VII

aristide practised his many queer accomplishments“She has no strength to struggle. She wants happiness.”“Can you tell me the druggist’s where that can be procured?” asked Aristide.The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “I tell you the truth. It is one of those pulmonary cases. Happy, she will live; unhappy, she will die.”“My poor Mme. Bidoux, what is to be done?” asked Aristide, after the doctor had gone off with his modest fee. “How are we to make her happy?”“If only she could have news of her husband!” replied Mme. Bidoux.Aristide’s anxieties grew heavier. It was November, when knickerbockered and culture-seeking tourists no longer fill the cheap hotels of Paris. The profits of the Agence Pujol dwindled. Aristide lived on bread and cheese, and foresaw the time when cheese would be a sinful luxury. Meanwhile Fleurette had her nourishing food, and grew more like the ghost of a lily every day. But her eyes followed Aristide, wherever he went in her presence, as if he were the god of her salvation.One day Aristide, with an unexpected franc or two in his pocket, stopped in front of abureau de tabac. A brown packet of caporal and a book of cigarette-papers—a cigarette rolled—how good it would be! He hesitated, and his glance fell on a collection of foreign stamps exposed in thewindow. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all postmarked. He stared at them, fascinated.“Mon brave Aristide!” he cried. “If thebon Dieudoes not send you these vibrating inspirations, it is because you yourself have already conceived them!”He entered the shop and emerged, not with caporal and cigarette-papers, but with the twelve Honduras stamps.That night he sat up in his little bedroom at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, until his candle failed, inditing a letter in English to Fleurette. At the head of his paper he wrote “Hotel Rosario, Honduras.” And at the end of the letter he signed the name of Reginald Batterby. Where Honduras was, he had but a vague idea. For Fleurette, at any rate, it would be somewhere at the other end of the world, and she would not question any want of accuracy in local detail. Just before the light went out he read the letter through with great pride. Batterby alluded to the many letters he had posted from remote parts of the globe, gave glowing forecasts of the fortune that Honduras had in store for him, reminded her that he had placed sufficient funds for her maintenance in the hands of Aristide Pujol, and assured her that the time was not far off when she would be summoned to join her devoted husband.“Mme. Bidoux was right,” said he, before goingto sleep. “This is the only way to make her happy.”The next day Fleurette received the letter. The envelope bore the postmarked Honduras stamp. It had been rubbed on the dusty pavement to take off the newness. It was in her husband’s handwriting. There was no mistake about it—it was a letter from Honduras.“Are you happier now, little doubting female St. Thomas that you are?” cried Aristide when she had told him the news.She smiled at him out of grateful eyes, and touched his hand.“Much happier,mon bon ami,” she said, gently.Later in the day she handed him a letter addressed to Batterby. It had no stamp.“Will you post this for me, Aristide?”Aristide put the letter in his pocket and turned sharply away, lest she should see a sudden rush of tears. He had not counted on this innocent trustfulness. He went to his room. The poor little letter! He had not the heart to destroy it. No; he would keep it till Batterby came; it was not his to destroy. So he threw it into a drawer.Having once begun the deception, however, he thought it necessary to continue. Every week, therefore, he invented a letter from Batterby. To interest her he drew upon his Provençal imagination. He described combats with crocodiles, lion-hunts, feasts with terrific savages from theinterior, who brought their lady wives chastely clad in petticoats made out of human teeth; he drew pictures of the town, a kind of palm-shaded Paris by the sea, where one ate ortolans and oysters as big as soup-plates, and where Chinamen with pigtails rode about the streets on camels. It was not a correct description of Honduras, but, all the same, an exotic atmosphere stimulating and captivating rose from the pages. With this it was necessary to combine expressions of affection. At first it was difficult. Essential delicacy restrained him. He had also to keep in mind Batterby’s vernacular. To address Fleurette, impalpable creation of fairyland, as “old girl” was particularly distasteful. By degrees, however, the artist prevailed. And then at last the man himself took to forgetting the imaginary writer and poured out words of love, warm, true, and passionate.And every week Fleurette would smile and tell him the wondrous news, and would put into his hands an unstamped letter to post, which he, with a wrench of the heart, would add to the collection in the drawer.Once she said, diffidently, with an unwonted blush and her pale blue eyes swimming: “I write English so badly. Won’t you read the letter and correct my mistakes?”But Aristide laughed and licked the flap of the envelope and closed it. “What has love to do withspelling and grammar? The good Reginald would prefer your bad English to all the turned phrases of the Académie Française.”“It is as you like, Aristide,” said Fleurette, with wistful eyes.Yet, in spite of the weekly letters, Fleurette continued to droop. The winter came, and Fleurette was no longer able to stay among the cabbages of Mme. Bidoux. She lay on her bed in the little room, ten feet by seven, away, away at the top of the house in the Rue Saint Honoré. The doctor, informed of her comparative happiness, again shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing more to be done.“She is dying, monsieur, for want of strength to live.”Then Aristide went about with a great heartache. Fleurette would die; she would never see the man she loved again. What would he say when he returned and learned the tragic story? He would not even know that Aristide, loving her, had been loyal to him. When the Director of the Agence Pujol personally conducted the clients of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse to the Grand Trianon and pointed out the bed of the Empress Josephine he nearly broke down.“What is the Empress doing now?”What was Fleurette doing now? Going to join the Empress in the world of shadows.The tourists talked after the manner of their kind.“She must have found the bed very hard, poor dear.”“Give me an iron bedstead and a good old spring mattress.”“Ah, but, my dear sir, you forget. The Empress’s bed was slung on the back of tame panthers which Napoleon brought from Egypt.”It was hard to jest convincingly to the knickerbockered with death in one’s soul.“Most belovèd little Flower,” ran the last letter that Fleurette received, “I have just had a cable from Aristide saying that you are very ill. I will come to you as soon as I can.Ces petits yeux de pervenche—I am learning your language here, you see—haunt me day and night ...” etcetera, etcetera.Aristide went up to her room with a great bunch of chrysanthemums. The letter peeped from under the pillow. Fleurette was very weak. Mme. Bidoux, who, during Fleurette’s illness, had allowed her green grocery business to be personally conducted to the deuce by a youth of sixteen very much in love with the lady who sold sausages and othercharcuterienext door, had spread out the fortune-telling cards on the bed and was prophesying mendaciously. Fleurette took the flowers and clasped them to her bosom.“No letter force cher Reginald?”She shook her head. “I can write no more,” she whispered.She closed her eyes. Presently she said, in a low voice:—“Aristide—if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep.”He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his neck and he kissed her on the lips.“She is sleeping,” said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.Aristide tiptoed out of the room.And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the Rue Saint Honoré he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day’s work at the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux, hands on broad hips.“Tiens, mon petit,” she said, without preliminary greeting. “You are an angel. I knew it. But that a man’s an angel is no reason for his being an imbecile. Read this.”She plucked a paper from her apron pocket andthrust it into his hand. He read it, and blinked in amazement.“Where did you get this, Mère Bidoux?”“Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him.”“Mère Bidoux!” cried Aristide. “Those letters were sacred!”“Bah!” said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. “There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters,et voilà, et voilà, et voilà!” And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide’s pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something—she knew notwhat—would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant’s soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.he read it, and blinked in amazement“She died for want of love,parbleu,” said Aristide, “and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She haddes yeux de pervenche. Ah!nom d’un chien!It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks.”He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:—Elle est morte en février;Pauvre Colinette!VIITHE ADVENTURE OF THE MIRACLEYou have seen how Aristide, by attaching himself to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse as a kind of glorified courier, had founded the Agence Pujol. As he, personally, was the Agence, and the Agence was he, it happened that when he was not in attendance at the hotel, the Agence faded into space, and when he made his appearance in the vestibule and hung up his placard by the bureau, the Agence at once burst again into the splendour of existence. Apparently the fitful career of the Agence Pujol lasted some years. Whenever a chance of more remunerative employment turned up, Aristide took it and dissolved the Agence. Whenever outrageous fortune chivied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated.It was during one of these periodic flourishings of the Agence Pujol that Aristide met the Ducksmiths.Business was slack, few guests were at the hotel, and of those few none desired to be personally conducted to the Louvre or Notre Dame or themonument in the Place de la Bastille. They mostly wore the placid expression of folks engaged in business affairs instead of the worried look of pleasure-seekers.“My good Bocardon,” said Aristide, lounging by the bureau and addressing his friend the manager, “this is becoming desperate. In another minute I shall take you out by main force and show you the Pont Neuf.”At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a travelling Briton, whom Aristide had not seen before, advanced to the bureau and inquired his way to the Madeleine. Aristide turned on him like a flash.“Sir,” said he, extracting documents from his pockets with lightning rapidity, “nothing would give me greater pleasure than to conduct you thither. My card. My tariff. My advertisement.” He pointed to the placard. “I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol, under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all travelling arrangements, from the Moulin Rouge to the Pyramids, and, as you see, my charges are moderate.”The Briton, holding the documents in a pudgy hand, looked at the swift-gestured director with portentous solemnity. Then, with equal solemnity, he looked at Bocardon.“Monsieur Ducksmith,” said the latter, “you canrepose every confidence in Monsieur Aristide Pujol.”“Umph!” said Mr. Ducksmith.After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his fleshy nose and perused the documents. He was a fat, heavy man of about fifty years of age, and his scanty hair was turning grey. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-like, giving him the appearance of some odd dog—a similarity greatly intensified by the eye-sockets, the lower lids of which were dragged down in the middle, showing the red like a bloodhound’s; but here the similarity ended, for the man’s eyes, dull and blue, had the unspeculative fixity of a rabbit’s. His mouth, small and weak, dribbled away at the corners into the jowls which, in their turn, melted into two or three chins. He was decently dressed in grey tweeds, and wore a diamond ring on his little finger.“Umph!” said he, at last; and went back to the salon.As soon as the door closed behind him Aristide sprang into an attitude of indignation.“Did you ever see such a bear! If I ever saw a bigger one I would eat him without salt or pepper.Mais nom d’un chien, such people ought to be made into sausages!”“Flègme britannique!” laughed Bocardon.Half an hour passed, and Mr. Ducksmith madeno reappearance from the salon. In the forlorn hope of a client Aristide went in after him. He found Mr. Ducksmith, glasses on nose, reading a newspaper, and a plump, black-haired lady, with an expressionless face, knitting a grey woollen sock. Why they should be spending their first morning—and a crisp, sunny morning, too—in Paris in the murky staleness of this awful little salon, Aristide could not imagine. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded him vacantly over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.“I have looked in,” said Aristide, with his ingratiating smile, “to see whether you are ready to go to the Madeleine.”“Madeleine?” the lady inquired, softly, pausing in her knitting.“Madame,” Aristide came forward, and, hand on heart, made her the lowest of bows. “Madame, have I the honour of speaking to Madame Ducksmith? Enchanted, madame, to make your acquaintance,” he continued, after a grunt from Mr. Ducksmith had assured him of the correctness of his conjecture. “I am Monsieur Aristide Pujol, director of the Agence Pujol, and my poor services are absolutely at your disposal.”He drew himself up, twisted his moustache, and met her eyes—they were rather sad and tired—with the roguish mockery of his own. She turned to her husband.“Are you thinking of going to the Madeleine, Bartholomew?”“I am, Henrietta,” said he. “I have decided to do it. And I have also decided to put ourselves in the charge of this gentleman. Mrs. Ducksmith and I are accustomed to all the conveniences of travel—I may say that we are great travellers—and I leave it to you to make the necessary arrangements. I prefer to travel at so much per head per day.”He spoke in a wheezy, solemn monotone, from which all elements of life and joy seemed to have been eliminated. His wife’s voice, though softer in timbre, was likewise devoid of colour.“My husband finds that it saves us from responsibilities,” she remarked.“And over-charges, and the necessity of learning foreign languages, which at our time of life would be difficult. During all our travels we have not been to Paris before, owing to the impossibility of finding a personally-conducted tour of an adequate class.”“Then, my dear sir,” cried Aristide, “it is Providence itself that has put you in the way of the Agence Pujol. I will now conduct you to the Madeleine without the least discomfort or danger.”“Put on your hat, Henrietta,” said Mr. Ducksmith, “while this gentleman and I discuss terms.”Mrs. Ducksmith gathered up her knitting andretired, Aristide dashing to the door to open it for her. This gallantry surprised her ever so little, for a faint flush came into her cheek and the shadow of a smile into her eyes.“I wish you to understand, Mr. Pujol,” said Mr. Ducksmith, “that being, I may say, a comparatively rich man, I can afford to pay for certain luxuries; but I made a resolution many years ago, which has stood me in good stead during my business life, that I would never be cheated. You will find me liberal but just.”He was as good as his word. Aristide, who had never in his life exploited another’s wealth to his own advantage, suggested certain terms, on the basis of so much per head per day, which Mr. Ducksmith declared, with a sigh of relief, to be perfectly satisfactory.“Perhaps,” said he, after further conversation, “you will be good enough to schedule out a month’s railway tour through France, and give me an inclusive estimate for the three of us. As I say, Mrs. Ducksmith and I are great travellers—we have been to Norway, to Egypt, to Morocco and the Canaries, to the Holy Land, to Rome, and lovely Lucerne—but we find that attention to the trivial detail of travel militates against our enjoyment.”“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “trust in me, and your path and that of the charming Mrs. Ducksmith will be strewn with roses.”Whereupon Mrs. Ducksmith appeared, arrayed for walking out, and Aristide, having ordered a cab, drove with them to the Madeleine. They alighted in front of the majestic flight of steps. Mr. Ducksmith stared at the classical portico supported on its Corinthian columns with his rabbit-like, unspeculative gaze—he had those filmy blue eyes that never seem to wink—and after a moment or two turned away.“Umph!” said he.Mrs. Ducksmith, dutiful and silent, turned away also.“This sacred edifice,” Aristide began, in his best cicerone manner, “was built, after a classic model, by the great Napoleon, as a Temple of Fame. It was afterwards used as a church. You will observe—and, if you care to, you can count, as a conscientious American lady did last week—the fifty-six Corinthian columns. You will see they are Corinthian by the acanthus leaves on the capitals. For the vulgar, who have no architectural knowledge, I havememoria technicafor the instant recognition of the three orders—Cabbages, Corinthian; horns, Ionic; anything else, Doric. We will now mount the steps and inspect the interior.”He was dashing off in his eager fashion, when Mr. Ducksmith laid a detaining hand on his arm.“No,” said he, solemnly. “I disapprove of Popish interiors. Take us to the next place.”he might as well have pointed out the marvels of kubla khan’s pleasure-dome to a couple of guinea-pigsHe entered the waiting victoria. His wife meekly followed.“I suppose the Louvre is the next place?” said Aristide.“I leave it to you,” said Mr. Ducksmith.Aristide gave the order to the cabman and took the little seat in the cab facing his employers. On the way down the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli he pointed out the various buildings of interest—Maxim’s, the Cercle Royal, the Ministère de la Marine, the Hôtel Continental. Two expressionless faces, two pairs of unresponsive eyes, met his merry glance. He might as well have pointed out the marvels of Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome to a couple of guinea-pigs.The cab stopped at the entrance to the galleries of the Louvre. They entered and walked up the great staircase on the turn of which the Winged Victory stands, with the wind of God in her vesture, proclaiming to each beholder the deathless, ever-soaring, ever-conquering spirit of man, and heralding the immortal glories of the souls, wind-swept likewise by the wind of God, that are enshrined in the treasure-houses beyond.“There!” said Aristide.“Umph! No head,” said Mr. Ducksmith, passing it by with scarcely a glance.“Would it cost very much to get a new one?”asked Mrs. Ducksmith, timidly. She was three or four paces behind her spouse.“It would cost the blood and tears and laughter of the human race,” said Aristide.(“That was devilish good, wasn’t it?” remarked Aristide, when telling me this story. He always took care not to hide his light under the least possibility of a bushel.)The Ducksmiths looked at him in their lacklustre way, and allowed themselves to be guided into the picture-galleries, vaguely hearing Aristide’s comments, scarcely glancing at the pictures, and manifesting no sign of interest in anything whatever. From the Louvre they drove to Notre Dame, where the same thing happened. The venerable pile, standing imperishable amid the vicissitudes of centuries (the phrase was that of the director of the Agence Pujol), stirred in their bosoms no perceptible emotion. Mr. Ducksmith grunted and declined to enter; Mrs. Ducksmith said nothing.As with pictures and cathedrals, so it was with their food at lunch. Beyond a solemn statement to the effect that in their quality of practised travellers they made a point of eating the food and drinking the wine of the country, Mr. Ducksmith did not allude to the meal. At any rate, thought Aristide, they don’t clamour for underdone chops and tea. So far they were human. Nor did theymaintain an awful silence during the repast. On the contrary, Mr. Ducksmith loved to talk—in a dismal, pompous way—chiefly of British politics. His method of discourse was to place himself in the position of those in authority and to declare what he would do in any given circumstances. Now, unless the interlocutor adopts the same method and declares whathewould do, conversation is apt to become one-sided. Aristide, having no notion of a policy should he find himself exercising the functions of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, cheerfully tried to change the ground of debate.“What would you do, Mr. Ducksmith, if you were King of England?”“I should try to rule the realm like a Christian statesman,” replied Mr. Ducksmith.“I should have a devil of a time!” said Aristide.“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Ducksmith.“I should have a—ah, I see—pardon. I should——” He looked from one paralyzing face to the other, and threw out his arms. “Parbleu!” said he, “I should decapitate your Mrs. Grundy, and make it compulsory for bishops to dance once a week in Trafalgar Square.Tiens!I would have it a capital offence for any English cook to prepare hashed mutton without a license, and I would banish all the bakers of the kingdom to Siberia—ah! your English bread, which you have to eat staleso as to avoid a horrible death!—and I would open two hundred thousandcafés—mon Dieu!how thirsty I have been there!—and I would make every English work-girl do her hair properly, and I would ordain that everybody should laugh three times a day, under pain of imprisonment for life.”“I am afraid, Mr. Pujol,” remarked Mr. Ducksmith, seriously, “you would not be acting as a constitutional monarch. There is such a thing as the British Constitution, which foreigners are bound to admire, even though they may not understand.”“To be a king must be a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Ducksmith.“Madame,” said Aristide, “you have uttered a profound truth.” And to himself he murmured, though he should not have done so, “Nom de Dieu! Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!”After lunch they drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel, where they established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr. Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife knitting a grey woollen sock.“Mon vieux!” said Aristide to Bocardon, “they are people of a nightmare. They are automata endowed with the faculty of digestion.Ce sont des gens invraisemblables.”Paris providing them, apparently, with no entertainment, they started, after a couple of days,Aristide duce et auspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide a pilgrimage of unimaginable depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Châteaux of the Loire, and began to work their way south. Nothing that Aristide could do roused them from their apathy. They were exasperatingly docile, made few complaints, got up, entrained, detrained, fed, excursioned, slept, just as they were bidden. But they looked at nothing, enjoyed nothing (save perhaps English newspapers and knitting), and uttered nothing by way of criticism or appreciation when Aristide attempted to review the wonders through which they had passed. They did not care to know the history, authentic or Pujolic, of any place they visited; they were impressed by no scene of grandeur, no corner of exquisite beauty. To go on and on, in a dull, non-sentient way, so long as they were spared all forethought, all trouble, all afterthought, seemed to be their ideal of travel. Sometimes Aristide, after a fruitless effort to capture their interest, would hold his head, wondering whether he or the Ducksmith couple were insane. It was a dragon-fly personally conducting two moles through a rose-garden.Once only, during the early part of their journey, did a gleam of joyousness pierce the dull glaze of Mr. Ducksmith’s eyes. He had procured from the bookstall of a station a pile of English newspapers, and was reading them in the train,while his wife knitted the interminable sock. Suddenly he folded aDaily Telegraph, and handed it over to Aristide so that he should see nothing but a half-page advertisement. The great capitals leaped to Aristide’s eyes:—“DUCKSMITH’S DELICATE JAMS.”“I amtheDucksmith,” said he. “I started and built up the business. When I found that I could retire, I turned it into a limited liability company, and now I am free and rich and able to enjoy the advantages of foreign travel.”Mrs. Ducksmith started, sighed, and dropped a stitch.“Did you also make pickles?” asked Aristide.“I did manufacture pickles, but I made my name in jam. In the trade you will find it an honoured one.”“It is that in every nursery in Europe,” Aristide declared, with polite hyperbole.“I have done my best to deserve my reputation,” said Mr. Ducksmith, as impervious to flattery as to impressions of beauty.“Pécaïre!” said Aristide to himself, “how can I galvanize these corpses?”As the soulless days went by this problem grew to be Aristide’s main solicitude. He felt strangled, choked, borne down by an intolerable weight.What could he do to stir their vitality? Should he fire off pistols behind them, just to see them jump? But would they jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit-eyes, set in their bloodhound sockets, vacantly on him, and assume that the detonations were part of the tour’s programme? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols, and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thaïs might come along, cast her spell upon him, and induce him to wink. He himself was powerless. His raciest stories fell on dull ears; none of his jokes called forth a smile. At last, having taken them to nearly all the historic châteaux of Touraine, without eliciting one cry of admiration, he gave Mr. Ducksmith up in despair and devoted his attention to the lady.Mrs. Ducksmith parted her smooth black hair in the middle and fastened it in a knob at the back of her head. Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness. At her bosom she wore a great brooch, containing intertwined locks of a grandfather and grandmother long since defunct. Her mind was as drearily equipped as her person. She had a vague idea that they were travelling in France; but if Aristide had told her that it was Japan she would have meeklyaccepted the information. She had no opinions. Still she was a woman, and Aristide, firm in his conviction that when it comes to love-making all women are the same, proceeded forthwith to make love to her.“Madame,” said he, one morning—she was knitting in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers—“how much more charming that beautiful grey dress would be if it had a spot of colour.”His audacious hand placed a deep crimson rose against her corsage, and he stood away at arm’s length, his head on one side, judging the effect.“Magnificent! If madame would only do me the honour to wear it.”Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.“I’m afraid my husband does not like colour,” she said.“He must be taught,” cried Aristide. “You must teach him. I must teach him. Let us begin at once. Here is a pin.”He held the pin delicately between finger and thumb, and controlled her with his roguish eyes. She took the pin and fixed the rose to her dress.“I don’t know what Mr. Ducksmith will say.”“What he ought to say, madame, is ‘Bountiful Providence, I thank Thee for giving me such a beautiful wife.’”Mrs. Ducksmith blushed and, to conceal her face, bent it over her resumed knitting. She made woman’s time-honoured response.“I don’t think you ought to say such things, Mr. Pujol.”“Ah, madame,” said he, lowering his voice; “I have tried not to; but,que voulez-vous, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little grey mouse”—the lady weighed at least twelve stone—“you, who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here”—he thumped his chest; “my Provençal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep.”“I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Pujol,” she said, dropping stitches recklessly.“Ah, madame,” he whispered—and the rascal’s whisper on such occasions could be very seductive—“that I will never believe.”“I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes,” she murmured.“That’s an illusion,” said he, with a wide-flung gesture, “that will vanish at the first experiment.”Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon,Daily Telegraphin hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building.Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jelly-fish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered, “Charming!” Whereupon she coloured and dropped her eyes. And during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her.“Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?”She laid down her knitting. “Bartholomew, will you come out?”He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.“What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen.”So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.“Wouldn’t you like,” said he, “to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?”“What odd things you think of.”“But wouldn’t you?” he insinuated.Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful “Yes.”“I can tell you of many odd things,” said Aristide. “I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun.Chère madame,” he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, “you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn’t that so?”She nodded.“You have always been misunderstood.”A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child’s game.Enfin, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for, with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and ofwrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saint-like purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman,pour tout de bon, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.“Bah!” said he to himself. “I am doing a noble and disinterested act. I am restoring sight to the blind. I am giving life to one in a state of suspended animation.Tron de l’Air!I am playing the part of a soul-reviver! And,parbleu!it isn’t Jean or Jacques that can do that. It takes an Aristide Pujol!”So, having persuaded himself, in his Southern way, that he was executing an almost divine mission, he continued, with a zest now sharpened by an approving conscience, to revive Mrs. Ducksmith’s soul.The poor lady, who had suffered the blighting influence of Mr. Ducksmith for twenty years with never a ray of counteracting warmth from the outside, expanded like a flower to the sun under the soul-reviving process. Day by day she exhibited some fresh timid coquetry in dress and manner. Gradually she began to respond to Aristide’s suggestions of beauty in natural scenery and exquisite building. On the ramparts of Angoulême, daintiest of towns in France, she gazed at the smiling valleys of the Charente and the Son stretching away below, and of her own accord touched hisarm lightly and said: “How beautiful!” She appealed to her husband.“Umph!” said he.Once more (it had become a habit) she exchanged glances with Aristide. He drew her a little farther along, under pretext of pointing out the dreamy sweep of the Charente.“If he appreciates nothing at all, why on earth does he travel?”Her eyelids fluttered upwards for a fraction of a second.“It’s his mania,” she said. “He can never rest at home. He must always be going on—on.”“How can you endure it?” he asked.She sighed. “It is better now that you can teach me how to look at things.”“Good!” thought Aristide. “When I leave them she can teach him to look at things and revive his soul. Truly I deserve a halo.”As Mr. Ducksmith appeared to be entirely unperceptive of his wife’s spiritual expansion, Aristide grew bolder in his apostolate. He complimented Mrs. Ducksmith to his face. He presented her daily with flowers. He scarcely waited for the heavy man’s back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous,unseeing way. At every stopping-place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town—to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted—he would extract a newspaper from his pocket and read with dull and dogged stupidity. Once Aristide caught him reading the advertisements for cooks and housemaids. In these circumstances Mrs. Ducksmith spiritually expanded at an alarming rate; and, correspondingly, dwindled the progress of Mr. Ducksmith’s sock.They arrived at Perigueux, in Perigord, land of truffles, one morning, in time for lunch. Towards the end of the meal themaître d’hôtelhelped them to great slabs ofpâté de foie gras, made in the house—most of the hotel-keepers in Perigord makepâté de foie gras, both for home consumption and for exportation—and waited expectant of their appreciation. He was not disappointed. Mr. Ducksmith, after a hesitating glance at the first mouthful, swallowed it, greedily devoured his slab, and, after pointing to his empty plate, said, solemnly:—“Plou.”Like Oliver, he asked for more.“Tiens!” thought Aristide, astounded. “Is he, too, developing a soul?”But, alas! there were no signs of it when they went their dreary round of the town in the usual ramshackle open cab. The cathedral ofSaint-Front, extolled by Aristide and restored by Abadie—a terrible fellow who has capped with tops of pepper-castors every pre-Gothic building in France—gave him no thrill; nor did the picturesque, tumble-down ancient buildings on the banks of the Dordogne, nor the delicate Renaissance façades in the cool, narrow Rue du Lys.“We will now go back to the hotel,” said Mr. Ducksmith.“But have we seen it all?” asked his wife.“By no means,” said Aristide.“We will go back to the hotel,” repeated her husband, in his expressionless tones. “I have seen enough of Perigueux.”This was final. They drove back to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith, without a word, went straight into the salon, leaving Aristide and his wife standing in the vestibule.“And you, madame,” said Aristide; “are you going to sacrifice the glory of God’s sunshine to the manufacture of woollen socks?”She smiled—she had caught the trick at last—and said, in happy submission: “What would you have me do?”With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.“Let us drain together,” cried he, “the loveliness of Perigueux to its dregs!”Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade—the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window-openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honour leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a mediæval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and grey in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.“Voilà!” said Aristide. “Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows.”“I have wasted twenty years of my life,” said Mrs. Ducksmith, with a sigh. “Why didn’t I meet someone like you when I was young? Ah, you don’t know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol.”“Why not Aristide when we are alone? Why not, Henriette?”He too had the sense of adventure, and his eyes were more than usually compelling and his voice more seductive. For some reason or other, undivined by Aristide—over-excitement of nerves, perhaps—she burst into tears.“Henriette! Henriette, ne pleurez pas.”His arm crept round her—he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson; but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on someone’s shoulder and to have someone’s sympathetic arm around one’s waist.“Pauvre petite femme!And is it love she is pining for?”She sobbed; he lifted her chin with his free hand—and what less could mortal apostle do?—he kissed her on her wet cheek.A bellow like that of an angry bull caused them to start asunder. They looked up, and there wasMr. Ducksmith within a few yards of them, his face aflame, his rabbit’s eyes on fire with rage. He advanced, shook his fists in their faces.“I’ve caught you! At last, after twenty years, I’ve caught you!”“Monsieur,” cried Aristide, starting up, “allow me to explain.”He swept Aristide aside like an intercepting willow-branch, and poured forth a torrent of furious speech upon his wife.“I have hated you for twenty years. Day by day I have hated you more. I’ve watched you, watched you, watched you! But, you sly jade, you’ve been too clever for me till now. Yes; I followed you from the hotel. I dogged you. I foresaw what would happen. Now the end has come. I’ve hated you for twenty years—ever since you first betrayed me——”Mrs. Ducksmith, who had sat with overwhelmed head in her hands, started bolt upright, and looked at him like one thunderstruck.“I betrayed you?” she gasped, in bewilderment. “My God! When? How? What do you mean?”He laughed—for the first time since Aristide had known him—but it was a ghastly laugh, that made the jowls of his cheeks spread horribly to his ears; and again he flooded the calm, stately courtyard with the raging violence of words. The veneer of easy life fell from him. He became the low-born,petty tradesman, using the language of the hands of his jam factory. No, he had never told her. He had awaited his chance. Now he had found it. He called her names....

aristide practised his many queer accomplishments

“She has no strength to struggle. She wants happiness.”

“Can you tell me the druggist’s where that can be procured?” asked Aristide.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “I tell you the truth. It is one of those pulmonary cases. Happy, she will live; unhappy, she will die.”

“My poor Mme. Bidoux, what is to be done?” asked Aristide, after the doctor had gone off with his modest fee. “How are we to make her happy?”

“If only she could have news of her husband!” replied Mme. Bidoux.

Aristide’s anxieties grew heavier. It was November, when knickerbockered and culture-seeking tourists no longer fill the cheap hotels of Paris. The profits of the Agence Pujol dwindled. Aristide lived on bread and cheese, and foresaw the time when cheese would be a sinful luxury. Meanwhile Fleurette had her nourishing food, and grew more like the ghost of a lily every day. But her eyes followed Aristide, wherever he went in her presence, as if he were the god of her salvation.

One day Aristide, with an unexpected franc or two in his pocket, stopped in front of abureau de tabac. A brown packet of caporal and a book of cigarette-papers—a cigarette rolled—how good it would be! He hesitated, and his glance fell on a collection of foreign stamps exposed in thewindow. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all postmarked. He stared at them, fascinated.

“Mon brave Aristide!” he cried. “If thebon Dieudoes not send you these vibrating inspirations, it is because you yourself have already conceived them!”

He entered the shop and emerged, not with caporal and cigarette-papers, but with the twelve Honduras stamps.

That night he sat up in his little bedroom at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, until his candle failed, inditing a letter in English to Fleurette. At the head of his paper he wrote “Hotel Rosario, Honduras.” And at the end of the letter he signed the name of Reginald Batterby. Where Honduras was, he had but a vague idea. For Fleurette, at any rate, it would be somewhere at the other end of the world, and she would not question any want of accuracy in local detail. Just before the light went out he read the letter through with great pride. Batterby alluded to the many letters he had posted from remote parts of the globe, gave glowing forecasts of the fortune that Honduras had in store for him, reminded her that he had placed sufficient funds for her maintenance in the hands of Aristide Pujol, and assured her that the time was not far off when she would be summoned to join her devoted husband.

“Mme. Bidoux was right,” said he, before goingto sleep. “This is the only way to make her happy.”

The next day Fleurette received the letter. The envelope bore the postmarked Honduras stamp. It had been rubbed on the dusty pavement to take off the newness. It was in her husband’s handwriting. There was no mistake about it—it was a letter from Honduras.

“Are you happier now, little doubting female St. Thomas that you are?” cried Aristide when she had told him the news.

She smiled at him out of grateful eyes, and touched his hand.

“Much happier,mon bon ami,” she said, gently.

Later in the day she handed him a letter addressed to Batterby. It had no stamp.

“Will you post this for me, Aristide?”

Aristide put the letter in his pocket and turned sharply away, lest she should see a sudden rush of tears. He had not counted on this innocent trustfulness. He went to his room. The poor little letter! He had not the heart to destroy it. No; he would keep it till Batterby came; it was not his to destroy. So he threw it into a drawer.

Having once begun the deception, however, he thought it necessary to continue. Every week, therefore, he invented a letter from Batterby. To interest her he drew upon his Provençal imagination. He described combats with crocodiles, lion-hunts, feasts with terrific savages from theinterior, who brought their lady wives chastely clad in petticoats made out of human teeth; he drew pictures of the town, a kind of palm-shaded Paris by the sea, where one ate ortolans and oysters as big as soup-plates, and where Chinamen with pigtails rode about the streets on camels. It was not a correct description of Honduras, but, all the same, an exotic atmosphere stimulating and captivating rose from the pages. With this it was necessary to combine expressions of affection. At first it was difficult. Essential delicacy restrained him. He had also to keep in mind Batterby’s vernacular. To address Fleurette, impalpable creation of fairyland, as “old girl” was particularly distasteful. By degrees, however, the artist prevailed. And then at last the man himself took to forgetting the imaginary writer and poured out words of love, warm, true, and passionate.

And every week Fleurette would smile and tell him the wondrous news, and would put into his hands an unstamped letter to post, which he, with a wrench of the heart, would add to the collection in the drawer.

Once she said, diffidently, with an unwonted blush and her pale blue eyes swimming: “I write English so badly. Won’t you read the letter and correct my mistakes?”

But Aristide laughed and licked the flap of the envelope and closed it. “What has love to do withspelling and grammar? The good Reginald would prefer your bad English to all the turned phrases of the Académie Française.”

“It is as you like, Aristide,” said Fleurette, with wistful eyes.

Yet, in spite of the weekly letters, Fleurette continued to droop. The winter came, and Fleurette was no longer able to stay among the cabbages of Mme. Bidoux. She lay on her bed in the little room, ten feet by seven, away, away at the top of the house in the Rue Saint Honoré. The doctor, informed of her comparative happiness, again shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing more to be done.

“She is dying, monsieur, for want of strength to live.”

Then Aristide went about with a great heartache. Fleurette would die; she would never see the man she loved again. What would he say when he returned and learned the tragic story? He would not even know that Aristide, loving her, had been loyal to him. When the Director of the Agence Pujol personally conducted the clients of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse to the Grand Trianon and pointed out the bed of the Empress Josephine he nearly broke down.

“What is the Empress doing now?”

What was Fleurette doing now? Going to join the Empress in the world of shadows.

The tourists talked after the manner of their kind.

“She must have found the bed very hard, poor dear.”

“Give me an iron bedstead and a good old spring mattress.”

“Ah, but, my dear sir, you forget. The Empress’s bed was slung on the back of tame panthers which Napoleon brought from Egypt.”

It was hard to jest convincingly to the knickerbockered with death in one’s soul.

“Most belovèd little Flower,” ran the last letter that Fleurette received, “I have just had a cable from Aristide saying that you are very ill. I will come to you as soon as I can.Ces petits yeux de pervenche—I am learning your language here, you see—haunt me day and night ...” etcetera, etcetera.

Aristide went up to her room with a great bunch of chrysanthemums. The letter peeped from under the pillow. Fleurette was very weak. Mme. Bidoux, who, during Fleurette’s illness, had allowed her green grocery business to be personally conducted to the deuce by a youth of sixteen very much in love with the lady who sold sausages and othercharcuterienext door, had spread out the fortune-telling cards on the bed and was prophesying mendaciously. Fleurette took the flowers and clasped them to her bosom.

“No letter force cher Reginald?”

She shook her head. “I can write no more,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes. Presently she said, in a low voice:—

“Aristide—if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep.”

He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his neck and he kissed her on the lips.

“She is sleeping,” said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.

Aristide tiptoed out of the room.

And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the Rue Saint Honoré he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.

The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day’s work at the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux, hands on broad hips.

“Tiens, mon petit,” she said, without preliminary greeting. “You are an angel. I knew it. But that a man’s an angel is no reason for his being an imbecile. Read this.”

She plucked a paper from her apron pocket andthrust it into his hand. He read it, and blinked in amazement.

“Where did you get this, Mère Bidoux?”

“Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him.”

“Mère Bidoux!” cried Aristide. “Those letters were sacred!”

“Bah!” said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. “There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters,et voilà, et voilà, et voilà!” And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.

And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.

They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide’s pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something—she knew notwhat—would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant’s soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.

he read it, and blinked in amazement

“She died for want of love,parbleu,” said Aristide, “and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She haddes yeux de pervenche. Ah!nom d’un chien!It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks.”

He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:—

Elle est morte en février;Pauvre Colinette!

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MIRACLE

You have seen how Aristide, by attaching himself to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse as a kind of glorified courier, had founded the Agence Pujol. As he, personally, was the Agence, and the Agence was he, it happened that when he was not in attendance at the hotel, the Agence faded into space, and when he made his appearance in the vestibule and hung up his placard by the bureau, the Agence at once burst again into the splendour of existence. Apparently the fitful career of the Agence Pujol lasted some years. Whenever a chance of more remunerative employment turned up, Aristide took it and dissolved the Agence. Whenever outrageous fortune chivied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated.

It was during one of these periodic flourishings of the Agence Pujol that Aristide met the Ducksmiths.

Business was slack, few guests were at the hotel, and of those few none desired to be personally conducted to the Louvre or Notre Dame or themonument in the Place de la Bastille. They mostly wore the placid expression of folks engaged in business affairs instead of the worried look of pleasure-seekers.

“My good Bocardon,” said Aristide, lounging by the bureau and addressing his friend the manager, “this is becoming desperate. In another minute I shall take you out by main force and show you the Pont Neuf.”

At that moment the door of the stuffy salon opened, and a travelling Briton, whom Aristide had not seen before, advanced to the bureau and inquired his way to the Madeleine. Aristide turned on him like a flash.

“Sir,” said he, extracting documents from his pockets with lightning rapidity, “nothing would give me greater pleasure than to conduct you thither. My card. My tariff. My advertisement.” He pointed to the placard. “I am the managing director of the Agence Pujol, under the special patronage of this hotel. I undertake all travelling arrangements, from the Moulin Rouge to the Pyramids, and, as you see, my charges are moderate.”

The Briton, holding the documents in a pudgy hand, looked at the swift-gestured director with portentous solemnity. Then, with equal solemnity, he looked at Bocardon.

“Monsieur Ducksmith,” said the latter, “you canrepose every confidence in Monsieur Aristide Pujol.”

“Umph!” said Mr. Ducksmith.

After another solemn inspection of Aristide, he stuck a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his fleshy nose and perused the documents. He was a fat, heavy man of about fifty years of age, and his scanty hair was turning grey. His puffy cheeks hung jowl-like, giving him the appearance of some odd dog—a similarity greatly intensified by the eye-sockets, the lower lids of which were dragged down in the middle, showing the red like a bloodhound’s; but here the similarity ended, for the man’s eyes, dull and blue, had the unspeculative fixity of a rabbit’s. His mouth, small and weak, dribbled away at the corners into the jowls which, in their turn, melted into two or three chins. He was decently dressed in grey tweeds, and wore a diamond ring on his little finger.

“Umph!” said he, at last; and went back to the salon.

As soon as the door closed behind him Aristide sprang into an attitude of indignation.

“Did you ever see such a bear! If I ever saw a bigger one I would eat him without salt or pepper.Mais nom d’un chien, such people ought to be made into sausages!”

“Flègme britannique!” laughed Bocardon.

Half an hour passed, and Mr. Ducksmith madeno reappearance from the salon. In the forlorn hope of a client Aristide went in after him. He found Mr. Ducksmith, glasses on nose, reading a newspaper, and a plump, black-haired lady, with an expressionless face, knitting a grey woollen sock. Why they should be spending their first morning—and a crisp, sunny morning, too—in Paris in the murky staleness of this awful little salon, Aristide could not imagine. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded him vacantly over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.

“I have looked in,” said Aristide, with his ingratiating smile, “to see whether you are ready to go to the Madeleine.”

“Madeleine?” the lady inquired, softly, pausing in her knitting.

“Madame,” Aristide came forward, and, hand on heart, made her the lowest of bows. “Madame, have I the honour of speaking to Madame Ducksmith? Enchanted, madame, to make your acquaintance,” he continued, after a grunt from Mr. Ducksmith had assured him of the correctness of his conjecture. “I am Monsieur Aristide Pujol, director of the Agence Pujol, and my poor services are absolutely at your disposal.”

He drew himself up, twisted his moustache, and met her eyes—they were rather sad and tired—with the roguish mockery of his own. She turned to her husband.

“Are you thinking of going to the Madeleine, Bartholomew?”

“I am, Henrietta,” said he. “I have decided to do it. And I have also decided to put ourselves in the charge of this gentleman. Mrs. Ducksmith and I are accustomed to all the conveniences of travel—I may say that we are great travellers—and I leave it to you to make the necessary arrangements. I prefer to travel at so much per head per day.”

He spoke in a wheezy, solemn monotone, from which all elements of life and joy seemed to have been eliminated. His wife’s voice, though softer in timbre, was likewise devoid of colour.

“My husband finds that it saves us from responsibilities,” she remarked.

“And over-charges, and the necessity of learning foreign languages, which at our time of life would be difficult. During all our travels we have not been to Paris before, owing to the impossibility of finding a personally-conducted tour of an adequate class.”

“Then, my dear sir,” cried Aristide, “it is Providence itself that has put you in the way of the Agence Pujol. I will now conduct you to the Madeleine without the least discomfort or danger.”

“Put on your hat, Henrietta,” said Mr. Ducksmith, “while this gentleman and I discuss terms.”

Mrs. Ducksmith gathered up her knitting andretired, Aristide dashing to the door to open it for her. This gallantry surprised her ever so little, for a faint flush came into her cheek and the shadow of a smile into her eyes.

“I wish you to understand, Mr. Pujol,” said Mr. Ducksmith, “that being, I may say, a comparatively rich man, I can afford to pay for certain luxuries; but I made a resolution many years ago, which has stood me in good stead during my business life, that I would never be cheated. You will find me liberal but just.”

He was as good as his word. Aristide, who had never in his life exploited another’s wealth to his own advantage, suggested certain terms, on the basis of so much per head per day, which Mr. Ducksmith declared, with a sigh of relief, to be perfectly satisfactory.

“Perhaps,” said he, after further conversation, “you will be good enough to schedule out a month’s railway tour through France, and give me an inclusive estimate for the three of us. As I say, Mrs. Ducksmith and I are great travellers—we have been to Norway, to Egypt, to Morocco and the Canaries, to the Holy Land, to Rome, and lovely Lucerne—but we find that attention to the trivial detail of travel militates against our enjoyment.”

“My dear sir,” said Aristide, “trust in me, and your path and that of the charming Mrs. Ducksmith will be strewn with roses.”

Whereupon Mrs. Ducksmith appeared, arrayed for walking out, and Aristide, having ordered a cab, drove with them to the Madeleine. They alighted in front of the majestic flight of steps. Mr. Ducksmith stared at the classical portico supported on its Corinthian columns with his rabbit-like, unspeculative gaze—he had those filmy blue eyes that never seem to wink—and after a moment or two turned away.

“Umph!” said he.

Mrs. Ducksmith, dutiful and silent, turned away also.

“This sacred edifice,” Aristide began, in his best cicerone manner, “was built, after a classic model, by the great Napoleon, as a Temple of Fame. It was afterwards used as a church. You will observe—and, if you care to, you can count, as a conscientious American lady did last week—the fifty-six Corinthian columns. You will see they are Corinthian by the acanthus leaves on the capitals. For the vulgar, who have no architectural knowledge, I havememoria technicafor the instant recognition of the three orders—Cabbages, Corinthian; horns, Ionic; anything else, Doric. We will now mount the steps and inspect the interior.”

He was dashing off in his eager fashion, when Mr. Ducksmith laid a detaining hand on his arm.

“No,” said he, solemnly. “I disapprove of Popish interiors. Take us to the next place.”

he might as well have pointed out the marvels of kubla khan’s pleasure-dome to a couple of guinea-pigs

He entered the waiting victoria. His wife meekly followed.

“I suppose the Louvre is the next place?” said Aristide.

“I leave it to you,” said Mr. Ducksmith.

Aristide gave the order to the cabman and took the little seat in the cab facing his employers. On the way down the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli he pointed out the various buildings of interest—Maxim’s, the Cercle Royal, the Ministère de la Marine, the Hôtel Continental. Two expressionless faces, two pairs of unresponsive eyes, met his merry glance. He might as well have pointed out the marvels of Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome to a couple of guinea-pigs.

The cab stopped at the entrance to the galleries of the Louvre. They entered and walked up the great staircase on the turn of which the Winged Victory stands, with the wind of God in her vesture, proclaiming to each beholder the deathless, ever-soaring, ever-conquering spirit of man, and heralding the immortal glories of the souls, wind-swept likewise by the wind of God, that are enshrined in the treasure-houses beyond.

“There!” said Aristide.

“Umph! No head,” said Mr. Ducksmith, passing it by with scarcely a glance.

“Would it cost very much to get a new one?”asked Mrs. Ducksmith, timidly. She was three or four paces behind her spouse.

“It would cost the blood and tears and laughter of the human race,” said Aristide.

(“That was devilish good, wasn’t it?” remarked Aristide, when telling me this story. He always took care not to hide his light under the least possibility of a bushel.)

The Ducksmiths looked at him in their lacklustre way, and allowed themselves to be guided into the picture-galleries, vaguely hearing Aristide’s comments, scarcely glancing at the pictures, and manifesting no sign of interest in anything whatever. From the Louvre they drove to Notre Dame, where the same thing happened. The venerable pile, standing imperishable amid the vicissitudes of centuries (the phrase was that of the director of the Agence Pujol), stirred in their bosoms no perceptible emotion. Mr. Ducksmith grunted and declined to enter; Mrs. Ducksmith said nothing.

As with pictures and cathedrals, so it was with their food at lunch. Beyond a solemn statement to the effect that in their quality of practised travellers they made a point of eating the food and drinking the wine of the country, Mr. Ducksmith did not allude to the meal. At any rate, thought Aristide, they don’t clamour for underdone chops and tea. So far they were human. Nor did theymaintain an awful silence during the repast. On the contrary, Mr. Ducksmith loved to talk—in a dismal, pompous way—chiefly of British politics. His method of discourse was to place himself in the position of those in authority and to declare what he would do in any given circumstances. Now, unless the interlocutor adopts the same method and declares whathewould do, conversation is apt to become one-sided. Aristide, having no notion of a policy should he find himself exercising the functions of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, cheerfully tried to change the ground of debate.

“What would you do, Mr. Ducksmith, if you were King of England?”

“I should try to rule the realm like a Christian statesman,” replied Mr. Ducksmith.

“I should have a devil of a time!” said Aristide.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Ducksmith.

“I should have a—ah, I see—pardon. I should——” He looked from one paralyzing face to the other, and threw out his arms. “Parbleu!” said he, “I should decapitate your Mrs. Grundy, and make it compulsory for bishops to dance once a week in Trafalgar Square.Tiens!I would have it a capital offence for any English cook to prepare hashed mutton without a license, and I would banish all the bakers of the kingdom to Siberia—ah! your English bread, which you have to eat staleso as to avoid a horrible death!—and I would open two hundred thousandcafés—mon Dieu!how thirsty I have been there!—and I would make every English work-girl do her hair properly, and I would ordain that everybody should laugh three times a day, under pain of imprisonment for life.”

“I am afraid, Mr. Pujol,” remarked Mr. Ducksmith, seriously, “you would not be acting as a constitutional monarch. There is such a thing as the British Constitution, which foreigners are bound to admire, even though they may not understand.”

“To be a king must be a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Ducksmith.

“Madame,” said Aristide, “you have uttered a profound truth.” And to himself he murmured, though he should not have done so, “Nom de Dieu! Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!”

After lunch they drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel, where they established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr. Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife knitting a grey woollen sock.

“Mon vieux!” said Aristide to Bocardon, “they are people of a nightmare. They are automata endowed with the faculty of digestion.Ce sont des gens invraisemblables.”

Paris providing them, apparently, with no entertainment, they started, after a couple of days,Aristide duce et auspice Pujol, on their railway tour through France, to Aristide a pilgrimage of unimaginable depression. They began with Chartres, continued with the Châteaux of the Loire, and began to work their way south. Nothing that Aristide could do roused them from their apathy. They were exasperatingly docile, made few complaints, got up, entrained, detrained, fed, excursioned, slept, just as they were bidden. But they looked at nothing, enjoyed nothing (save perhaps English newspapers and knitting), and uttered nothing by way of criticism or appreciation when Aristide attempted to review the wonders through which they had passed. They did not care to know the history, authentic or Pujolic, of any place they visited; they were impressed by no scene of grandeur, no corner of exquisite beauty. To go on and on, in a dull, non-sentient way, so long as they were spared all forethought, all trouble, all afterthought, seemed to be their ideal of travel. Sometimes Aristide, after a fruitless effort to capture their interest, would hold his head, wondering whether he or the Ducksmith couple were insane. It was a dragon-fly personally conducting two moles through a rose-garden.

Once only, during the early part of their journey, did a gleam of joyousness pierce the dull glaze of Mr. Ducksmith’s eyes. He had procured from the bookstall of a station a pile of English newspapers, and was reading them in the train,while his wife knitted the interminable sock. Suddenly he folded aDaily Telegraph, and handed it over to Aristide so that he should see nothing but a half-page advertisement. The great capitals leaped to Aristide’s eyes:—

“DUCKSMITH’S DELICATE JAMS.”

“I amtheDucksmith,” said he. “I started and built up the business. When I found that I could retire, I turned it into a limited liability company, and now I am free and rich and able to enjoy the advantages of foreign travel.”

Mrs. Ducksmith started, sighed, and dropped a stitch.

“Did you also make pickles?” asked Aristide.

“I did manufacture pickles, but I made my name in jam. In the trade you will find it an honoured one.”

“It is that in every nursery in Europe,” Aristide declared, with polite hyperbole.

“I have done my best to deserve my reputation,” said Mr. Ducksmith, as impervious to flattery as to impressions of beauty.

“Pécaïre!” said Aristide to himself, “how can I galvanize these corpses?”

As the soulless days went by this problem grew to be Aristide’s main solicitude. He felt strangled, choked, borne down by an intolerable weight.What could he do to stir their vitality? Should he fire off pistols behind them, just to see them jump? But would they jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit-eyes, set in their bloodhound sockets, vacantly on him, and assume that the detonations were part of the tour’s programme? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols, and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thaïs might come along, cast her spell upon him, and induce him to wink. He himself was powerless. His raciest stories fell on dull ears; none of his jokes called forth a smile. At last, having taken them to nearly all the historic châteaux of Touraine, without eliciting one cry of admiration, he gave Mr. Ducksmith up in despair and devoted his attention to the lady.

Mrs. Ducksmith parted her smooth black hair in the middle and fastened it in a knob at the back of her head. Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness. At her bosom she wore a great brooch, containing intertwined locks of a grandfather and grandmother long since defunct. Her mind was as drearily equipped as her person. She had a vague idea that they were travelling in France; but if Aristide had told her that it was Japan she would have meeklyaccepted the information. She had no opinions. Still she was a woman, and Aristide, firm in his conviction that when it comes to love-making all women are the same, proceeded forthwith to make love to her.

“Madame,” said he, one morning—she was knitting in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers—“how much more charming that beautiful grey dress would be if it had a spot of colour.”

His audacious hand placed a deep crimson rose against her corsage, and he stood away at arm’s length, his head on one side, judging the effect.

“Magnificent! If madame would only do me the honour to wear it.”

Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.

“I’m afraid my husband does not like colour,” she said.

“He must be taught,” cried Aristide. “You must teach him. I must teach him. Let us begin at once. Here is a pin.”

He held the pin delicately between finger and thumb, and controlled her with his roguish eyes. She took the pin and fixed the rose to her dress.

“I don’t know what Mr. Ducksmith will say.”

“What he ought to say, madame, is ‘Bountiful Providence, I thank Thee for giving me such a beautiful wife.’”

Mrs. Ducksmith blushed and, to conceal her face, bent it over her resumed knitting. She made woman’s time-honoured response.

“I don’t think you ought to say such things, Mr. Pujol.”

“Ah, madame,” said he, lowering his voice; “I have tried not to; but,que voulez-vous, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little grey mouse”—the lady weighed at least twelve stone—“you, who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here”—he thumped his chest; “my Provençal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep.”

“I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Pujol,” she said, dropping stitches recklessly.

“Ah, madame,” he whispered—and the rascal’s whisper on such occasions could be very seductive—“that I will never believe.”

“I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes,” she murmured.

“That’s an illusion,” said he, with a wide-flung gesture, “that will vanish at the first experiment.”

Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon,Daily Telegraphin hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building.

Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jelly-fish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered, “Charming!” Whereupon she coloured and dropped her eyes. And during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her.

“Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?”

She laid down her knitting. “Bartholomew, will you come out?”

He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.

“What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen.”

So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.

“Wouldn’t you like,” said he, “to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?”

“What odd things you think of.”

“But wouldn’t you?” he insinuated.

Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful “Yes.”

“I can tell you of many odd things,” said Aristide. “I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun.Chère madame,” he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, “you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn’t that so?”

She nodded.

“You have always been misunderstood.”

A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child’s game.Enfin, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for, with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and ofwrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saint-like purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman,pour tout de bon, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.

“Bah!” said he to himself. “I am doing a noble and disinterested act. I am restoring sight to the blind. I am giving life to one in a state of suspended animation.Tron de l’Air!I am playing the part of a soul-reviver! And,parbleu!it isn’t Jean or Jacques that can do that. It takes an Aristide Pujol!”

So, having persuaded himself, in his Southern way, that he was executing an almost divine mission, he continued, with a zest now sharpened by an approving conscience, to revive Mrs. Ducksmith’s soul.

The poor lady, who had suffered the blighting influence of Mr. Ducksmith for twenty years with never a ray of counteracting warmth from the outside, expanded like a flower to the sun under the soul-reviving process. Day by day she exhibited some fresh timid coquetry in dress and manner. Gradually she began to respond to Aristide’s suggestions of beauty in natural scenery and exquisite building. On the ramparts of Angoulême, daintiest of towns in France, she gazed at the smiling valleys of the Charente and the Son stretching away below, and of her own accord touched hisarm lightly and said: “How beautiful!” She appealed to her husband.

“Umph!” said he.

Once more (it had become a habit) she exchanged glances with Aristide. He drew her a little farther along, under pretext of pointing out the dreamy sweep of the Charente.

“If he appreciates nothing at all, why on earth does he travel?”

Her eyelids fluttered upwards for a fraction of a second.

“It’s his mania,” she said. “He can never rest at home. He must always be going on—on.”

“How can you endure it?” he asked.

She sighed. “It is better now that you can teach me how to look at things.”

“Good!” thought Aristide. “When I leave them she can teach him to look at things and revive his soul. Truly I deserve a halo.”

As Mr. Ducksmith appeared to be entirely unperceptive of his wife’s spiritual expansion, Aristide grew bolder in his apostolate. He complimented Mrs. Ducksmith to his face. He presented her daily with flowers. He scarcely waited for the heavy man’s back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous,unseeing way. At every stopping-place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town—to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted—he would extract a newspaper from his pocket and read with dull and dogged stupidity. Once Aristide caught him reading the advertisements for cooks and housemaids. In these circumstances Mrs. Ducksmith spiritually expanded at an alarming rate; and, correspondingly, dwindled the progress of Mr. Ducksmith’s sock.

They arrived at Perigueux, in Perigord, land of truffles, one morning, in time for lunch. Towards the end of the meal themaître d’hôtelhelped them to great slabs ofpâté de foie gras, made in the house—most of the hotel-keepers in Perigord makepâté de foie gras, both for home consumption and for exportation—and waited expectant of their appreciation. He was not disappointed. Mr. Ducksmith, after a hesitating glance at the first mouthful, swallowed it, greedily devoured his slab, and, after pointing to his empty plate, said, solemnly:—

“Plou.”

Like Oliver, he asked for more.

“Tiens!” thought Aristide, astounded. “Is he, too, developing a soul?”

But, alas! there were no signs of it when they went their dreary round of the town in the usual ramshackle open cab. The cathedral ofSaint-Front, extolled by Aristide and restored by Abadie—a terrible fellow who has capped with tops of pepper-castors every pre-Gothic building in France—gave him no thrill; nor did the picturesque, tumble-down ancient buildings on the banks of the Dordogne, nor the delicate Renaissance façades in the cool, narrow Rue du Lys.

“We will now go back to the hotel,” said Mr. Ducksmith.

“But have we seen it all?” asked his wife.

“By no means,” said Aristide.

“We will go back to the hotel,” repeated her husband, in his expressionless tones. “I have seen enough of Perigueux.”

This was final. They drove back to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith, without a word, went straight into the salon, leaving Aristide and his wife standing in the vestibule.

“And you, madame,” said Aristide; “are you going to sacrifice the glory of God’s sunshine to the manufacture of woollen socks?”

She smiled—she had caught the trick at last—and said, in happy submission: “What would you have me do?”

With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.

“Let us drain together,” cried he, “the loveliness of Perigueux to its dregs!”

Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade—the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.

Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window-openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honour leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a mediæval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and grey in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.

“Voilà!” said Aristide. “Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows.”

“I have wasted twenty years of my life,” said Mrs. Ducksmith, with a sigh. “Why didn’t I meet someone like you when I was young? Ah, you don’t know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol.”

“Why not Aristide when we are alone? Why not, Henriette?”

He too had the sense of adventure, and his eyes were more than usually compelling and his voice more seductive. For some reason or other, undivined by Aristide—over-excitement of nerves, perhaps—she burst into tears.

“Henriette! Henriette, ne pleurez pas.”

His arm crept round her—he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson; but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on someone’s shoulder and to have someone’s sympathetic arm around one’s waist.

“Pauvre petite femme!And is it love she is pining for?”

She sobbed; he lifted her chin with his free hand—and what less could mortal apostle do?—he kissed her on her wet cheek.

A bellow like that of an angry bull caused them to start asunder. They looked up, and there wasMr. Ducksmith within a few yards of them, his face aflame, his rabbit’s eyes on fire with rage. He advanced, shook his fists in their faces.

“I’ve caught you! At last, after twenty years, I’ve caught you!”

“Monsieur,” cried Aristide, starting up, “allow me to explain.”

He swept Aristide aside like an intercepting willow-branch, and poured forth a torrent of furious speech upon his wife.

“I have hated you for twenty years. Day by day I have hated you more. I’ve watched you, watched you, watched you! But, you sly jade, you’ve been too clever for me till now. Yes; I followed you from the hotel. I dogged you. I foresaw what would happen. Now the end has come. I’ve hated you for twenty years—ever since you first betrayed me——”

Mrs. Ducksmith, who had sat with overwhelmed head in her hands, started bolt upright, and looked at him like one thunderstruck.

“I betrayed you?” she gasped, in bewilderment. “My God! When? How? What do you mean?”

He laughed—for the first time since Aristide had known him—but it was a ghastly laugh, that made the jowls of his cheeks spread horribly to his ears; and again he flooded the calm, stately courtyard with the raging violence of words. The veneer of easy life fell from him. He became the low-born,petty tradesman, using the language of the hands of his jam factory. No, he had never told her. He had awaited his chance. Now he had found it. He called her names....

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