The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

III

THE ADVENTURE OF THE KIND MR. SMITH

Aristide Pujol started life on his own account as a chasseur in a Nice café – one of those luckless children tightly encased in bottle-green cloth by means of brass buttons, 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 glass 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 café, would be a mystery to anyone unacquainted with Aristide. But to his friends his mastery of the English tongue in such circumstances 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 classes, 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 gods 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 bêtes, 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; rouspétance, assaulting 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 sœur, was the purest Montmartre; also Fich’-moi la paix, mon petit, and Tu as un toupet, toi; and the delectable locution, Allons étrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious 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 chère? 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 échoir, 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 class a surprise visit.

The sight that met her eyes petrified her. The class, 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 était saoûl 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 class through some irregular verbs.”

So for the remainder of the lesson Aristide, under the freezing eyes of the head mistress, put his sorrowful class 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 passengers 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.

“Sacré 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.

“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 titles.

“He seems to be an intelligent fellow, mademoiselle.”

There was a span of silence. The girl looked at the bouquet, then at Aristide, who looked at the girl, then at the bouquet, then at the girl again.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “will you deign to accept these flowers as a token of my respectful homage?”

Miss Christabel took the flowers and blushed prettily. She had dark hair and eyes and a fascinating, upturned little nose, and the kindest little mouth in the world.

“An Englishman would not have thought of that,” she said.

Aristide smiled in his roguish way and raised a deprecating hand.

“Oh, yes, he would. But he would not have had – what you call the cheek to do it.”

Miss Christabel laughed merrily, invited him to a seat by the fire, and comforted him with tea and hot muffins. The frank charm of his girl-hostess captivated Aristide and drove from his mind the riddle of his adventure. Besides, think of the Arabian Nights’ enchantment of the change from his lonely and shabby bed-sitting-room in the Rusholme Road to this fragrant palace with princess and all to keep him company! He watched the firelight dancing through her hair, the dainty play of laughter over her face, and decided that the brougham had transported him to Bagdad instead of Hampstead.

“You have the air of a veritable princess,” said he.

“I once met a princess – at a charity bazaar – and she was a most matter-of-fact, businesslike person.”

“Bah!” said Aristide. “A princess of a charity bazaar! I was talking of the princess in a fairytale. They are the only real ones.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Christabel, “that when men pay such compliments to English girls they are apt to get laughed at?”

“Englishmen, yes,” replied Aristide, “because they think over a compliment for a week, so that by the time they pay it, it is addled, like a bad egg. But we of Provence pay tribute to beauty straight out of our hearts. It is true. It is sincere. And what comes out of the heart is not ridiculous.”

Again the girl coloured and laughed. “I’ve always heard that a Frenchman makes love to every woman he meets.”

“Naturally,” said Aristide. “If they are pretty. What else are pretty women for? Otherwise they might as well be hideous.”

“Oh!” said the girl, to whom this Provençal point of view had not occurred.

“So, if I make love to you, it is but your due.”

“I wonder what my fiancé would say if he heard you?”

“Your – ?”

“My fiancé! There’s his photograph on the table beside you. He is six foot one, and so jealous!” she laughed again.

“The Turk!” cried Aristide, his swiftly-conceived romance crumbling into dust. Then he brightened up. “But when this six feet of muscle and egotism is absent, surely other poor mortals can glean a smile?”

“You will observe that I’m not frowning,” said Miss Christabel. “But you must not call my fiancé a Turk, for he’s a very charming fellow whom I hope you’ll like very much.”

Aristide sighed. “And the name of this thrice-blessed mortal?”

Miss Christabel told his name – one Harry Ralston – and not only his name, but, such was the peculiar, childlike charm of Aristide Pujol, also many other things about him. He was the Honourable Harry Ralston, the heir to a great brewery peerage, and very wealthy. He was a member of Parliament, and but for Parliamentary duties would have dined there that evening; but he was to come in later, as soon as he could leave the House. He also had a house in Hampshire, full of the most beautiful works of art. It was through their common hobby that her father and Harry had first made acquaintance.

“We’re supposed to have a very fine collection here,” she said, with a motion of her hand.

Aristide looked round the walls and saw them hung with pictures in gold frames. In those days he had not acquired an extensive culture. Besides, who having before him the firelight gleaming through Miss Christabel’s hair could waste his time over painted canvas? She noted his cursory glance.

“I thought you were a connoisseur?”

“I am,” said Aristide, his bright eyes fixed on her in frank admiration.

She blushed again; but this time she rose.

“I must go and dress for dinner. Perhaps you would like to be shown your room?”

He hung his head on one side.

“Have I been too bold, mademoiselle?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You see, I’ve never met a Frenchman before.”

“Then a world of undreamed-of homage is at your feet,” said he.

A servant ushered him up broad, carpeted staircases into a bedroom such as he had never seen in his life before. It was all curtains and hangings and rugs and soft couches and satin quilts and dainty writing-tables and subdued lights, and a great fire glowed red and cheerful, and before it hung a clean shirt. His poor little toilet apparatus was laid on the dressing-table, and (with a tact which he did not appreciate, for he had, sad to tell, no dress-suit) the servant had spread his precious frock-coat and spare pair of trousers on the bed. On the pillow lay his night-shirt, neatly folded.

“Evidently,” said Aristide, impressed by these preparations, “it is expected that I wash myself now and change my clothes, and that I sleep here for the night. And for all that the ravishing Miss Christabel is engaged to her honourable Harry, this is none the less a corner of Paradise.”

So Aristide attired himself in his best, which included a white tie and a pair of nearly new brown boots – a long task, as he found that his valise had been spirited away and its contents, including the white tie of ceremony (he had but one), hidden in unexpected drawers and wardrobes – and eventually went downstairs into the drawing-room. There he found Miss Christabel and, warming himself on the hearthrug, a bald-headed, beefy-faced Briton, with little pig’s eyes and a hearty manner, attired in a dinner-suit.

“My dear fellow,” said this personage, with outstretched hand, “I’m delighted to have you here. I’ve heard so much about you; and my little girl has been singing your praises.”

“Mademoiselle is too kind,” said Aristide.

“You must take us as you find us,” said Mr. Smith. “We’re just ordinary folk, but I can give you a good bottle of wine and a good cigar – it’s only in England, you know, that you can get champagne fit to drink and cigars fit to smoke – and I can give you a glimpse of a modest English home. I believe you haven’t a word for it in French.”

“Ma foi, no,” said Aristide, who had once or twice before heard this lunatic charge brought against his country. “In France the men all live in cafés, the children are all put out to nurse, and the women, saving the respect of mademoiselle – well, the less said about them the better.”

“England is the only place, isn’t it?” Mr. Smith declared, heartily. “I don’t say that Paris hasn’t its points. But after all – the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergères and that sort of thing soon pall, you know – soon pall.”

“Yet Paris has its serious side,” argued Aristide. “There is always the tomb of Napoleon.”

“Papa will never take me to Paris,” sighed the girl.

“You shall go there on your honeymoon,” said Mr. Smith.

Dinner was announced. Aristide gave his arm to Miss Christabel, and proud not only of his partner, but also of his frock-coat, white tie, and shiny brown boots, strutted into the dining-room. The host sat at the end of the beautifully set table, his daughter on his right, Aristide on his left. The meal began gaily. The kind Mr. Smith was in the best of humours.

“And how is our dear old friend, Jules Dancourt?” he asked.

“Tiens!” said Aristide, to himself, “we have a dear friend Jules Dancourt. Wonderfully well,” he replied at a venture, “but he suffers terribly at times from the gout.”

“So do I, confound it!” said Mr. Smith, drinking sherry.

“You and the good Jules were always sympathetic,” said Aristide. “Ah! he has spoken to me so often about you, the tears in his eyes.”

“Men cry, my dear, in France,” Mr. Smith explained. “They also kiss each other.”

“Ah, mais c’est un beau pays, mademoiselle!” cried Aristide, and he began to talk of France and to draw pictures of his country which set the girl’s eyes dancing. After that he told some of the funny little stories which had brought him disaster at the academy. Mr. Smith, with jovial magnanimity, declared that he was the first Frenchman he had ever met with a sense of humour.

“But I thought, Baron,” said he, “that you lived all your life shut up in that old château of yours?”

“Tiens!” thought Aristide. “I am still a Baron, and I have an old château.”

“Tell us about the château. Has it a fosse and a drawbridge and a Gothic chapel?” asked Miss Christabel.

“Which one do you mean?” inquired Aristide, airily. “For I have two.”

When relating to me this Arabian Nights’ adventure, he drew my special attention to his astuteness.

His host’s eye quivered in a wink. “The one in Languedoc,” said he.

Languedoc! Almost Pujol’s own country! With entire lack of morality, but with picturesque imagination, Aristide plunged into a description of that non-existent baronial hall. Fosse, drawbridge, Gothic chapel were but insignificant features. It had tourelles, emblazoned gateways, bastions, donjons, barbicans; it had innumerable rooms; in the salle des chevaliers two hundred men-at-arms had his ancestors fed at a sitting. There was the room in which François Premier had slept, and one in which Joan of Arc had almost been assassinated. What the name of himself or of his ancestors was supposed to be Aristide had no ghost of an idea. But as he proceeded with the erection of his airy palace he gradually began to believe in it. He invested the place with a living atmosphere; conjured up a staff of family retainers, notably one Marie-Joseph Loufoque, the wizened old major-domo, with his long white whiskers and blue and silver livery. There were also Madeline Mioulles, the cook, and Bernadet the groom, and La Petite Fripette the goose girl. Ah! they should see La Petite Fripette! And he kept dogs and horses and cows and ducks and hens – and there was a great pond whence frogs were drawn to be fed for the consumption of the household.

Miss Christabel shivered. “I should not like to eat frogs.”

“They also eat snails,” said her father.

“I have a snail farm,” said Aristide. “You never saw such interesting little animals. They are so intelligent. If you’re kind to them they come and eat out of your hand.”

“You’ve forgotten the pictures,” said Mr. Smith.

“Ah! the pictures,” cried Aristide, with a wide sweep of his arms. “Galleries full of them. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Wiertz, Reynolds – ”