William John Locke

“ Hugging it tight is the Mairie, and hugging that, the Hôtel de Ville. Hither does every soul in the place, at some hour or other of the day, inevitably gravitate. Lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, merchants, lovers, soldiers, market-women, loafers, horses, dogs, wagons, all crowd in a noisy medley the narrow cobble-paved streets around the Loge. Of course there are other streets, tortuous, odorous and cool, intersecting the old town, and there are various open spaces, one of which is the broad market square on one side flanked by the Théâtre Municipal. ”

“ The only other occupant of the first-class compartment was an elderly Englishwoman of sour aspect. Aristide, his head full of Zette and Bondon, scarcely noticed her. The train started and sped through the sunny land of vine and olive.
They had almost reached Tarascon when a sudden thought hit him between the eyes, like the blow of a fist. He gasped for a moment, then he burst into shrieks of laughter, kicking his legs up and down and waving his arms in maniacal mirth. After that he rose and danced. The sour-faced Englishwoman, in mortal terror, fled into the corridor. ”

“ Shouts and laughter and music filled the air.
Aristide in a hideous red mask and with a bag of confetti under his arm, plunged with enthusiasm into the revelry. To enjoy yourself you only had to throw your arm round a girl’s waist and swing her off wildly to the beat of the music. If you wanted to let her go you did so; if not, you talked in the squeaky voice that is the recognized etiquette of the carnival. On the other hand any girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. ”

“ Aristide listened in incredulous amazement. His automobile, his wonderful, beautiful, clashing, dashing automobile unrepairable! It was impossible. But a quarter of an hour’s demonstration by the foreman convinced him. The car was dead. The engine would never whir again. All the petrol in the world would not stimulate her into life. Never again would he sit behind that wheel rejoicing in the insolence of speed. The car, which, in spite of her manifold infirmities, he had fondly imagined to be immortal, had run her last course. Aristide felt faint. ”

“ I do not recognize the others,” said Aristide.
“Unfortunately we have to recognize them,” said the elder lady with a smile.
“Not socially, madame. They exist as mechanical factors of the legislative machine; but that is all.” He swelled as if the blood of the Montmorencys and the Colignys boiled in his veins. “We do not ask them into our drawing rooms. We do not allow them to marry our daughters. We only salute them with cold politeness when we pass them in the street.”
“It’s astonishing,” said Miss Errington, “how strongly the aristocratic principle exists in republican France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Christabel blushed furiously and emitted a sound half between a laugh and a scream. Harry Ralston’s eyes flashed.
“My dear sir——” he began.
“Pardon,” said Aristide, disarming him with the merry splendour of his glance. “I do not wish to take mademoiselle from you. My love is hopeless! I know it. But it will feed me to my dying day. In return for the joy of this hopeless passion I will not sell you the picture—I give it to you as a wedding present.” ”

“ Ah me! What would man be without the unattainable?
Aristide pocketed his takings, struck his flag, dismantled his table, and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hiéropath. The day’s work over, he returned to inquire for his supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. ”

“ After all, here was a babe equipped to face the exigencies of a censorious world; in looks and apparel a credit to any father. As the afternoon was fine, and as it seemed a pity to waste satin and rabbit-fur on the murky interior of the hotel, Aristide borrowed a perambulator from the landlady, and, joyous as a schoolboy, wheeled the splendid infant through the sunny avenues of Salon. ”

“ For the first time for many years the dragon-fly’s wings grew limp. Jean—what could he do with Jean?
Jean had already gone to sleep when he arrived. All day he had been as good as gold, so Miss Anne declared. For herself, she had spent the happiest day of her life.
“I don’t wonder at your being devoted to him, M. Pujol,” she said. “He has the most loving ways of any baby I ever met.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” replied Aristide, with an unaccustomed huskiness in his voice, “I am devoted to him. It may seem odd for a man to be wrapped up in a baby of nine months old—but—it’s like that. It’s true. ”

“ I believe there is no man living to whom Aristide is in debt. In the depths of the man’s changeling and feckless soul is a principle which has carried him untarnished through many a wild adventure. If he ever accepted money—money to the Provençal peasant is the transcendental materialised, and Aristide (save by the changeling theory) was Provençal peasant bone and blood—it was always for what he honestly thought was value received. If he met a man who wanted to take a mule ride among the Mountains of the Moon, Aristide would at once have offered himself as guide. ”

“ At Aigues Mortes the salon was a comfortless, tasteless convention, set apart for the celebrations of baptisms and marriages and deaths, a pride and a terror to the inhabitants. But here everything seemed to be as much a warm bit of Anne Honeywood as the tortoise-shell comb in her hair and the square of Brussels lace that rose and fell on the bosom of her old evening frock. ”

“ Aristide, his pulses throbbing, his heart exulting, ran to the Mayor’s house. He was rather a panting triumph than a man. He had beaten the police of Perpignan. He had discovered the thief. He was the hero of the town. Soon would the wedding bells be playing.... He envied the marble of the future statue. He would like to be on the pedestal himself.
He dashed past the maid-servant who opened the door and burst into the prim salon. Madame Coquereau was alone, just preparing to retire for the night. Mademoiselle Stéphanie had already gone to bed.
“Mon Dieu, what is all this?” she cried. ”

“ Nothing else in the wide world mattered. Nothing else in the wide world occupied his mind. He sped through the hot streets like a meteor in human form. A stout man, sipping syrup and water in the cool beneath the awning of the Café de la Bourse, rose, looked wonderingly after him, and resumed his seat, wiping a perspiring brow.
A short while afterwards Aristide, valise in hand, presented himself at the bureau of the Hôtel de la Curatterie. ”

“ I wanted to call her Flossie, but she didn’t like it.”
“I should think not,” said Aristide. “Fleurette is an adorable name.”
“I suppose it’s right enough,” said Batterby. “But if I want to call her good old Flossie, why should she object? You married, old man? No? Well, wait till you are. You think women are angels all wrapped up in feathers and wings beneath their toggery, don’t you? Well, they’re just blooming porcupines, all bristling with objections.”
“Mais, allons, donc!” cried Aristide. ”

“ A cold shiver ran down my back.
“Don’t you think, monseigneur,” she asked, archly, “that M. 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 watch-dog. You agree, then, monseigneur, to my giving the whole of the four thousand francs to Amélie?” ”

“ Anne carried off Jean to bed, refusing Aristide’s helpful ministrations. It was his Saturday and Sunday joy to bath Jean amid a score of crawly tin insects which he had provided for the child’s ablutionary entertainment, and it formed the climax of Jean’s blissful day. But this afternoon Anne tore the twain asunder. Aristide looked mournfully over the rain-swept common through the leaded panes, and speculated on the enigma of woman. A man, feeling ill, would have been only too glad for somebody to do his work; but a woman, just because she was ill, declined assistance. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach nothing suggestive of man meets the view. Nothing but the infinite barrenness of the plain, the ridges on either side, the long, straight, endless road cleaving through this abomination of desolation.
To walk through it would be a task as depressing as mortal could execute. But to the speed-drunken motorist it is a realization of dim and tremulous visions of Paradise. What need to look to right or left when you are swallowing up free mile after mile of dizzying road? Aristide looked neither to right nor left, and knew this was heaven at last. ”

“ That evening a bed was made up for the child in Aristide’s room, which, until its master retired for the night, was haunted by the landlady, the chambermaids and all the kitchen wenches in the hotel. Aristide had to turn them out and lock his door.
“This is excellent,” said he, apostrophizing the thoroughly fed, washed, and now sleeping child. “This is superb. As in every hotel there are women, and as every woman thinks she can be a much better mother than I, so in every hotel we visit we shall find a staff of trained and enthusiastic nurses. Jean, you will live like a little coq en pâté.” ”

“ Snatching the dog from the arms of the fascinated woman, he darted in his dragon-fly fashion into the shop, gave a hundred orders to a stupefied assistant, and—to cut short a story which Aristide told me with great wealth of detail—mended the precious dog and gained Madame Bidoux’s eternal gratitude. For Madame Bidoux the world held no more remarkable man than Aristide Pujol; and for Aristide the world held no more devoted friend than Madame Bidoux. ”

“ His cheerful reflections were soon disturbed by the sudden irruption of his host and a grizzled, elderly, foxy-faced gentleman with a white moustache, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in the buttonhole of his overcoat.
“Here, you!” cried the kind Mr. Smith, striding up to Aristide, with a very red face. “Will you have the kindness to tell me who the devil you are?”
Aristide rose, and, putting his hands behind the tails of his frock-coat, stood smiling radiantly on the hearthrug. ”

“ Aristide made the most respectful love in the world to Betty Errington, because he could not help himself. “Tonnerre de Dieu!” he cried when from my Britannic point of view, I talked to him on the subject. “You English whom I try to understand and can never understand are so funny! It would have been insulting to Miss Betty Errington—tiens!—a purple hyacinth of spring—that was what she was—not to have made love to her. Love to a pretty woman is like a shower of rain to hyacinths. It passes, it goes. ”

“ If ever a man loved to talk, it was Aristide Pujol; and what profession, save that of an advocate, offers more occasion for wheedling loquacity than that of a public vendor of quack medicaments? As a matter of fact, he revelled in it. When he offered a free box of the cure to the first lady who confessed the need thereof, and a blushing wench came forward, the rascal revelled in the opportunity for badinage which set the good-humoured crowd in a roar. He loved to exert his half-mesmeric power. He had not the soul of a mountebank, for Aristide’s soul had its high and generous dwelling-place ”

“ Aristide tugged at his beard in agitation. Suddenly, as the Count dealt a king as trump card, he sprang to his feet knocking over the chair behind him.
“You cheat, monsieur. You cheat!”
“Monsieur!” cried the outraged dealer.
“What has he done?”
“He has been palming kings and neutralizing the cut. I’ve been watching. Now I catch him,” cried Aristide in great excitement. “Ah, sale voleur! Maintenant je vous tiens!”
“Monsieur,” said the Comte de Lussigny with dignity, stuffing his winnings into his jacket pocket. “You insult me. It is an infamy. Two of my friends will call upon you.” ”

“ So much so that on the morning when he was to draw the cash for the cheque, at the Crédit Lyonnais, he had only fifty pounds and some odd silver left. Aristide looking at the remainder rather ruefully made a great resolution. He would gamble no more. Already he was richer than he had ever been in his life. He would leave Aix. Tiens! why should he not go to his good friends the Bocardons at Nîmes, bringing with him a gold chain for Bocardon and a pair of ear-rings for the adorable Zette? There he would look about him. He would use the thousand pounds as a stepping-stone to legitimate fortune. ”

“ 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 théâtre at the fork of the roads. He was delighted with it. Even now I sometimes think that Aristide Pujol will never grow 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. ”

“ The best hotel in Perpignan being one to get away from as soon as possible, owing to restriction of site, Aristide conceived the idea of building a spacious and palatial hostelry in the new part of the town, which should allure all the motorists and tourists of the globe to that Pyrenean Paradise. By sheer audacity he had contrived to interest an eminent Paris architect in his project. Now the man who listened to Aristide Pujol was lost. With the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner he combined the winning charm of a woman. ”

“ Her eyelids fluttered upwards 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 had, then, no dishonorable designs as regards Miss Betty Errington. On the other hand, the thoughts of marriage had as yet not entered his head. You see, a Frenchman and an Englishman or an American, view marriage from entirely different angles. The Anglo-Saxon of honest instincts, attracted towards a pretty girl at once thinks of the possibilities of marriage; if he finds them infinitely remote, he makes romantic love to her in the solitude of his walks abroad or of his sleepless nights, and, in her presence, is as dumb and dismal as a freshly hooked trout. ”

“ Aristide disengaged himself, waved his hand airily towards Perigueux, and smiled blandly.
“In the salon of the hotel, waiting for you to prostrate 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.
“Confound 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. ”