My good friend Blessington, who is a mighty man in the Bordeaux
wine-trade, happening one day to lament the irreparable loss of a
deceased employe, an Admirable Crichton of a myriad accomplishments and
linguistic attainments whose functions it had been, apparently, to
travel about between London, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Algiers, I
immediately thought of a certain living and presumably unemployed
paragon of my acquaintance.
"I know the very man you're looking for," said I.
"Who is he?"
"He's a kind of human firework," said I, "and his name is Aristide
Pujol."
I sketched the man--in my desire to do a good turn to Aristide, perhaps
in exaggerated colour.
"Let me have a look at him," said Blessington.
"He may be anywhere on the continent of Europe," said I. "How long can
you give me to produce him?"
"A week. Not longer."
"I'll do my best," said I.
By good luck my telegram, sent off about four o'clock, found him at 213
_bis_ Rue Saint-Honore. He had just returned to Paris after some mad
dash for fortune (he told me afterwards a wild and disastrous story of a
Russian Grand-Duke, a Dancer and a gold mine in the Dolomites) and had
once more resumed the dreary conduct of the Agence Pujol at the Hotel du
Soleil et de l'Ecosse. My summons being imperative, he abandoned the
Agence Pujol as a cat jumps off a wall, and, leaving the guests of the
Hotel guideless, to the indignation of Monsieur Bocardon, whom he had
served this trick several times before, paid his good landlady, Madam
Bidoux, what he owed her, took a third-class ticket to London, bought,
lunatic that he was, a ripe Brie cheese, a foot in diameter, a present
to myself, which he carried in his hand most of the journey, and turned
up at my house at eight o'clock the next morning with absolutely empty
pockets and the happiest and most fascinating smile that ever irradiated
the face of man. As a matter of fact, he burst his way past my
scandalized valet into my bedroom and woke me up.
"Here I am, my dear friend, and here is something French you love that I
have brought you," and he thrust the Brie cheese under my nose.
"-- -- --," said I.
If you were awakened by a Brie cheese, an hour before your time, you
would say the same. Aristide sat at the foot of the bed and laughed till
the tears ran down his beard.
As soon as it was decent I sent him into the city to interview
Blessington. Three hours afterward he returned more radiant than ever.
He threw himself into my arms; before I could disentagle myself, he
kissed me on both cheeks; then he danced about the room.
"_Me voici_," he said, "accredited representative of the great Maison
Dulau et Compagnie. I have hundreds of pounds a year. I go about. I
watch. I control. I see that the Great British Public can assuage its
thirst with the pure juice of the grape and not with the dregs of a
laboratory. I test vintages. I count barrels. I enter them in books. I
smile at Algerian wine growers and say, 'Ha! ha! none of your _petite
piquette frelatee_ for me but good sound wine.' It is diplomacy. It is
as simple as kissing hands. And I have a sustained income. Now I can be
_un bon bourgeois_ instead of a stray cat. And all due to you, _mon cher
ami_. I am grateful--_voyons_--if anybody ever says Aristide Pujol is
ungrateful, he is a liar. You believe me! Say you believe me."
He looked at me earnestly.
"I do, old chap," said I.
I had known Aristide for some years, and in all kinds of little ways he
had continuously manifested his gratitude for the trifling service I had
rendered him, at our first meeting, in delivering him out of the hands
of the horrific Madam Gougasse. That gratitude is the expectation of
favors to come was, in the case of Aristide, a cynical and inapplicable
proposition. And here, as this (as far as I can see) is the last of
Aristide's adventures I have to relate, let me make an honest and
considered statement:--
During the course of an interesting and fairly prosperous life, I have
made many delightful Bohemian, devil-may-care acquaintances, but among
them all Aristide stands as the one bright star who has never asked me
to lend him money. I have offered it times without number, but he has
refused. I believe there is no man living to whom Aristide is in debt.
In the depths of the man's changeling and feckless soul is a principle
which has carried him untarnished through many a wild adventure. If
he ever accepted money--money to the Provencal peasant is the
transcendental materialised, and Aristide (save by the changeling
theory) was Provencal peasant bone and blood--it was always for what he
honestly thought was value received. If he met a man who wanted to take
a mule ride among the Mountains of the Moon, Aristide would at once have
offered himself as guide. The man would have paid him; but Aristide, by
some quaint spiritual juggling, would have persuaded him that the
ascent of Primrose Hill was equal to any lunar achievement, seeing that,
himself, Aristide Pujol, was keeper of the Sun, Moon and Seven Stars;
and the gift to that man of Aristide's dynamic personality would have
been well worth anything that he would have found in the extinct volcano
we know to be the moon.
"The only thing I would suggest, if you would allow me to do so," said
I, "is not to try to make the fortune of Messrs. Dulau & Co. by some
dazzling but devastating _coup_ of your own."
He looked at me in his bright, shrewd way. "You think it time I
restrained my imagination?"
"Exactly."
"I will read The Times and buy a family Bible," said Aristide.
A week after he had taken up his work in the City, under my friend
Blessington, I saw the delighted and prosperous man again. It was a
Saturday and he came to lunch at my house.
"_Tiens!_" said he, when he had recounted his success in the office, "it
is four years since I was in England?"
"Yes," said I, with a jerk of memory. "Time passes quickly."
"It is three years since I lost little Jean."
"Who is little Jean?" I asked.
"Did I not tell you when I saw you last in Paris?"
"No."
"It is strange. I have been thinking about him and my heart has been
aching for him all the time. You must hear. It is most important." He
lit a cigar and began.
It was then that he told me the story of which I have already related
in these chronicles:[A] how he was scouring France in a ramshackle
automobile as the peripatetic vendor of a patent corn cure and found a
babe of nine months lying abandoned in the middle of that silent road
through the wilderness between Salon and Arles; how instead of
delivering it over to the authorities, he adopted it and carried it
about with him from town to town, a motor accessory sometimes
embarrassing, but always divinely precious; how an evil day came upon
him at Aix-en-Provence when, the wheezing automobile having uttered
its last gasp, he found his occupation gone; how, no longer being able
to care for _le petit_ Jean, he left him with a letter and half his
fortune outside the door of a couple of English maiden ladies who,
staying in the same hotel, had manifested great interest in the baby
and himself; and how, in the dead of the night, he had tramped away
from Aix-en-Provence in the rain, his pockets light and his heart as
heavy as lead.
[A] The Adventures of the Foundling.
"And I have never heard of my little Jean again," said Aristide.
"Why didn't you write?" I asked.
"I knew their names, Honeywood; Miss Janet was the elder, Miss Anne the
younger. But the name of the place they lived at I have never been able
to remember. It was near London--they used to come up by train to
matinees and afternoon concerts. But what it is called, _mon Dieu_, I
have racked my brain for it. _Sacre mille tonnerres!_" He leaped to his
feet in his unexpected, startling way, and pounced on a Bradshaw's
Railway Guide lying on my library table. "Imbecile, pig, triple ass that
I am! Why did I not think of this before? It is near London. If I look
through all the stations near London on every line, I shall find it."
"All right," said I, "go ahead."
I lit a cigarette and took up a novel. I had not read very far when a
sudden uproar from the table caused me to turn round. Aristide danced
and flourished the Bradshaw over his head.
"Chislehurst! Chislehurst! Ah, _mon ami_, now I am happy. Now I have
found my little Jean. You will forgive me--but I must go now and embrace
him."
He held out his hand.
"Where are you off to?" I demanded.
"The Chislehurst, where else?"
"My dear fellow," said I, rising, "do you seriously suppose that these
two English maiden ladies have taken on themselves the responsibility of
that foreign brat's upbringing?"
"_Mon Dieu!_" said he taken aback for the moment, hypothesis having
entered his head. Then, with a wide gesture, he flung the preposterous
idea to the winds. "Of course. They have hearts, these English women.
They have maternal instincts. They have money." He looked at Bradshaw
again, then at his watch. "I have just time to catch a train. _Au
revoir, mon vieux._"
"But," I objected, "why don't you write? It's the natural thing to do."
"Write? _Bah!_ Did you ever hear of a Provencal writing when he could
talk?" He tapped his lips, and in an instant, like a whirlwind, he
passed from my ken.
* * * * *
Aristide on his arrival at Chislehurst looked about the pleasant, leafy
place--it was a bright October afternoon and the wooded hillside blazed
in russet and gold--and decided it was the perfect environment for Miss
Janet and Miss Anne, to say nothing of little Jean. A neat red brick
house with a trim garden in front of it looked just the kind of a house
wherein Miss Janet and Miss Anne would live. He rang the bell. A
parlour-maid, in spotless black and white, tutelary nymph of Suburbia,
the very parlour-maid who would minister to Miss Janet and Miss Anne,
opened the door.
"Miss Honeywood?" he inquired.
"Not here, sir," said the parlour-maid.
"Where is she? I mean, where are they?"
"No one of that name lives here," said the parlour-maid.
"Who does live here?"
"Colonel Brabazon."
"And where do the two Miss Honeywood live?" he asked with his engaging
smile.
But English suburban parlour-maids are on their guard against smiles, no
matter how engaging. She prepared to shut the door.
"I don't know."
"How can I find out?"
"You might enquire among the tradespeople."
"Thank you, mademoiselle, you are a most intelligent young----"
The door shut in his face. Aristide frowned. She was a pretty
parlour-maid, and Aristide didn't like to be so haughtily treated by a
pretty woman. But his quest being little Jean and not the eternal
feminine, he took the maid's advice and made enquiries at the prim and
respectable shops.
"Oh, yes," said a comely young woman in a fragrant bakers' and
confectioners'. "They were two ladies, weren't they? They lived at Hope
Cottage. We used to supply them. They left Chislehurst two years ago."
"_Sacre nom d'un chien!_" said Aristide.
"Beg pardon?" asked the young woman.
"I am disappointed," said Aristide. "Where did they go to?"
"I'm sure I can't tell you."
"Do you remember whether they had a baby?"
"They were maiden ladies," said the young woman rebukingly.
"But anybody can keep a baby without being its father or mother. I want
to know what has become of the baby."
The young woman gazed through the window.
"You had better ask the policeman."
"That's an idea," said Aristide, and, leaving her, he caught up the
passing constable.
The constable knew nothing of maiden ladies with a baby, but he directed
him to Hope Cottage. He found a pretty half-timber house lying back from
the road, with a neat semi-circular gravelled path leading to a porch
covered thick with Virginia creeper. Even more than the red brick
residence of Colonel Brabazon did it look, with its air of dainty
comfort, the fitting abode of Miss Janet and Miss Anne. He rang the bell
and interviewed another trim parlour-maid. More susceptible to smiles
than the former, she summoned her master, a kindly, middle-aged man, who
came out into the porch. Yes, Honeywood was the name of the previous
tenants. Two ladies, he believed. He had never seen them and knew
nothing about a child. Messrs. Tompkin & Briggs, the estate agents in
the High Street, could no doubt give him information. Aristide thanked
him and made his way to Messrs. Tompkin & Briggs. A dreary spectacled
youth in resentful charge of the office--his principals, it being
Saturday afternoon, were golfing the happy hours away--professed blank
ignorance of everything. Aristide fixed him with his glittering eye and
flickered his fingers and spoke richly. The youth in a kind of mesmeric
trance took down a battered, dog's eared book and turned over the pages.
"Honeywood--Miss--Beverly Stoke--near St. Albans--Herts. That's it," he
said.