"To the Hotel du Luxembourg--at a gallop!"
In the joyous excitement of the past few hours this child of impulse and sunshine, this dragon-fly of a man, had entirely forgotten the appointment at two o"clock with the American millionaire and the fortune that depended on it. He would be angry at being kept waiting. Aristide had met Americans before. His swift brain invented an elaborate excuse.
He leaped from the cab and entered the vestibule of the hotel.
"Can I see M. Congleton?" he asked at the bureau.
"An American gentleman? He has gone, monsieur. He left by the three-thirty train. Are you M. Pujol? There is a letter for you."
With a sinking heart he opened it and read:--
DEAR SIR,--I was in this hotel at two o"clock, according to arrangement. As my last train to j.a.pan leaves at three-thirty, I regret I cannot await your convenience. The site of the hotel is satisfactory. Your business methods are not. I am sorry, therefore, not to be able to entertain the matter further.--Faithfully,
WILLIAM B. CONGLETON.
He stared at the words for a few paralyzed moments. Then he stuffed the letter into his pocket and broke into a laugh.
"_Zut!_" said he, using the inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most adequately expresses his scorn of circ.u.mstance. "_Zut!_ If I have lost a fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on the day"s work."
Whereupon he returned gaily to the bosom of the Bocardon family and remained there, its Cousin Quicksilver and its entirely happy and idolized hero, until the indignation of the eminent M. Say summoned him to Paris.
And that is how Aristide Pujol could live thenceforward on nothing at all at Nimes, whenever it suited him to visit that historic town.
III
THE ADVENTURE OF THE KIND MR. SMITH
Aristide Pujol started life on his own account as a _cha.s.seur_ in a Nice cafe--one of those luckless children tightly encased in bottle-green cloth by means of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, who earn a sketchy livelihood by enduring with cherubic smiles the continuous maledictions of the establishment. There he soothed his hours of servitude by dreams of vast ambitions. He would become the manager of a great hotel--not a contemptible hostelry where commercial travellers and seedy Germans were indifferently bedded, but one of those white palaces where milords (English) and millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night for a bedroom and five louis for a gla.s.s of beer. Now, in order to derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon a knowledge of English was indispensable. He resolved to learn the language. How he did so, except by sheer effrontery, taking linguistic toll of frequenters of the cafe, would be a mystery to anyone unacquainted with Aristide. But to his friends his mastery of the English tongue in such circ.u.mstances is comprehensible. To Aristide the impossible was ever the one thing easy of attainment; the possible the one thing he never could achieve.
That was the paradoxical nature of the man. Before his days of hunted-little-devildom were over he had acquired sufficient knowledge of English to carry him, a few years later, through various vicissitudes in England, until, fired by new social ambitions and self-educated in a haphazard way, he found himself appointed Professor of French in an academy for young ladies.
One of these days, when I can pin my dragon-fly friend down to a plain, unvarnished autobiography, I may be able to trace some chronological sequence in the kaleidoscopic changes in his career. But hitherto, in his talks with me, he flits about from any one date to any other during a couple of decades, in a manner so confusing that for the present I abandon such an attempt. All I know of the date of the episode I am about to chronicle is that it occurred immediately after the termination of his engagement at the academy just mentioned. Somehow, Aristide"s history is a category of terminations.
If the head mistress of the academy had herself played dragon at his cla.s.ses, all would have gone well. He would have made his pupils conjugate irregular verbs, rendered them adepts in the mysteries of the past participle and the subjunctive mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But _dis aliter visum_. The G.o.ds always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess--and in a governess a sense of humour and of novelty is always a sign of a weak mind--played dragon during Aristide"s lessons. She appreciated his method, which was colloquial. The colloquial Aristide was jocular. His lessons therefore were a giggling joy from beginning to end. He imparted to his pupils delicious knowledge. _En avez-vous des-z-homards? Oh, les sales betes, elles ont du poil aux pattes_, which, being translated, is: "Have you any lobsters? Oh, the dirty animals, they have hair on their feet"--a catch phrase which, some years ago, added greatly to the gaiety of Paris, but in which I must confess to seeing no gleam of wit--became the historic property of the school. He recited to them, till they were word-perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early "eighties--_Sur le bi, sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc_, and delighted them with dissertations on Mme. Yvette Guilbert"s earlier repertoire. But for him they would have gone to their lives" end without knowing that _pognon_ meant money; _rouspetance_, a.s.saulting the police; _thune_, a five-franc piece; and _bouffer_, to take nourishment. He made (according to his own statement) French a living language. There was never a school in Great Britain, the Colonies, or America on which the Parisian accent was so electrically impressed. The retort, _Eh! ta soeur_, was the purest Montmartre; also _Fich"-moi la paix, mon pet.i.t_, and _Tu as un toupet, toi_; and the delectable locution, _Allons etrangler un perroquet_ (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a gla.s.s of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surrept.i.tious cocoa-parties.
The progress that academy made in a real grip of the French language was miraculous; but the knowledge it gained in French grammar and syntax was deplorable. A certain mid-term examination--the paper being set by a neighbouring vicar--produced awful results. The phrase, "How do you do, dear?" which ought, by all the rules of Stratford-atte-Bowe, to be translated by _Comment vous portez-vous, ma chere?_ was rendered by most of the senior scholars _Eh, ma vieille, ca boulotte?_ One innocent and anachronistic damsel, writing on the execution of Charles I., declared that he _cracha dans le panier_ in 1649, thereby mystifying the good vicar, who was unaware that "to spit into the basket" is to be guillotined. This wealth of vocabulary was discounted by abject poverty in other branches of the language. No one could give a list of the words in "_al_" that took "_s_" in the plural, no one knew anything at all about the defective verb _echoir_, and the orthography of the school would have disgraced a kindergarten. The head mistress suspected a lack of method in the teaching of M. Pujol, and one day paid his cla.s.s a surprise visit.
The sight that met her eyes petrified her. The cla.s.s, including the governess, bubbled and gurgled and shrieked with laughter. M. Pujol, his bright eyes agleam with merriment and his arms moving in frantic gestures, danced about the platform. He was telling them a story--and when Aristide told a story, he told it with the eloquence of his entire frame. He bent himself double and threw out his hands.
"_Il etait saoul comme un porc_," he shouted.
And then came the hush of death. The rest of the artless tale about the man as drunk as a pig was never told. The head mistress, indignant majesty, strode up the room.
"M. Pujol, you have a strange way of giving French lessons."
"I believe, madame," said he, with a polite bow, "in interesting my pupils in their studies."
"Pupils have to be taught, not interested," said the head mistress.
"Will you kindly put the cla.s.s through some irregular verbs."
So for the remainder of the lesson Aristide, under the freezing eyes of the head mistress, put his sorrowful cla.s.s through irregular verbs, of which his own knowledge was singularly inexact, and at the end received his dismissal. In vain he argued. Outraged Minerva was implacable. Go he must.
We find him, then, one miserable December evening, standing on the arrival platform of Euston Station (the academy was near Manchester), an unwonted statue of dubiety. At his feet lay his meagre valise; in his hand was an enormous bouquet, a useful tribute of esteem from his disconsolate pupils; around him luggage-laden porters and pa.s.sengers hurried; in front were drawn up the long line of cabs, their drivers"
waterproofs glistening with wet; and in his pocket rattled the few paltry coins that, for Heaven knew how long, were to keep him from starvation. Should he commit the extravagance of taking a cab or should he go forth, valise in hand, into the pouring rain? He hesitated.
"_Sacre mille cochons! Quel chien de climat!_" he muttered.
A smart footman standing by turned quickly and touched his hat.
"Beg pardon, sir; I"m from Mr. Smith."
"I"m glad to hear it, my friend," said Aristide.
"You"re the French gentleman from Manchester?"
"Decidedly," said Aristide.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STANDING ON THE ARRIVAL PLATFORM OF EUSTON STATION]
"Then, sir, Mr. Smith has sent the carriage for you."
"That"s very kind of him," said Aristide.
The footman picked up the valise and darted down the platform. Aristide followed. The footman held invitingly open the door of a cosy brougham.
Aristide paused for the fraction of a second. Who was this hospitable Mr. Smith?
"Bah!" said he to himself, "the best way of finding out is to go and see."
He entered the carriage, sank back luxuriously on the soft cushions, and inhaled the warm smell of leather. They started, and soon the pelting rain beat harmlessly against the windows. Aristide looked out at the streaming streets, and, hugging himself comfortably, thanked Providence and Mr. Smith. But who was Mr. Smith? _Tiens_, thought he, there were two little Miss Smiths at the academy; he had pitied them because they had chilblains, freckles, and perpetual colds in their heads; possibly this was their kind papa. But, after all, what did it matter whose papa he was? He was expecting him. He had sent the carriage for him.
Evidently a well-bred and attentive person. And _tiens!_ there was even a hot-water can on the floor of the brougham. "He thinks of everything, that man," said Aristide. "I feel I am going to like him."
The carriage stopped at a house in Hampstead, standing, as far as he could see in the darkness, in its own grounds. The footman opened the door for him to alight and escorted him up the front steps. A neat parlour-maid received him in a comfortably-furnished hall and took his hat and greatcoat and magnificent bouquet.
"Mr. Smith hasn"t come back yet from the City, sir; but Miss Christabel is in the drawing-room."
"Ah!" said Aristide. "Please give me back my bouquet."
The maid showed him into the drawing-room. A pretty girl of three-and-twenty rose from a fender-stool and advanced smilingly to meet him.
"Good afternoon, M. le Baron. I was wondering whether Thomas would spot you. I"m so glad he did. You see, neither father nor I could give him any description, for we had never seen you."
This fitted in with his theory. But why Baron? After all, why not? The English loved t.i.tles.