The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol. Locke William John
McKeogh.
“And now,” said I, as soon as we had started on the right-hand road, “will you have the kindness to explain?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he cried, gleefully. “Here am I delivered. I am free. I can breathe God’s good air again. I’m not going to marry Yum-Yum, Yum-Yum. I feel ten years younger. Oh, I’ve had a narrow escape. But that’s the way with me. I always fall on my feet. Didn’t I tell you I’ve never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the House of Bondage. I took it, and here I am! For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Aigues-Mortes, when suddenly you – a Deus ex machina– a veritable god out of the machine – come to my aid. Don’t say there isn’t a Providence watching over me.”
I suggested that his mode of escape seemed somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn’t he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied?
“For the simple reason,” said he, with a gay laugh, “that I haven’t a single penny piece in the world.”
He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously.
“Not one tiny bronze sou,” said he.
“You seem to take it pretty philosophically,” said I.
“Les gueux, les gueux, sont des gens heureux,” he quoted.
“You’re the first person who has made me believe in the happiness of beggars.”
“In time I shall make you believe in lots of things,” he retorted. “No. I hadn’t one sou to buy a ticket, and Amélie never left me. I spent my last franc on the journey from Carcassonne to Aigues-Mortes. Amélie insisted on accompanying me. She was taking no chances. Her eyes never left me from the time we started. When I ran to your assistance she was watching me from a house on the other side of the place. She came to the hotel while we were lunching. I thought I would slip away unnoticed and join you after you had made the tour des remparts. But no. I must present her to my English friend. And then —voyons– didn’t I tell you I never lost a visiting-card? Look at this?”
He dived into his pocket, produced the letter-case, and extracted a card.
“Voilà.”
I read: “The Duke of Wiltshire.”
“But, good heavens, man,” I cried, “that’s not the card I gave you.”
“I know it isn’t,” said he; “but it’s the one I showed to Amélie.”
“How on earth,” I asked, “did you come by the Duke of Wiltshire’s visiting-card?”
He looked at me roguishly.
“I am – what do you call it? – a – a ‘snapper up of unconsidered trifles.’ You see I know my Shakespeare. I read ‘The Winter’s Tale’ with some French pupils to whom I was teaching English. I love Autolycus. C’est un peu moi, hein? Anyhow, I showed the Duke’s card to Amélie.”
I began to understand. “That was why you called me ‘monseigneur’?”
“Naturally. And I told her that you were my English patron, and would give me four thousand francs as a wedding present if I accompanied you to your agent’s at Montpellier, where you could draw the money. Ah! But she was suspicious! Yesterday I borrowed a bicycle. A friend left it in the courtyard. I thought, ‘I will creep out at dead of night, when everyone’s asleep, and once on my petite bicyclette, bonsoir la compagnie.’ But, would you believe it? When I had dressed and crept down, and tried to mount the bicycle, I found both tyres had been punctured in a hundred places with the point of a pair of scissors. What do you think of that, eh? Ah, là, là! it has been a narrow escape. When you invited her to accompany us to Montpellier my heart was in my mouth.”
“It would have served you right,” I said, “if she had accepted.”
He laughed as though, instead of not having a penny, he had not a care in the world. Accustomed to the geometrical conduct of my well-fed fellow-Britons, who map out their lives by rule and line, I had no measure whereby to gauge this amazing and inconsequential person. In one way he had acted abominably. To leave an affianced bride in the lurch in this heartless manner was a most ungentlemanly proceeding. On the other hand, an unscrupulous adventurer would have married the woman for her money and chanced the consequences. In the tussle between Perseus and the Gorgon the odds are all in favour of Perseus. Mercury and Minerva, the most sharp-witted of the gods, are helping him all the time – to say nothing of the fact that Perseus starts out by being a notoriously handsome fellow. So a handsome rogue can generally wheedle an elderly, ugly wife into opening her money-bags, and, if successful, leads the enviable life of a fighting-cock. It was very much to his credit that this kind of life was not to the liking of Aristide Pujol.
Indeed, speaking from affectionate knowledge of the man, I can declare that the position in which he, like many a better man, had placed himself was intolerable. Other men of equal sensitiveness would have extricated themselves in a more commonplace fashion; but the dramatic appealed to my rascal, and he has often plumed himself on his calculated coup de théâtre at the fork of the roads. He was delighted with it. Even now I sometimes think that Aristide Pujol will never grow up.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” said I, “and that is your astonishing influence over the populace at Aigues-Mortes. You came upon them like a firework – a devil-among-the-tailors – and everybody, gendarmes and victim included, became as tame as sheep. How was it?”
He laughed. “I said you were my very old and dear friend and patron, a great English duke.”
“I don’t quite see how that explanation satisfied the pig-headed old gentleman whom I knocked down.”
“Oh, that,” said Aristide Pujol, with a look of indescribable drollery – “that was my old father.”
II
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ARLÉSIENNE
Aristide Pujol bade me a sunny farewell at the door of the Hôtel du Luxembourg at Nîmes, and, valise in hand, darted off, in his impetuous fashion, across the Place de l’Esplanade. I felt something like a pang at the sight of his retreating figure, as, on his own confession, he had not a penny in the world. I wondered what he would do for food and lodging, to say nothing of tobacco, apéritifs, and other such necessaries of life. The idea of so gay a creature starving was abhorrent. Yet an invitation to stay as my guest at the hotel until he saw an opportunity of improving his financial situation he had courteously declined.
Early next morning I found him awaiting me in the lounge and smoking an excellent cigar. He explained that so dear a friend as myself ought to be the first to hear the glad tidings. Last evening, by the grace of Heaven, he had run across a bare acquaintance, a manufacturer of nougat at Montélimar; had spent several hours in his company, with the result that he had convinced him of two things: first, that the dry, crumbling, shortbread-like nougat of Montélimar was unknown in England, where the population subsisted on a sickly, glutinous mess whereto the medical faculty had ascribed the prevalent dyspepsia of the population; and, secondly, that the one Heaven-certified apostle who could spread the glorious gospel of Montélimar nougat over the length and breadth of Great Britain and Ireland was himself, Aristide Pujol. A handsome salary had been arranged, of which he had already drawn something on account —hinc ille Colorado– and he was to accompany his principal the next day to Montélimar, en route for the conquest of Britain. In the meantime he was as free as the winds, and would devote the day to showing me the wonders of the town.
I congratulated him on his almost fantastic good fortune and gladly accepted his offer.
“There is one thing I should like to ask you,” said I, “and it is this. Yesterday afternoon you refused my cordially-offered hospitality, and went away without a sou to bless yourself with. What did you do? I ask out of curiosity. How does a man set about trying to subsist on nothing at all?”
“It’s