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Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

<h2>VIII</h2> THE ADVENTURE OF THE FICKLE GODDESS It may be remembered that Aristide Pujol had aged parents, browned and wrinkled children of the soil, who had passed all their days in the desolation of Aigues-Mortes, the little fortified, derelict city in the salt marshes of Provence. Although they regarded him with the same unimaginative wonder as a pair of alligators might regard an Argus butterfly, their undoubted but freakish progeny, and although Aristide soared high above their heads in all phases of thought and emotion, the mutual ties remained strong and perdurable. Scarcely a year passed without Aristide struggling somehow south to visit ses vieux, as he affectionately called them, and whenever Fortune shed a few smiles on him, one or two at least were sure to find their way to Aigues-Mortes in the shape of, say, a silver-mounted umbrella for his father or a deuce of a Paris hat for the old lady’s Sunday wear. Monsieur and Madame Pujol had a sacred museum of these unused objects—the pride of their [Pg 246] lives. Aristide was entirely incomprehensible, but he was a good son. A bad son in France is rare. But once Aristide nearly killed his old people outright. An envelope from him contained two large caressive slips of bluish paper, which when scrutinized with starting eyes turned out to be two one-thousand-franc notes. Mon Dieu! What had happened? Had Aristide been robbing the Bank of France? They stood paralyzed and only recovered motive force when a neighbour suggested their reading the accompanying letter. It did not explain things very clearly. He was in Aix-les-Bains, a place which they had never heard of, making his fortune. He was staying at the Hôtel de l’Europe, where Queen Victoria (they had heard of Queen Victoria) had been contented to reside, he was a glittering figure in a splendid beau-monde, and if ses vieux would buy a few cakes and a bottle of vin cacheté with the enclosed trifle, to celebrate his prosperity, he would deem it the privilege of a devoted son. But Pujol senior, though wondering where the devil he had fished all that money from, did not waste it in profligate revelry. He took the eighty pounds to the bank and exchanged the perishable paper for one hundred solid golden louis which he carried home in a bag curiously bulging beneath his woollen jersey and secreted it with the savings of his long life in the mattress of the conjugal bed. [Pg 247] “If only he hasn’t stolen it,” sighed the mother. “What does it matter, since it is sewn up there all secure?” said the old man. “No one can find it.” The Provençal peasant is as hard-headed and practical as a Scottish miner, and if left alone by the fairies would produce no imaginative effect whatever upon his generation; but in his progeniture he is more preposterously afflicted with changelings than any of his fellows the world over, which, though ethnologically an entirely new proposition, accounts for a singular number of things and inter alia for my dragon-fly friend, Aristide Pujol. Now, Aristide, be it said at the outset, had not stolen the money. It (and a vast amount more) had been honestly come by. He did not lie when he said that he was staying at the Hôtel de l’Europe, Aix-les-Bains, honoured by the late Queen Victoria (pedantic accuracy requires the correction that the august lady rented the annexe, the Villa Victoria, on the other side of the shady way—but no matter—an hotel and its annexe are the same thing) nor did he lie in boasting of his prodigious prosperity. Aristide was in clover. For the first, and up to now as I write, the only, time in his life he realized the gorgeous visions of pallid years. He was leading the existence of the amazing rich. He could drink champagne—not your miserable tisane at five francs a quart—but real champagne, [Pg 248] with year of vintage and gôut américan or gôut anglais marked on label, fabulously priced; he could dine lavishly at the Casino restaurants or at Nikola’s, prince of restaurateurs, among the opulent and the fair; he could clothe himself in attractive raiment; he could step into a fiacre and bid the man drive and not care whither he went or what he paid; he could also distribute five-franc pieces to lame beggars. He scattered his money abroad with both hands, according to his expansive temperament; and why not, when he was drawing wealth out of an inexhaustible fount? The process was so simple, so sure. All you had to do was to believe in the cards on which you staked your money. If you knew you were going to win, you won. Nothing could be easier. He had drifted into Aix-les-Bains from Geneva on the lamentable determination of a commission agency in the matter of some patent fuel, with a couple of louis in his pocket forlornly jingling the tale of his entire fortune. As this was before the days when you had to exhibit certificates of baptism, marriage, sanity and bank-balance before being allowed to enter the baccarat rooms, Aristide paid his two francs and made a bee line for the tables. I am afraid Aristide was a gambler. He was never so happy as when taking chances; his whole life was a gamble, with Providence holding the bank. Before the night was over he had converted his two [Pg 249] louis into fifty. The next day they became five hundred. By the end of a week his garments were wadded with bank notes whose value amounted to a sum so stupendous as to be beyond need of computation. He was a celebrity in the place and people nudged each other as he passed by. And Aristide passed by with a swagger, his head high and the end of his pointed beard sticking joyously up in the air. We see him one August morning, in the plentitude of his success, lounging in a wicker chair on the shady lawn of the Hôtel de l’Europe. He wore white buckskin shoes—I begin with these as they were the first point of his person to attract the notice of the onlooker—lilac silk socks, a white flannel suit with a zig-zag black stripe, a violet tie secured by a sapphire and diamond pin, and a rakish panama hat. On his knees lay the Matin; the fingers of his left hand held a fragrant corona; his right hand was uplifted in a gesture, for he was talking. He was talking to a couple of ladies who sat near by, one a mild-looking Englishwoman of fifty, dressed in black, the other, her daughter, a beautiful girl of twenty-four. That Aristide should fly to feminine charms, like moth to candle, was a law of his being; that he should lie, with shriveled wings, at Miss Errington’s feet was the obvious result. Her charms were of the winsome kind to which he was most susceptible. She had an oval [Pg 250] face, a little mouth like crumpled rose petals (so Aristide himself described it), a complexion the mingling of ivory and peach blossom (Aristide again), a straight little nose, appealing eyes of the deepest blue veiled by sweeping lashes and fascinating fluffiness of dark hair over a pure brow. She had a graceful figure, and the slender foot below her white piqué skirt was at once the envy and admiration of Aix-les-Bains. Aristide talked. The ladies listened, with obvious amusement. In the easy hotel way he had fallen into their acquaintance. As the man of wealth, the careless player who took five-hundred-louis banks at the table with the five-louis minimum, and cleared out the punt, he felt it necessary to explain himself. I am afraid he deviated from the narrow path of truth. “What perfect English you speak,” Miss Errington remarked, when he had finished his harangue and had put the corona between his lips. Her voice was a soft contralto. “I have mixed much in English society, since I was a child,” replied Aristide, in his grandest manner. “Fortune has made me know many of your county families and members of Parliament.” Miss Errington laughed. “Our M. P.’s are rather a mixed lot, Monsieur Pujol.” “To me an English Member of Parliament is a [Pg 251] high-bred conservative. I do not recognize the others,” said Aristide. “Unfortunately we have to recognize them,” said the elder lady with a smile. “Not socially, madame. They exist as mechanical factors of the legislative machine; but that is all.” He swelled as if the blood of the Montmorencys and the Colignys boiled in his veins. “We do not ask them into our drawing rooms. We do not allow them to marry our daughters. We only salute them with cold politeness when we pass them in the street.” “It’s astonishing,” said Miss Errington, “how strongly the aristocratic principle exists in republican France. Now, there’s our friend, the Comte de Lussigny, for instance——” A frown momentarily darkened the cloudless brow of Aristide Pujol. He did not like the Comte de Lussigny—— “With Monsieur de Lussigny,” he interposed, “it is a matter of prejudice, not of principle.” “And with you?” “The reasoned philosophy of a lifetime, mademoiselle,” answered Aristide. He turned to Mrs. Errington. “How long have you known Monsieur de Lussigny, madame?” She looked at her daughter. “It was in Monte Carlo the winter before last, wasn’t it, Betty? [Pg 252] Since then we have met him frequently in England and Paris. We came across him, just lately, at Trouville. I think he’s charming, don’t you?” “He’s a great gambler,” said Aristide. Betty Errington laughed again. “But so are you. So is mamma. So am I, in my poor little way.” “We gamble for amusement,” said Aristide loftily. “I’m sure I don’t,” cried Miss Betty, with merry eyes—and she looked adorable—“When I put my despised five-franc piece down on the table I want desperately to win, and when the horrid croupier rakes it up I want to hit him—Oh! I want to hit him hard.” “And when you win?” “I’m afraid I don’t think of the croupier at all,” said Miss Betty. Her mother smiled indulgently and exchanged a glance with Aristide. This pleased him; there was an agreeable little touch of intimacy in it. It confirmed friendly relations with the mother. What were his designs as regards the daughter he did not know. They were not evil, certainly. For all his southern blood, Latin traditions and devil-may-care upbringing, Aristide, though perhaps not reaching our divinely set and therefore unique English standard of morality, was a decent soul; further, partly through his pedagogic sojourn among them, and [Pg 253] partly through his childish adoration of the frank, fair-cheeked, northern goddesses talking the quick, clear speech, who passed him by when he was a hunted little devil of a chasseur in the Marseilles café, he had acquired a peculiarly imaginative reverence for English girls. The reverence, indeed, extended to English ladies generally. Owing to the queer circumstances of his life they were the only women of a class above his own, with whom he had associated on terms of equality. He had, then, no dishonorable designs as regards Miss Betty Errington. On the other hand, the thoughts of marriage had as yet not entered his head. You see, a Frenchman and an Englishman or an American, view marriage from entirely different angles. The Anglo-Saxon of honest instincts, attracted towards a pretty girl at once thinks of the possibilities of marriage; if he finds them infinitely remote, he makes romantic love to her in the solitude of his walks abroad or of his sleepless nights, and, in her presence, is as dumb and dismal as a freshly hooked trout. The equally honest Gaul does nothing of the kind. The attraction in itself is a stimulus to adventure. He makes love to her, just because it is the nature of a lusty son of Adam to make love to a pretty daughter of Eve. He lives in the present. The rest doesn’t matter. He leaves it to chance. I am speaking, be it understood, not of deep passions—that is a different matter [Pg 254] altogether—but of the more superficial sexual attractions which we, as a race, take so seriously and puritanically, often to our most disastrous undoing, and which the Latin light-heartedly regards as essential, but transient phenomena of human existence. Aristide made the most respectful love in the world to Betty Errington, because he could not help himself. “Tonnerre de Dieu!” he cried when from my Britannic point of view, I talked to him on the subject. “You English whom I try to understand and can never understand are so funny! It would have been insulting to Miss Betty Errington—tiens!—a purple hyacinth of spring—that was what she was—not to have made love to her. Love to a pretty woman is like a shower of rain to hyacinths. It passes, it goes. Another one comes. Qu’importe? But the shower is necessary—Ah! sacré gredin, when will you comprehend?” All this to make as clear as an Englishman, in the confidence of a changeling child of Provence can hope to do, the attitude of Aristide Pujol towards the sweet and innocent Betty Errington with her mouth like crumpled rose-petals, her ivory and peach-blossom complexion, her soft contralto voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as per foregoing bald description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of these chronicles, was dazzled and overwhelmed. [Pg 255] “I’m afraid I don’t think of the croupier at all,” said Betty. “Do you think of no one who brings you good fortune?” asked Aristide. He threw the Matin on the grass, and, doubling himself up in his chair regarded her earnestly. “Last night you put five louis into my bank——” “And I won forty. I could have hugged you.” “Why didn’t you? Ah!” His arms spread wide and high. “What I have lost!” “Betty!” cried Mrs. Errington. “Alas, Madame,” said Aristide, “that is the despair of our artificial civilization. It prohibits so much spontaneous expression of emotion.” “You’ll forgive me, Monsieur Pujol,” said Mrs. Errington dryly, “but I think our artificial civilization has its advantages.” “If you will forgive me, in your turn,” said Aristide, “I see a doubtful one advancing.” A man approached the group and with profuse gestures took off a straw hat which he thrust under his right arm, exposing an amazingly flat head on which the closely cropped hair stood brush-fashion upright. He had an insignificant pale face to which a specious individuality was given by a moustache with ends waxed up to the eyes and by a monocle with a tortoise shell rim. He was dressed (his valet had misjudged things—and valets like [Pg 256] the rest of us are fallible) in what was yesterday a fairly white flannel suit. “Madame—Mademoiselle.” He shook hands with charming grace. “Monsieur.” He bowed stiffly. Aristide doffed his Panama hat with adequate ceremony. “May I be permitted to join you?” “With pleasure, Monsieur de Lussigny,” said Mrs. Errington. Monsieur de Lussigny brought up a chair and sat down. “What time did you get to bed, last night?” asked Betty Errington. She spoke excellently pure French, and so did her mother. “Soon after we parted, mademoiselle, quite early for me but late for you. And you look this morning as if you had gone to bed at sundown and got up at dawn.” Miss Betty’s glance responsive to the compliment filled Aristide with wrath. What right had the Comte de Lussigny, a fellow who consorted with Brazilian Rastaquouères and perfumed Levantine nondescripts, to win such a glance from Betty Errington? “If Mademoiselle can look so fresh,” said he, “in the artificial atmosphere of Aix, what is there of adorable that she must not resemble in the innocence of her Somersetshire home?” “You cannot imagine it, Monsieur,” said the Count; “but I have had the privilege to see it.” [Pg 257] “I hope Monsieur Pujol will visit us also in our country home, when we get back,” said Mrs. Errington with intent to pacificate. “It is modest, but it is old-world and has been in our family for hundreds of years.” “Ah, these old English homes!” said Aristide. “Would you care to hear about it?” “I should,” said he. He drew his chair courteously a foot or so nearer that of the mild lady; Monsieur de Lussigny took instant advantage of the move to establish himself close to Miss Betty. Aristide turned one ear politely to Mrs. Errington’s discourse, the other ragingly and impotently to the whispered conversation between the detached pair. Presently a novel fell from the lady’s lap. Aristide sprang to his feet and restored it. He remained standing. Mrs. Errington consulted a watch. It was nearing lunch time. She rose, too. Aristide took her a pace or two aside. “My dear Mrs. Errington,” said he, in English. “I do not wish to be indiscreet—but you come from your quiet home in Somerset and your beautiful daughter is so young and inexperienced, and I am a man of the world who has mingled in all the society of Europe—may I warn you against admitting the Comte de Lussigny too far into your intimacy.” [Pg 258] She turned an anxious face. “Monsieur Pujol, is there anything against the Count?” Aristide executed the large and expressive shrug of the Southerner. “I play high at the tables for my amusement—I know the principal players, people of high standing. Among them Monsieur de Lussigny’s reputation is not spotless.” “You alarm me very much,” said Mrs. Errington, troubled. “I only put you on your guard,” said he. The others who had risen and followed, caught them up. At the entrance to the hotel the ladies left the men elaborately saluting. The latter, alone, looked at each other. “Monsieur.” “Monsieur.” Each man raised his hat, turned on his heel and went his way. Aristide betook himself to the café on the Place Carnot on the side of the square facing the white Etablissement des Bains, with a stern sense of having done his duty. It was monstrous that this English damask rose should fall a prey to so detestable a person as the Comte de Lussigny. He suspected him of disgraceful things. If only he had proof. Fortune, ever favoring him, stood at his elbow. She guided him straight to a table in the front row of the terrace where sat a black-haired, hard-featured though comely youth deep [Pg 259] in thought, in front of an untouched glass of beer. At Aristide’s approach he raised his head, smiled, nodded and said: “Good morning, sir. Will you join me?” Aristide graciously accepted the invitation and sat down. The young man was another hotel acquaintance, one Eugene Miller of Atlanta, Georgia, a curious compound of shrewdness and simplicity, to whom Aristide had taken a fancy. He was twenty-eight and ran a colossal boot-factory in partnership with another youth and had a consuming passion for stained-glass windows. From books he knew every square foot of old stained-glass in Europe. But he had crossed the Atlantic for the first time only six weeks before, and having indulged his craving immoderately, had rested for a span at Aix-les-Bains to recover from æsthetic indigestion. He had found these amenities agreeable to his ingenuous age. He had also, quite recently, come across the Comte de Lussigny. Hence the depth of thought in which Aristide discovered him. Now, the fact that North is North and South is South and that never these twain shall meet is a proposition all too little considered. One of these days when I can retire from the dull but exacting avocation of tea-broking in the City, I think I shall write a newspaper article on the subject. Anyhow, I hold the theory that the Northerners of all nations have a common characteristic and the [Pg 260] Southerners of all nations have a common characteristic, and that it is this common characteristic in each case that makes North seek and understand North and South seek and understand South. I will not go further into the general proposition; but as a particular instance I will state that the American of the South and the Frenchman of the South found themselves in essential sympathy. Eugene Miller had the unfearing frankness of Aristide Pujol. “I used rather to look down upon Europe as a place where people knew nothing at all,” said he. “We’re sort of trained to think it’s an extinct volcano, but it isn’t. It’s alive. My God! It’s alive. It’s Hell in the shape of a Limburger cheese. I wish the whole population of Atlanta, Georgia, would come over and just see. There’s a lot to be learned. I thought I knew how to take care of myself, but this tortoise-shell-eyed Count taught me last night that I couldn’t. He cleaned me out of twenty-five hundred dollars——” “How?” asked Aristide, sharply. “Ecarté.” Aristide brought his hand down with a bang on the table and uttered anathemas in French and Provençal entirely unintelligible to Eugene Miller; but the youth knew by instinct that they were useful, soul-destroying curses and he felt comforted. [Pg 261] “Ecarté! You played ecarté with Lussigny? But my dear young friend, do you know anything of ecarté?” “Of course,” said Miller. “I used to play it as a child with my sisters.” “Do you know the jeux de règle?” “The what?” “The formal laws of the game—the rules of discards——” “Never heard of them,” said Eugene Miller. “But they are as absolute as the Code Napoléon,” cried Aristide. “You can’t play without knowing them. You might as well play chess without knowing the moves.” “Can’t help it,” said the young man. “Well, don’t play ecarté any more.” “I must,” said Miller. “Comment?” “I must. I’ve fixed it up to get my revenge this afternoon—in my sitting room at the hotel.” “But it’s imbecile!” The sweep of Aristide’s arm produced prismatic chaos among a tray-full of drinks which the waiter was bringing to the family party at the next table. “It’s imbecile,” he cried, as soon as order was apologetically and pecuniarily restored. “You are a little mutton going to have its wool taken off.” “I’ve fixed it up,” said Miller. “I’ve never gone [Pg 262] back on an engagement yet in my own country and I’m not going to begin this side.” Aristide argued. He argued during the mechanical absorption of four glasses of vermouth-cassis—after which prodigious quantity of black currant syrup he rose and took the Gadarene youth to Nikola’s where he continued the argument during déjeuner. Eugene Miller’s sole concession was that Aristide should be present at the encounter and, backing his hand, should have the power (given by the rules of the French game) to guide his play. Aristide agreed and crammed his young friend with the jeux de règle and pâté de foie gras. The Count looked rather black when he found Aristide Pujol in Miller’s sitting room. He could not, however, refuse him admittance to the game. The three sat down, Aristide by Miller’s side, so that he could overlook the hand and, by pointing, indicate the cards that it was advisable to play. The game began. Fortune favored Mr. Eugene Miller. The Count’s brow grew blacker. “You are bringing your own luck to our friend, Monsieur Pujol,” said he, dealing the cards. “He needs it,” said Aristide. “Le roi,” said the Count, turning up the king. The Count won the vole, or all five tricks, and swept the stakes towards him. Then, fortune quickly and firmly deserted Mr. Miller. The Count besides being an amazingly fine player, held [Pg 263] amazingly fine hands. The pile of folded notes in front of him rose higher and higher. Aristide tugged at his beard in agitation. Suddenly, as the Count dealt a king as trump card, he sprang to his feet knocking over the chair behind him. “You cheat, monsieur. You cheat!” “Monsieur!” cried the outraged dealer. “What has he done?” “He has been palming kings and neutralizing the cut. I’ve been watching. Now I catch him,” cried Aristide in great excitement. “Ah, sale voleur! Maintenant je vous tiens!” “Monsieur,” said the Comte de Lussigny with dignity, stuffing his winnings into his jacket pocket. “You insult me. It is an infamy. Two of my friends will call upon you.” “And Monsieur Miller and I will kick them over Mont Revard.” “You cannot treat gens d’honneur in such a way, monsieur.” He turned to Miller, and said haughtily in his imperfect English, “Did you see the cheat, you?” “I can’t say that I did,” replied the young man. “On the other hand that torch-light procession of kings doesn’t seem exactly natural.” “But you did not see anything! Bon!” “But I saw. Isn’t that enough, hein?” shouted Aristide brandishing his fingers in the Count’s face. “You come here and think there’s nothing easier [Pg 264] than to cheat young foreigners who don’t know the rules of ecarté. You come here and think you can carry off rich young English misses. Ah, sale escroc! You never thought you would have to reckon with Aristide Pujol. You call yourself the Comte de Lussigny. Bah! I know you——” he didn’t, but that doesn’t matter—“your dossier is in the hands of the prefect of Police. I am going to get that dossier. Monsieur Lepine is my intimate friend. Every autumn we shoot together. Aha! You send me your two galley-birds and see what I do to them.” The Comte de Lussigny twirled the tips of his moustache almost to his forehead and caught up his hat. “My friends shall be officers in the uniform of the French Army,” he said, by the door. “And mine shall be two gendarmes,” retorted Aristide. “Nom de Dieu!” he cried, after the other had left the room. “We let him take the money!” “That’s of no consequence. He didn’t get away with much anyway,” said young Miller. “But he would have if you hadn’t been here. If ever I can do you a return service, just ask.” Aristide went out to look for the Erringtons. But they were not to be found. It was only late in the afternoon that he met Mrs. Errington in the hall of the hotel. He dragged her into a corner [Pg 265] and in his impulsive fashion told her everything. She listened white faced, in great distress. “My daughter’s engaged to him. I’ve only just learned,” she faltered. “Engaged? Sacrebleu! Ah, le goujat!”—for the second he was desperately, furiously, jealously in love with Betty Errington. “Ah, le sale type! Voyons! This engagement must be broken off. At once! You are her mother.” “She will hear of nothing against him.” “You will tell her this. It will be a blow; but——” Mrs. Errington twisted a handkerchief between helpless fingers. “Betty is infatuated. She won’t believe it.” She regarded him piteously. “Oh, Monsieur Pujol, what can I do? You see she has an independent fortune and is over twenty-one. I am powerless.” “I will meet his two friends,” exclaimed Aristide magnificently—“and I will kill him. Voilà!” “Oh, a duel? No! How awful!” cried the mild lady horror-stricken. He thrust his cane dramatically through a sheet of a newspaper, which he had caught up from a table. “I will run him through the body like that”—Aristide had never handled a foil in his life—“and when he is dead, your beautiful daughter will thank me for having saved her from such an execrable fellow.” [Pg 266] “But you mustn’t fight. It would be too dreadful. Is there no other way?” “You must consult first with your daughter,” said Aristide. He dined in the hotel with Eugene Miller. Neither the Erringtons nor the Comte de Lussigny were anywhere to be seen. After dinner, however, he found the elder lady waiting for him in the hall. They walked out into the quiet of the garden. She had been too upset to dine, she explained, having had a terrible scene with Betty. Nothing but absolute proofs of her lover’s iniquity would satisfy her. The world was full of slanderous tongues; the noblest and purest did not escape. For herself, she had never been comfortable with the Comte de Lussigny. She had noticed too that he had always avoided the best French people in hotels. She would give anything to save her daughter. She wept. “And the unhappy girl has written him compromising letters,” she lamented. “They must be got back.” “But how? Oh, Monsieur Pujol, do you think he would take money for them?” “A scoundrel like that would take money for his dead mother’s shroud,” said Aristide. “A thousand pounds?” She looked very haggard and helpless beneath the blue arc-lights. Aristide’s heart went out to [Pg 267] her. He knew her type—the sweet gentlewoman of rural England who comes abroad to give her pretty daughter a sight of life, ingenuously confident that foreign watering-places are as innocent as her own sequestered village. “That is much money, chère madame,” said Aristide. “I am fairly well off,” said Mrs. Errington. Aristide reflected. At the offer of a smaller sum the Count would possibly bluff. But to a Knight of Industry, as he knew the Count to be, a certain thousand pounds would be a great temptation. And after all to a wealthy Englishwoman what was a thousand pounds? “Madame,” said he, “if you offer him a thousand pounds for the letters, and a written confession that he is not the Comte de Lussigny, but a common adventurer, I stake my reputation that he will accept.” They walked along for a few moments in silence; the opera had begun at the adjoining Villa des Fleurs and the strains floated through the still August air. After a while she halted and laid her hand on his sleeve. “Monsieur Pujol, I have never been faced with such a thing, before. Will you undertake for me this delicate and difficult business?” “Madame,” said he, “my life is at the service of yourself and your most exquisite daughter.” [Pg 268] She pressed his hand. “Thank God, I’ve got a friend in this dreadful place,” she said brokenly. “Let me go in.” And when they reached the lounge, she said, “Wait for me here.” She entered the lift. Aristide waited. Presently the lift descended and she emerged with a slip of paper in her hand. “Here is a bearer cheque, Monsieur Pujol, for a thousand pounds. Get the letters and the confession if you can, and a mother’s blessing will go with you.” She left him and went upstairs again in the lift. Aristide athirst with love, living drama and unholy hatred of the Comte de Lussigny, cocked his black, soft-felt evening hat at an engaging angle on his head and swaggered into the Villa des Fleurs. As he passed the plebeian crowd round the petits-chevaux table—these were the days of little horses and not the modern equivalent of la boule—he threw a louis on the square marked 5, waited for the croupier to push him his winnings, seven louis and his stake on the little white horse, and walked into the baccarat room. A bank was being called for thirty louis at the end table. “Quarante,” said Aristide. “Ajugé à quarante louis,” cried the croupier, no one bidding higher. Aristide took the banker’s seat and put down his forty louis. Looking round the long table he saw [Pg 269] the Comte de Lussigny sitting in the punt. The two men glared at each other defiantly. Someone went “banco.” Aristide won. The fact of his holding the bank attracted a crowd round the table. The regular game began. Aristide won, lost, won again. Now it must be explained, without going into the details of the game, that the hand against the bank is played by the members of the punt in turn. Suddenly, before dealing the cards, Aristide asked, “A qui la main?” “C’est à Monsieur,” said the croupier, indicating Lussigny. “Il y a une suite,” said Aristide, signifying, as was his right, that he would retire from the bank with his winnings. “The face of that gentleman does not please me.” There was a hush at the humming table. The Count grew dead white and looked at his fingernails. Aristide superbly gathered up his notes and gold, and tossing a couple of louis to the croupiers, left the table, followed by all eyes. It was one of the thrilling moments of Aristide’s life. He had taken the stage, commanded the situation. He had publicly offered the Comte de Lussigny the most deadly insult and the Comte de Lussigny sat down beneath it like a lamb. He swaggered slowly through the crowded room, twirling his moustache, and went into the cool of the moonlit deserted [Pg 270] garden beyond, where he waited gleefully. He had a puckish knowledge of human nature. After a decent interval, and during the absorbing interest of the newly constituted bank, the Comte de Lussigny slipped unnoticed from the table and went in search of Aristide. He found him smoking a large corona and lounging in one wicker chair with his feet on another, beside a very large whisky and soda. “Ah, it’s you,” said he without moving. “Yes,” said the Count furiously. “I haven’t yet had the pleasure of kicking your friends over Mont Revard,” said Aristide. “Look here, mon petit, this has got to finish,” cried the Count. “Parfaitement. I should like nothing better than to finish. But let us finish like well-bred people,” said Aristide suavely. “We don’t want the whole Casino as witnesses. You’ll find a chair over there. Bring it up.” He was enjoying himself immensely. The Count glared at him, turned and banged a chair over by the side of the table. “Why do you insult me like this?” “Because,” said Aristide, “I’ve talked by telephone this evening with my good friend Monsieur Lepine, Prefect of Police of Paris.” “You lie,” said the Count. “Vous verrez. In the meantime, perhaps we [Pg 271] might have a little conversation. Will you have a whisky and soda? It is one of my English habits.” “No,” said the Count emphatically. “You permit me then?” He drank a great draught. “You are wrong. It helps to cool one’s temper. Eh bien, let us talk.” He talked. He put before the Count the situation of the beautiful Miss Errington. He conducted the scene like the friend of the family whose astuteness he had admired as a boy in the melodramas that found their way to Marseilles. “Look,” said he, at last, having vainly offered from one hundred to eight hundred pounds for poor Betty Errington’s compromising letters. “Look——” He drew the cheque from his note-case. “Here are twenty-five thousand francs. The signature is that of the charming Madame Errington herself. The letters, and a little signed word, just a little word. ‘Mademoiselle, I am a chevalier d’industrie. I have a wife and five children. I am not worthy of you. I give you back your promise.’ Just that. And twenty-five thousand francs, mon ami.” “Never in life!” exclaimed the Count rising. “You continue to insult me.” Aristide for the first time abandoned his lazy and insolent attitude and jumped to his feet. “And I’ll continue to insult you, canaille that you are, all through that room,” he cried, with [Pg 272] a swift-flung gesture towards the brilliant doorway. “You are dealing with Aristide Pujol. Will you never understand? The letters and a confession for twenty-five thousand francs.” “Never in life,” said the Count, and he moved swiftly away. Aristide caught him by the collar as he stood on the covered terrace, a foot or two from the threshold of the gaming-room. “I swear to you, I’ll make a scandal that you won’t survive.” The Count stopped and pushed Aristide’s hand away. “I admit nothing,” said he. “But you are a gambler and so am I. I will play you for those documents against twenty-five thousand francs.” “Eh?” said Aristide, staggered for the moment. The Comte de Lussigny repeated his proposition. “Bon,” said Aristide. “Trés bon. C’est entendu. C’est fait.” If Beelzebub had arisen and offered to play beggar-my-neighbour for his soul, Aristide would have agreed; especially after the large whisky and soda and the Mumm Cordon Rouge and the Napoleon brandy which Eugene Miller had insisted on his drinking at dinner. “I have a large room at the hotel,” said he. “I will join you,” said the Count. “Monsieur,” [Pg 273] he took off his hat very politely. “Go first. I will be there in three minutes.” Aristide trod on air during the two minutes’ walk to the Hôtel de l’Europe. At the bureau he ordered a couple of packs of cards and a supply of drinks and went to his palatial room on the ground floor. In a few moments the Comte de Lussigny appeared. Aristide offered him a two francs corona which was ceremoniously accepted. Then he tore the wrapping off one of the packs of cards and shuffled. “Monsieur,” said he, still shuffling. “I should like to deal two hands at ecarté. It signifies nothing. It is an experiment. Will you cut?” “Volontiers,” said the Count. Aristide took up the pack, dealt three cards to the Count, three cards to himself, two cards to the Count, two to himself and turned up the King of Hearts as the eleventh card. “Monsieur,” said he, “expose your hand and I will expose mine.” Both men threw their hands face uppermost on the table. Aristide’s was full of trumps, the Count’s of valueless cards. He looked at his adversary with his roguish, triumphant smile. The Count looked at him darkly. “The ordinary card player does not know how to deal like that,” he said with sinister significance. “But I am not ordinary in anything, my dear [Pg 274] sir,” laughed Aristide, in his large boastfulness. “If I were, do you think I would have agreed to your absurd proposal? Voyons, I only wanted to show you that in dealing cards I am your equal. Now, the letters——” The Count threw a small packet on the table. “You will permit me? I do not wish to read them. I verify only. Good,” said he. “And the confession?” “What you like,” said the Count, coldly. Aristide scribbled a few lines that would have been devastating to the character of a Hyrcanean tiger and handed the paper and fountain pen to the Count. “Will you sign?” The Count glanced at the words and signed. “Voilà,” said Aristide, laying Mrs. Errington’s cheque beside the documents. “Now let us play. The best of three games?” “Good,” said the Count. “But you will excuse me, monsieur, if I claim to play for ready money. The cheque will take five days to negotiate and if I lose, I shall evidently have to leave Aix to-morrow morning.” “That’s reasonable,” said Aristide. He drew out his fat note-case and counted twenty-five one-thousand-franc notes on to the table. And then began the most exciting game of cards he had ever played. In the first place he was playing with another person’s money for a [Pg 275] fantastic stake, a girl’s honour and happiness. Secondly he was pitted against a master of ecarté. And thirdly he knew that his adversary would cheat if he could and that his adversary suspected him of fraudulent designs. So as they played, each man craned his head forward and looked at the other man’s fingers with fierce intensity. Aristide lost the first game. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. In the second game, he won the vole in one hand. The third and final game began. They played slowly, carefully, with keen quick eyes. Their breathing came hard. The Count’s lips parted beneath his uptwisted moustache showed his teeth like a cat’s. Aristide lost sense of all outer things in the thrill of the encounter. They snarled the stereotyped phrases necessary for the conduct of the game. At last the points stood at four for Aristide and three for his adversary. It was Aristide’s deal. Before turning up the eleventh card he paused for the fraction of a second. If it was the King, he had won. He flicked it neatly face upward. It was not the King. “J’en donne.” “Non. Le roi.” The Count played and marked the King. Aristide had no trumps. The game was lost. He sat back white, while the Count smiling gathered up the bank-notes. “And now, Monsieur Pujol,” said he impudently, [Pg 276] “I am willing to sell you this rubbish for the cheque.” Aristide jumped to his feet. “Never!” he cried. Madness seized him. Regardless of the fact that he had nothing like another thousand pounds left wherewith to repay Mrs. Errington if he lost, he shouted: “I will play again for it. Not ecarté. One cut of the cards. Ace lowest.” “All right,” said the Count. “Begin, you.” Aristide watched his hand like cat, as he cut. He cut an eight. Aristide gave a little gasp of joy and cut quickly. He held up a Knave and laughed aloud. Then he stopped short as he saw the Count about to pounce on the documents and the cheque. He made a swift movement and grabbed them first, the other man’s hand on his. “Canaille!” He dashed his free hand into the adventurer’s face. The man staggered back. Aristide pocketed the precious papers. The Count scowled at him for an undecided second, and then bolted from the room. “Whew!” said Aristide, sinking into his chair and wiping his face. “That was a narrow escape.” He looked at his watch. It was only ten o’clock. It had seemed as if his game with Lussigny had lasted for hours. He could not go to bed and stood confronted with anti-climax. After a while [Pg 277] he went in search of Eugene Miller and having found him in solitary meditation on stained glass windows in the dim-lit grounds of the Villa, sat down by his side and for the rest of the evening poured his peculiar knowledge of Europe into the listening ear of the young man from Atlanta. On the following morning, as soon as he was dressed, he learned from the Concierge that the Comte de Lussigny had left for Paris by the early train. “Good,” said Aristide. A little later Mrs. Errington met him in the lounge and accompanied him to the lawn where they had sat the day before. “I have no words to thank you, Monsieur Pujol,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I have heard how you shamed him at the tables. It was brave of you.” “It was nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he were in the habit of doing deeds like that every day of his life. “And your exquisite daughter, Madame?” “Poor Betty! She is prostrate. She says she will never hold up her head again. Her heart is broken.” “It is young and will be mended,” said Aristide. She smiled sadly. “It will be a question of time. But she is grateful to you, Monsieur Pujol. She [Pg 278] realizes from what a terrible fate you have saved her.” She sighed. There was a brief silence. “After this,” she continued, “a further stay in Aix would be too painful. We have decided to take the Savoy express this evening and get back to our quiet home in Somerset.” “Ah, madame,” said Aristide earnestly. “And shall I not have the pleasure of seeing the charming Miss Betty again?” “You will come and stay with us in September. Let me see? The fifteenth. Why not fix a date? You have my address? No? Will you write it down?” she dictated: “Wrotesly Manor, Burnholme, Somerset. There I’ll try to show you how grateful I am.” She extended her hand. He bowed over it and kissed it in his French way and departed a very happy man. The Erringtons left that evening. Aristide waylaid them as they were entering the hotel omnibus, with a preposterous bouquet of flowers which he presented to Betty, whose pretty face was hidden by a motor-veil. He bowed, laid his hand on his heart and said: “Adieu, mademoiselle.” “No,” she said in a low voice, but most graciously, “Au revoir, Monsieur Pujol.” For the next few days Aix seemed to be tame and colourless. In an inexplicable fashion, too, it had become unprofitable. Aristide no longer knew [Pg 279] that he was going to win; and he did not win. He lost considerably. So much so that on the morning when he was to draw the cash for the cheque, at the Crédit Lyonnais, he had only fifty pounds and some odd silver left. Aristide looking at the remainder rather ruefully made a great resolution. He would gamble no more. Already he was richer than he had ever been in his life. He would leave Aix. Tiens! why should he not go to his good friends the Bocardons at Nîmes, bringing with him a gold chain for Bocardon and a pair of ear-rings for the adorable Zette? There he would look about him. He would use the thousand pounds as a stepping-stone to legitimate fortune. Then he would visit the Erringtons in England, and if the beautiful Miss Betty smiled on him—why, after all, sacrebleu he was an honest man, without a feather on his conscience. So, jauntily swinging his cane, he marched into the office of the Crédit Lyonnais, went into the inner room and explained his business. “Ah, your cheque, monsieur, that we were to collect. I am sorry. It has come back from the London bankers.” “How come back?” “It has not been honoured. See, monsieur. ‘Not known. No account.’” The cashier pointed to the grim words across the cheque. “Comprends pas,” faltered Aristide. [Pg 280] “It means that the person who gave you the cheque has no account at this bank.” Aristide took the cheque and looked at it in a dazed way. “Then I do not get my twenty-five thousand francs?” “Evidently not,” said the cashier. Aristide stood for a while stunned. What did it mean? His thousand pounds could not be lost. It was impossible. There was some mistake. It was an evil dream. With a heavy weight on the top of his head, he went out of the Crédit Lyonnais and mechanically crossed the little street separating the Bank from the café on the Place Carnot. There he sat stupidly and wondered. The waiter hovered in front of him. “Monsieur désire?” Aristide waved him away absently. Yes, it was some mistake. Mrs. Errington in her agitation must have used the wrong cheque book. But even rich English people do not carry about with them a circulating library assortment of cheque books. It was incomprehensible—and meanwhile, his thousand pounds.... The little square blazed before him in the August sunshine. Opposite flashed the white mass of the Etablissement des Bains. There was the old Roman Arch of Titus, gray and venerable. There were the trees of the gardens in riotous greenery. There on the right marking the hour of eleven on its [Pg 281] black face was the clock of the Comptoir National. It was Aix; familiar Aix; not a land of dreams. And there coming rapidly across from the Comptoir National was the well knit figure of the young man from Atlanta. “Nom de Dieu,” murmured Aristide. “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” Eugene Miller, in a fine frenzy, threw himself into a chair beside Aristide. “See here. Can you understand this?” He thrust into his hand a pink strip of paper. It was a cheque for a hundred pounds, made payable to Eugene Miller, Esquire, signed by Mary Errington, and marked “Not known. No account.” “Tonnerre de Dieu!” cried Aristide. “How did you get this?” “How did I get it? I cashed it for her—the day she went away. She said urgent affairs summoned her from Aix—no time to wire for funds—wanted to pay her hotel bill—and she gave me the address of her old English home in Somerset and invited me to come there in September. Fifteenth of September. Said that you were coming. And now I’ve got a bum cheque. I guess I can’t wander about this country alone. I need blinkers and harness and a man with a whip.” He went on indignantly. Aristide composed his face into an expression of parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening [Pg 282] upheaval. He saw it all, the whole mocking drama.... He, Aristide Pujol, was the most sweetly, the most completely swindled man in France. The Comte de Lussigny, the mild Mrs. Errington and the beautiful Betty were in league together and had exquisitely plotted. They had conspired, as soon as he had accused the Count of cheating. The rascal must have gone straight to them from Miller’s room. No wonder that Lussigny, when insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in the garden. No wonder he had accepted the accusation of adventurer. No wonder he had refused to play for the cheque which he knew to be valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying for success on his manipulation of the cards. Finally he had desired to get hold of a dangerous cheque. In that he had been foiled. But the trio has got away with his thousand pounds, his wonderful thousand pounds. He reflected, still keeping an attentive eye on young Eugene Miller and interjecting a sympathetic word, that after he had paid his hotel bill, he would be as poor on quitting Aix-les-Bains as he was when [Pg 283] he had entered it. Sic transit.... As it was in the beginning with Aristide Pujol, is now and ever shall be.... “But I have my clothes—such clothes as I’ve never had in my life,” thought Aristide. “And a diamond and sapphire tie-pin and a gold watch, and all sorts of other things. Tron de l’air, I’m still rich.” “Who would have thought she was like that?” said he. “And a hundred pounds, too. A lot of money.” For nothing in the world would he have confessed himself a fellow-victim. “I don’t care a cent for the hundred pounds,” cried the young man. “Our factory turns out seven hundred and sixty-seven million pairs of boots per annum.” (Aristide, not I, is responsible for the statistics.) “But I have a feeling that in this hoary country I’m just a little toddling child. And I hate it. I do, sir. I want a nurse to take me round.” Aristide flashed the lightning of his wit upon the young man from Atlanta, Georgia. “You do, my dear young friend. I’ll be your nurse, at a weekly salary—say a hundred francs—it doesn’t matter. We will not quarrel.” Eugene Miller was startled. “Yes,” said Aristide, with a convincing flourish. “I’ll clear robbers and sirens and harpies from your path. I’ll show you things [Pg 284] in Europe—from Tromsö to Cap Spartivento that you never dreamed of. I’ll lead you to every stained glass window in the world. I know them all.” “I particularly want to see those in the church of St. Sebald in Nuremberg.” “I know them like my pocket,” said Aristide. “I will take you there. We start to-day.” “But, Mr. Pujol,” said the somewhat bewildered Georgian. “I thought you were a man of fortune.” “I am more than a man. I am a soldier. I am a soldier of Fortune. The fickle goddess has for the moment deserted me. But I am loyal. I have for all worldly goods, two hundred and fifty dollars, with which I shall honorably pay my hotel bill. I say I am a soldier of Fortune. But,” he slapped his chest, “I am the only honorable one on the Continent of Europe.” The young man fixed upon him the hard blue eyes, not of the enthusiast for stained glass windows, but of the senior partner in the boot factory of Atlanta, Georgia. “I believe you,” said he. “It’s a deal. Shake.” “And now,” said Aristide, after having shaken hands, “come and lunch with me at Nikola’s for the last time.” He rose, stretched out both arms in a wide gesture and smiled with his irresistible Ancient Mariner’s eyes at the young man. [Pg 285] “We lunch. We eat ambrosia. Then we go out together and see the wonderful world through the glass-blood of saints and martyrs and apostles and the good Father Abraham and Louis Quatorze. Viens, mon cher ami. It is the dream of my life.” Practically penniless and absolutely disillusioned, the amazing man was radiantly happy. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 286] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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