"But, Mr. Pujol----!" Miss Anne laughed, protestingly. Who could be angry with the vivid and impulsive creature?
"It is the room opposite Jean"s--not so?"
She followed him into the clean little kitchen, half amused, half fl.u.s.tered. 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 omelette before I"ve had time to lay the cloth, and it will get cold.
Besides, I want to learn how to do it."
"_Tres bien_," said Aristide, laying down the frying-pan. "You shall see how it is made--the omelette of the universe."
So he helped Miss Anne to lay the cloth on the gate-legged oak table in the parlour and to set it out with bread and b.u.t.ter 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, skilful 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 for inrush of life and colour, who shall blame her? The light sparkled once more in her eyes and the pink of her naturally florid complexion shone on her cheek as they sat down to table.
"It is I who help it," said Aristide. "Taste that." He pa.s.sed the plate and waited, with the artist"s expectation for her approval.
"It"s delicious."
It was indeed the perfection of omelette, all its suave juiciness contained in film as fine as goldbeater"s skin.
"Yes, it"s good." He was delighted, childlike, at the success of his cookery. His gaiety kept the careworn 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 maidish existence--and a strange man, too, who had once behaved in a 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 in 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 your coming to live down here, it"s absurd."
"Of course, if you formally forbid me to do so, mademoiselle, and if you don"t want to see me----"
"How can you say a thing like that? Haven"t I shown you to-day that you are welcome?"
"Dear Miss Anne," said he, "forgive me. But what is that great vast town of London to me who know n.o.body 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.
"Bah!" cried Aristide. "You talk of discomfort to an old client of _L"Hotel 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-curtains, if you demand luxury, are a hedge, and your ceiling, if you are fortunate, is ornamented with stars."
She looked at him wide-eyed, in great concern.
"Do you mean that you have ever been homeless?"
He laughed. "I think I"ve been everything imaginable, except married."
"Hush!" 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 care-free creature in the world, he stole down the stone pa.s.sage into the wilderness of Beverly Stoke.
An hour afterwards he knocked at the front door, Anne Honeywood admitted him.
"I have arranged with the good Mrs. b.u.t.tershaw. 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. b.u.t.tershaw."
So it came to pa.s.s 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. Every morning he ran into the cottage for a sight of little Jean and every evening after a digestion-racking meal prepared by Mrs. b.u.t.tershaw he went to the cottage armed with toys and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account of the precious infant"s doings during the day. Gradually Jean recovered of his congestion, being a st.u.r.dy 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 Provencal; we"ll leave Provencal 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?
And at four years old not to have a father is heart-breaking. Do you want us to bring him up an orphan? No. You shan"t be an orphan, _mon brave_," 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 Aristide. "_Moi je suis papa._ And you, mademoiselle?"
"I am Auntie Anne," she replied demurely.
Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays were Aristide"s days of delight. He could devote himself entirely to Jean. The thrill of the weeks when he had paraded the child in the market places 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 senile decay at Aix-en-Provence. If he only had it now he could exhibit Jean to the astonished eyes of St.
Albans, Watford--nay London itself!
"I wish I could take him to Dulau & Company," said he.
"Good Heavens!" cried Miss Anne in alarm, for Aristide was capable of everything. "What in the world would you do with him there?"
"What would I do with him?" replied Aristide, picking the child up in his arms--the three were strolling on the common--"_Parbleu!_ I would use him to strike the staff of Dulau & Company green with envy. Do you think the united efforts of the whole lot of them, from the good Mr.