The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

She shook her head. “I can write no more,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes. Presently she said, in a low voice: —

“Aristide – if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep.”

He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his neck and he kissed her on the lips.

“She is sleeping,” said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.

Aristide tiptoed out of the room.

And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the Rue Saint Honoré he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.

The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day’s work at the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux, hands on broad hips.

“Tiens, mon petit,” she said, without preliminary greeting. “You are an angel. I knew it. But that a man’s an angel is no reason for his being an imbecile. Read this.”

She plucked a paper from her apron pocket and thrust it into his hand. He read it, and blinked in amazement.

“Where did you get this, Mère Bidoux?”

“Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him.”

“Mère Bidoux!” cried Aristide. “Those letters were sacred!”

“Bah!” said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. “There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters, et voilà, et voilà, et voilà!” And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.

And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.

They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide’s pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something – she knew not what – would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant’s soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.

“She died for want of love, parbleu,” said Aristide, “and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time… She had des yeux de pervenche. Ah! nom d’un chien! It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks.”

He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song: —

Elle est morte en février;Pauvre Colinette!

VII

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MIRACLE

You have seen how 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 splendour of existence. Apparently the 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 chivied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated.

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 monument 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 Pont Neuf.”

At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a travelling 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.” He pointed to the placard. “I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol, under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all travelling 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.”

“Umph!” said Mr. Ducksmith.

After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold-rimmed glasses 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 grey. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-like, giving him the appearance of some odd dog – a similarity greatly intensified by the eye-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 grey 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 grey woollen 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 could not imagine. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded him 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 honour 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 of 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 moustache, 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 travellers – 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 a 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 colour.

“My husband finds that it saves us from responsibilities,” she remarked.

“And over-charges, 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 has 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 travellers – 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.”

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.

“Umph!” 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 will 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; 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 Hôtel Continental. Two expressionless faces, two pairs of unresponsive eyes, met his merry glance. He might as well have pointed out the marvels of Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome 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 lacklustre 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 that of the director of the Agence Pujol), 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 travellers 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 clamour 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 British Chancellor of the 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 offence 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 grey woollen 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 auspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide a pilgrimage of unimaginable depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Châteaux 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, excursioned, 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 were insane. It was a dragon-fly personally conducting two moles through a rose-garden.

Once only, 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 honoured 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.

“Pécaïre!” 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 programme? 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-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thaïs 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 châteaux 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 travelling 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 grey dress would be if it had a spot of colour.”

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 honour to wear it.”

Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.

“I’m afraid my husband does not like colour,” 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-honoured 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 grey 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 jelly-fish. 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 coloured 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. “Bartholomew, 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.