 CHAPTER 9 THE ADVENTURE OF A ST. MARTEN SUMMER 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 employee, an admirable quiten of myriad accomplishments and linguistic attainments, whose functions it had been, apparently, to travel about between London, Bordeaux, Marseille, 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. I sketch the man, in my desire to do a good turn to Aristide, perhaps in exaggerated colour. Let me have a look at him, said Blessington. He may be anywhere on the continent of Europe, said I. How long can you give me to produce him? A week. Not longer. I'll do my best, said I. By good luck my telegram, sent off about four o'clock, found him at two-one-three, Miss Roux-en-Honoré. He had just returned to Paris after some mad dash for fortune. He told me afterwards a wild and disastrous story of a Russian grand duke, a dancer, and a gold mine in the Dolomites, and had once more resumed the dreary conduct of the Ajanza Pujol at Hotel du Soleil de l'Écosse. My summons, being imperative, he abandoned the Ajanza Pujol as a cat jumps off a wall and, leaving the guests of the hotel guide-less to the indignation of Monsieur Bocadon, whom he had served this trick several times before, paid his good landlady Madame Bidoux, what he owed her, took a third-class ticket to London, bought, lunatic that he was, a ripe brie cheese, a foot in diameter, a present to myself, which he carried in his hand most of the journey, and turned up at my house at eight o'clock the next morning with absolutely empty pockets and the happiest and most fascinating smile that ever irradiated the face of man. As a matter of fact, he burst his way past my scandalized valid into my bedroom and woke me up. Here I am, my dear friend, and here is something French you love that I have brought you, and he thrust the brie cheese under my nose. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Said I, if you were awakened by a brie cheese an hour before your time you would say the same. Aristides sat at the foot of the bed and laughed till the tears ran down his beard. As soon as it was decent I sent him into the city to interview Blessington. Three hours afterward he returned, more radiant than ever. He threw himself into my arms. Before I could disentangle myself, he kissed me on both cheeks, and then he danced about the room. M'a voici, he said. A credited representative of the great Maison du Lair est compagnie. I have hundreds of pounds a year. I go about. I watch. I control. I see that the great British public can assuage its thirst with the pure juice of the grape and not with the dregs of a laboratory. I test vintages. I count barrels. I enter them in books. I smile at Algerian wine growers and say, ha-ha, none of your petit piquette de ferrettais for me, but good sound wine. It is diplomacy. It is as simple as kissing hands. And I have a sustained and gum. Now I can be un bon bourgeois instead of a stray cat. And all due to you, mon cher ami, I am grateful. Voyant, if anyone ever says Aristide Pujol is ungrateful, he is a liar. You believe me. Say you believe me. He looked at me earnestly. I do, old chap, said I. I had known Aristide for some years, and in all kinds of little ways he had continuously manifested his gratitude for the trifling service I had rendered him at our first meeting in delivering him out of the hands of the horrific Madame Gugos that gratitude is the expectation of favors to come was, in the case of Aristide, a cynical and inapplicable proposition. And here, as this, as far as I can see, is the last of Aristide's adventures I have to relate, let me make an honest and considered statement. During the course of an interesting and fairly prosperous life, I have made many delightful Bohemian devil-made-care acquaintances, but among them all Aristide stands as the one bright star who has never asked me to lend him money. I have offered it times without number, but he has refused. I believe there is no man living to whom Aristide is in debt. In the depths of a man's changeling and factless soul is a principle which has carried him untarnished through many a wild adventure. If he ever accepted money, money to the proven soul peasant, is the transcendental materialized, and Aristide, saved by the changeling theory, was proven soul 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. The man would have paid him, but Aristide, by some quaint spiritual juggling, would have persuaded him that the Ascent of Primrose Hill was equal to any lunar achievement, seeing that himself, Aristide Pujol, was a keeper of the sun, moon and seven stars. And the gift to that man of Aristide's dynamic personality would have been well worth anything that he would have found in the extinct volcano we know to be the moon. The only thing I would suggest, if you would allow me to do so, said I, is not to try to make the fortune of measures du lau accompany by some dazzling but devastating coup of your own. He looked at me in his bright shrewd way. You think at time I restrained my imagination? Exactly. I will read the times and buy a family Bible, said Aristide. A week after he had taken up his work in the city, under my friend Blessington, I saw the delighted and prosperous man again. It was a Saturday, and he came to lunch at my house. Tia, said he, when he had recounted his success at the office, it is four years since I was in England. Yes, said I, with a jerk of memory, time passes quickly. It is three years since I lost little Jean. Who is little Jean? I asked. Did I not tell you when I saw you last in Paris? No. It is strange. I have been thinking about him, and my heart has been aching for him all the time. You must hear. It is most important. He lit a cigar and began. It was then that they told me the story of which I have already related in these chronicles. How he was scouring France in a ramshackle automobile as the peripatatic vendor of a patent corn cure, and found a babe of nine months lying abandoned in the middle of that silent road through the wilderness between Salon and Arles. How, instead of delivering it over to the authorities, he adopted it and carried it about with him from town to town. A motor accessory, sometimes embarrassing, but always divinely precious. How an evil day came upon him at Hexon-Provence, when the wheezing automobile having uttered its last gasp, he found his occupation gone. How no longer being able to care for Le Petit Jean, he left him with a letter and half his fortune outside the door of a couple of English-made ladies who, staying in the same hotel, had manifested great interest in the baby and himself. And how, in the dead of the night, he had cramped away from Hexon-Provence in the rain, his pockets light and his heart, as heavy as lead. And I had never heard of my little Jean again, said Aristite. Why didn't you write? I asked. I knew their names. Honeywood, Miss Janet was the elder, Miss Anne, the younger. But the name of the place they lived at, I have never been able to remember. It was near London. They used to come up by train to matinees and afternoon concerts. But what it is called, a mion d'eur, I have wracked my brain for it, Sacré-Mille-Jonaire. He leaped to his feet in his unexpected startling way and pounced on her Bradshaw's railway guide lying on my library table. In the sill, pig, triple, asked that I am. Why did I not think of this before? It is near London. If I look through all the stations near London on every line, I shall find it. All right, said I, go ahead. I lit a cigarette and took up a novel. I had not read very far when a sudden uproar from the table caused me to turn around. Aristite danced and flourished the Bradshaw over his head. Jizzle-hurst! Jizzle-hurst! Oh, mon ami, now I am happy. Now I have found my little John. You will forgive me, but I must go now and embrace him. He held out his hand. Where are you off to? I demanded. The jizzle-hurst, where else? My dear fellow, said I, rising, do you seriously suppose that these two English-made and ladies have taken on themselves the responsibility of that foreign brats upbringing? Mon Dieu! said he, taken aback for the moment, hypothesis having entered his head. Then, with a wide gesture, he flung the preposterous idea to the winds. Of course, they have hearts, these English women. They have maternal instincts. They have money. He looked at Bradshaw again, then at his watch. I have just time to catch a train. Oh, wow, mon dieu! But I objected. Why don't you write? It's the natural thing to do. Write! Bah! Did you ever hear of a province all writing when he could talk? He tapped his lips, and in an instant, like a whirlwind, he passed from my ken. Aristite, on his arrival at Jizzle-hurst, looked about the pleasant, leafy place. It was a bright October afternoon, and the wooded hillside blazed in russet and gold, and decided it was the perfect environment for Miss Janet and Miss Ann, to say nothing of little Jean. A neat, red-to-brick house with a trim garden in front of it looked just the kind of a house wherein Miss Janet and Miss Ann would live. He rang the bell, a parlor maid in spotless black-and-white, tutelary nymph of suburbia, the very parlor maid who would minister to Miss Janet and Miss Ann, opened the door. Miss Honeywood, he inquired. Not here, sir, said the parlor maid. Where is she? I mean, where are they? No one of that name lives here, said the parlor maid. Who does live here? Colonel Brabazon. And where do the two Miss Honeywoods live? He asked with his engaging smile, but English suburban parlor maids are on their guard against smiles, no matter how engaging. She prepared to shut the door. I don't know. How can I find out? Oh, you might inquire among the tradespeople. Thank you, mademoiselle, you are a most intelligent young. The door shut in his face. Arastiti frowned. She was a pretty parlor maid, and Arastiti didn't like to be so heartily treated by a pretty woman. But his quest, being little Jean and not the eternal feminine, he took the maids advice and made inquiries at the prim and respectable shops. Oh, yes, said a commonly young woman and her fragrant bakers and confectioners. They were two ladies, weren't they? They lived at Hope Cottage. We used to supply them. They left Chislehurst two years ago. Sacré nom d'un chien, said Arastiti. Beg pardon, asked the young woman. I am disappointed, said Arastiti. Where did they go to? I'm sure I can't tell you. Do you remember whether they had a baby? They were maiden ladies, said the young woman, rebukingly. But anyone can keep a baby without being his father or mother. I want to know what has become of the baby. The young woman engaged through the window. You'd better ask the policeman. That's an idea, said Arastiti, and leading her, he caught up the passing constable. The constable knew nothing of maiden ladies with a baby, but he directed in to Hope Cottage. He found a pretty half-timber house lying back from the road, with a neat, semi-circular, graveled path leading to a porch, covered thick with Virginia creeper. Even more than the red brick residence of Colonel Brabassone did it look, with its air of dainty comfort, the fitting abode of Ms. Janet and Ms. Anne. He rang the bell and interviewed another trim, parlor-made. More susceptible to smiles than the former, she summoned her master, a kindly middle-aged man, who came out into the porch. Yes, Honeywood was the name of the previous tenants, two ladies, he believed. He had never seen them and knew nothing about a child. Ms. Tompkins and Briggs, the estate agents in the High Street, could no doubt give him information. Arastiti thanked him and made his way to Ms. Tompkin and Briggs. A dreary, bespeckled youth in resentful charge of the office, his principles at being Saturday afternoon, were golfing the happy hours away, professed blank ignorance of everything. Arastiti fixed him with his glittering eye and flickered his fingers and spoke richly. The youth in a kind of mesmeric trance took down a battered dog-eared book and turned over the pages. Ah, Honeywood, Ms. Beverly Stoke, the nearest and all one's hurts. That's it, he said. Arastiti made a note of the address. Is that all you can tell me? Yes, said the youth. I thank you very much, my young friends, at Arastiti, raising his hat, and here is something to buy a smile with, and leaving a six-pence on the table to shimmer before the youth's stupefied eyes, Arastiti strutted out of the office. You had much better have written, said I, when he came back and told me of his experiences. The post office would have done all that for you. You have no idea of business, mon cher ami, a successful tea broker of 25 years standing, the impudence of the fellow. If I had written today, the letter would have reached Gislerst on Monday morning. It would be redirected and reached Hartfordshire on Tuesday. I should not get any news till Wednesday. I go down to Beverly Stoke tomorrow, and then I find at once Ms. Janet and Ms. Anne and my little John, the secret of businessmen. And I am a businessman, the accredited representative of Dulao, a company. Never forget that. The secret of business is no delay. He darted across the room to Bradshaw. For God's sake, said I, put that nightmare of perpetual motion in your pocket, and go mad over it in the privacy of your own chamber. Very good, said he, tucking the brain-compulsing volume under his arm. I will put it on top of the Times and the Family Bible, and I will say, Pa, now I am British. Now I am very respectable. What else can I do? Rent a pew in a Baptist chapel, said I. After a three-mile trudge from St. Albans, Aristeti, following directions, found himself on a high road running through the middle of a straggy common, decked here and there with great elms, splendid in autumn bravery, and populated chiefly by geese, who, when he halted in some perplexity, bore on each side beyond the green, were indications of a human settlement, advanced in waddling flocks towards him, and signified their disapproval of his presence. A sun-dified youth in a rainbow tie rode past on a bicycle. Aristeti took off his hat. The youth nearly fell off the bicycle, but British doggedness saved him from disaster. Beverly Stoke, will you have the courtesy? Here, ball the youth with a circular twist of his head, and eager to escape from a madman, he rode on furiously. Aristeti looked to left and right at the little houses beyond the green, some white and thatched and dilapidated, others horribly new and perky, but all poor and insignificant. As his eyes became accustomed to the scene, they were aware of human forms dotted sparsely about the common. He struck across and accosted one, an elderly woman with the prayer-book, Miss Honeywood, a lady from London, that house over there, the third beyond the poplar, and Little Jean, a beautiful child about four years old. Oh, that I don't know, sir. I live in Wilmer's End, a good half-mile from here. Aristeti made for the third house past the poplar. First there was a plank bridge across a grass-grown ditch, then a tiny patch of garden, then a humble whitewashed cottage with a small leaded casement window on each side of the front door. Unlike Hope Cottage, it did not look at all the residents of Miss Janet and Miss Anne. Its appearance, indeed, was woe be gone. Aristeti, however, went up to the door, as there was neither knocker nor bell, he rapped with his knuckles. The door opened and there, poorly dressed in blouse and skirt, stood Miss Anne. She regarded him for a moment in a bewildered way, then, recognizing him, drew back into the stone-flagged passage with a sharp cry. You, you, Mr. Pujol? We, mademoiselle, c'est moi. It is I, Aristeti Pujol. She put her hands on her bosom. It is rather a shock seeing you, so unexpectedly. Will you come in? She led the way into a tiny parlor, very clean, very simple, with its furniture of old oak and brass, and bad him sit. She looked a little older than when he had seen her at Aix-en-Chapabance. A few lines had marred the comely face, and there was here and there a touch of gray in the reddish air, and, though still buxom, she had grown thinner. Care had set its stamp upon her. Miss Honeywood, said Aristeti, it is on account of little genre that I have come. She turned on him swiftly. Not to take him away. Then he is here. He jumped to his feet and wrung both her hands and kissed them to her great embarrassment. Ah, mademoiselle, I knew it. I felt it. When such an inspiration comes to a man, it is Le Bon Dieu who sends it. He is here, actually, here in this house? Yes, said Miss Anne. Aristeti threw out his arms. Let me see him. Ah, Le Chépatis! I have been yearning after him for three years. It was my heart that I ripped out of my body that night, and laid at your threshold. Hush, said Miss Anne, with an interrupting gesture. You must not talk so loud. He is asleep in the next room. You must not wake him. He's very ill. Ill? Dangerously ill? I'm afraid so. Mon Dieu, said he, sitting down again in the oak saddle. To Aristeti the emotion of the moment was absorbing, overwhelming. His attitude be tokened deepest misery and dejection. And I expected to see him full of joy and health. It is not my fault, Mr. Pujol, said Miss Anne. He started. But no, how could it be? You loved him when you first set eyes on him and then launched above us. Miss Anne began to cry. God knows, said she, what I should do without him. The dear might is all that is left to me. Oh, but there is your sister, the dear Miss Janet. Miss Anne's eyes were hidden in her handkerchief. My poor sister died last year, Mr. Pujol. I'm very sorry. I did not know, said Aristeti gently. There was a short silence. It was a great sorrow to you, he said. It was God's will, said Anne. Then, after another pause, during which she dried her eyes, she strove to smile. Tell me about yourself. How do you come to be here? Aristeti replied in a hesitating way. He was in the presence of grief and sickness and trouble. The proven soul, Braga Docio, dropped from him, and he became the simple and childish creature that he was. He accounted very truthfully, very convincingly, for his queer life, for his abandonment, a little genre, for his silence, for his sudden and unexpected appearance. During the ingenuous apologia provita sua, Miss Anne regarded him with her honest candor. Janet and I both understood, she said. Janet was gifted with a divine comprehension and pity. The landlady at the hotel, I remember, said some unkind things about you, but we didn't believe them. We felt that you were a good man, no one but a good man, could have written that letter. We cried over it, and when she tried to poison our minds, we said to each other, What does it matter? 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 Aristeti, we of the South do things impulsively, by lightning flashes. An idea comes suddenly. Blah! 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 Aristeti after a while, that if I had not been only a football at the feet of fortune, I should never have deserted little John. I do, Mr. Pujol. My sister and I have been footballs, too. She added with a change of tone. You tell me you saw our dear home at Gisler's. Yes, said Aristeti. And you see this. There is a difference. What has happened? asked Aristeti. She told him the commonplace pathetic story. Their father had left them shares in the company of which he had been managing director. For many years they had enjoyed a comfortable income. Then the company had become bankrupt and only a miserable ninety pounds a year had been saved from the wreckage. The cottage at Beverly Stoke belonging to them, it had been their mothers, they had migrated thither with their fallen fortunes and little John. And then Janet had died. She was delicate and unaccustomed to privation and discomfort, and the cottage had its disadvantages. She, Anne herself, was as strong as a horse and had never been ill in her life. But others were not quite so hardy. However, she smiled. One has to make the best of things. Popular, said Aristeti. Miss Anne went on to talk of Jean, a miraculous infant of infinite graces and accomplishments. Up to now he had to been the sturdiest and merriest fellow. At nine months old he saw that life was a big joke, said Aristeti, how he used to laugh. There's not much laugh left in him, poor darling, she sighed, and she told how he had caught a chill which had gone to his lungs and how the night before last she thought she had lost him. She sat up and listened. With you excuse me for a moment. She went out and presently returned, standing at the doorway. He is still asleep, would you like to see him? Only, she put her fingers to her lips, you must be very, very quiet. He followed her into the next room and looked about him shyly, recognizing that it was Miss Anne's own bedroom, and there, lying in a little cot beside the big bed, he saw the sleeping child, his brown face flushed with fever. He had a curly shock of black hair and well-formed features. An old woolly lamb, nose to nose with him, shared his pillow. Aristeti drew from his pocket a teddy bear, and having asked Miss Anne's permission with a glance, laid it down gently on the coverlet. His eyes were wet when they returned to the parlor, so were Miss Anne's. The teddy bear was proof of the simplicity of his faith in her. After a while, conscious of hunger, he rose to take leave. He must be getting back to St. Albans, but might he be permitted to come back later in the afternoon. Miss Anne reddened. It outraged her sense of hospitality to send a guest away from her house on a three-mile walk for food, and yet, Mr. Pujol, she said bravely, I would ask you to stay till luncheon, if I had anything to offer you. But I am single-handed, and with Jean's illness I haven't given much thought to housekeeping. The woman who does some of the rough work won't be back till six. I hate to let you go all those miles. I'm so distressed. But, mademoiselle, said Aristeti, you have some bread, you have water. It has been a banquet many a day to me, and this time it would be the most precious banquet of all. I can do little better than that, faltered Miss Anne. I have plenty of eggs, and there is bacon. Eggs? Bacon! cried Aristeti, his bright eyes twinkling, and his hands going in the familiar gesture. That is superb! You shall not do the cooking. You shall rest. I will make you an omelet au laud. Ah! he kissed the tips of his fingers. Such an omelet as you have not eaten since you were in France. And even there I doubt whether you have ever eaten an omelet like mine. His soul, simmering with omelet, he darted towards the door. The kitchen is at this way. Oh! but Mr. Peugeot, Miss Anne laughed, protestingly, who could be angry with the livid and impulsive creature. It is the room opposite Jean's, not so. She followed him into the clean little kitchen, half amused, half flustered. Already he had hooked off the top of the kitchen range. Ah! a good fire! And your frying pan? He dived into the scullery. Please, don't be in such a hurry, she pleaded. You will have made the omelet before I've had time to lay the cloth, and it will get cold. Besides, I want to learn how to do it. Très bien! said Aristeti, laying down the frying pan. You shall see how it is made, the omelet of the universe. So he helped Miss Anne to lay the cloth on the gate-legged oak table in the parlor, and to set it out with bread and butter and the end of a tinned tongue, and a couple of bottles of stout. After which they went back to the little kitchen, where in a kind of giggling awe she watched him shred the bacon and break the eggs with his thin, skillful fingers, and perform his magic with the frying pan, and turn out the great golden creation into the dish. Now said he, pulling her in his enthusiasm to table while it is hot. Miss Anne laughed. She lost her head ever so little. The days had been drab and hopeless of late, and she was still young, so if she felt excited at this unhoped four in rush of life and color, who shall blame her? The light sparkled once more in her eyes, and the pink of her naturally florid complexion shown on her cheek, as they sat down to table. It is I who help it, said Aristide, taste that. He passed the plate and waited, with the artist's expectation for her approval. It's delicious! It was indeed the perfection of omelet, all its suave juiciness contained in film as fine as gold beater's skin. Yes, it's good! He was delighted, childlike, at the success of his cookery. His gaiety kept the care-worn woman in rare laughter during the meal. She lost all consciousness that he was a strange man, plunged down suddenly in the midst of her old, made-ish existence, and a strange man, too, who had once behaved in the most outrageous fashion. But that was ever the way of Aristide. The moment you yielded to his attraction, he made you feel that you had known him for years. His fascination possessed you. Miss Anne, said he, smoking a cigarette at her urgent invitation, is there a poor woman in Beverly Stoke with whom I could lodge? She gasped, You lodge in Beverly Stoke? Why, yes, said Aristide, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I am engaged in the city from ten to five every day. I can't come here and go back to London every night, and I can't stay a whole week without my little Jean. And I have my duty to Jean. I stand to him in the relation of a father. I must help you to nurse him and make him better. I must give him soup and apples and ice-cream, and you would kill the darling in five minutes, interrupted Miss Anne. He waved his forefinger in the air. No, no, I have nursed the sick of my time. My dear friend, said he, with a change of tone. When did you go to bed last? I don't know, she answered in some confusion. The district nurse has helped me, and the doctor has been very good. Jean has turned the corner now. Please don't worry, and as for you coming to live down here, it's absurd. Oh, of course, if you formally forbid me to do so, mademoiselle, and if you don't want to see me. How can you say such a thing like that? Haven't I shown you today that you are welcome? Dear Miss Anne, said he, forgive me. But what is that great vast town of London to me who know nobody there? Here, in this tiny spot, is concentrated all I care for in the world. Why shouldn't I live in it? You would be so dreadfully uncomfortable, said Miss Anne weakly. Cried Aristide, you talk of discomfort to an old client of L'Hôtel de la Belle Etoile. The hotel of the beautiful star? Where is that? asked the innocent lady. Wherever you like, said Aristide, your bed is dry leaves, and your bed-gurtons, if you demand luxury, are a hedge, and your ceiling, if you're fortunate, is ornamented with stars. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and great concern. Do you mean that you have ever been homeless? He laughed. I think I've been everything imaginable except married. She said, listen. Her keen ear had caught a child's cry. It's Jean, I must go. She hurried out, Aristide prepared to light another cigarette, but a second before the application of the flaring match, an idea struck him. He blew out the match, replaced the cigarette in his case, and with a dexterity that revealed the professional of years ago, began to clear the table. He took the things noiselessly into the kitchen, shut the door, and master of the kitchen and scullery washed up. Then the most carefree creature in the world, he stole down the stone passage into the wilderness of Beverly Stoke. An hour afterwards he knocked at the front door, and Honeywood admitted him. I have arranged with a good Mrs. Buttershaw. She lives a hundred yards down the road. I bring my baggage to-morrow evening, and 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 Arocedy Pujol took up his residence at Beverly Stoke, trudging every morning three miles to catch his business-drain at St. Albans, and trudging back every evening three miles to Beverly Stoke. Every morning he ran into the cottage for a sight of a little genre, and every evening after a digestion-racking meal prepared by Mrs. Buttershaw, he went to the cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little genre, and demanded an account of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually, genre recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Arocedy's delight, resumed the normal life of childhood. Je suis papa, said Arocedy. 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. I don't quite see how he can call you that, Mr. Pujol, said Anne, with the suspicion of a flush energy. And why not? Has the poor child any other papa in the whole wide world? And, at four years old, not to have a father, is heartbreaking. Do you want us to bring him to an orphan? No, you shan't be an orphan, Mombov. He continued, bending over the child, and putting his little hands against his bearded face. You couldn't bear such a calamity, could you? And so you will call me papa. Papa, said Jean, with a grin. There he has settled it, said Arocedy. Ma je suis papa, and you, mademoiselle. I am Anne, she replied, demurely. Saturday afternoons and Sundays were Arocedy's days of delight. He could devote himself entirely to Jean. The thrill of the weeks when he had paraded the child in the marketplaces of France, while he sold his corn cure again, ran through his veins. The two rows of cottages separated by the common, which was the whole of Beverly Stoke, became too small a theatre for his parental pride. He bewailed the loss of his automobile that had perished of Sénal Decay, addicts en Provence. If he only had it now, he could exhibit Jean to the astonished eyes of St. Almond's Watford, nay, London itself. I wish I could take him to the doulau and company, said he. Good heavens! cried Miss Anne in alarm, for Arocedy was capable of everything. What in the world would you do with him there? What would I do with him? replied Arocedy, picking the child up in his arms. The three were strolling on the common, but there I would use him to strike the staff of doulau and company green with envy. Do you think the united efforts of the whole lot of them, from the good Mr. Blessington to the office boy, could produce a hero like this? You are a hero, Jean, aren't you? Yes, papa, said Jean. He knows it, shouted Arocedy, with a delighted gesture, which nearly cast Jean to the circumambient geese. Miss Anne, we have the most wonderful child in the universe. This, as far as Anne was concerned, was a proposition, which for the past three years she had regarded as incontrovertible. She smiled at Arocedy, who smiled at her, and Jean, seeing them happy, smiled largely at them both. In a very short time Arocedy, who could magically manufacture boats and cocks and things and giraffes, out of bits of paper, who could bark like a dog and quack like a goose, who could turn himself into a horse or a bear at a minute's notice, whose pockets were a perennial mine of infantile ecstasy, established himself in Jean's mind as a kind of tame, necessary, and beloved gen. Being a loyal little soul, the child retained his affection for auntie Anne, but he was swept off his little feet by his mirrific parent. The time came when, if he was not dressed in his tiny woolen jersey and knee-bridges, and had not his nose glued against the parlor window in readiness to scramble to the front door for Arocedy's morning kiss, he would have thought that chaos had come again. And Anne, humoring the child, hastened to get him washed and dressed in time, until, at last, so greatly was she affected by his obsession, she got into the foolish habit of watching the clock and saying to herself, in another minute he will be here, or he is a minute late, what can have happened to him. So Arocedy, in his childlike way, found remarkable happiness in Beverly Stoke. A very wet summer had been followed by a dry and mellow autumn. Arocedy waxed enthusiastic over the English climate and rejoiced in the mild country air. He was also happy under my friend's blessing-ton, who spoke of him to me in glowing terms. At the back of all Arocedy's eccentricities was the provenceau peasants' shrewdness. He realized that for the first time in his life he had taken up a sound and serious avocation. Also he was no longer irresponsible. He had found little Jean. Jean's future was in his hands. Jean was to be an architect, God knows why, but Arocedy settled it, definitely, off-hand. He would have to be educated, and my dear friend said he, when we were discussing Jean, and for months I heard nothing but Jean, Jean, Jean, so that I loathed the brat, until I met the brown-skinned, black-eyed, merry little wretch, and fell, like everybody else, fatuously in love with him. My dear friend said he, an architect, to be an architect, that I mean him to be, must have universal knowledge. He must know the first word of the classic, the last word of the modern. He must be steeped in poetry. His brain must vibrate with science. He must be what you call in England a gentleman. He must go to one of your great public schools, Eaton, Winchester, Rugby, Arrow, you see I know them all. He must go to Cambridge, or Oxford. Ah, I tell you he is to be a big man. I, Aristide Pujol, did not pick him up on that deserted road in the Arabia patria of Provence, between Salon and Arles, for nothing. He was wrapped, as I have told you, in an old blanket, and ma foie, it smelt bad, and I dressed him in my pajamas, and made a neapolitan cap for him out of one of my socks. The bon Dieu sent him, and I shall arrange, just as the bon Dieu intended. Poor Miss Anne Honeywood, with her ninety pounds a year, what can she do? Poof! It is for me to look after the future, little Jean. By means of such discourse he convinced Miss Anne that Jean was predestined to greatness, and that Providence had appointed him, Aristide, as the child's agent in advance. Very much bewildered by his riotous flow of language, and very reluctant to sacrifice her woman's pride, she agreed to allow him to contribute towards Jean's upbringing. Dear Miss Anne, said he, it is my right. It is Jean's right. You would love to put him on top of the pinnacle of fame, would you not? Oh, of course, said Miss Anne. Eh, bien, we will work together. You will give him what can be given by a beautiful and exquisite woman, and I will do all that can be done by the accredited agent of Dulao et Compagnie, wine shippers of Bordeaux. So, I repeat, Aristide was entirely happy. His waking dreams were of the four-year-old child, the glad anticipation of the working day in a great Tower Street, E.C., was the evening welcome from the simple, but capable gentlewoman, and the sense of home and intimacy in her little parlor no bigger than the never-entered and nerve-destroying salon of his parents at E.Morté, but smiling with the grace of old oak and faded gents. At E.Morté, 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. For you see, since she expected to visit her in the evenings, Anne had taken to dressing for her sketch of a dinner. For all her struggle with poverty, she had retained the charm that four years before had made her touch upon Jean seem a consecration to the impressionable man. And now that he entered more deeply into her life and thoughts, he found himself in fragrant places that were very strange to him. He discovered too, with some surprise, that a man who has been at fierce grips with fortune all his life, from ten to forty, is ever so little tired in spirit and is glad to rest. In the tranquility of Anne Honeywood's presence, his soul was singularly at peace. He also wondered why Anne Honeywood seemed to grow younger, and in her gentle fashion, more laughter-loving every day. The St. Martin's summer lasted to the beginning of December, and then it came to an end, and with it the idol of Aristide D. Anne Honeywood. One Saturday afternoon, when the rain was falling dismally, she received him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual heightened color no longer gave youth to her cheek, an anxious frown knitted her candid brows, and there was no laughter in her eyes. He looked at her questioningly. Was anything the matter with Jean? But Jean answered the question for himself by running down the passage and springing like a puppy into Aristide's arms. Anne turned her face away, as if the sight pained her, and bleeding a headache and the desire to lie down, she left the two together. Returning after a couple of hours with the tea tray, she found them on the floor, breathlessly absorbed, in the erection of card pagodas. She bit her lip and swallowed a sob. Aristide jumped up and took the tray. Was not the headache better? He was so grieved. Jean must be very quiet and drink up his milk quietly, like a hero because auntie was suffering. Tea was a very subdued affair. Then Anne carried off Jean to bed, refusing Aristide's helpful ministrations. It was his Saturday and Sunday joy to bathe Jean amid a score of crawly ten 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 pains 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. Surely women were an intellect baffling sex. She came back, having put Jean to bed. My dear friend, she said, with a blurt of bravery, I have something very hard to say, but I must say it. You must go away from Beverly Stoke. Ah! cried Aristide. Is it I then that give you a headache? It's not your fault, she said gently. You have been everything that a loyal gentleman could be, and it's because you're a loyal gentleman that you must go. I don't understand, said he, puzzled. I must go because I give you a headache, although it is not my fault. It's nothing to do with headaches, she explained. Don't you see? People around here are talking. About you and me? Yes, said Miss Anne faintly. Sapper lot, cried Aristide, with a fine flourish. Let them talk. Against Jean and myself? The reproach brought him to his feet. No, he said. No! Sooner than they should talk, I would go out and strangle every one of them. But it is infamous. What do they say? How can I tell you? What would they say in your own country? Well, France is France, and England is England, and a little cackling village is the same all the world over. No, my dear friend, for you are my dear friend, you must go back to London for the sake of my good name and John's. But let us leave the cackling village. There are geese on every common, said Anne. No did je, muttered Aristide, walking about the tiny parlor. No did je, no did je. He stood in front of her and flung out his arms wide. But without Jean and you life will have no meaning for me. I shall die. I shall fade away. I shall perish. Tell me, dear Miss Anne, what they are saying, the miserable peasants, with souls of mud. But Anne could tell him no more. It had been hateful and degrading to tell him so much. She shivered through all her purity. After a barren discussion, she held out her hand, large and generous like her so. Good-bye, she hesitated for the fraction of a second. Goodbye, Aristide. I promise you shall provide for Jean's future. I will bring him up to London now and then to see you. We will find some way out of the difficulty. But you see, don't you, that you must leave Beverly Stoke. Aristide went back to his comfortless lodgings, a flame with bewilderment, indignation, and despair. He fell upon Mrs. Buttershaw, a slatternly and sour-visaged woman, and hurled at her a tornado of questions. She responded with the glee of a hag, and Aristide learned the amazing fact that in the matter of sheer uncharitableness, unkindness, and foulness of thought, Beverly Stoke, with its population of three hundred hines, could have brought down upon it the righteous indignation of Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon, Paris, and London. For a fortnight or so, and Honeywood's life in the village, had been that of a pariah dog. And now you spoke of it yourself, said Mrs. Buttershaw, her hands on her hips. I'm glad. I'm a respectable woman I am, and go to church regularly, and I don't want to be mixed up in such goings-on, and I never have held with foreigners anyway, and the sooner you find other lodgings, the better. For the first and only time in his life, words failed Aristide Boucher. He stood in front of the virtuous harridan, his lips working, his fingers compulsively clutching the air. You, you, you naughty woman, he gasped, and sweeping her away from the doorway of his walks of a sitting-room, he rushed up to his tinier bedroom, and in furious haste packed his portmanteau. I would rather die than sleep another night beneath your slanderous roof, he cried at the foot of the stairs. Here is more than your week's money. He flung a couple of gold coins on the floor, and dashed out into the darkness and the rain. He hammered at Anne Honeywood's door. She opened it in some alarm. You, but—she stammered. I have come, said he, dumping his portmanteau in the passage, to take you and Jean away from this abomination of a place. It is a toffett reserved for those who are not good enough for hell. In hell there is dignity, que diable. Here there is none. I know what you have suffered. I know how they insult you. I know what they say. You cannot stay one more night here. Pack up all your things. Pack up all Jean's things. I have my valise here. I walk to St. Albans and I come back for you in an automobile. You lock up the door. I tell the policeman to guard the cottage. You come with me. We take a train to London. You and Jean will stay at a hotel. I will go to my good friend who saved me from Madame Gougasse, and after that we will think. That's just like you, she said, smiling in spite of her trouble. You act first and think afterwards. Unfortunately I'm in the habit of doing the reverse. But it's I who am doing all the thinking for you. I have thought till my brain is red hot. He laughed in his luminous and excited way, and, seizing both her hands, kissed them one after the other. There, said he, be ready by the time I return. Do not hesitate. Do not look back. Remember Lot's wife. He flourished his hat and was gone like a flash into the heavy rain and darkness of the December evening, and cried after him, but he, too, remembering Lot's wife, would not turn. He marched on, aboyantly, heedless of the wet and the squirting mud from unseen puddles. It was an adventure such as he loved. It was a nightly errand, parblur. Was he not delivering a beautiful lady from the dragon of Calumny, and in that automobile, too, his imagination fondled the idea. At a garage in St. Albans he readily found a car for hire. He was all for driving it himself. That is how he had pictured the rescue. But the proprietor, dull and unimaginative tradesman, declined firmly. It was a hireling who drove the car to Beverly Stoke, and, unhatted and unquoked, admitted him. You are not ready. My dear friend, how can I? You are not coming? His hands dropped to his sides, and his face was the incarnation of disappointment. Let us talk things over reasonably. She urged, opening the parlor door. But I have brought the automobile. He can wait for five minutes, can't he? He can wait till doomsday, said Aristide. Take off your dripping coat. You must be wet through. Oh, how impulsive you are! He took off his overcoat dejectedly, and followed her into the parlor, where she tried to point out the impossibility of his scheme. How could she abandon her home at a moment's notice? Failing to convince him, she said at last in some embarrassment, but with gentle dignity, suppose we did run away together in your romantic fashion, would it not confirm the scandal in the eyes of this wretched village? You are right, said Aristide. I had not thought of it. He knew himself to be a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued from Calumne, but to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was unthinkable, and meanwhile what would become of him severed from her and little Jean. He sighed and looked around the little room where he had been so happy, and at the sweet-faced woman whose companionship had been so dear to him, and then the true meaning of all the precious things that had been his life for the past two months appeared before him like a smiling valley hitherto hidden and now revealed by dissolving mist, a great gladness gathered around his heart. He leaned across the table, by which he was sitting, and looked at her, and for the first time noticed that her eyes were red. You have been crying, dear Anne, said he, using her name boldly. Why? A man ought not to put a question like that at a woman's head, and bid her stand and deliver. How was she to answer? Anne felt Aristide's bright eyes upon her, and the color mounted and mounted and deepened on her cheeks and brow. I don't like changes, she said, in a low voice. Aristide slipped noiselessly to the side of her chair, and knelt on one knee and took her hand. Anne, my beloved Anne, said he, and Anne neither moved nor protested, but looked away from him into the fire. And that is all that Aristide told me. There are sacred and beautiful things in life that one man does not tell to another. He did, however, mention that they forgot all about the unfortunate chauffeur sitting in the rain till about three hours afterwards when Aristide sped away to a St. Albans hotel in joyous solitude. The very next day he burst in upon me in a state of bliss, bordering on Mania. But there is a tragic side to it, he said, when the story was over, for half the year I shall be exiled to Bordeaux, Marseille, and Algiers as the representative of douleur et compagnie. The very best thing that could happen for your domestic happiness, said I. What, with my heart? He thumped his heart. With my heart hurting like the devil all the time? So long as your heart hurts, said I, you know it isn't dead. A short while afterwards they were married in London. I was best man, and Jean, speculously attired, was Page of Honor and the vicar of her own church at Gisler's performed the ceremony. The most myopic of creatures could have seen that Anne was foolishly in love with her rascal husband. How could she help it? As soon as the newly wedded pair had received the exhortation, Aristide, darting to the altar rail, caught Jean up in his arms and to the consternation of the officiating clergy, the verger, and Anne's conventional friends, cried out exultingly, Ah, mon petit, it was a lucky day for both of us when I picked you up on the road between Salon and Arles. Put your hands together as you do when you're saying your prayers, mon bras, and say God bless father and mother. Jean obediently adopted the attitude of the infant Samuel in the pictures. God bless father and mother, said he, and the childish trouble rang out queerly in the large, almost empty church. There was a span of silence, and then all the women folk fell on little Jean, and that was the end of that wedding. End of Chapter 9 End of The Joyous Adventures of Aristide de Bourgeois by William John Locke