Chapter 7

Aristide pocketed his takings, struck his flag, dismantled his table, and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hieropath. The day's work over, he returned to inquire for his supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, and showed his two little teeth to the proudest father in the world. The landlady invited the happy parent into her little dark parlour beyond the office, and there exhibited a parcel containing garments and implements whose use was a mystery to Aristide. She also demanded the greater part of another louis. Aristide began to learn that fatherhood is expensive. But what did it matter?

After all, here was a babe equipped to face the exigencies of a censorious world; in looks and apparel a credit to any father. As the afternoon was fine, and as it seemed a pity to waste satin and rabbit-fur on the murky interior of the hotel, Aristide borrowed a perambulator from the landlady, and, joyous as a schoolboy, wheeled the splendid infant through the sunny avenues of Salon.

That evening a bed was made up for the child in Aristide's room, which, until its master retired for the night, was haunted by the landlady, the chambermaids and all the kitchen wenches in the hotel. Aristide had to turn them out and lock his door.

"This is excellent," said he, apostrophizing the thoroughly fed, washed, and now sleeping child. "This is superb. As in every hotel there are women, and as every woman thinks she can be a much better mother than I, so in every hotel we visit we shall find a staff of trained and enthusiastic nurses. Jean, you will live like a little _coq en pate_."

The night passed amid various excursions on the part of Aristide and alarms on the part of Jean. Sometimes the child lay so still that Aristide arose to see whether he was alive. Sometimes he gave such proofs of vitality that Aristide, in terror lest he should awaken the whole hotel, walked him about the room chanting lullabies. This was in accordance with Jean's views on luxury. He "goo'd" with joy. When Aristide put him back to bed he howled. Aristide snatched him up and he "goo'd" again. At last Aristide fed him desperately, dandled him eventually to sleep, and returned to an excited pillow. It is a fearsome thing for a man to be left alone in the dead of night with a young baby.

"I'll get used to it," said Aristide.

The next morning he purchased a basket, which he lashed ingeniously on the left-hand seat of the car, and a cushion, which he fitted into the basket. The berth prepared, he deposited the sumptuously-apparelled Jean therein and drove away, amid the perplexed benisons of the landlady and her satellites.

Thus began the oddest Odyssey on which ever mortals embarked. The man with the automobile, the corn-cure, and the baby grew to be legendary in the villages of Provence. When the days were fine, Jean in his basket assisted at the dramatic performance in the market-place. Becoming a magnet for the women, and being of a good-humoured and rollicking nature, he helped on the sale of the cure prodigiously. He earned his keep, as Aristide declared in exultation. Soon Aristide formed a collection of his tricks and doings wherewith he would entertain the chance acquaintances of his vagabondage. To a permanent companion he would have grown insufferable. He invented him a career from the day of his birth, chronicled the coming of the first tooth, wept over the demise of the fictitious mother, and, in his imaginative way, convinced himself of his fatherhood. And every day the child crept deeper into the man's sunny heart.

Together they had many wanderings and many adventures. The wheezy, crazy mechanism of the car went to bits in unexpected places. They tobogganed down hills without a brake at the imminent peril of their lives. They suffered the indignity of being towed by wine-wagons. They spent hours by the wayside while Aristide took her to pieces and, sometimes with the help of a passing motorist, put her together again. Sometimes, too, an inn boasted no landlady, only a dishevelled and over-driven chambermaid, who refused to wash Jean. Aristide washed and powdered Jean himself, the landlord lounging by, pipe in mouth, administering suggestions. Once Jean grew ill, and Aristide in terror summoned the doctor, who told him that he had filled the child up with milk to bursting-point. Yet, in spite of heterogeneous nursing and exposure to sun and rain and piercing mistral, Jean throve exceedingly, and, to Aristide's delight, began to cut another tooth. The vain man began to regard himself as an expert in denticulture.

At the end of a fairly-wide circuit, Aristide, with empty store-boxes and pleasantly-full pockets, arrived at the little town of Aix-en-Provence. He had arrived there not without difficulty. On the outskirts the car, which had been coaxed reluctantly along for many weary kilometres, had groaned, rattled, whirred, given a couple of convulsive leaps, and stood stock-still. This was one of her pretty ways. He was used to them, and hitherto he had been able to wheedle her into resumed motion. But this time, with all his cunning and perspiration, he could not induce another throb in the tired engines. A friendly motorist towed them to the Hotel de Paris in the Cours Mirabeau. Having arranged for his room and given Jean in charge of the landlady, he procured some helping hands, and pushed the car to the nearest garage. There he gave orders for the car to be put into running condition for the following morning, and returned to the hotel.

He found Jean in the vestibule, sprawling sultanesquely on the landlady's lap, the centre of an admiring circle which consisted of two little girls in pigtails, an ancient peasant-woman, and two English ladies of obvious but graceful spinsterhood.

"Here is the father," said the landlady.

He had already explained Jean to the startled woman--landladies were always startled at Jean's unconventional advent. "Madame," he had said, according to rigid formula, "this is my son. I am taking him from his mother, who is dead, to an aunt who is an invalid, so he is alone on my hands. I beseech you to let some kind woman attend to his necessities."

There was no need for further explanation. Aristide, thus introduced, bowed politely, removed his Crusoe cap, and smiled luminously at the assembled women. They resumed their antiphonal chorus of worship. The brown, merry, friendly brat had something of Aristide's personal charm. He had a bubble and a "goo" for everyone. Aristide looked on in great delight. Jean was a son to be proud of.

"_Ah! qu'il est fort--fort comme un Turc._"

"_Regardez ses dents._"

"The darling thing!"

"_Il est_--oh, dear!--_il est ravissante!_"--with a disastrous plunge into gender.

"_Tiens! il rit. C'est moi qui le fais rire._"

"To think," said the younger Englishwoman to her sister, "of this wee mite travelling about in an open motor!"

"He's having the time of his life. He enjoys it as much as I do," said Aristide, in his excellent English.

The lady started. She was a well-bred, good-humoured woman in the early thirties, stout, with reddish hair, and irregular though comely features. Her sister was thin, faded, sandy, and kind-looking.

"I thought you were French," she said, apologetically.

"So I am," replied Aristide. "Provencal of Provence, Meridional of the Midi, Marseillais of Marseilles."

"But you talk English perfectly."

"I've lived in your beautiful country," said Aristide.

"You have the bonniest boy," said the elder lady. "How old is he?"

"Nine months, three weeks and a day," said Aristide, promptly.

The younger lady bent over the miraculous infant.

"Can I take him? _Est-ce que je puis_--oh, dear!" She turned a whimsical face to Aristide.

He translated. The landlady surrendered the babe. The lady danced him with the spinster's charming awkwardness, yet with instinctive feminine security, about the hall, while the little girls in pigtails, daughters of the house, followed like adoratory angels in an altar-piece, and the old peasant-woman looked benignly on, a myriad-wrinkled St. Elizabeth. Aristide had seen Jean dandled by dozens of women during their brief comradeship; he had thought little of it, as it was the natural thing for women to do; but when this sweet English lady mothered Jean it seemed to matter a great deal. She lifted Jean and himself to a higher plane. Her touch was a consecration.

It was the hour of the day when infants of nine months should be washed and put to bed. The landlady, announcing the fact, held out her arms. Jean clung to his English nurse, who played the fascinating game of pretending to eat his hand. The landlady had not that accomplishment. She was dull and practical.

"Come and be washed," she said.

"Oh, do let me come, too," cried the English lady.

"_Bien volontiers, mademoiselle_," said the other. "_C'est par ici._"

The English lady held Jean out for the paternal good-night. Aristide kissed the child in her arms. The action brought about, for the moment, a curious and sweet intimacy.

"My sister is passionately fond of children," said the elder lady, in smiling apology.

"And you?"

"I, too. But Anne--my sister--will not let me have a chance when she is by."

After dinner Aristide went up, as usual, to his room to see that Jean was alive, painless, and asleep. Finding him awake, he sat by his side and, with the earnestness of a nursery-maid, patted him off to slumber. Then he crept out on tiptoe and went downstairs. Outside the hotel he came upon the two sisters sitting on a bench and drinking coffee. The night was fine, the terraces of the neighbouring cafes were filled with people, and all the life of Aix not at the cafes promenaded up and down the wide and pleasant avenue. The ladies smiled. How was the boy? He gave the latest news. Permission to join them at their coffee was graciously given. A waiter brought a chair and he sat down. Conversation drifted from the baby to general topics. The ladies told the simple story of their tour. They had been to Nice and Marseilles, and they were going on the next day to Avignon. They also told their name--Honeywood. He gathered that the elder was Janet, the younger Anne. They lived at Chislehurst when they were in England, and often came up to London to attend the Queen's Hall concerts and the dramatic performances at His Majesty's Theatre. As guileless, though as self-reliant, gentlewomen as sequestered England could produce. Aristide, impressionable and responsive, fell at once into the key of their talk. He has told me that their society produced on him the effect of the cool hands of saints against his cheek.

At last the conversation inevitably returned to Jean. The landlady had related the tragic history of the dead mother and the invalid aunt. They deplored the orphaned state of the precious babe. For he was precious, they declared. Miss Anne had taken him to her heart.

"If only you had seen him in his bath, Janet!"

She turned to Aristide. "I'm afraid," she said, very softly, hesitating a little--"I'm afraid this must be a sad journey for you."

He made a wry mouth. The sympathy was so sincere, so womanly. That which was generous in him revolted against acceptance.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "I can play a farce with landladies--it happens to be convenient--in fact, necessary. But with you--no. You are different. Jean is not my child, and who his parents are I've not the remotest idea."

"Not your child?" They looked at him incredulously.

"I will tell you--in confidence," said he.

Jean's history was related in all its picturesque details; the horrors of the life of an _enfant trouve_ luridly depicted. The sisters listened with tears in their foolish eyes. Behind the tears Anne's grew bright. When he had finished she stretched out her hand impulsively.

"Oh, I call it splendid of you!"

He took the hand and, in his graceful French fashion, touched it with his lips. She flushed, having expected, in her English way, that he would grasp it.

"Your commendation, mademoiselle, is sweet to hear," said he.

"I hope he will grow up to be a true comfort to you, M. Pujol," said Miss Janet.

"I can understand a woman doing what you've done, but scarcely a man," said Miss Anne.

"But, dear mademoiselle," cried Aristide, with a large gesture, "cannot a man have his heart touched, his--his--_ses entrailles, enfin_--stirred by baby fingers? Why should love of the helpless and the innocent be denied him?"

"Why, indeed?" said Miss Janet.

Miss Anne said, humbly: "I only meant that your devotion to Jean was all the more beautiful, M. Pujol."

Soon after this they parted, the night air having grown chill. Both ladies shook hands with him warmly.

Anne's hand lingered the fraction of a second longer in his than Janet's. She had seen Jean in his bath.

Aristide wandered down the gay avenue into the open road and looked at the stars, reading in their splendour a brilliant destiny for Jean. He felt, in his sensitive way, that the two sweet-souled Englishwomen had deepened and sanctified his love for Jean. When he returned to the hotel he kissed his incongruous room-mate with the gentleness of a woman.

In the morning he went round to the garage. The foreman mechanician advanced to meet him.

"Well?"

"There is nothing to be done, monsieur."

"What do you mean by 'nothing to be done'?" asked Aristide.

The other shrugged his sturdy shoulders.

"She is worn out. She needs new carburation, new cylinders, new water-circulation, new lubrication, new valves, new brakes, new ignition, new gears, new bolts, new nuts, new everything. In short, she is not repairable."

Aristide listened in incredulous amazement. His automobile, his wonderful, beautiful, clashing, dashing automobile unrepairable! It was impossible. But a quarter of an hour's demonstration by the foreman convinced him. The car was dead. The engine would never whir again. All the petrol in the world would not stimulate her into life. Never again would he sit behind that wheel rejoicing in the insolence of speed. The car, which, in spite of her manifold infirmities, he had fondly imagined to be immortal, had run her last course. Aristide felt faint.

"And there is nothing to be done?"

"Nothing, monsieur. Fifty francs is all that she is worth."

"At any rate," said Aristide, "send the basket to the Hotel de Paris."

He went out of the garage like a man in a dream. At the door he turned to take a last look at the Pride of his Life. Her stern was towards him, and all he saw of her was the ironical legend, "Cure your Corns."

At the hotel he found the bench outside occupied chiefly by Jean. One of the little girls in pigtails was holding him, while Miss Anne administered the feeding-bottle. Provincial France is the happiest country in the world--in that you can live your intimate, domestic life in public, and nobody heeds.

"I hope you've not come to tell Jean to boot and saddle," said Miss Anne, a smile on her roughly-hewn, comely face.

"Alas!" said Aristide, cheered by the charming spectacle before him. "I don't know when we can get away. My auto has broken down hopelessly. I ought to go at once to my firm in Marseilles"--he spoke as if he were a partner in the Maison Hieropath--"but I don't quite know what to do with Jean."

"Oh, I'll look after Jean."

"But you said you were leaving for Avignon to-day."

She laughed, holding the feeding-bottle. "The Palace of the Popes has been standing for six centuries, and it will be still standing to-morrow; whereas Jean----" Here Jean, for some reason known to himself, grinned wet and wide. "Isn't he the most fascinating thing of the twentieth century?" she cried, logically inconsequential, like most of her sex. "You go to Marseilles, M. Pujol."

So Aristide took the train to Marseilles--a half-hour's journey--and in a quarter of the city resembling a fusion of Jarrow, an unfashionable part of St. Louis, and a brimstone-manufacturing suburb of Gehenna, he interviewed the high authorities of the Maison Hieropath. His cajolery could lead men into diverse lunacies, but it could not induce the hard-bitten manufacturer of quack remedies to provide a brand-new automobile for his personal convenience. The old auto had broken down. The manufacturer shrugged his shoulders. The mystery was that it had lasted as long as it did. He had expected it to explode the first day. The idea had originally been that of the junior partner, a scatter-brained youth whom at times they humoured. Meanwhile, there being no beplacarded and beflagged automobile, there could be no advertisement; therefore they had no further use for M. Pujol's services.

"Good," said Aristide, when he reached the evil thoroughfare. "It was a degraded occupation, and I am glad I am out of it. Meanwhile, here is Marseilles before me, and it will be astonishing if I do not find some fresh road to fortune before the day is out."

Aristide tramped and tramped all day through the streets of Marseilles, but the road he sought he did not find. He returned to Aix in dire perplexity. He was used to finding himself suddenly cut off from the means of livelihood. It was his chronic state of being. His gay resourcefulness had always carried him through. But then there had been only himself to think of. Now there was Jean. For the first time for many years the dragon-fly's wings grew limp. Jean--what could he do with Jean?

Jean had already gone to sleep when he arrived. All day he had been as good as gold, so Miss Anne declared. For herself, she had spent the happiest day of her life.

"I don't wonder at your being devoted to him, M. Pujol," she said. "He has the most loving ways of any baby I ever met."

"Yes, mademoiselle," replied Aristide, with an unaccustomed huskiness in his voice, "I am devoted to him. It may seem odd for a man to be wrapped up in a baby of nine months old--but--it's like that. It's true. _Je l'adore de tout mon coeur, de tout mon etre_," he cried, in a sudden gust of passion.

Miss Anne smiled kindly, not dreaming of his perplexity, amused by his Southern warmth. Miss Janet joined them in the hall. They went in to dinner, Aristide sitting at the central _table d'hote_, the ladies at a little table by themselves. After dinner they met again outside the hotel, and drank coffee and talked the evening away. He was not as bright a companion as on the night before. His gaiety was forced. He talked about everything else in the world but Jean. The temptation to pour his financial troubles into the sympathetic ears of these two dear women he resisted. They regarded him as on a social equality, as a man of means engaged in some sort of business at Marseilles; they had invited him to bring Jean to see them at Chislehurst when he should happen to be in England again. Pride forbade him to confess himself a homeless, penniless vagabond. The exquisite charm of their frank intimacy would be broken. Besides, what could they do?

They retired early. Aristide again sought the message of the stars; but the sky was clouded over, and soon a fine rain began to fall. A bock at a cafe brought him neither comfort nor inspiration. He returned to the hotel, and, eluding a gossip-seeking landlady, went up to his room.

What could be done? Neither the sleeping babe nor himself could offer any suggestion. One thing was grimly inevitable. He and Jean must part. To carry him about like an infant prince in an automobile had, after all, been a simple matter; to drag him through Heaven knew what hardships in his makeshift existence was impossible. In his childlike, impulsive fashion he had not thought of the future when he adopted Jean. Aristide always regarded the fortune of the moment as if it would last forever. Past deceptions never affected his incurable optimism. Now Jean and he must part. Aristide felt that the end of the world had come. His pacing to and fro awoke the child, who demanded, in his own way, the soothing rocking of his father's arms. There he bubbled and "goo'd" till Aristide's heart nearly broke.

"What can I do with you, _mon petit Jean_?"

The Enfants Trouves, after all? He thought of it with a shudder.

The child asleep again, he laid it on its bed, and then sat far into the night thinking barrenly. At last one of his sudden gleams of inspiration illuminated his mind. It was the only way. He took out his watch. It was four o'clock. What had to be done must be done swiftly.

In the travelling-basket, which had been sent from the garage, he placed a pillow, and on to the pillow he transferred with breathless care the sleeping Jean, and wrapped him up snug and warm in bedclothes. Then he folded the tiny day-garments that lay on a chair, collected the little odds and ends belonging to the child, took from his valise the rest of Jean's little wardrobe, and laid them at the foot of the basket. The most miserable man in France then counted up his money, divided it into two parts, and wrote a hasty letter, which, with the bundle of notes, he enclosed in an envelope.

"My little Jean," said he, laying the envelope on the child's breast. "Here is a little more than half my fortune. Half is for yourself and the little more to pay your wretched father's hotel bill. Good-bye, my little Jean. _Je t'aime bien, tu sais_--and don't reproach me."

* * * * *

About an hour afterwards Miss Anne awoke and listened, and in a moment or two Miss Janet awoke also.

"Janet, do you hear that?"

"It's a child crying. It's just outside the door."

"It sounds like Jean."

"Nonsense, my dear!"

But Anne switched on the light and went to see for herself; and there, in the tiny anteroom that separated the bedroom from the corridor, she found the basket--a new Pharoah's daughter before a new little Moses in the bulrushes. In bewilderment she brought the ark into the room, and read the letter addressed to Janet and herself. She burst into tears. All she said was:--

"Oh, Janet, why couldn't he have told us?"

And then she fell to hugging the child to her bosom.

Meanwhile Aristide Pujol, clad in his goat-skin cap and coat, valise in hand, was plodding through the rain in search of the elusive phantom, Fortune; gloriously certain that he had assured Jean's future, yet with such a heartache as he had never had in his life before.

V

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PIG'S HEAD

Once upon a time Aristide Pujol found himself standing outside his Paris residence, No. 213 _bis_, Rue Saint Honore, without a penny in the world. His last sou had gone to Madame Bidoux, who kept a small green grocer's shop at No. 213 _bis_ and rented a ridiculously small back room for a ridiculously small weekly sum to Aristide whenever he honoured the French capital with his presence. During his absence she forwarded him such letters as might arrive for him; and as this was his only permanent address, and as he let Madame Bidoux know his whereabouts only at vague intervals of time, the transaction of business with Aristide Pujol, "Agent, No. 213 _bis_, Rue Saint Honore, Paris," by correspondence was peculiarly difficult.