"You seem amused," said Aristide.
"_Parbleu!_" said the motorist. "You have at the back of your auto a placard telling people to cure their corns, and in front you carry a baby."
"That," replied Aristide, "is easily understood. I am the agent of the Maison Hieropath of Ma.r.s.eilles, and the baby, whom I, its father, am carrying from a dead mother to an invalid aunt, I am using as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. As he luckily has no corns, I can exhibit his feet as a proof of the efficacy of the corn-cure."
The bear laughed and joined his companion, and the torpedo thundered away. Aristide replaced the baby, and with a complicated arrangement of string fastened it securely to the seat. The baby, having ceased crying, clutched his beard as he bent over, and "goo"d" pleasantly. The tug was at his heart-strings. How could he give so fascinating, so valiant a mite over to the Enfants Trouves? Besides, it belonged to him. Had he not in jest claimed paternity? It had given him a new importance. He could say "_mon fils_," just as he could say (with equal veracity) "_mon automobile_." A generous thrill ran through him. He burst into a loud laugh, clapped his hands, and danced before the delighted babe.
"_Mon pet.i.t Jean_," said he, with humorous tenderness, "for I suppose your name is Jean; I will rend myself in pieces before I let the Administration board you out among the wolves. You shall not go to the Enfants Trouves. I myself will adopt you, _mon pet.i.t Jean_."
As Aristide had no fixed abode whatever, the address on his visiting-card, "213 bis, Rue Saint-Honore, Paris," being that of an old greengrocer woman of his acquaintance, with whom he lodged when he visited the metropolis, there was a certain amount of rashness in the undertaking. But when was Aristide otherwise than rash? Had prudence been his guiding principle through life he would not have been selling corn-cure for the Maison Hieropath, and consequently would not have discovered the child at all.
In great delight at this satisfactory settlement of little Jean"s destiny, he started the ramshackle engine and drove triumphantly on his way. Jean, fatigued by the emotions of the last half-hour, slumbered peacefully.
"The little angel!" said Aristide.
The sun was shining when they arrived at Salon, the gayest, the most coquettish, the most laughing little town in Provence. It is a place all trees and open s.p.a.ces, and fountains and cafes, and sauntering people.
The only thing grim about it is the solitary machicolated tower in the main street, the last vestige of ancient ramparts; and even that, close cuddled on each side by prosperous houses with shops beneath, looks like an old, old, wrinkled grandmother smiling amid her daintier grandchildren. Everyone seemed to be in the open air. Those who kept shops stood at the doorways. The prospect augured well for the Maison Hieropath.
Aristide stopped before an hotel, disentangled Jean, to the mild interest of the pa.s.sers-by, and, carrying him in, delivered him into the arms of the landlady.
"Madame," he said, "this is my son. I am taking him from his mother, who is dead, to an aunt who is an invalid. So he is alone on my hands. He is very hungry, and I beseech you to feed him at once."
The motherly woman received the babe instinctively and cast aside the travelling-rug in which he was enveloped. Then she nearly dropped him.
"_Mon Dieu! Qu"est-ce que c"est que ca?_"
She stared in stupefaction at the stocking-cap and at the long flannel pyjama legs that depended from the body of the infant, around whose neck the waist was tightly drawn. Never since the world began had babe masqueraded in such attire. Aristide smiled his most engaging smile.
"My son"s luggage has unfortunately been lost. His portmanteau, _pauvre pet.i.t_, was so small. A poor widower, I did what I could. I am but a mere man, madame."
"Evidently," said the woman, with some asperity.
Aristide took a louis from his purse. "If you will purchase him some necessary articles of costume while I fulfil my duties towards the Maison Hieropath of Ma.r.s.eilles, which I represent, you will be doing me a kindness."
The landlady took the louis in a bewildered fashion. Allowing for the baby"s portmanteau to have gone astray, what, she asked, had become of the clothes he must have been wearing? Aristide entered upon a picturesque and realistic explanation. The landlady was stout, she was stupid, she could not grasp the fantastic.
"_Mon Dieu!_" she said. "To think that there are Christians who dress their children like this!" She sighed exhaustively, and, holding the grotesque infant close to her breast, disappeared indignantly to administer the very greatly needed motherment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HE DEMONSTRATED THE PROPER APPLICATION OF THE CURE]
Aristide breathed a sigh of relief, and after a well-earned _dejeuner_ went forth with the car into the Place des Arbres and prepared to ply his trade. First he unfurled the Hieropath banner, which floated proudly in the breeze. Then on a folding table he displayed his collection of ointment-boxes (together with pills and a toothache-killer which he sold on his own account) and a wax model of a human foot on which were grafted putty corns in every stage of callosity. As soon as half-a-dozen idlers collected he commenced his harangue. When their numbers increased he performed prodigies of chiropody on the putty corns, and demonstrated the proper application of the cure. He talked incessantly all the while. He has told me, in the grand manner, that this phase of his career was distasteful to him. But I scarcely believe it. If ever a man loved to talk, it was Aristide Pujol; and what profession, save that of an advocate, offers more occasion for wheedling loquacity than that of a public vendor of quack medicaments? As a matter of fact, he revelled in it. When he offered a free box of the cure to the first lady who confessed the need thereof, and a blushing wench came forward, the rascal revelled in the opportunity for badinage which set the good-humoured crowd in a roar. He loved to exert his half-mesmeric power. He had not the soul of a mountebank, for Aristide"s soul had its high and generous dwelling-place; but he had the puckish swiftness and mischief of which the successful mountebank is made. And he was a success because he treated it as an art, thinking nothing during its practice of the material gain, laughing whole-heartedly, like his great predecessor Tabarin of imperishable memory, and satisfying to the full his instinct for the dramatic. On the other hand, ever since he started life in the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned sh.e.l.l-jacket of a _cha.s.seur_ in a Ma.r.s.eilles cafe, and dreamed dreams of the fairytale lives of the clients who came in accompanied by beautifully dressed ladies, he had social ambitions--and the social status of the mountebank is, to say the least of it, ambiguous. Ah me! What would man be without the unattainable?
Aristide pocketed his takings, struck his flag, dismantled his table, and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hieropath.
The day"s work over, he returned to inquire for his supposit.i.tious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, and showed his two little teeth to the proudest father in the world. The landlady invited the happy parent into her little dark parlour beyond the office, and there exhibited a parcel containing garments and implements whose use was a mystery to Aristide.
She also demanded the greater part of another louis. Aristide began to learn that fatherhood is expensive. But what did it matter?
After all, here was a babe equipped to face the exigencies of a censorious world; in looks and apparel a credit to any father. As the afternoon was fine, and as it seemed a pity to waste satin and rabbit-fur on the murky interior of the hotel, Aristide borrowed a perambulator from the landlady, and, joyous as a schoolboy, wheeled the splendid infant through the sunny avenues of Salon.
That evening a bed was made up for the child in Aristide"s room, which, until its master retired for the night, was haunted by the landlady, the chambermaids and all the kitchen wenches in the hotel. Aristide had to turn them out and lock his door.
"This is excellent," said he, apostrophizing the thoroughly fed, washed, and now sleeping child. "This is superb. As in every hotel there are women, and as every woman thinks she can be a much better mother than I, so in every hotel we visit we shall find a staff of trained and enthusiastic nurses. Jean, you will live like a little _coq en pate_."
The night pa.s.sed amid various excursions on the part of Aristide and alarms on the part of Jean. Sometimes the child lay so still that Aristide arose to see whether he was alive. Sometimes he gave such proofs of vitality that Aristide, in terror lest he should awaken the whole hotel, walked him about the room chanting lullabies. This was in accordance with Jean"s views on luxury. He "goo"d" with joy. When Aristide put him back to bed he howled. Aristide s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and he "goo"d" again. At last Aristide fed him desperately, dandled him eventually to sleep, and returned to an excited pillow. It is a fearsome thing for a man to be left alone in the dead of night with a young baby.
"I"ll get used to it," said Aristide.
The next morning he purchased a basket, which he lashed ingeniously on the left-hand seat of the car, and a cushion, which he fitted into the basket. The berth prepared, he deposited the sumptuously-apparelled Jean therein and drove away, amid the perplexed benisons of the landlady and her satellites.
Thus began the oddest Odyssey on which ever mortals embarked. The man with the automobile, the corn-cure, and the baby grew to be legendary in the villages of Provence. When the days were fine, Jean in his basket a.s.sisted at the dramatic performance in the market-place. Becoming a magnet for the women, and being of a good-humoured and rollicking nature, he helped on the sale of the cure prodigiously. He earned his keep, as Aristide declared in exultation. Soon Aristide formed a collection of his tricks and doings wherewith he would entertain the chance acquaintances of his vagabondage. To a permanent companion he would have grown insufferable. He invented him a career from the day of his birth, chronicled the coming of the first tooth, wept over the demise of the fict.i.tious mother, and, in his imaginative way, convinced himself of his fatherhood. And every day the child crept deeper into the man"s sunny heart.
[Ill.u.s.tration: IT IS A FEARSOME THING FOR A MAN TO BE LEFT ALONE IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT WITH A YOUNG BABY]
Together they had many wanderings and many adventures. The wheezy, crazy mechanism of the car went to bits in unexpected places. They tobogganed down hills without a brake at the imminent peril of their lives. They suffered the indignity of being towed by wine-wagons. They spent hours by the wayside while Aristide took her to pieces and, sometimes with the help of a pa.s.sing motorist, put her together again. Sometimes, too, an inn boasted no landlady, only a dishevelled and over-driven chambermaid, who refused to wash Jean. Aristide washed and powdered Jean himself, the landlord lounging by, pipe in mouth, administering suggestions. Once Jean grew ill, and Aristide in terror summoned the doctor, who told him that he had filled the child up with milk to bursting-point. Yet, in spite of heterogeneous nursing and exposure to sun and rain and piercing mistral, Jean throve exceedingly, and, to Aristide"s delight, began to cut another tooth. The vain man began to regard himself as an expert in denticulture.
At the end of a fairly-wide circuit, Aristide, with empty store-boxes and pleasantly-full pockets, arrived at the little town of Aix-en-Provence. He had arrived there not without difficulty. On the outskirts the car, which had been coaxed reluctantly along for many weary kilometres, had groaned, rattled, whirred, given a couple of convulsive leaps, and stood stock-still. This was one of her pretty ways. He was used to them, and hitherto he had been able to wheedle her into resumed motion. But this time, with all his cunning and perspiration, he could not induce another throb in the tired engines.
A friendly motorist towed them to the Hotel de Paris in the Cours Mirabeau. Having arranged for his room and given Jean in charge of the landlady, he procured some helping hands, and pushed the car to the nearest garage. There he gave orders for the car to be put into running condition for the following morning, and returned to the hotel.
He found Jean in the vestibule, sprawling sultanesquely on the landlady"s lap, the centre of an admiring circle which consisted of two little girls in pigtails, an ancient peasant-woman, and two English ladies of obvious but graceful spinsterhood.
"Here is the father," said the landlady.
He had already explained Jean to the startled woman--landladies were always startled at Jean"s unconventional advent. "Madame," he had said, according to rigid formula, "this is my son. I am taking him from his mother, who is dead, to an aunt who is an invalid, so he is alone on my hands. I beseech you to let some kind woman attend to his necessities."
There was no need for further explanation. Aristide, thus introduced, bowed politely, removed his Crusoe cap, and smiled luminously at the a.s.sembled women. They resumed their antiphonal chorus of worship. The brown, merry, friendly brat had something of Aristide"s personal charm.
He had a bubble and a "goo" for everyone. Aristide looked on in great delight. Jean was a son to be proud of.
"_Ah! qu"il est fort--fort comme un Turc._"
"_Regardez ses dents._"
"The darling thing!"
"_Il est_--oh, dear!--_il est ravissante!_"--with a disastrous plunge into gender.
"_Tiens! il rit. C"est moi qui le fais rire._"
"To think," said the younger Englishwoman to her sister, "of this wee mite travelling about in an open motor!"
"He"s having the time of his life. He enjoys it as much as I do," said Aristide, in his excellent English.
The lady started. She was a well-bred, good-humoured woman in the early thirties, stout, with reddish hair, and irregular though comely features. Her sister was thin, faded, sandy, and kind-looking.
"I thought you were French," she said, apologetically.
"So I am," replied Aristide. "Provencal of Provence, Meridional of the Midi, Ma.r.s.eillais of Ma.r.s.eilles."
"But you talk English perfectly."