"We"ll go to Nimes."
"Very good, sir," said McKeogh.
"And now," said I, as soon as we had started on the right-hand road, "will you have the kindness to explain?"
"There"s nothing to explain," he cried, gleefully. "Here am I delivered.
I am free. I can breathe G.o.d"s good air again. I"m not going to marry Yum-Yum, Yum-Yum. I feel ten years younger. Oh, I"ve had a narrow escape. But that"s the way with me. I always fall on my feet. Didn"t I tell you I"ve never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the House of Bondage. I took it, and here I am! For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Aigues-Mortes, when suddenly you--a _Deus ex machina_--a veritable G.o.d out of the machine--come to my aid. Don"t say there isn"t a Providence watching over me."
I suggested that his mode of escape seemed somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn"t he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied?
"For the simple reason," said he, with a gay laugh, "that I haven"t a single penny piece in the world."
He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously.
"Not one tiny bronze sou," said he.
"You seem to take it pretty philosophically," said I.
"_Les gueux, les gueux, sont des gens heureux_," he quoted.
"You"re the first person who has made me believe in the happiness of beggars."
"In time I shall make you believe in lots of things," he retorted. "No.
I hadn"t one sou to buy a ticket, and Amelie never left me. I spent my last franc on the journey from Carca.s.sonne to Aigues-Mortes. Amelie insisted on accompanying me. She was taking no chances. Her eyes never left me from the time we started. When I ran to your a.s.sistance she was watching me from a house on the other side of the _place_. She came to the hotel while we were lunching. I thought I would slip away unnoticed and join you after you had made the _tour des remparts_. But no. I must present her to my English friend. And then--_voyons_--didn"t I tell you I never lost a visiting-card? Look at this?"
He dived into his pocket, produced the letter-case, and extracted a card.
"_Voila._"
I read: "The Duke of Wiltshire."
"But, good heavens, man," I cried, "that"s not the card I gave you."
"I know it isn"t," said he; "but it"s the one I showed to Amelie."
"How on earth," I asked, "did you come by the Duke of Wiltshire"s visiting-card?"
He looked at me roguishly.
"I am--what do you call it?--a--a "snapper up of unconsidered trifles."
You see I know my Shakespeare. I read "The Winter"s Tale" with some French pupils to whom I was teaching English. I love Autolycus. _C"est un peu moi, hein?_ Anyhow, I showed the Duke"s card to Amelie."
I began to understand. "That was why you called me "monseigneur"?"
"Naturally. And I told her that you were my English patron, and would give me four thousand francs as a wedding present if I accompanied you to your agent"s at Montpellier, where you could draw the money. Ah! But she was suspicious! Yesterday I borrowed a bicycle. A friend left it in the courtyard. I thought, "I will creep out at dead of night, when everyone"s asleep, and once on my _pet.i.te bicyclette, bonsoir la compagnie_." But, would you believe it? When I had dressed and crept down, and tried to mount the bicycle, I found both tyres had been punctured in a hundred places with the point of a pair of scissors. What do you think of that, eh? Ah, _la, la!_ it has been a narrow escape.
When you invited her to accompany us to Montpellier my heart was in my mouth."
"It would have served you right," I said, "if she had accepted."
He laughed as though, instead of not having a penny, he had not a care in the world. Accustomed to the geometrical conduct of my well-fed fellow-Britons, who map out their lives by rule and line, I had no measure whereby to gauge this amazing and inconsequential person. In one way he had acted abominably. To leave an affianced bride in the lurch in this heartless manner was a most ungentlemanly proceeding. On the other hand, an unscrupulous adventurer would have married the woman for her money and chanced the consequences. In the tussle between Perseus and the Gorgon the odds are all in favour of Perseus. Mercury and Minerva, the most sharp-witted of the G.o.ds, are helping him all the time--to say nothing of the fact that Perseus starts out by being a notoriously handsome fellow. So a handsome rogue can generally wheedle an elderly, ugly wife into opening her money-bags, and, if successful, leads the enviable life of a fighting-c.o.c.k. It was very much to his credit that this kind of life was not to the liking of Aristide Pujol.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I FOUND BOTH TYRES HAD BEEN PUNCTURED IN A HUNDRED PLACES"]
Indeed, speaking from affectionate knowledge of the man, I can declare that the position in which he, like many a better man, had placed himself was intolerable. 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 theatre_ 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. How was it?"
He laughed. "I said you were my very old and dear friend and patron, a great English duke."
"I don"t quite see how that explanation satisfied the pig-headed old gentleman whom I knocked down."
"Oh, that," said Aristide Pujol, with a look of indescribable drollery--"that was my old father."
II
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ARLeSIENNE
Aristide Pujol bade me a sunny farewell at the door of the Hotel du Luxembourg at Nimes, and, valise in hand, darted off, in his impetuous fashion, across the Place de l"Esplanade. I felt something like a pang at the sight of his retreating figure, as, on his own confession, he had not a penny in the world. I wondered what he would do for food and lodging, to say nothing of tobacco, _aperitifs_, and other such necessaries of life. The idea of so gay a creature starving was abhorrent. Yet an invitation to stay as my guest at the hotel until he saw an opportunity of improving his financial situation he had courteously declined.
Early next morning I found him awaiting me in the lounge and smoking an excellent cigar. He explained that so dear a friend as myself ought to be the first to hear the glad tidings. Last evening, by the grace of Heaven, he had run across a bare acquaintance, a manufacturer of nougat at Montelimar; had spent several hours in his company, with the result that he had convinced him of two things: first, that the dry, crumbling, shortbread-like nougat of Montelimar was unknown in England, where the population subsisted on a sickly, glutinous mess whereto the medical faculty had ascribed the prevalent dyspepsia of the population; and, secondly, that the one Heaven-certified apostle who could spread the glorious gospel of Montelimar nougat over the length and breadth of Great Britain and Ireland was himself, Aristide Pujol. A handsome salary had been arranged, of which he had already drawn something on account--_hinc ille Colorado_--and he was to accompany his princ.i.p.al the next day to Montelimar, _en route_ for the conquest of Britain. In the meantime he was as free as the winds, and would devote the day to showing me the wonders of the town.
I congratulated him on his almost fantastic good fortune and gladly accepted his offer.
"There is one thing I should like to ask you," said I, "and it is this.
Yesterday afternoon you refused my cordially-offered hospitality, and went away without a sou to bless yourself with. What did you do? I ask out of curiosity. How does a man set about trying to subsist on nothing at all?"
"It"s very simple," he replied. "Haven"t I told you, and haven"t you seen for yourself, that I never lose an opportunity? More than that. It has been my rule in life either to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness--he"s a muddle-headed a.s.s is Mammon, and you can steer clear of his unrighteousness if you"re sharp enough--or else to cast my bread upon the waters in the certainty of finding it again after many days. In the case in question I took the latter course. I cast my bread a year or two ago upon the waters of the Roman baths, which I will have the pleasure of showing you this morning, and I found it again last night at the Hotel de la Curatterie."
In the course of the day he related to me the following artless history.
Aristide Pujol arrived at Nimes one blazing day in July. He had money in his pocket and laughter in his soul. He had also deposited his valise at the Hotel du Luxembourg, which, as all the world knows, is the most luxurious hotel in the town. Joyousness of heart impelled him to a course of action which the good Nimois regard as maniacal in the sweltering July heat--he walked about the baking streets for his own good pleasure.
Aristide Pujol was floating a company, a process which afforded him as much delirious joy as the floating, for the first time, of a toy yacht affords a child. It was a company to build an hotel in Perpignan, where the recent demolition of the fortifications erected by the Emperor Charles V. had set free a vast expanse of valuable building ground on the other side of the little river on which the old town is situated.
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 s.p.a.cious 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. For salvation, you either had to refuse to see him, as all the architects to the end of the R"s in the alphabetical list had done, or put wax, Ulysses-like, in your ears, a precaution neglected by the eminent M. Say. M. Say went to Perpignan and returned in a state of subdued enthusiasm.
A limited company was formed, of which Aristide Pujol, man of vast experience in affairs, was managing director. But money came in slowly.
A financier was needed. Aristide looked through his collection of visiting-cards, and therein discovered that of a deaf ironmaster at St.
etienne whose life he had once saved at a railway station by dragging him, as he was crossing the line, out of the way of an express train that came thundering through. Aristide, man of impulse, went straight to St. etienne, to work upon the ironmaster"s sense of grat.i.tude.
Meanwhile, M. Say, man of more sober outlook, bethought him of a client, an American millionaire, pa.s.sing through Paris, who had speculated considerably in hotels. The millionaire, having confidence in the eminent M. Say, thought well of the scheme. He was just off to j.a.pan, but would drop down to the Pyrenees the next day and look at the Perpignan site before boarding his steamer at Ma.r.s.eilles. If his inquiries satisfied him, and he could arrange matters with the managing director, he would not mind putting a million dollars or so into the concern. You must kindly remember that I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of everything told me by Aristide Pujol.
The question of the all-important meeting between the millionaire and the managing director then arose. As Aristide was at St. etienne it was arranged that they should meet at a halfway stage on the latter"s journey from Perpignan to Ma.r.s.eilles. The Hotel du Luxembourg at Nimes was the place, and two o"clock on Thursday the time appointed.