The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol (American Magazine series)/The Adventure of the Miracle
Aristide, by attaching himself to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse as a kind of glorified courier, had founded the, Agence Pujol. As he, personally, was the Agence and the Agence was he, it happened that when he was not in attendance at the hotel, the Agence faded into space; and when he made his appearance in the vestibule and hung up his placard by the bureau, the Agence at once burst again into the splendor of existence. Apparently this fitful career of the Agence Pujol lasted some years. Whenever a chance of more remunerative employment turned up; Aristide took it and dissolved the Agence. Whenever outrageous Fortune chivvied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated.
“LET US DRAIN TOGETHER,” CRIED HE, “THE LOVELINESS OF PÈRIGUEUX TO ITS DREGS!”
The Adventure of the Miracle
It was during one of these periodic flourishings of the Agence Pujol that Aristide met the Ducksmiths.
Business was slack, few guests were at the hotel, and of those few none desired to be personally conducted to the Louvre or Notre Dame or the Statue of Liberty in the Place de la Bastille. 'They mostly wore the placid expression of folks engaged in business affairs instead of the worried look of pleasure-seekers.
“My good Bocardon,” said Aristide, lounging by the bureau and addressing his friend the manager, “this is becoming desperate. In another minute I shall take you out by main force and show you the Tomb of Napoleon.”
At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a traveling Briton, whom Aristide:had not seen before, advanced to the bureau and inquired his way to the Madeleine. Aristide turned on him like a flash.
“Sir,” said he, extracting documents from his pockets with lightning rapidity, “nothing would give me greater pleasure than to conduct you thither. My card. My tariff. My advertisement,” pointing to the placard. “I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all traveling arrangements—from the Moulin Rouge to the Pyramids, and, as you see, my charges are moderate.”
The Briton holding the documents in a pudgy hand looked at the swift-gestured director with portentous solemnity. Then with equal solemnity he looked at Bocardon.
“Monsieur Ducksmith,” said the latter. “you can repose every confidence in Monsieur Aristide Pujol.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Ducksmith.
FOR ONE POOR LITTLE MOMENT IN A LIFETIME IT IS GOOD TO WEEP ON SOME ONE'S SHOULDER AND TO HAVE SOME ONE'S SYMPATHETIC ARM AROUND ONE'S WAIST
After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold glasses midway on his fleshy nose and perused the documents. He was a fat, heavy man of about fifty years of age. and his scanty hair was turning gray. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-wise, giving him the appearance of some odd dog—a similarity greatly intensified by the eve sockets, the lower lids of which were dragged down in the middle, showing the red like a bloodhound's; but here the similarity ended, for the man's eyes, dull and blue, had the unspeculative fixity of a rabbit's. His mouth, small and weak, dribbled away at the corners into the jowls, which in their turn melted into two or three chins. He was decently dressed in gray tweeds, and wore a diamond ring on his little finger.
“Umph,” said he at last, and went back to the salon.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Aristide sprang into an attitude of indignation.
“Did you ever see such a bear! If I ever saw a bigger one I would eat him without salt or pepper. Mais nom d'un chien, such people ought to be made into sausages!”
“Flègme britannique!” laughed Bocardon.
Half an hour passed and Mr. Ducksmith made no reappearance from the salon. In the forlorn hope of a client Aristide went in after him. He found Mr. Ducksmith, glasses on nose, reading a newspaper, and a plump, black-haired lady with an expressionless face knitting a gray woolen sock. Why they should be spending their first morning—and a crisp, sunny morning, too—in Paris in the murky staleness of this awful little salon, Aristide was at a loss to conjecture. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded bim vacantly over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.
“I have looked in,” said Aristide, with his ingratiating smile, “to see whether you are ready to go to the Madeleine.”
“Madeleine?” the lady inquired softly, pausing in her knitting.
“Madame,” Aristide came forward, and, hand on heart, made her the lowest of bows. “Madame, have I the honor of speaking to Madame Ducksmith? Enchanted, madame, to make your acquaintance,” he continued, after a grunt from Mr. Ducksmith had assured him of the correctness oí his conjecture. “I am Monsieur Aristide Pujol, Director of the Agence Pujol, and my poor services are absolutely at your disposal.”
He drew himself up, twisted his mustache, and met her eyes—they were rather sad and tired—with the roguish mockery of his own. She turned to her husband.
“Are you thinking of going to the Madeleine, Bartholomew?”
“I am, Henrietta,” said he. “I have decided to do it. And I have also decided to put ourselves in the charge of this gentleman. Mrs. Ducksmith and I are accustomed to all the conveniences of travel—I may say that we are great travelers, and I leave it to you to make the necessary arrangements. I prefer to travel at so much per head per day.”
He spoke in à wheezy, solemn monotone from which all elements of life and joy seemed to have been eliminated. His wife's voice, though softer in timbre, was likewise devoid of color.
“My husband finds that it saves us from responsibilities,” she remarked.
“And overcharges, and the necessity of learning foreign languages, which at our time of life would be difficult. During all our travels we have not been to Paris before, owing to the impossibility of finding a personally conducted tour of an adequate class.”
“Then, my dear sir,” cried Aristide, “it is Providence itself that has put you in the way of the Agence Pujol. I will now conduct you to the Madeleine without the least discomfort or danger.”
“Put on your hat, Henrietta,” said Mr. Ducksmith, “while this gentleman and I discuss terms.”
Mrs. Ducksmith gathered up her knitting and retired, Aristide dashing to the door to open it for her. This gallantry surprised her ever so little, for a faint flush came into her cheek, and the shadow of a smile into her eyes.
“I wish you to understand, Mr. Pujol.” said Mr. Ducksmith, “that being, I may say. a comparatively rich man, I can afford to pay for certain luxuries; but I made a resolution many years ago, which stood me in good stead during my business life, that I would never be cheated. You will find me liberal but just.”
He was as good as his word. Aristide, who had never in his life exploited another's wealth to his own advantage, suggested certain terms, on the basis of so much per head per day, which Mr. Ducksmith declared with a sigh of relief to be perfectly satisfactory.
“Perhaps,” said he, after further conversation, “you will be good enough to schedule out a month's railway tour through France, and give me an inclusive estimate for the three of us. As I say, Mrs. Ducksmith and I are great travelers—we have been to Norway, to Egypt, to Morocco and the Canaries, to the Holy Land, to Rome, and lovely Lucerne—but we find that attention to the trivial detail of travel militates against our enjoyment.”
“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “trust in me and your path and that of the charming Mrs. Ducksmith will be strewn with roses.”
SHE OPENED IT, A POOR DUMPY NIOBE, ALL TEARS. HE PUT HIS FINGER TO HIS LIPS
Whereupon Mrs. Ducksmith appeared, arrayed for walking out, and Aristide having ordered a cab, drove with them to the Madeleine. They alighted in front of the majestic flight of steps. Mr. Ducksmith stared at the classical portico supported on its Corinthian columns with his rabbit-like, unspeculative gaze—he had those filmy blue eyes that never seem to wink—and after a moment or two, turned away.
“Humph,” said he.
Mrs. Ducksmith, dutiful and silent, turned away also.
“This sacred edifice,” Aristide began in his best Cicerone manner, “was built, after a classic model by the great Napoleon, as a Temple of Fame. It was afterwards used as a church. You will observe, and if you care to, you can count, as a conscientious American lady did last week, the fifty-six Corinthian columns—you vill see they are Corinthian by the acanthus leaves on the capitals. For the vulgar, who have no architectural knowledge, I have memoria technica for the instant recognition of the three orders—cabbages, Corinthian; horns, Ionic ('orns, iornic—you see); anything else Doric. We will now mount the steps and inspect the interior.”
He was dashing off in his eager fashion when Mr. Ducksmith laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“No,” said he solemnly. “I disapprove of Popish interiors. Take us to the next place.”
He entered the waiting victoria. His wife meekly followed.
“I suppose the Louvre is the next place,” said Aristide.
“I leave it to you,” said Mr. Ducksmith.
Aristide gave the order to the cabman and took the little seat in the cab facing his employers. On the way down the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli he pointed out the various buildings of interest, Maxim's, the Cercle Royal, the Ministère de la Marine, the Hotel Continental. Two expressionless faces, two pairs of unresponsive eyes met his merry glance. He might as well have pointed out the beauties of the New Jerusalem to a couple of guinea pigs.
The cab stopped at the entrance to the galleries of the Louvre. They entered and walked up the great staircase on the turn of which the Winged Victory stands, with the wind of God in her vesture, proclaiming to each beholder the deathless, ever soaring, ever conquering spirit of man, and heralding the immortal glories of the souls, wind-swept likewise by the wind of God, that are enshrined in the treasure houses beyond.
“There!” said Aristide.
“Umph! No head,” said Mr. Ducksmith, passing it by with scarcely a glance.
“Would it cost very much to get a new one?” asked Mrs. Ducksmith timidly. She was three or four paces behind her spouse.
“It would cost the blood and tears and laughter of the human race,” said Aristide.
(“That was devilish good, wasn't it?” remarked Aristide, when telling me this story. He always took care not to hide his light under the least possibility of a bushel.)
The Ducksmiths looked at him in their lack-luster way and allowed themselves to be guided into the picture galleries, vaguely hearing Aristide's comments, scarcely glancing at the pictures and manifesting no sign of interest in anything whatever. From the Louvre they drove to Notre Dame, where the same thing happened. The venerable pile standing imperishable amid the vicissitudes of centuries (the phrase was Aristide's and he was very proud of it) stirred in their bosoms no perceptible emotion. Mr. Ducksmith grunted and declined to enter; Mrs. Ducksmith said nothing. As with pictures and cathedrals so it was with their food at lunch. Beyond a solemn statement to the effect that in their quality of practised travelers they made a point of eating the food and drinking the wine of the country, Mr. Ducksmith did not allude to the meal. At any rate, thought Aristide, they don't clamor for underdone chops and tea. So far they were human. Nor did they maintain an awful silence during the repast. On the contrary, Mr. Ducksmith loved to talk—in a dismal, pompous way—chiefly of British politics. His method of discourse was to place himself in the position of those in authority and to declare what he would do in any given circumstances. Now, unless the interlocutor adopts the same method and declares what he would do, conversation is apt to become one-sided. Aristide having no notion of a policy should he find himself exercising the functions of the Chancellor of the British Exchequer, cheerfully tried to change the ground of debate.
“What would you do, Mr. Ducksmith, if you were King of England?”
“I should try to rule the realm like a Christian statesman,” replied Mr. Ducksmith.
“I should have a devil of a time,” said Aristide. `
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Ducksmith.
“I should have a—ah, I see—pardon—I should” he looked from one paralyzing face to the other and threw out his arms. “Parbleu!” said he, “I should decapitate your Mrs. Grundy and make it compulsory for bishops to dance once a week in Trafalgar Square. Tiens! I would have it a capital offense for any English cook to prepare hashed mutton without a license, and I would banish all the bakers of the kingdom to Siberia—ah! your English bread which you have to eat stale so as to avoid a horrible death!—and I would open two hundred thousand cafés—mon Dieu! how thirsty I have been there!—and I would make every English work-girl do her hair properly—and I would ordain that everybody should laugh three times a day under pain of imprisonment for life.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Pujol,” remarked Mr. Ducksmith seriously, “you would not be acting as a constitutional monarch. There is such a thing as the British Constitution which foreigners are bound to admire even though they may not understand.”
“To be a king must be a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Ducksmith.
“Madame,” said Aristide, “you have uttered a profound truth.” And to himself he murmured, though he should not have done so, “Nom de Dieu! Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!”
After lunch they drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel where they established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr. Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife knitting a gray woolen sock.
“Mon vieux,” said Aristide to Bocardon, “they are people of a nightmare. They are automata endowed with the faculty of digestion. Ce sont des gens invraisemblables.”
Paris providing them, apparently, with no entertainment, they started, after a couple of days, Aristide duce et suspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide an Odyssey of unimagined depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Chateaux of the Loire, and began to work their way south. Nothing that Aristide could do roused them from their apathy. They were exasperatingly docile, made few complaints, got up, entrained, detrained, fed, excursionized, slept, just as they were bidden. But they looked at nothing, enjoyed nothing (save perhaps English newspapers and knitting) and uttered nothing by way of criticism or appreciation when Aristide attempted to review the wonders through which they had passed. They did not care to know the history, authentic or Pujolic, of any place they visited; they were impressed by no scene of grandeur, no corner of exquisite beauty. To go on and on, in a dull, non-sentient way, so long as they were spared all forethought, all trouble, all afterthought, seemed to be their ideal of travel. Sometimes Aristide, after a fruitless effort to capture their interest, would hold his head, wondering whether he, or the Ducksmith couple, was insane. It was a dragonfly personally conducting two moles through a rose garden.
Only once, during the early part of their journey, did a gleam of joyousness pierce the dull glaze of Mr. Ducksmith's eyes. He had procured from the bookstall of a station a pile of English newspapers and was reading them in the train, while his wife knitted the interminable sock. Suddenly he folded a Daily Telegraph and handed it over to Aristide so that he should see nothing but a half page advertisement. The great capitals leaped to Aristide's eyes:
“DUCKSMITH'S DELICATE JAMS.”
“I am the Ducksmith,” said he. “I started and built up the business. When I found that I could retire, I turned it into a Limited Liability Company, and now I am free and rich and able to enjoy the advantages of foreign travel.”
Mrs. Ducksmith started, sighed, and dropped a stitch.
“Did you also make pickles?” asked Aristide.
“I did manufacture pickles, but I made my name in jam. In the trade you will find it an honored one.”
“It is that in every nursery in Europe,” Aristide declared with polite hyperbole.
“I have done my best to deserve my reputation,” said Mr. Ducksmith, as impervious to flattery as to impressions of beauty.
“Pecaire!” said Aristide to himself, “how can I galvanize these corpses?”
As the soulless days went by, this problem grew to be Aristide's main solicitude. He felt strangled, choked, borne down by an intolerable weight. What could he do to stir their vitality? Should he fire off pistols behind? them, just to see them jump? But would they jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit eyes set in their bloodhound sockets vacantly on him and assume that the detonations were part of the tour's program? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-time, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thais might come along, cast her spell upon him and induce him to wink! He himself was powerless. His raciest stories fell on dull ears; none of his jokes called forth a smile. At last having taken them to nearly all the historic Cháteaux of Touraine, without eliciting one cry of admiration, he gave Mr. Ducksmith up in despair and devoted his attention to the lady.
Mrs. Ducksmith parted her smooth black hair in the middle and fastened it in a knob at the back of her head. Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness. At her bosom she wore a great brooch containing intertwined locks of a grandfather and grandmother long since defunct. Her mind was as drearily equipped as her person. She had a vague idea that they were traveling in France; but if Aristide had told her that it was Japan she would have meekly accepted the information. She had no opinions. Still she was a woman, and Aristide, firm in his conviction, that when it comes to love-making, all women are the same, proceeded forthwith to make love to her.
“Madame,” said he one morning—she was knitting in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers—“ how much more charming that beautiful gray dress would be if it had a spot of color.”
His audacious hand placed a deep crimson rose against her corsage and he stood away at arm's length, his head on one side, judging the effect.
“Magnificent!-If madame would only do me the honor to wear it.”
Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.
“I'm afraid my husband does not like color,” she said.
“He must be taught,” cried Aristide. “You must teach him. I must teach him. Let us begin at once. Here is a pin.”
He held the pin delicately between finger and thumb, and controlled her with his roguish eyes. She took the pin and fixed the rose to her dress.
“I don't know what Mr. Ducksmith will say?”
“What he ought to say, madame, is 'Bountiful Providence, I thank Thee for giving me such a beautiful wife.'”
Mrs. Ducksmith blushed and, to conceal her face, bent it over her resumed knitting. She made woman's time-honored response.
“I don't think you ought to say such things, Mr. Pujol.”
“Ah, madame,” said he, lowering his voice, “I have tried not to; but que voulez-vous, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little gray mouse”—the lady weighed at least twelve stone—“you who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here”—he thumped his chest, “my Provençal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep.”
“I don't quite understand you, Mr. Pujol,” she said, dropping stitches recklessly.
“Ah, madame,” he whispered—and the rascal's whisper on such occasions could be very seductive, “that I will never believe.”
“I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes,” she murmured.
“That's an illusion,” said he, with a wide-flung gesture, “that will vanish at the first experiment.”
Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon, Daily Telegraph in hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building.
Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour, he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jellyfish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening, Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered “Charming!” Whereupon she colored and dropped her eyes. And, during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her.
“Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?”
She laid down her knitting. “Batholomew, will you come out?”
He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.
“What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen.”
So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.
“Wouldn't you like,” said he, “to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?”
“What odd things you think of.”
“But wouldn't you?” he insinuated.
Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful “Yes.”
“I can tell you of many odd things,” said Aristide. “I can tell you how flowers sing and what color there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun. Chère madame,” he went on after a pause, touching her little plump hand, “you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn't that so?”
She nodded.
“You have always been misunderstood.”
A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child's game. Enfin, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and of wrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saintlike purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman pour tout de bon, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.
“Bah!” said he to himself, “I am doing a noble and disinterested act. I am restoring sight to the blind. I am giving life to one in a state of suspended animation. Tron de l'Air! I am playing the part of a soul-reviver! And, parbleu, it isn't Jean or Jacques that can do that. It takes an Aristide Pujol.”
So, having persuaded himself, in his southern way, that he was executing an almost divine mission, he continued with a zest, now sharpened by an approving conscience, to revive Mrs. Ducksmith's soul.
The poor lady who had suffered the blighting influence of Mr. Ducksmith for twenty years with never a ray of counteracting warmth from the outside, expanded like a flower to the sun under the soul-reviving process. Day by day she exhibited some fresh, timid coquetry in dress and manner. Gradually she began to respond to Aristide's suggestions of beauty in natural scenery and exquisite building. On the ramparts of Angouléme, daintiest of towns in France, she gazed at the smiling valleys of the Charente and the Son stretching away below, and of her own accord touched his arm lightly and said: “How beautiful!” She appealed to her husband.
“Umph!” said he.
Once more (it had become a habit) she exchanged glances with Aristide. He drew her a little farther along under pretext of pointing out the dreamy sweep of the Charente.
“If he appreciates nothing at all, why on earth does he travel?”
Her eyelids fluttered upward for a fraction of a second.
“It's his mania,” she said. “He can never rest at home. He must always be going on, on.”
“How can you endure it?” he asked.
She sighed. “It is better now that you can teach me how to look at things.”
“Good!” thought Aristide. “When I leave them she can teach him to look at things and revive his soul. Truly I deserve a halo.”
As Mr. Ducksmith appeared to be entirely unperceptive of his wife's spiritual expansion, Aristide grew bolder in his apostolate. He complimented Mrs. Ducksmith to his face. He presented her daily with flowers. He scarcely waited for the heavy man's back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous, unseeing way. At every stopping place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town, to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted, he would extract a newspaper from his pocket and read with dull and dogged stupidity. Once Aristide caught him reading the advertisements for cooks and housemaids. In these circumstances Mrs. Ducksmith spiritually expanded at an alarming rate; and in an inverse ratio dwindled the progress of Mr. Ducksmith's sock.
They arrived at Pèrigueux, in Pèrigord, land of truffles, one morning, in time for lunch. Toward the end of the meal the maïtre d'hôtel helped them to great slabs of pâté de foie gras, made in the house—mosj of the hotelkeepers in Périgord make pâté de foie gras both for home consumption and for exportation—and waited expectant of their appreciation. He was not disappointed. Mr. Ducksmith, after a hesitating glance at the first mouthful swallowed it, greedily devoured his slab, and, after pointing to his empty plate, said solemnly:
“Plou.”
Like Oliver he asked for more.
“Tiens!” thought Aristide, astounded, “is he too developing a soul?”
But, alas! there were no signs of it when they went their dreary round of the town in the usual ramshackle open cab. The cathedral of Saint-Front extolled by Aristide and restored by Abadie—a terrible fellow who has capped with tops of pepper castors every pre-Gothic building in France—gave him no thrill; nor did the picturesque, tumble-down ancient buildings on the bank of the Dordogne, nor the delicate Renaissance façades in the cool narrow Rue du Lys.
“We will now go back to the hotel,” said he.
“But have we seen it all?” asked Mrs. Ducksmith.
“By no means,” said Aristide.
“We will go back to the hotel,” repeated her husband in his expressionless tones. “I have seen enough of Pèrigueux.”
This was final. They drove back to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith, without a word, went straight into the salon, leaving Aristide and his wife standing in the vestibule.
“And you, madame,” said Aristide, “are you going to sacrifice the glory of God's sunshine to the manufacture of woolen socks?”
She smiled—she had caught the trick at last—and said in happy submission, 'What would you have me do?”
With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.
“Let us drain together,” cried he, “the loveliness of Pèrigueux to its dregs!”
Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade—the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him, and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side chokeful of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers nursing chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches and meeting the mystery of colored glass and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.
Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honor leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a medieval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and gray in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.
“Voilà,” said Aristide. “Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows.”
“I have wasted twenty years of my life,” said Mrs. Ducksmith with a sigh. “Why didn't I meet some one like you when I was young? Ah! you don't know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol.”
“Why not Aristide, when we are alone? Why not, Henriette?”
He too had the sense of adventure, and his eyes were more than usually compelling and his voice more seductive. For some reason or other undivined by Aristide, overexcitement of nerves, perhaps, she burst into tears.
“Henriette! Henriette, ne pleurez pas.”
His arm crept round her, he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson, but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on some one's shoulder and to have some one's sympathetic arm around one's waist.
“Pauvre petite femme—and is it love she is pining for?”
She sobbed; he lifted her chin with his free hand—and what less could moral apostle do?—he kissed her on her wet cheek.
A bellow like that of an angry bull caused them to start asunder. They looked up, and there was Mr. Ducksmith within a few yards of them, his face aflame—his rabbits' eyes on fire with rage. He advanced, shook his fists in their faces.
“I've caught you. At last, after twenty years, I've caught you.”
“Monsieur,” cried Aristide starting up, “allow me to explain.”
He swept Aristide aside like an intercepting willow branch and poured forth a torrent of furious speech upon his wife.
“I have hated you for twenty years. Day by day I have hated you more. I've watched you, watched you, watched you. But, you sly jade, you've been too clever for me till now ... yes! I followed you from the hotel. I dogged you. I foresaw what would happen.... Now the end has come.... I've hated you for twenty years—ever since you first betrayed me----”.
Mrs. Ducksmith, who had sat with overwhelmed head in her hands started bolt upright, and looked at him like one thunderstruck.
“I betrayed you?” she gasped in bewilderment. “When? How? What do you mean?”
He laughed—for the first time since Aristide had known him—but it was a ghastly laugh that made the jowls of his cheeks spread horridly to his eats, and again he flooded the calm, stately courtyard with the raging violence of words. The veneer of easy life fell from him. He became the low-born, petty tradesman, using the language of the hands of his jam factory.... No, he had never told her. He had awaited his chance. Now he had found it. He called her names....
Aristide interposed, his Southern being athrob with the insults heaped upon the woman.
“Say that again, monsieur,” he shouted, “and I will take you up in my arms like a sheep and throw you down that well.”
The two men glared at each other, Aristide standing bent, with crooked fingers, ready to spring at the other's throat. The woman threw herself between them.
“For Heaven's sake,” she cried. “Listen to me. I have done no wrong. I have done no wrong now—I never did you wrong. I swear I didn't.”
Mr. Ducksmith laughed again, and his laugh reëchoed round the quiet walls and up the vast staircase of honor.
“You'd be a fool not to say it. But now I've done with you. Here, you, sir. Take her away—do what you like with her—I'll divorce her. I'll give you a thousand pounds never to see her again.”
“Goujat! Triple goujat!” cried Aristide, more incensed than ever at this final insult.
Mrs. Ducksmith, deadly white, swayed sideways, and Aristide caught her in his arms and dragged her to the stone bench. The fat, heavy man looked at them for a second, laughed again and sped through the porte-cochère. Mrs. Ducksmith quickly recovered from her fainting attack and gently pushed the solicitous Aristide away.
“Merciful Heaven!” she murmured, “what is to become of me?”
The last person to answer the question was Aristide. For the first time in his adventurous life resource failed him. He stared at the woman for whom he cared not the snap of a finger and who, he knew, cared not the snap of a finger for him, aghast at the havoc he had wrought. If he had set out to arouse emotion in these two sluggish breasts he had done so with a vengeance. He had thought he was amusing himself with a toy cannon and he had fired a charge of dynamite.
He questioned her almost stupidly—for a man in the comic mask does not readily attune himself to tragedy. She answered with the desolate frankness of a lost soul. And then the whole meaning—or the lack of meaning—of their inanimate lives was revealed to him. Absolute estrangement had followed the birth of their child nearly twenty years ago. The child had died after a few weeks. Since then he saw—and the generous blood of his heart froze as the vision came to him—that the vulgar, half-sentient, rabbit-eyed bloodhound of a man had nursed an unexpressed, dull, undying, implacable resentment against the woman. It did not matter that the man's suspicion was vain—to Aristide the woman's blank amazement at the preposterous charge was proof enough; to the man the thing was real. For nearly twenty years, the man had suffered the cancer to eat away his vitals—and he had watched and watched his blameless wife until, now, at last, he had caught her in this folly. No wonder he could not rest at home; no wonder he was driven Io-wise, on and on, although he hated travel and all its discomforts, knew no word of a foreign language, knew no scrap of history, had no sense of beauty, was utterly ignorant, as every single one of our expensively state-educated English lower classes is, of everything that matters on God's earth; no wonder that, in the unfamiliarity of foreign lands, feeling as helpless as a ballet-dancer in a cavalry charge, he looked to Cook or Lunn or the Agence Pujol to carry him through his uninspired pilgrimage. For twenty years he had shown no sign of joy or sorrow or anger, scarcely even of pleasure or annoyance. A tortoise could not have been more unemotional. The unsuspected volcano had slumbered. To-day came disastrous eruption. And what was a mere laughing, crying child of a man like Aristide Pujol in front of a Ducksmith volcano?
“What is to become of me?” wailed Mrs. Ducksmith again.
“Ma foi~!” said Aristide, with a shrug of his shoulders, “what's going to become of anyone? Who can foretell what will happen in a minute's time? Tiens!” he added, kindly laying his hand on the sobbing woman's shoulder, “be comforted, my poor Henriette. Just as nothing in this world is as good as we hope, so nothing is as bad as we fear. Voyons. All is not lost yet. We must return to the hotel.”
She weepingly acquiesced. They walked through the quiet streets like children whose truancy had been discovered and who were creeping back to condign punishment at school. When they reached the hotel, Mrs. Ducksmith went straight up to the woman's haven, her bedroom.
Aristide tugged at his Vandyck beard in dire perplexity. The situation was too pregnant with tragedy for him to run away and leave the pair to deal with it as best they could. But what was he todo? He sat down in the vestibule and tried to think. The landlord, an unstoppable gramophone of garrulity, entering by the street door and bearing-down upon him, put him to flight. He too sought his bedroom, a cool apartment with a balcony outside the French window. On this balcony, which stretched along the whole range of first-floor bedrooms, he stood for a while, pondering deeply. Then in an absent way he overstepped the limit of his own room frontage; a queer sound startled him; he paused, glanced through the open window, and there he saw a sight which for the moment paralyzed him.
Recovering command of his muscles, he tip-toed his way back. He remembered now that the three rooms adjoined; next to his was Mr. Ducksmith's, and then came Mrs. Ducksmith's. It was Mr. Ducksmith whom he had seen.
Suddenly his dark face became luminous with laughter; his eyes glowed, he threw his hat in the air and danced with glee about the room. Having thus worked off the first intoxication of his idea, he flung his few articles of attire and toilet necessaries into his bag, strapped it, and darted, in his dragon-fly way, into the corridor and tapped softly at Mrs. Ducksmith's door. She opened it, a poor dumpy Niobe, all tears. He put his finger to his lips.
“Madame,” he whispered, bringing to bear on her all the mocking magnetism of his eyes, “if you value your happiness you will do exactly what I tell you. You will obey me implicitly. You must not ask questions. Pack your trunks at once. In ten minutes' time the porter will come for them.”
She looked at him with a scared face. “But what am I going to do?”
“You are going to revenge yourself on your husband.”
“But I don't want to,” she replied piteously.
“I do,” said he. “Begin, chère madame, every moment is precious.”
In a state of stupefied terror the poor woman obeyed him. He saw her start seriously on her task and then went downstairs where he held a violent and gesticulatory conversation with the landlord and with a man in a green baize apron summoned from some dim lair of the hotel.. After that he lighted a cigarette and smoked feverishly, walking up and down the pavement. In ten minutes' time his luggage and that of Mrs. Ducksmith was placed upon the cab. Mrs. Ducksmith appeared trembling and tear-stained in the vestibule.
The man in the green baize apron knocked at Mr. Ducksmith's door and entered the room.
“I have come for the baggage of Monsieur,” said he.
“Baggage? What baggage?” asked Mr. Ducksmith, sitting up.
“I have descended the baggage of Monsieur Pujol,” said the porter in his stumbling English, “and of madame, and put them in a cab, and I naturally thought monsieur was going away too.”
“Going away!” He rubbed his eyes, glared at the porter, and dashed into his wife's room. It was empty. He dashed into Aristide's room. It was empty too. With a roar like that of a wounded elephant he rushed downstairs, the man in the green baize apron following at his heels.
Not a soul was in the vestibule. No cab was at the door. Mr. Ducksmith turned upon his stupefied satellite.
“Where are they?”
“They must have gone already. I filled the cab. Perhaps Monsieur Pujol and madame have gone before to make arrangements.”
“Where have they gone to?”
“In Pèrigueux there is nowhere to go to with baggage but the railway station.”
A decrepit vehicle with a gaudy linen canopy hove in sight. Mr. Ducksmith hailed it as the last victims of the Flood must have hailed the Ark. He sprang into it and drove to the station.
There, in the salle d'attente he found Aristide mounting guard over his wife's luggage. He hurled his immense bulk at his betrayer.
“You blackguard! Where is my wife?”
“Monsieur,” said Aristide, puffing a cigarette, sublimely impudent and debonair, “I decline to answer any questions. Your wife is no longer your wife. You offered me a thousand pounds to take her away. I am taking her away. I did not deign to disturb you for such a trifle as a thousand pounds, but since you are here”
He smiled engagingly and held out his curved palm. Mr. Ducksmith foamed at the corners of the small mouth that disappeared into the bloodhound jowl.
“My wife,” he shouted, “if you don't want me to throw you down and trample on you.”
A band of loungers, railway officials, peasants and other travelers awaiting their trains, gathered round. As the altercation was conducted in English which they did not understand, they could only hope for the commencement of physical hostilities.
“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “I do not understand you. For twenty years you hold an innocent and virtuous woman under an infamous suspicion. She meets a sympathetic soul, and you come across her pouring into his ear the love and despair of a lifetime. You have more suspicion. You tell me you will give me a thousand pounds to go away with her. I take you at your word. And now you want to stamp on me—ma foi, it is not reasonable.”
Mr. Ducksmith seized him by the lapels of his coat. A gasp of expectation went round the crowd. But Aristide recognized an agonized appeal in the eyes now bloodshot.
“My wife,” he said hoarsely. “I want my wife. I can't live without her. Give her back to me. Where is she?”
“You had better search the station,” said Aristide.
The heavy man unconsciously shook him in his powerful grasp as a child might shake a doll.
“Give her to me. Give her to me, I say. She won't regret it.”
“You swear that?” asked Aristide, with lightning quickness.
“I swear it. Where is she?”
Aristide disengaged himself, waved his hand airily toward Pèrigueux and smiled blandly.
“In the salon of the hotel, waiting for you to throw yourself on your knees before her.”
Mr. Ducksmith gripped him by the arm.
“Come back with me. If you're lying, I'll kill you.”
“The luggage?” queried Aristide.
“Damn the luggage!” said Mr. Ducksmith, and dragged him out of the station.
A cab brought them quickly to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith bolted like an obese rabbit into the salon. A few moments afterwards, Aristide, entering, found them locked in each other's arms.
They started alone for England that night, and Aristide returned to the directorship of the Agence Pujol. But he took upon himself enormous credit for having worked a miracle.
“One thing I can't understand,” said I, after he had told me the story with his wealth of gesture and picturesque phrase which I have not ventured to reproduce, “is what put this sham elopement into your crazy head. What did you see when you looked into Mr. Ducksmith's bedroom?”
“Ah, mon vieux, I did not tell you. If I had told you, you would not have been surprised at what I did. I saw a sight that would have melted the heart of a stone. I saw Ducksmith wallowing on his bed and sobbing as if his heart would break. It filled my soul with pity. I said: 'If that mountain of insensibility can weep and sob in such agony,it is because he loves—and it is I, Aristide Pujol, who have reawakened that love.'”
“Then,” said I, “why on earth didn't you go and fetch Mrs. Ducksmith and leave them together?”
He started from his chair and threw up both hands.
“Mon Dieu!” cried he, “you English! You are a charming people, but you have no romance. You have no dramatic sense. I will help myself to a whiskey and soda.”