"Hush!" she said. "Listen!" Her keen ear had caught a child's cry. "It's
Jean. I must go."
She hurried out. Aristide prepared to light another cigarette. But a
second before the application of the flaring match an idea struck him.
He blew out the match, replaced the cigarette in his case, and with a
dexterity that revealed the professional of years ago, began to clear
the table. He took the things noiselessly into the kitchen, shut the
door, and master of the kitchen and scullery washed up. Then, the most
care-free creature in the world, he stole down the stone passage into
the wilderness of Beverly Stoke.
An hour afterwards he knocked at the front door, Anne Honeywood admitted
him.
"I have arranged with the good Mrs. Buttershaw. She lives a hundred
yards down the road. I bring my baggage to-morrow evening."
Anne regarded him in a humorous, helpless way. "I can't prevent you,"
she said, "but I can give you a piece of advice."
"What is it?"
"Don't wash up for Mrs. Buttershaw."
* * * * *
So it came to pass that Aristide Pujol took up his residence at
Beverly Stoke, trudging every morning three miles to catch his
business train at St. Albans, and trudging back every evening three
miles to Beverly Stoke. Every morning he ran into the cottage for a
sight of little Jean and every evening after a digestion-racking meal
prepared by Mrs. Buttershaw he went to the cottage armed with toys
and weird and injudicious food for little Jean and demanded an account
of the precious infant's doings during the day. Gradually Jean
recovered of his congestion, being a sturdy urchin, and, to Aristide's
delight, resumed the normal life of childhood.
"_Moi, je suis papa_," said Aristide. "He has got to speak French, and
he had better begin at once. It is absurd that anyone born between Salon
and Arles should not speak French and Provencal; we'll leave Provencal
till later. _Moi, je suis papa, Jean._ Say _papa_."
"I don't quite see how he can call you that, Mr. Pujol," said Anne, with
the suspicion of a flush on her cheek.
"And why not? Has the poor child any other papa in the whole wide world?
And at four years old not to have a father is heart-breaking. Do you
want us to bring him up an orphan? No. You shan't be an orphan, _mon
brave_," he continued, bending over the child and putting his little
hands against his bearded face, "you couldn't bear such a calamity,
could you? And so you will call me _papa_."
"_Papa_," said Jean, with a grin.
"There, he has settled it," said Aristide. "_Moi je suis papa._ And you,
mademoiselle?"
"I am Auntie Anne," she replied demurely.
Saturday afternoons and Sundays were Aristide's days of delight. He
could devote himself entirely to Jean. The thrill of the weeks when he
had paraded the child in the market places of France while he sold his
corn cure again ran through his veins. The two rows of cottages
separated by the common, which was the whole of Beverly Stoke, became
too small a theatre for his parental pride. He bewailed the loss of his
automobile that had perished of senile decay at Aix-en-Provence. If he
only had it now he could exhibit Jean to the astonished eyes of St.
Albans, Watford--nay London itself!
"I wish I could take him to Dulau & Company," said he.
"Good Heavens!" cried Miss Anne in alarm, for Aristide was capable of
everything. "What in the world would you do with him there?"
"What would I do with him?" replied Aristide, picking the child up in
his arms--the three were strolling on the common--"_Parbleu!_ I would
use him to strike the staff of Dulau & Company green with envy. Do you
think the united efforts of the whole lot of them, from the good Mr.
Blessington to the office boy, could produce a hero like this? You are a
hero, Jean, aren't you?"
"Yes, papa," said Jean.
"He knows it," shouted Aristide with a delighted gesture which nearly
cast Jean to the circumambient geese. "Miss Anne, we have the most
wonderful child in the universe."
This, as far as Anne was concerned, was a proposition which for the past
three years she had regarded as incontrovertible. She smiled at
Aristide, who smiled at her, and Jean, seeing them happy, smiled largely
at them both.
In a very short time Aristide, who could magically manufacture boats
and cocks and pigs and giraffes out of bits of paper, who could bark
like a dog and quack like a goose, who could turn himself into a horse
or a bear at a minute's notice, whose pockets were a perennial mine of
infantile ecstasy, established himself in Jean's mind as a kind of
tame, necessary and beloved jinn. Being a loyal little soul, the child
retained his affection for Auntie Anne, but he was swept off his
little feet by his mirific parent. The time came when, if he was not
dressed in his tiny woollen jersey and knee breeches and had not his
nose glued against the parlour window in readiness to scramble to the
front door for Aristide's morning kiss, he would have thought that
chaos had come again. And Anne, humouring the child, hastened to get
him washed and dressed in time; until at last, so greatly was she
affected by his obsession, she got into the foolish habit of watching
the clock and saying to herself: "In another minute he will be here,"
or: "He is a minute late. What can have happened to him?"
So Aristide, in his childlike way, found remarkable happiness in
Beverly Stoke. A very wet summer had been followed by a dry and mellow
autumn. Aristide waxed enthusiastic over the English climate and
rejoiced in the mild country air. He was also happy under my friend
Blessington, who spoke of him to me in glowing terms. At the back of
all Aristide's eccentricities was the Provencal peasant's shrewdness.
He realized that, for the first time in his life, he had taken up a
sound and serious avocation. Also, he was no longer irresponsible. He
had found little Jean. Jean's future was in his hands. Jean was to be
an architect--God knows why--but Aristide settled it, definitely,
off-hand. He would have to be educated. "And, my dear friend," said
he, when we were discussing Jean--and for months I heard nothing but
Jean, Jean, Jean, so that I loathed the brat, until I met the
brown-skinned, black-eyed, merry little wretch and fell, like
everybody else, fatuously in love with him--"my dear friend," said he,
"an architect, to be the architect that I mean him to be, must have
universal knowledge. He must know the first word of the classic, the
last word of the modern. He must be steeped in poetry, his brain must
vibrate with science. He must be what you call in England a gentleman.
He must go to one of your great public schools--Eton, Winchester,
Rugby, Harrow--you see I know them all--he must go to Cambridge or
Oxford. Ah, I tell you, he is to be a big man. I, Aristide Pujol, did
not pick him up on that deserted road, in the Arabia Petrea of
Provence, between Salon and Arles, for nothing. He was wrapped, as I
have told you, in an old blanket--and _ma foi_ it smelt bad--and I
dressed him in my pyjamas and made a Neapolitan cap for him out of one
of my socks. The _bon Dieu_ sent him, and I shall arrange just as the
_bon Dieu_ intended. Poor Miss Anne Honeywood with her ninety pounds a
year, what can she do? Pouf! It is for me to look after the future of
little Jean."
By means of such discourse he convinced Miss Anne that Jean was
predestined to greatness and that Providence had appointed him,
Aristide, as the child's agent in advance. Very much bewildered by his
riotous flow of language and very reluctant to sacrifice her woman's
pride, she agreed to allow him to contribute towards Jean's upbringing.
"Dear Miss Anne," said he, "it is my right. It is Jean's right. You
would love to put him on top of the pinnacle of fame, would you not?"
"Of course," said Miss Anne.
"_Eh bien!_ we will work together. You will give him what can be given
by a beautiful and exquisite woman, and I will do all that can be done
by the accredited agent of Dulau et Compagnie, Wine Shippers of
Bordeaux."
So, I repeat, Aristide was entirely happy. His waking dreams were of the
four-year-old child. The glad anticipation of the working day in Great
Tower St., E. C., was the evening welcome from the simple but capable
gentlewoman and the sense of home and intimacy in her little parlour no
bigger than the never-entered and nerve-destroying salon of his parents
at Aigues Mortes, but smiling with the grace of old oak and faded
chintz. At Aigues Mortes the salon was a comfortless, tasteless
convention, set apart for the celebrations of baptisms and marriages and
deaths, a pride and a terror to the inhabitants. But here everything
seemed to be as much a warm bit of Anne Honeywood as the tortoise-shell
comb in her hair and the square of Brussels lace that rose and fell on
the bosom of her old evening frock. For, you see, since she expected a
visitor in the evenings, Anne had taken to dressing for her sketch of a
dinner. For all her struggle with poverty she had retained the charm
that four years before had made her touch upon Jean seem a consecration
to the impressionable man. And now that he entered more deeply into her
life and thoughts, he found himself in fragrant places that were very
strange to him. He discovered, too, with some surprise, that a man who
has been at fierce grips with Fortune all his life from ten to forty is
ever so little tired in spirit and is glad to rest. In the tranquility
of Anne Honeywood's presence his soul was singularly at peace. He also
wondered why Anne Honeywood seemed to grow younger, and, in her gentle
fashion, more laughter-loving, every day.
The Saint Martin's summer lasted to the beginning of December, and then
it came to an end, and with it the idyll of Aristide and Anne Honeywood.
One Saturday afternoon, when the rain was falling dismally, she received
him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual
heightened colour no longer gave youth to her cheek; an anxious frown
knitted her candid brows; and there was no laughter in her eyes. He
looked at her questioningly. Was anything the matter with Jean? But Jean
answered the question for himself by running down the passage and
springing like a puppy into Aristide's arms. Anne turned her face away,
as if the sight pained her, and, pleading a headache and the desire to
lie down, she left the two together. Returning after a couple of hours
with the tea-tray, she found them on the floor breathlessly absorbed in
the erection of card pagodas. She bit her lip and swallowed a sob.
Aristide jumped up and took the tray. Was not the headache better? He
was so grieved. Jean must be very quiet and drink up his milk quietly
like a hero because Auntie was suffering. Tea was a very subdued affair.
Then Anne carried off Jean to bed, refusing Aristide's helpful
ministrations. It was his Saturday and Sunday joy to bath Jean amid a
score of crawly tin insects which he had provided for the child's
ablutionary entertainment, and it formed the climax of Jean's blissful
day. But this afternoon Anne tore the twain asunder. Aristide looked
mournfully over the rain-swept common through the leaded panes, and
speculated on the enigma of woman. A man, feeling ill, would have been
only too glad for somebody to do his work; but a woman, just because she
was ill, declined assistance. Surely women were an intellect-baffling
sex.
She came back, having put Jean to bed.
"My dear friend," she said, with a blurt of bravery, "I have something
very hard to say, but I must say it. You must go away from Beverly
Stoke."
"Ah!" cried Aristide, "is it I, then, that give you a headache?"
"It's not your fault," she said gently. "You have been everything that a
loyal gentleman could be--and it's because you're a loyal gentleman that
you must go."
"I don't understand," said he, puzzled. "I must go away because I give
you a headache, although it is not my fault."
"It's nothing to do with headaches," she explained. "Don't you see?
People around here are talking."
"About you and me?"
"Yes," said Miss Anne, faintly.
"_Saprelotte!_" cried Aristide, with a fine flourish, "let them talk!"
"Against Jean and myself?"
The reproach brought him to his feet. "No," said he. "No. Sooner than
they should talk, I would go out and strangle every one of them. But it
is infamous. What do they say?"
"How can I tell you? What would they say in your own country?"
"France is France and England is England."
"And a little cackling village is the same all the world over. No, my
dear friend--for you are my dear friend--you must go back to London, for
the sake of my good name and Jean's."
"But let us leave the cackling village."
"There are geese on every common," said Anne.
"_Nom de Dieu!_" muttered Aristide, walking about the tiny parlour.
"_Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!_" He stood in front of her and flung out
his arms wide. "But without Jean and you life will have no meaning for
me. I shall die. I shall fade away. I shall perish. Tell me, dear Miss
Anne, what they are saying, the miserable peasants with souls of mud."
But Anne could tell him no more. It had been hateful and degrading to
tell him so much. She shivered through all her purity. After a barren
discussion she held out her hand, large and generous like herself.
"Good-bye"--she hesitated for the fraction of a second--"Good-bye,
Aristide. I promise you shall provide for Jean's future. I will bring
him up to London now and then to see you. We will find some way out of
the difficulty. But you see, don't you, that you must leave Beverly
Stoke?"
Aristide went back to his comfortless lodgings aflame with bewilderment,
indignation and despair. He fell upon Mrs. Buttershaw, a slatternly and
sour-visaged woman, and hurled at her a tornado of questions. She
responded with the glee of a hag, and Aristide learned the amazing fact
that in the matter of sheer uncharitableness, unkindness and foulness of
thought Beverly Stoke, with its population of three hundred hinds, could
have brought down upon it the righteous indignation of Sodom, Gomorrah,
Babylon, Paris, and London. For a fortnight or so Anne Honeywood's life
in the village had been that of a pariah dog.
"And now you've spoke of it yourself," said Mrs. Buttershaw, her hands
on her hips, "I'm glad. I'm a respectable woman, I am, and go to church
regularly, and I don't want to be mixed up in such goings on. And I
never have held with foreigners, anyway. And the sooner you find other
lodgings, the better."
For the first and only time in his life words failed Aristide Pujol. He
stood in front of the virtuous harridan, his lips working, his fingers
convulsively clutching the air.
"You--you--you--you naughty woman!" he gasped, and, sweeping her away
from the doorway of his box of a sitting-room, he rushed up to his
tinier bedroom and in furious haste packed his portmanteau.
"I would rather die than sleep another night beneath your slanderous
roof," he cried at the foot of the stairs. "Here is more than your
week's money." He flung a couple of gold coins on the floor and dashed
out into the darkness and the rain.
He hammered at Anne Honeywood's door. She opened it in some alarm.
"You?--but----" she stammered.
"I have come," said he, dumping his portmanteau in the passage, "to take
you and Jean away from this abomination of a place. It is a Tophet
reserved for those who are not good enough for hell. In hell there is
dignity, _que diable!_ Here there is none. I know what you have
suffered. I know how they insult you. I know what they say. You cannot
stay one more night here. Pack up all your things. Pack up all Jean's
things. I have my valise here. I walk to St. Albans and I come back for
you in an automobile. You lock up the door. I tell the policeman to
guard the cottage. You come with me. We take a train to London. You and
Jean will stay at a hotel. I will go to my good friend who saved me
from Madam Gougasse. After that we will think."
"That's just like you," she said, smiling in spite of her trouble, "you
act first and think afterwards. Unfortunately I'm in the habit of doing
the reverse."
"But it's I who am doing all the thinking for you. I have thought till
my brain is red hot." He laughed in his luminous and excited way, and,
seizing both her hands, kissed them one after the other. "There!" said
he, "be ready by the time I return. Do not hesitate. Do not look back.
Remember Lot's wife!" He flourished his hat and was gone like a flash
into the heavy rain and darkness of the December evening. Anne cried
after him, but he too remembering Lot's wife would not turn. He marched
on buoyantly, heedless of the wet and the squirting mud from unseen
puddles. It was an adventure such as he loved. It was a knightly errand,
_parbleu!_ Was he not delivering a beautiful lady from the dragon of
calumny? And in an automobile, too! His imagination fondled the idea.
At a garage in St. Albans he readily found a car for hire. He was all
for driving it himself--that is how he had pictured the rescue--but the
proprietor, dull and unimaginative tradesman, declined firmly. It was a
hireling who drove the car to Beverly Stoke. Anne, unhatted and
uncloaked, admitted him.
"You are not ready?"
"My dear friend, how can I----?"
"You are not coming?" His hands dropped to his sides and his face was
the incarnation of disappointment.
"Let us talk things over reasonably," she urged, opening the parlour
door.
"But I have brought the automobile."
"He can wait for five minutes, can't he?"
"He can wait till Doomsday," said Aristide.
"Take off your dripping coat. You must be wet through. Oh, how impulsive
you are!"
He took off his overcoat dejectedly and followed her into the parlour,
where she tried to point out the impossibility of his scheme. How could
she abandon her home at a moment's notice? Failing to convince him, she
said at last in some embarrassment, but with gentle dignity: "Suppose we
did run away together in your romantic fashion, would it not confirm the
scandal in the eyes of this wretched village?"
"You are right," said Aristide. "I had not thought of it."
He knew himself to be a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued
from calumny. But to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was
unthinkable. And, meanwhile, what would become of him severed from her
and little Jean? He sighed and looked around the little room where he
had been so happy, and at the sweet-faced woman whose companionship had
been so dear to him. And then the true meaning of all the precious
things that had been his life for the past two months appeared before
him like a smiling valley hitherto hidden and now revealed by dissolving
mist. A great gladness gathered round his heart. He leaned across the
table by which he was sitting and looked at her and for the first time
noticed that her eyes were red.
"You have been crying, dear Anne," said he, using her name boldly.
"Why?"
A man ought not to put a question like that at a woman's head and bid
her stand and deliver. How is she to answer? Anne felt Aristide's bright
eyes upon her and the colour mounted and mounted and deepened on her
cheeks and brow.
"I don't like changes," she said in a low voice.
Aristide slipped noiselessly to the side of her chair and knelt on one
knee and took her hand.
"Anne--my beloved Anne!" said he.
And Anne neither moved nor protested, but looked away from him into the
fire.
* * * * *
And that is all that Aristide told me. There are sacred and beautiful
things in life that one man does not tell to another. He did, however,
mention that they forgot all about the unfortunate chauffeur sitting in
the rain till about three hours afterwards, when Aristide sped away to a
St. Albans hotel in joyous solitude.
The very next day he burst in upon me in a state of bliss bordering on
mania.
"But there is a tragic side to it," he said when the story was over.
"For half the year I shall be exiled to Bordeaux, Marseilles and Algiers
as the representative of Dulau et Compagnie."
"The very best thing that could happen for your domestic happiness,"
said I.
"What? With my heart"--he thumped his heart--"with my heart hurting like
the devil all the time?"
"So long as your heart hurts," said I, "you know it isn't dead."
A short while afterwards they were married in London. I was best man and
Jean, specklessly attired, was page of honour, and the vicar of her own
church at Chislehurst performed the ceremony. The most myopic of
creatures could have seen that Anne was foolishly in love with her
rascal husband. How could she help it?
As soon as the newly wedded pair had received the exhortation, Aristide,
darting to the altar-rail, caught Jean up in his arms, and, to the
consternation of the officiating clergy, the verger, and Anne's
conventional friends, cried out exultingly:
"_Ah, mon petit._ It was a lucky day for both of us when I picked you
up on the road between Salon and Arles. Put your hands together as you
do when you're saying your prayers, _mon brave_, and say, 'God bless
father and mother.'"
Jean obediently adopted the attitude of the infant Samuel in the
pictures.
"God bless father and mother," said he, and the childish treble rang out
queerly in the large, almost empty church.
There was a span of silence and then all the women-folk fell on little
Jean and that was the end of that wedding.