Monseigneur and I start at once for Montpellier, I shall not have time to transact my little affairs before your train arrives there.”
Parenthetically, I must remark that all trains going from Aigues-Mortes to Carcassonne must stop at Montpellier.
“That's true,” she agreed, in a somewhat hesitating manner. Bu”
“But, idol of my heart, though I am overcome with grief at the idea of leaving you for two little hours, it is a question of four thousand francs. Four thousand francs are not picked up every day in the street. It's a lot of money.”
Madame Gougasse's little eyes glittered.
“Bien sûr. And it's quite settled?”
“Absolutely.”
“And it will be all for me?”
“Half,” said Aristide.
“You promised all to me for the redecoration of the ceiling of the café.”
“Three thousand will be sufficient, dear angel. What? I know these contractors and decorators. The more you pay them, the more abominable will they make the ceiling. Leave it to me. I, Aristide, will guarantee you a ceiling like that of the Sistine Chapel for two thousand francs.”
She smiled and bridled, so as to appear perfectly well-bred in my presence. The act of smiling caused the tuft of hair on her jaw to twitch horridly. A shiver ran down my back.
“Don't you think, Monseigneur,” she asked archly, “that Monsieur Pujol should give me the four thousand francs as a wedding present?”
“Most certainly,” said I, in my heartiest voice, entirely mystified by the conversation.
“Well, I yield,” said Aristide. “Ah, women, women! They hold up their little rosy finger, and the bravest of men has to lie down with his chin on his paws like a good old watchdog. You agree then, Monseigneur, to my giving the whole of the four thousand francs to Amélie?”
“More than that,” said I, convinced that the swarthy lady of the prognathous jaw was bound to have her own way in the end where money was concerned, and yet for the life of me not seeing how I had anything to do with the disposal of Aristide Pujol's property. “More than that,” said I, “I command you to do it.”
“C'est bien gentil de votre part,” said Madame.
“And now the café,” I suggested, with chattering teeth. We had been standing all the time at the corner of the square, while the mistral whistled down the narrow street. The dust was driven stingingly into our faces, and the women of the place who passed us by held their black scarfs over their mouths.
“Alas, Monseigneur,” said Madame Gougasse. “Aristide is right. You must start now for Montpellier in the automobile. I will go by the train for Carcassonne at three-thirty. It is the only train from Aigues-Mortes. Aristide transacts his business, and joins me in the train at Montpellier. You have not much time to spare.”
I was bewildered. I turned to Aristide Pujol, who stood, hands on hips, regarding his prospective bride and myself with humorous benevolence.
“My good friend,” said I in English, “I've not the remotest idea of what the two of you are talking about; but I gather you have arranged that I should motor you to Montpellier. Now I'm not going to Montpellier. I've just come from there, as I told you. I'm going in the opposite direction.”
He took me familiarly by the arm, and, with a “Pardon, chère amie” to the lady, led me a few paces aside.
“I beseech you,” he whispered, “it's a matter of four thousand francs, a hundred and sixty pounds, eight hundred dollars, a new ceiling for the Café de l'Univers, the dream of a woman's life, and the happiest omen for my wedded felicity. You can't refuse.”
He hypnotized me with his bright eyes, overpowered my will by his winning personality. He seemed to force me to desire his companionship. After all, I reflected, I was at a loose end, and where I went did not matter to anybody. Aristide Pujol had also done me a considerable service, for which I felt grateful. I yielded with good grace.
He darted back to Madame Gougasse, alive with gayety.
“Chère amie, if you were to press Monseigneur, I'm sure he would come to Carcassonne and dance at our wedding.”
“Alas! that,” said I hastily, “is out of the question. But,” I added, amused by a humorous idea, “why should two lovers separate even for a few hours? Why should not Madame accompany us to Montpellier? There is room in my auto for three, and it would give me the opportunity of making Madame's better acquaintance.”
“There, Amélie!” cried Aristide. “What do you say?”
“Truly, it is too much honor,” murmured Madame Gougasse, evidently tempted.
“There's your luggage,” said Aristide. “You would bring that great trunk for which there is no place in the automobile of Monseigneur.”
“That's true—my luggage.”
“Send it on by train, chère amie.”
“When will it arrive at Carcassonne?”
“Not to-morrow,” said Pujol, “but perhaps next week or the week after. Perhaps it may never come at all. One is never certain with these railway companies. But what does that matter?”
“What do you say?” cried the lady sharply.
“It may arrive, or it may not arrive; but you are rich enough, chère amie, not to think of a few camisoles and bits of jewelry.”
“And my lace and my silk dress that I have brought to show your parents. Merci,” she retorted with a dangerous spark in her little eyes. “You think one's made of money, eh? You will soon find yourself mistaken, my friend. I would give you to understand—” She checked herself suddenly. “Monseigneur”—she turned to me, with a resumption of the gracious manner of her bottle-decked counter at the Café de l'Univers—“you are too kind. I appreciate your offer infinitely; but I am not going to entrust my luggage to the kind care of the railway company. Merci, non! They are robbers and thieves. Even if it did arrive, half the things would be stolen. Oh, I know them.”
She shook the head of an experienced and self-reliant woman. No doubt, distrustful of banks as of railway companies, she kept her money hidden in her mattress. I pitied my poor young friend. He would need all his gayety to enliven the domestic side of the Café de l'Univers.
The lady having declined my invitation, I expressed my regrets, and Aristide, more emotional, voiced his sense of heart-rent desolation, and in a resigned tone informed me that it was time to start. I left the lovers and went to the hotel, where I paid the bill and summoned McKeogh.
The car backed down the narrow street into the square and took up its position. We entered. McKeogh took charge of Aristide's valise, tucked us up in the rug and settled himself in his seat. The car started and we drove off, Aristide gallantly brandishing his hat and Madame Gougasse waving her lily hand, which happened to be hidden in an ill-fitting black glove.
“To Montpellier, as fast as you can!” he shouted at the top of his lungs to McKeogh. Then he sighed as he threw himself luxuriously back. “Ah! this is better than a train. Amélie doesn't know what a mistake she has made!”
The elderly victim of my furious entry was lounging, in spite of the mistral, by the grim old gateway. Instead of scowling at me he raised his hat respectfully as we passed. I touched my cap, but Aristide returned the salute with the grave politeness of royalty.
“This is a place,” said he, “which I should like never to behold again.”
In a few moments we were whirling along the straight white road between the interminable black vineyards, and past the dilapidated homesteads of the vine-folk and wayside cafés that are scattered about this unjoyous corner of France.
“Well,” said he suddenly, “what do you think of my fiancée?”
Politeness and good taste forbade expression of my real opinion. I murmured platitudes to the effect that she seemed to be a most sensible woman with a head for business.
“She's not what we in French call jolie, jolie; but what of that? What's the good of marrying a pretty face for other men to make love to? And, as you English say, there's none of your damned sentiment about her. But she has the most flourishing café in Carcassonne; and, when the ceiling is newly decorated, provided she doesn't have too much gold leaf and too many naked babies on clouds—it's astonishing how women love naked babies on clouds—it will be the snuggest place in the world. May I ask for one of your excellent cigarettes?”
I handed him the case from the pocket of the car.
“It was there that I made her acquaintance,” he resumed after having lit the cigarette from my pipe. “We met, we talked, we fixed it up. She is not the woman to go by four roads to a thing. She did me the honor of going straight for me. Ah, but what a wonderful woman! She rules that café like a kingdom; a Semiramis, a Queen Elizabeth, a Catherine de Medicis. She sits enthroned behind the counter all day long and takes the money and counts the saucers and smiles on rich clients, and if a waiter in a far corner gives a bit of sugar to a dog she spots it and the waiter has a devil of a time. That woman is worth her weight in thousand franc notes. She goes to bed every night at one, and gets up in the morning at five. And virtuous! Didn't Solomon say that a virtuous woman was more precious than rubies? That's the kind of wife the wise man chooses when he gives up the giddy ways of youth. Ah, my dear sir, over and over again these last two or three days my dear old parents—I have been on a visit to them in Aigues-Mortes—have commended my wisdom. Amélie, who is devoted to me, left her café in Carcassonne to make their acquaintance, and receive their blessing before our marriage, also to show them the lace on her dessous, and her new silk dress. They are too old to take the long journey to Carcassonne. 'My son,' they said, 'you are making a marriage after our own hearts. We are proud of you. Now we can die perfectly content.' I was wrong perhaps in saying that Amélie has no sentiment,” he continued, after a short pause. “She adores me. It is evident. She will not allow me out of her sight. Ah, my dear friend, you don't know what a happy man I am.”
For a brilliant young man of five and thirty who was about to marry a horrible Megæra ten or twelve years his senior, he looked unhealthily happy. There was no doubt that his handsome roguery had caught the woman's fancy. She was at the dangerous age, when even the most ferro-concrete natured of women are apt to run to riot. She was comprehensible; and pardonable. But the man baffled me. He was obviously marrying her for her money; but how in the name of Diogenes and all the cynics could he manage to look so confoundedly joyful about it?
The mistral blew bitterly. I snuggled beneath the rug and hunched up my shoulders so as to get my ears protected by my coat collar. Aristide, sufficiently protected by his goat's hide, talked like a shepherd on a May morning. Why he took for granted my interest in his unromantic, not to say sordid, courtship I knew not; but he gave me the whole history of it from its modest beginnings to its now penultimate stage. From what I could make out—for the mistral whirled many of his words away over unheeding Provence—he had entered the Café de l'Univers one evening, a human derelict battered by buffeting waves of Fortune, and finding a seat immediately beneath Madame Gougasse's comptoir had straightway poured his grievances into a feminine ear and, figuratively speaking, rested his weary heart upon a feminine bosom. And his buffetings and grievances and wearinesses? Whence came they? I asked the question point-blank.
“Ah, my dear friend,” he answered kissing his gloved finger-tips, “she was adorable.”
“Who?” I asked, taken aback. “Madame Gougasse?”'
“'I KISSED HER FOUR TIMES. AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTH KISS, OUT CAME HER FATHER FROM THE POSTCARD SHOP'”
“Mon Dieu! No!” he replied. “Not Madame Gougasse. Amélie is solid, she is virtuous, she is jealous, she is capacious—but I should not call her adorable. No, the adorable one was twenty, delicious and English—a peach-blossom, a zephyr, a summer night's dream, and the most provoking little devil you ever saw in your life. Her father and herself and six of her compatriots were touring through France. They had circular tickets. So had I. In fact I was a miniature Thomas Cook & Son to the party. I provided them with the discomforts of travel and supplied erroneous information. Que voulez-vous? lf people ask you for the history of a pair of Louis XV corsets in a museum glass case, it's much better to stimulate their imagination by saying that they were worn by Joan of Arc at the Battle of Agincourt than to dull their minds by your ignorance. Eh, bien, we go through the cháteaux of the Loire, through Poitiers and Angouléme and we come to Carcassonne. You know Carcassonne? The great grim Cité, with its battlements and bastions and barbicans and fifty towers, on the hill, looking over the rubbishy modern town? We were there. The rest of the party were buying picture post-cards of the gardien at the foot of the Tour de l'Inquisition. The man who invented picture postcards ought to have his statue on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The millions of headaches he has saved! People go to places now not to exhaust themselves by seeing them, but to buy picture postcards of them. The rest of the party, as I said, were deep in picture postcards. Mademoiselle and I promenaded outside. We often promenaded outside when the others were buying picture postcards,” he remarked with an extra twinkle in his bright eyes. “And the result? We leaned over the parapet. The wind blew a confounded mèche—what do you call it?”
“Strand?”
“Yes, strand of her hair across my face. She let it blow and laughed and did not move. Didn't I say she was a little devil? If there's a Provençal ever born who would not have kissed a girl under such provocation, I should like to have his mummy. I kissed her. She kept on laughing. I kissed her again. I kissed her four times. At the beginning of the fourth kiss, out came her father from the postcard shop. He waited till the end of it and then announced himself. He announced himself in such ungentlemanly terms that I was forced to let the whole party, including the adorable little devil, go on to Perpignan by themselves, while I betook my broken heart to the Café de l'Univers.”
“'AMÉLIE ALWAYS DRINKS FRONTIGNAN WHEN HER HEART IS TOUCHED'”
“And there you found consolation.”
“I told my sad tale. Amélie listened and called the manager to take charge of the comptoir, and poured herself out a glass of Frontignan. Amélie always drinks Frontignan when her heart is touched. I came the next day and the next. It was pouring with rain day and night—and Carcassonne in rain is like hell with its furnaces put out by human tears, and the Café de l'Univers like a little warm corner of Paradise stuck in the midst of it.”
“And so that's how it happened?”
“That's how it happened. Ma foi! When a lady asks a galant homme to marry her, what is he to do? Besides, did I not say that the Café de l'Univers was the most prosperous one in Carcassonne? I'm afraid you English, my dear friend, have such sentimental ideas about marriage. Now, we in France—attendez, allendez!” He suddenly broke off his story, lurched forward and gripped the back of the front seat.
“To the right, man, to the right!” he cried excitedly to McKeogh.
We had reached the point where the one straight road from Aigues-Mortes branches, one road going to Montpellier, the other to Nimes. Montpellier being to the west, McKeogh had naturally taken the left fork.
“To the right,” shouted Aristide.
McKeogh pulled up and turned his head with a look of protesting inquiry. I intervened with a laugh.
“You're wrong in your geography, Monsieur Pujol. Besides, there is the sign-post staring you in the face. This is the way to Montpellier.”
“But, my dear, Heaven-sent friend, I no more want to go to Montpellier than you do!” he cried. “Montpellier is the last place on earth I desire to visit. You want to go to Nimes, and so do I.”
I was utterly bewildered. I turned to the goatskin-clad, pointed-bearded, bright-eyed Aristide, who, sitting bolt upright, with his hands stretched out, looked like a modern parody of the god Pan in a hard felt hat.
“You don't want to go to Montpellier?”
“No, ten thousand times no.”
“But your four thousand francs—your meeting Madame Gougasse's train—your getting on to Carcassonne?”
“If I could put twenty million continents between myself and Carcassonne I'd do it,” he exclaimed with frantic gestures. “Don't you understand? The Lord, who is always on my side, sent you especially to deliver me out of the hands of that unspeakable Xantippe. There are no four thousand francs. I'm not going to meet her train at Montpellier, and if she marries anyone to-morrow at Carcassonne, it will not be Aristide Pujol.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We'll go to Nimes.”
“Very good, sir,” said McKeogh.
“And now,” said I, as soon as we had started on the right-hand road, “will you have the kindness to explain.”
“There's nothing to explain,” he cried gleefully. “Here am I delivered. I am free. I can breathe God's good air again. I'm not going to marry Yum-Yum, Yum-Yum! I feel ten years younger. Oh! I've had a narrow escape! But that's the way with me. I always fall on my feet. Didn't I tell you I've never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the House of Bondage. I took it, and here I am! For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Aigues-Mortes, when suddenly you—a deus ex machina—come to my aid. Don't say there isn't a Providence watching over me.”
I suggested that his mode of escape seemed somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn't he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied?
“For the simple reason,” said he, with a gay laugh, “that I haven't a single penny piece in the world.”
He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously.
“You seem to take it pretty philosophically,” said I.
“'Les gueux, les gueux, sont des gens heureux,'” he quoted.
“You're the first person who has made me believe in the happiness of beggars.”
“In time I shall make you believe in lots of things,” he retorted. “No. I hadn't one sou to buy a ticket, and Amélie never left me. I spent my last franc on the journey to Aigues-Mortes. Amélie's eyes never left me from the time we started. When I ran to your assistance she was watching me from a house on the other side of the place. She came to the hotel while we were lunching. I thought I would slip away and join you after you had made the tour des remparts. But no. I must present her to my English friend. And then—voyons—didn't I tell you I never lost a visiting-card? Look at this.”
He dived into his pocket, produced the letter case and extracted a card.
“Voilà.”
I read: “The Duke of Wiltshire.”
“But, good heavens, man!” I cried, “that's not the card I gave you.”
“I know it isn't,” said he, “but it's the one I showed to Amélie.”
“How on earth,” I asked, “did you come by the Duke of Wiltshire's visiting-card?”
He looked at me roguishly.
“I am—what do you call it—a—a—'snapper up of unconsidered trifles.' You see I know my Shakespeare. I love Autolycus. C'est un peu moi, hein? Anyhow, I showed the Duke's card to Amélie.”
I began to understand. “That was why you called me 'Monseigneur.'”
“Naturally. And told her that you were my English patron and would give me four thousand francs as a wedding present, if I accompanied you to your agent's at Montpellier, where you could draw the money. Ah! But she was suspicious! Yesterday I borrowed a bicycle. A friend left it in the courtyard. I thought 'I will creep out at dead of night, when everyone's asleep, and once on my petite bicyclette, bonsoir la compagnie! But, would you believe it? When I had dressed and crept down and tried to mount the bicycle, I found both tires had been punctured in a hundred places with the point of a pair of scissors. Ah, là, là! It has been a narrow escape. When you invited her to accompany us to Montpellier my heart was in my mouth.”
“It would have served you right,” I said, “if she had accepted.”
He laughed, as though, instead of not having a penny, he had not a care in the world. I had no measure whereby to gauge this amazing and inconsequential person. In one way he had acted abominably. To leave an affianced bride in the lurch in this heartless manner was a most ungentlemanly proceeding. On the other hand, an unscrupulous adventurer would have married the woman for her money and chanced the consequences.
Indeed, speaking from affectionate knowledge of the man, I can declare that the position in which he, like many a better man, had placed himself was intolerable. Other men of equal sensitiveness would have extricated themselves in a more commonplace fashion. But the dramatic appealed to my rascal, and he has often plumed himself on his calculated coup de theátre at the fork of the roads. was delighted with it. Even now I sometimes think that Aristide Pujol has never grown up.
“There's one thing I don't understand,” said I, “And that is your astonishing influence over the populace at Aigues-Mortes. You came upon them like a firework—a devil-among-the-tailors—and everybody, gendarmes and victim included, became as tame as sheep. How was it?”
He laughed. “I said you were my very old and dear friend and patron, a great English duke.”
“I don't quite see how that explanation satisfied the pig-headed old gentleman whom I knocked down.”
“Oh, that—” said Aristide Pujol, with a look of indescribable drollery—“that was my old father.”
In the February issue, “The Adventure of the Arlésienne,” the second adventure of Aristide Pujol, will appear