"And now," said Aristide, after having shaken hands, "come and lunch with me at Nikola"s for the last time."
He rose, stretched out both arms in a wide gesture and smiled with his irresistible Ancient Mariner"s eyes at the young man.
"We lunch. We eat ambrosia. Then we go out together and see the wonderful world through the gla.s.s-blood of saints and martyrs and apostles and the good Father Abraham and Louis Quatorze. _Viens, mon cher ami._ It is the dream of my life."
Practically penniless and absolutely disillusioned, the amazing man was radiantly happy.
IX
THE ADVENTURE OF A SAINT MARTIN"S 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 employe, an Admirable Crichton of a myriad accomplishments and linguistic attainments whose functions it had been, apparently, to travel about between London, Bordeaux, Ma.r.s.eilles 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 sketched 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 213 _bis_ Rue Saint-Honore. 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 Agence Pujol at the Hotel du Soleil et de l"Ecosse. My summons being imperative, he abandoned the Agence Pujol as a cat jumps off a wall, and, leaving the guests of the Hotel guideless, to the indignation of Monsieur Bocardon, whom he had served this trick several times before, paid his good landlady, Madam Bidoux, what he owed her, took a third-cla.s.s 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 valet 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.
"-- -- --," said I.
If you were awakened by a Brie cheese, an hour before your time, you would say the same. Aristide 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 disentagle myself, he kissed me on both cheeks; then he danced about the room.
"_Me voici_," he said, "accredited representative of the great Maison Dulau et Compagnie. I have hundreds of pounds a year. I go about. I watch. I control. I see that the Great British Public can a.s.suage 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 _pet.i.te piquette frelatee_ for me but good sound wine." It is diplomacy. It is as simple as kissing hands. And I have a sustained income. Now I can be _un bon bourgeois_ instead of a stray cat. And all due to you, _mon cher ami_. I am grateful--_voyons_--if anybody 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 grat.i.tude for the trifling service I had rendered him, at our first meeting, in delivering him out of the hands of the horrific Madam Gouga.s.se. That grat.i.tude 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-may-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 the man"s changeling and f.e.c.kless soul is a principle which has carried him untarnished through many a wild adventure. If he ever accepted money--money to the Provencal peasant is the transcendental materialised, and Aristide (save by the changeling theory) was Provencal 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 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 Messrs. Dulau & Co. by some dazzling but devastating _coup_ of your own."
He looked at me in his bright, shrewd way. "You think it 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 Sat.u.r.day and he came to lunch at my house.
"_Tiens!_" said he, when he had recounted his success in the office, "it is four years since I was in England?"
"Yes," said I, with a jerk of memory. "Time pa.s.ses 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 he told me the story of which I have already related in these chronicles:[A] how he was scouring France in a ramshackle automobile as the peripatetic 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 embarra.s.sing, but always divinely precious; how an evil day came upon him at Aix-en-Provence when, the wheezing automobile having uttered its last gasp, he found his occupation gone; how, no longer being able to care for _le pet.i.t_ Jean, he left him with a letter and half his fortune outside the door of a couple of English maiden 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 tramped away from Aix-en-Provence in the rain, his pockets light and his heart as heavy as lead.
[A] The Adventures of the Foundling.
"And I have never heard of my little Jean again," said Aristide.
"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, _mon Dieu_, I have racked my brain for it. _Sacre mille tonnerres!_" He leaped to his feet in his unexpected, startling way, and pounced on a Bradshaw"s Railway Guide lying on my library table. "Imbecile, pig, triple a.s.s 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 round. Aristide danced and flourished the Bradshaw over his head.
"Chislehurst! Chislehurst! Ah, _mon ami_, now I am happy. Now I have found my little Jean. You will forgive me--but I must go now and embrace him."
He held out his hand.
"Where are you off to?" I demanded.