The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol
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“Jamais de la vie!” he cried – “The honour of Aristide Pujol is at stake.”
The thing became an obsession. Not only his honour but his future was at stake. If he discovered the thief, he would be the most talked of person in Perpignan. He would know how to improve his position. He would rise to dizzy heights. Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir would acclaim him as its saviour. The Government would decorate him. And finally, both the Mayor and Madame Coquereau would place the blushing and adorable Mademoiselle Stéphanie in his arms and her two hundred and fifty thousand francs dowry in his pocket. Never before had so dazzling a prize shimmered before him in the near distance.
On the last Saturday night of the Carnival, there was a special corso for the populace in the Avenue des Plantanes, the long splendid Avenue of plane trees just outside the Porte Notre Dame, which is the special glory of Perpignan. The masquers danced to three or four bands. They threw confetti and serpentins. They rode hobby-horses and beat each other with bladders. They joined in bands of youths and maidens and whirled down the Avenue in Bacchic madness. It was a corso blanc, and everyone wore white – chiefly modifications of Pierrot costume – and everyone was masked. Chinese lanterns hung from the trees and in festoons around the bandstands and darted about in the hands of the revellers. Above, great standard electric lamps shed their white glare upon the eddying throng casting a myriad of grotesque shadows. Shouts and laughter and music filled the air.
Aristide in a hideous red mask and with a bag of confetti under his arm, plunged with enthusiasm into the revelry. To enjoy yourself you only had to throw your arm round a girl’s waist and swing her off wildly to the beat of the music. If you wanted to let her go you did so; if not, you talked in the squeaky voice that is the recognized etiquette of the carnival. On the other hand any girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, more than usually piquant.
“This hurly-burly,” said he, drawing her into a quiet eddy of the stream, “is no place for the communion of two twin souls.”
“Beau masque,” said she, “I perceive that you are a man of much sensibility.”
“Shall we find a spot where we can mingle the overflow of our exquisite natures?”
“As you like.”
“Allons! Hop!” cried he, and seizing her round the waist danced through the masquers to the very far end of the Avenue.
“There is a sequestered spot round here,” he said.
They turned. The sequestered spot, a seat beneath a plane tree, with a lonesome arc-lamp shining full upon it, was occupied.
“It’s a pity!” said the fair unknown.
But Aristide said nothing. He stared. On the seat reposed an amorous couple. The lady wore a white domino and a black mask. The cavalier, whose arm was around the lady’s waist, wore a pig’s head, and a clown or Pierrot’s dress.
Aristide’s eyes fell upon the shoes. On one of them the pompon was missing.
The lady’s left hand tenderly patted the cardboard snout of her lover. The fierce light of the arc lamp caught the hand and revealed, on the fourth finger, a topaz ring, the topaz held in its place by two snakes’ heads.
Aristide stared for two seconds; it seemed to him two centuries. Then he turned simply, caught his partner again, and with a “Allons, Hop!” raced back to the middle of the throng. There, in the crush, he unceremoniously lost her, and sped like a maniac to the entrance gates. His friend the brigadier happened to be on duty. He unmasked himself, dragged the police agent aside, and breathless, half-hysterical, acquainted him with the astounding discovery.
“I was right, mon vieux! There at the end of the Avenue you will find them. The pig-headed prowler I saw, with my pompon missing from his shoe, and his bonne amie wearing the stolen ring. Ah! you police people with your tape-measures and your José Puégas! It is I, Aristide Pujol, who have to come to Perpignan to teach you your business!”
“What do you want me to do?” asked the brigadier stolidly.
“Do?” cried Aristide. “Do you think I want you to kiss them and cover them with roses? What do you generally do with thieves in Perpignan?”
“Arrest them,” said the brigadier.
“Eh bien!” said Aristide. Then he paused – possibly the drama of the situation striking him. “No, wait. Go and find them. Don’t take your eyes off them. I will run and fetch Monsieur le Maire and he will identify his property —et puis nous aurons la scène à faire.”
The stout brigadier grunted an assent and rolled monumentally down the Avenue. Aristide, his pulses throbbing, his heart exulting, ran to the Mayor’s house. He was rather a panting triumph than a man. He had beaten the police of Perpignan. He had discovered the thief. He was the hero of the town. Soon would the wedding bells be playing… He envied the marble of the future statue. He would like to be on the pedestal himself.
He dashed past the maid-servant who opened the door and burst into the prim salon. Madame Coquereau was alone, just preparing to retire for the night. Mademoiselle Stéphanie had already gone to bed.
“Mon Dieu, what is all this?” she cried.
“Madame,” shouted he, “glorious news. I have found the thief!”
He told his tale. Where was Monsieur le Maire?
“He has not yet come back from the café.”
“I’ll go and find him,” said Aristide.
“And waste time? Bah!” said the iron-faced old lady, catching up a black silk shawl. “I will come with you and identify the ring of my sainted sister Philomène. Who should know it better than I?”
“As you like, Madame,” said Aristide.
Two minutes found them on their journey. Madame Coquereau, in spite of her sixty-five years trudged along with springing step.
“They don’t make metal like me, nowadays,” she said scornfully.
When they arrived at the gate of the Avenue, the police on guard saluted. The mother of Monsieur le Maire was a power in Perpignan.
“Monsieur,” said Aristide, in lordly fashion, to a policeman, “will you have the goodness to make a passage through the crowd for Madame Coquereau, and then help the Brigadier Pésac to arrest the burglar who broke into the house of Monsieur le Maire?”
The man obeyed, went ahead clearing the path with the unceremoniousness of the law, and Aristide giving his arm to Madame Coquereau followed gloriously. As the impressive progress continued the revellers ceased their revels and followed in the wake of Aristide. At the end of the Avenue Brigadier Pésac was on guard. He approached.
“They are still there,” he said.
“Good,” said Aristide.
The two police-officers, Aristide and Madame Coquereau turned the corner. At the sight of the police the guilty couple started to their feet. Madame Coquereau pounced like a hawk on the masked lady’s hand.
“I identify it,” she cried. “Brigadier, give these people in charge for theft.”
The white masked crowd surged around the group, in the midst of which stood Aristide transfigured. It was his supreme moment. He flourished in one hand his red mask and in the other a pompon which he had extracted from his pocket.
“This I found,” said he, “beneath the wall of Monsieur le Maire’s garden. Behold the shoe of the accused.”
The crowd murmured their applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig’s head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling voice beneath it said:
“We will go quietly.”
“Attention s’il vous plaît,” said the policemen, and each holding a prisoner by the arm they made a way through the crowd. Madame Coquereau and Aristide followed close behind.
“What did I tell you?” cried Aristide to the brigadier.
“It’s Puégas, all the same,” said the brigadier, over his shoulder.
“I bet you it’s not,” said Aristide, and striding swiftly to the back of the male prisoner whipped off the pig’s head, and revealed to the petrified throng the familiar features of the Mayor of Perpignan.
Aristide regarded him for two or three seconds open-mouthed, and then fell back into the arms of the Brigadier Pésac screaming with convulsive laughter. The crowd caught the infection of merriment. Shrieks filled the air. The vast mass of masqueraders held their sides, swayed helplessly, rolled in heaps, men and women, tearing each other’s garments as they fell.
Aristide, deposited on the ground by the Brigadier Pésac laughed and laughed. When he recovered some consciousness of surroundings, he found the Mayor bending over him and using language that would have made Tophet put its fingers in its ears. He rose. Madame Coquereau shook her thin fists in his face.
“Imbecile! Triple fool!” she cried.
Aristide turned tail and fled. There was nothing else to do.
And that was the end of his career at Perpignan. Vanished were the dreams of civic eminence; melted into thin air the statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot; faded, too, the vision of the modest Stéphanie crowned with orange-blossom; gone forever the two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Never since Alnaschar kicked over his basket of crockery was there such a hideous welter of shattered hopes.
If the Mayor had been allowed to go disguised to the Police Station, he could have disclosed his identity and that of the lady in private to awe-stricken functionaries. He might have forgiven Aristide. But Aristide had exposed him to the derision of the whole of Roussillon and the never ending wrath of Madame Coquereau. Ruefully Aristide asked himself the question: why had the Mayor not taken him into the confidence of his masquerading escapade? Why had he not told him of the pretty widow, whom, unknown to his mother, he was courting? Why had he permitted her to wear the ring which he had given her so as to spite his sainted Aunt Philomène? And why had he gone on wearing the pig’s head after Aristide had told him of his suspicions? Ruefully Aristide found no answers save in the general chuckle-headedness of mankind.
“If it hadn’t been such a good farce I should have wept like a cow,” said Aristide, after relating this story. “But every time I wanted to cry, I laughed. Nom de Dieu! You should have seen his face! And the face of Madame Coquereau! She opened her mouth wide showing ten yellow teeth and squealed like a rabbit! Oh, it was a good farce! He was very cross with me,” he added after a smiling pause, “and when I got back to Paris I tried to pacify him.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I sent him my photograph,” said Aristide.
VI
THE ADVENTURE OF FLEURETTE
One day, when Aristide was discoursing on the inexhaustible subject of woman, I pulled him up.
“My good friend,” said I, “you seem to have fallen in love with every woman you have ever met. But for how many of them have you really cared?”
“Mon Dieu! For all of them!” he cried, springing from his chair and making a wind-mill of himself.
“Come, come,” said I; “all that amorousness is just Gallic exuberance. Have you ever been really in love in your life?”
“How should I know?” said he. But he lit a cigarette, turned away, and looked out of window.
There was a short silence. He shrugged his shoulders, apparently in response to his own thoughts. Then he turned again suddenly, threw his cigarette into the fire, and thrust his hands into his pockets. He sighed.
“Perhaps there was Fleurette,” said he, not looking at me. “Est-ce qu’on sait jamais? That wasn’t her real name – it was Marie-Joséphine; but people called her Fleurette. She looked like a flower, you know.”
I nodded in order to signify my elementary acquaintance with the French tongue.
“The most delicate little flower you can conceive,” he continued. “Tiens, she was a slender lily – so white, and her hair the flash of gold on it – and she had eyes —des yeux de pervenche, as we say in French. What is pervenche in English – that little pale-blue flower?”
“Periwinkle,” said I.
“Periwinkle eyes! My God, what a language! Ah, no! She had des yeux de pervenche… She was diaphane, diaphanous … impalpable as cigarette-smoke … a little nose like nothing at all, with nostrils like infinitesimal sea-shells. Anyone could have made a mouthful of her… Ah! Cré nom d’un chien! Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank… I’ve never told you about Fleurette. It was this way.”
And the story he narrated I will do my best to set down.
The good M. Bocardon, of the Hôtel de la Curatterie at Nîmes, whose grateful devotion to Aristide has already been recorded, had a brother in Paris who managed the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse (strange conjuncture), a flourishing third-rate hostelry in the neighbourhood of the Halles Centrales. Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American school-marms realizing at last the dream of their modest and laborious lives. Accommodation was cheap, manners were easy, and knowledge of the gay city less than rudimentary.
To M. Bocardon of Paris Aristide, one August morning, brought glowing letters of introduction from M. and Mme. Bocardon of Nîmes. M. Bocardon of Paris welcomed Aristide as a Provençal and a brother. He brought out from a cupboard in his private bureau an hospitable bottle of old Armagnac, and discoursed with Aristide on the seductions of the South. It was there that he longed to retire – to a dainty little hotel of his own with a smart clientèle. The clientèle of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse was not to his taste. He spoke slightingly of his guests.
“There are people who know how to travel,” said he, “and people who don’t. These lost muttons here don’t, and they make hotel-keeping a nightmare instead of a joy. A hundred times a day have I to tell them the way to Notre Dame. Pouah!” said he, gulping down his disgust and the rest of his Armagnac, “it is back-breaking.”
“Tu sais, mon vieux,” cried Aristide – he had the most lightning way of establishing an intimacy – “I have an idea. These lost sheep need a shepherd.”
“Eh bien?” said M. Bocardon.
“Eh bien,” said Aristide. “Why should not I be the shepherd, the official shepherd attached to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse?”
“Explain yourself,” said M. Bocardon.
Aristide, letting loose his swift imagination, explained copiously, and hypnotized M. Bocardon with his glittering eye, until he had assured to himself a means of livelihood. From that moment he became the familiar genius of the hotel. Scorning the title of “guide,” lest he should be associated in the minds of the guests with the squalid scoundrels who infest the Boulevard, he constituted himself “Directeur de l’Agence Pujol.” An obfuscated Bocardon formed the rest of the agency and pocketed a percentage of Aristide’s earnings, and Aristide, addressed as “Director” by the Anglo-Saxons, “M. le Directeur” by the Latins, and “Herr Direktor” by the Teutons, walked about like a peacock in a barn-yard.
At that period, and until he had learned up Baedeker by heart, a process which nearly gave him brain-fever, and still, he declares, brings terror into his slumbers, he knew little more of the history, topography, and art-treasures of Paris than the flock he shepherded. He must have dealt out paralyzing information. The Britons and the Germans seemed not to heed; but now and then the American school-marms unmasked the charlatan. On such occasions his unfaltering impudence reached heights truly sublime. The sharp-witted ladies looked in his eyes, forgot their wrongs, and, if he had told them that the Eiffel Tower had been erected by the Pilgrim Fathers, would have accepted the statement meekly.
“My friend,” said Aristide, with Provençal flourish and braggadocio, “I never met a woman that would not sooner be misled by me than be taught by the whole Faculty of the Sorbonne.”
He had been practising this honourable profession for about a month, lodging with the good Mme. Bidoux at 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, when, one morning, in the vestibule of the hotel, he ran into his old friend Batterby, whom he had known during the days of his professorship of French at the Academy for Young Ladies in Manchester. The pair had been fellow-lodgers in the same house in the Rusholme Road; but, whereas Aristide lived in one sunless bed-sitting-room looking on a forest of chimney-pots, Batterby, man of luxury and ease, had a suite of apartments on the first floor and kept an inexhaustible supply of whisky, cigars, and such-like etceteras of the opulent, and the very ugliest prize bull-pup you can imagine. Batterby, in gaudy raiment, went to an office in Manchester; in gaudier raiment he often attended race meetings. He had rings and scarf-pins and rattled gold in his trousers pockets. He might have been an insufferable young man for a poverty-stricken teacher of French to have as a fellow-lodger; but he was not. Like all those born to high estate, he made no vulgar parade of his wealth, and to Aristide he showed the most affable hospitality. A friendship had arisen between them, which the years had idealized rather than impaired. So when they met that morning in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse their greetings were fervent and prolonged.
In person Batterby tended towards burliness. He had a red, jolly face, divided unequally by a great black moustache, and his manner was hearty. He slapped Aristide on the back many times and shook him by the shoulders.
“We must have a drink on this straight away, old man,” said he.
“You’re so strange, you English,” said Aristide. “The moment you have an emotion you must celebrate it by a drink. ‘My dear fellow, I’ve just come into a fortune; let us have a drink.’ Or, ‘My friend, my poor old father has just been run over by an omnibus; let us have a drink.’ My good Reginald, look at the clock. It is only nine in the morning.”
“Rot!” said Reginald. “Drink is good at any time.”
They went into the dark and deserted smoking-room, where Batterby ordered Scotch and soda and Aristide, an abstemious man, a plain vermouth.
“What’s that muck?” asked Batterby, when the waiter brought the drinks. Aristide explained. “Whisky’s good enough for me,” laughed the other. Aristide laughed too, out of politeness and out of joy at meeting his old friend.
“With you playing at guide here,” said Batterby, when he had learned Aristide’s position in the hotel, “it seems I have come to the right shop. There are no flies on me, you know, but when a man comes to Paris for the first time he likes to be put up to the ropes.”
“Your first visit to Paris?” cried Aristide. “Mon vieux, what wonders are going to ravish your eyes! What a time you are going to have!”
Batterby bit off the end of a great black cigar.
“If the missus will let me,” said he.
“Missus? Your wife? You are married, my dear Reginald?” Aristide leaped, in his unexpected fashion, from his chair and almost embraced him. “Ah, but you are happy, you are lucky. It was always like that. You open your mouth and the larks fall ready roasted into it! My congratulations. And she is here, in this hotel, your wife? Tell me about her.”
Batterby lit his cigar. “She’s nothing to write home about,” he said, modestly. “She’s French.”
“French? No – you don’t say so!” exclaimed Aristide, in ecstasy.
“Well, she was brought up in France from her childhood, but her parents were Finns. Funny place for people to come from – Finland – isn’t it? You could never expect it – might just as well think of ’em coming from Lapland. She’s an orphan. I met her in London.”
“But that’s romantic! And she is young, pretty?”
“Oh, yes; in a way,” said the proprietary Briton.
“And her name?”
“Oh, she has a fool name – Fleurette. I wanted to call her Flossie, but she didn’t like it.”
“I should think not,” said Aristide. “Fleurette is an adorable name.”
“I suppose it’s right enough,” said Batterby. “But if I want to call her good old Flossie, why should she object? You married, old man? No? Well, wait till you are. You think women are angels all wrapped up in feathers and wings beneath their toggery, don’t you? Well, they’re just blooming porcupines, all bristling with objections.”
“Mais, allons, donc!” cried Aristide. “You love her, your beautiful Finnish orphan brought up in France and romantically met in London, with the adorable name?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the easy Batterby, lifting his half-emptied glass. “Here’s luck!”
“Ah – no!” said Aristide, leaning forward and clinking his wineglass against the other’s tumbler. “Here is to madame.”
When they returned to the vestibule they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She rose from her seat at the approach of the two men, a fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the pervenche (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual tears. She was dressed in pale, shadowy blue – graceful, impalpable, like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upwards from a cigarette.
“Reggie has spoken of you many times, monsieur,” said Fleurette, after the introduction had been effected.
Aristide was touched. “Fancy him remembering me! Ce bon vieux Reginald. Madame,” said he, “your husband is the best fellow in the world.”
“Feed him with sugar and he won’t bite,” said Batterby; whereat they all laughed, as if it had been a very good joke.
“Well, what about this Paris of yours?” he asked, after a while. “The missus knows as little of it as I do.”
“Really?” asked Aristide.
“I lived all my life in Brest before I went to England,” she said, modestly.
“She wants to see all the sights, the Louvre, the Morgue, the Cathedral of What’s-its-name that you’ve got here. I’ve got to go round, too. Pleases her and don’t hurt me. You must tote us about. We’ll have a cab, old girl, as you can’t do much walking, and good old Pujol will come with us.”
“But that is ideal!” cried Aristide, flying to the door to order the cab; but before he could reach it he was stopped by three or four waiting tourists, who pointed, some to the clock, some to the wagonette standing outside, and asked the director when the personally-conducted party was to start. Aristide, who had totally forgotten the responsibilities attached to the directorship of the Agence Pujol and, but for this reminder, would have blissfully left his sheep to err and stray over Paris by themselves, returned crestfallen to his friends and explained the situation.
“But we’ll join the party,” said the cheery Batterby. “The more the merrier – good old bean-feast! Will there be room?”
“Plenty,” replied Aristide, brightening. “But would it meet the wishes of madame?” Her pale face flushed ever so slightly and the soft eyes fluttered at him a half-astonished, half-grateful glance.
“With my husband and you, monsieur, I should love it,” she said.
So Mr. and Mrs. Batterby joined the personally-conducted party, as they did the next morning, and the next, and several mornings after, and received esoteric information concerning the monuments of Paris that is hidden even from the erudite. The evenings, however, Aristide, being off duty, devoted to their especial entertainment. He took them to riotous and perspiring restaurants where they dined gorgeously for three francs fifty, wine included; to open-air cafés-concerts in the Champs Elysées, which Fleurette found infinitely diverting, but which bored Batterby, who knew not French, to stertorous slumber; to crowded brasseries on the Boulevard, where Batterby awakened, under a steady flow of whisky, to appreciative contemplation of Paris life. As in the old days of the Rusholme Road, Batterby flung his money about with unostentatious generosity. He was out for a beano, he declared, and hang the expense! Aristide, whose purse, scantily filled (truth to say) by the profits of the Agence Pujol, could contribute but modestly to this reckless expenditure, found himself forced to accept his friend’s lavish hospitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening’s dissipation.