Chapter 14

"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 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 Rastaquoueres 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."

"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."

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 cafe 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 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 aesthetic 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 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.

"Ecarte."

Aristide brought his hand down with a bang on the table and uttered anathemas in French and Provencal entirely unintelligible to Eugene Miller; but the youth knew by instinct that they were useful, soul-destroying curses and he felt comforted.

"Ecarte! You played ecarte with Lussigny? But my dear young friend, do you know anything of ecarte?"

"Of course," said Miller. "I used to play it as a child with my sisters."

"Do you know the _jeux de regle_?"

"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 Napoleon," 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 ecarte 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 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 dejeuner. 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 regle_ and _pate 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 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 than to cheat young foreigners who don't know the rules of ecarte. 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 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. _Voila!_"

"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."

"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 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, _chere 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." 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.

"_Ajuge a 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 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 a 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 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 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 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. "_Tres 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," 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 Hotel 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 ecarte. 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 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?"