Aristide Pujol

“ The splendour of the idea—a poet, in his way, was Aristide, and the Idea was the thing that always held him captive—the splendour of the idea of dashing up to hotels in his own automobile dazed him. He beheld himself doing his hundred kilometres an hour and trailing clouds of glory whithersoever he went. To a child [Pg 108] a moth-eaten rocking-horse is a fiery Arab of the plains; to Aristide Pujol this cheat of the scrap-heap was a sixty-horse-power thunderer and devourer of space. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An hour afterwards he knocked at the front door, Anne Honeywood admitted him.
“I have arranged with the good Mrs. Buttershaw. She lives a hundred yards down the road. I bring my baggage to-morrow evening.”
Anne regarded him in a humorous, helpless way. “I can’t prevent you,” she said, “but I can give you a piece of advice.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t wash up for Mrs. Buttershaw.”
So it came to pass that Aristide Pujol took up his residence at Beverly Stoke, trudging every morning three miles to catch his business train at St. Albans, and trudging back every evening three miles to Beverly Stoke. ”

“ The Provençal peasant is as hard-headed and practical as a Scottish miner, and if left alone by the fairies would produce no imaginative effect whatever upon his generation; but in his progeniture he is more preposterously afflicted with changelings than any of his fellows the world over, which, though ethnologically an entirely new proposition, accounts for a singular number of things and inter alia for my dragon-fly friend, Aristide Pujol. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Gougasse’s train—your getting on to Carcassonne?”
“If I could put twenty million continents between myself and Carcassonne I’d do it,” he explained, with frantic gestures. “Don’t you understand? The good Lord who is always on my side [Pg 37] 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 Nîmes.”
“Very good, sir,” said McKeogh. ”

“ My good friend Blessington, who is a mighty man in the Bordeaux wine-trade, happening one day to lament the irreparable loss of a deceased employé, an Admirable Crichton of a myriad accomplishments and linguistic attainments whose functions it had been, apparently, to travel about between London, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Algiers, I immediately thought of a certain living and presumably unemployed paragon of my acquaintance.
“I know the very man you’re looking for,” said I.
“Who is he?”
“He’s a kind of human firework,” said I, “and his name is Aristide Pujol.” ”

“ Aristide Pujol it Was Impossible to Imagine 22 Had Straightway Poured His Grievances into a Feminine Ear 32 I Found Both Tyres Had Been Punctured in a Hundred Places 40 “Madame,” said Aristide, “You Are Adorable, and I Love You to
Distraction” 50 “The Villain Was a Traveller in Buttons—Buttons!” 60 He Burst into Shrieks of Laughter 64 “And You!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Zette, to-day I called your husband a scoundrel and a crocodile. I was wrong. I find him a man with a beautiful nature.”
“You needn’t tell me that, M. Aristide.”
“You are breaking his heart, Mme. Zette.”
“And is he not breaking mine? He has told you, I suppose. Am I responsible for what I know nothing more about than a babe unborn? You don’t believe I am speaking the truth? Bah! And your professions this afternoon? Wind and gas, like the words of all men.”
“Mme. Zette,” cried Aristide, “I said I would devote my life to your service, and so I will. I’ll go and find Bondon and kill him.” ”

“ One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and grey 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.
[Pg 233] “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 someone 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? ”

“ When they reached the house—distances are short in Perpignan—they found policemen busily engaged with tape measures around the premises. Old Madame Coquereau in a clean white linen dressing jacket, bare-headed, defying the keen air, stood grim and eager in the midst of them.
“Good morning, Monsieur Pujol, what do you think of this?”
“A veritable catastrophe,” said Aristide.
She shrugged her iron shoulders. “I tell him it serves him right,” she said, cuttingly. “A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. ”

“ Then Aristide went about with a great heartache. Fleurette would die; she would never see the man she loved again. What would he say when he returned and learned the tragic story? He would not even know that Aristide, loving her, had been loyal to him. When the Director of the Agence Pujol personally conducted the clients of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse to the Grand Trianon and pointed out the bed of the Empress Josephine he nearly broke down. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here God in his mercy has given us a child.’ But, Mr. Pujol, why didn’t you take us into your confidence?”
“My dear Miss Anne,” said Aristide, “we of the South do things impulsively, by lightning flashes. An idea comes suddenly. Vlan! we carry it out in two seconds. We are not less human than the Northerner, who reflects two months.”
“That is almost what dear, wise Janet told me,” said Miss Anne.
“Then you know in your heart,” said Aristide, after a while, “that if I had not been only a football at the feet of fortune, I should never have deserted little Jean?” ”

“ Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide’s delight, resumed the normal life of childhood.
“Moi, je suis papa,” said Aristide. “He has got to speak French, and he had better begin at once. It is absurd that anyone born between Salon and Arles should not speak French and Provençal; we’ll leave Provençal till later. Moi, je suis papa, Jean. Say papa.”
“I don’t quite see how he can call you that, Mr. Pujol,” said Anne, with the suspicion of a flush on her cheek.
“And why not? Has the poor child any other papa in the whole wide world? ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why had he permitted her to wear the ring which he had given her so as to spite his sainted Aunt Philomène? And why had he gone on wearing the pig’s head after Aristide had told him of his suspicions? Ruefully Aristide found no answers save in the general chuckle-headedness of mankind.
“If it hadn’t been such a good farce I should have wept like a cow,” said Aristide, after relating this story. “But every time I wanted to cry, I laughed. Nom de Dieu! You should have seen his face! And the face of Madame Coquereau! She opened her mouth wide showing ten yellow teeth and squealed like a rabbit! ”

“ 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. ”

“ They resumed their antiphonal chorus of worship. The brown, merry, friendly brat had something of Aristide’s personal charm. He had a bubble and a “goo” for everyone. Aristide looked on in great delight. Jean was a son to be proud of.
“Ah! qu’il est fort—fort comme un Turc.”
“Regardez ses dents.”
“The darling thing!”
“Il est—oh, dear!—il est ravissante!”—with a disastrous plunge into gender.
“Tiens! il rit. C’est moi qui le fais rire.”
“To think,” said the younger Englishwoman to her sister, “of this wee mite travelling about in an open motor!” ”

“ 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, [Pg 230] 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. ”

“ Scarcely a year passed without Aristide struggling somehow south to visit ses vieux, as he affectionately called them, and whenever Fortune shed a few smiles on him, one or two at least were sure to find their way to Aigues-Mortes in the shape of, say, a silver-mounted umbrella for his father or a deuce of a Paris hat for the old lady’s Sunday wear. Monsieur and Madame Pujol had a sacred museum of these unused objects—the pride of their [Pg 246] lives. Aristide was entirely incomprehensible, but he was a good son. ”

“ 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 honour,” murmured Mme. Gougasse, evidently tempted.
“There’s your luggage, however,” said Aristide. “You would bring that great trunk, for which there is no place in the automobile of monseigneur.” ”