Читать книгу: «The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol», страница 3

“M. Bocardon,” said he, carefully mixing the absinthe which he had ordered, “I learn from my fair cousin that there is between you a regrettable misunderstanding, for which I am sincerely sorry.”

“She calls it a misunderstanding?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir. There is infamy between us. When a wife betrays a man like me – kind, indulgent, trustful, who has worshipped the ground she treads on – it is not a question of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head, I would turn her out of doors to-night. But she has not. You, who are her relative, know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive.”

It was on the tip of Aristide’s impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her, but prudently he refrained.

“She has broken my heart,” continued Bocardon.

Aristide asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion; but, fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes, he launched with Southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveller in buttons —buttons! To be wronged by a traveller in diamonds might have its compensations – but buttons! Linen buttons, bone buttons, brass buttons, trouser buttons! To be a traveller in the inanity of buttonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bondon – he uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client! – who never ordered a bottle of vin cacheté or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zette gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly, there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zette’s room. He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide.

It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely damning epistle. Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bondon’s blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon’s face, and gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache dripped in splashes on the marble table.

“I loved her so tenderly, monsieur,” said he.

The cry, so human, went straight to Aristide’s heart. A sympathetic tear glistened in his bright eyes. He was suddenly filled with an immense pity for this grief-stricken, helpless giant. An odd feminine streak ran through his nature and showed itself in queer places. Impulsively he stretched out his hand.

“You’re going?” asked Bocardon.

“No. A sign of good friendship.”

They gripped hands across the table. A new emotion thrilled through the facile Aristide.

“Bocardon, I devote myself to you,” he cried, with a flamboyant gesture. “What can I do?”

“Alas, nothing,” replied the other, miserably.

“And Zette? What does she say to it all?”

The mountainous shoulders heaved with a shrug. “She denies everything. She had never seen the letter until I showed it to her. She did not know how it came into her room. As if that were possible!”

“It’s improbable,” said Aristide, gloomily.

They talked. Bocardon, in a choking voice, told the simple tale of their married happiness. It had been a love-match, different from the ordinary marriages of reason and arrangement. Not a cloud since their wedding-day. They were called the turtle-doves of the Rue de la Curatterie. He had not even manifested the jealousy justifiable in the possessor of so beautiful a wife. He had trusted her implicitly. He was certain of her love. That was enough. They had had one child, who died. Grief had brought them even nearer each other. And now this stroke had been dealt. It was a knife being turned round in his heart. It was agony.

They walked back to the hotel together. Zette, who was sitting by the desk in the bureau, rose and, without a word or look, vanished down the passage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner-time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting to wash their hands at the primitive lavabo by the foot of the stairs. Aristide accompanied them into the salle à manger, where he dined in solemn silence. The dinner over he went out again, passing by the bureau where Bocardon, in its dim recesses, was eating a sad meal brought to him by the melancholy Euphémie. Zette, he conjectured, was dining in the kitchen. An atmosphere of desolation impregnated the place, as though a corpse were somewhere in the house.

Aristide drank his coffee at the nearest café in a complicated state of mind. He had fallen furiously in love with the lady, believing her to be the victim of a jealous husband. In an outburst of generous emotion he had taken the husband to his heart, seeing that he was a good man stricken to death. Now he loved the lady, loved the husband, and hated the villain Bondon. What Aristide felt, he felt fiercely. He would reconcile these two people he loved, and then go and, if not assassinate Bondon, at least do him some bodily injury. With this idea in his head, he paid for his coffee and went back to the hotel.

He found Zette taking her turn at the bureau, for clients have to be attended to, even in the most distressing circumstances. She was talking to a new arrival, trying to smile a welcome. Aristide, loitering near, watched her beautiful face, to which the perfect classic features gave an air of noble purity. His soul revolted at the idea of her mixing herself up with a sordid wretch like Bondon. It was unbelievable.

“Eh bien?” she said as soon as they were alone.

“Mme. Zette, to-day I called your husband a scoundrel and a crocodile. I was wrong. I find him a man with a beautiful nature.”

“You needn’t tell me that, M. Aristide.”

“You are breaking his heart, Mme. Zette.”

“And is he not breaking mine? He has told you, I suppose. Am I responsible for what I know nothing more about than a babe unborn? You don’t believe I am speaking the truth? Bah! And your professions this afternoon? Wind and gas, like the words of all men.”

“Mme. Zette,” cried Aristide, “I said I would devote my life to your service, and so I will. I’ll go and find Bondon and kill him.”

He watched her narrowly, but she did not grow pale like a woman whose lover is threatened with mortal peril. She said dryly: —

“You had better have some conversation with him first.”

“Where is he to be found?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “How do I know? He left by the early train this morning that goes in the direction of Tarascon.”

“Then to-morrow,” said Aristide, who knew the ways of commercial travellers, “he will be at Tarascon, or at Avignon, or at Arles.”

“I heard him say that he had just done Arles.”

“Tant mieux. I shall find him either at Tarascon or Avignon. And by the Tarasque of Sainte-Marthe, I’ll bring you his head and you can put it up outside as a sign and call the place the ‘Hôtel de la Tête Bondon.’”

Early the next morning Aristide started on his quest, without informing the good Bocardon of his intentions. He would go straight to Avignon, as the more likely place. Inquiries at the various hotels would soon enable him to hunt down his quarry; and then – he did not quite know what would happen then – but it would be something picturesque, something entirely unforeseen by Bondon, something to be thrillingly determined by the inspiration of the moment. In any case he would wipe the stain from the family escutcheon. By this time he had convinced himself that he belonged to the Bocardon family.

The only other occupant of the first-class compartment was an elderly Englishwoman of sour aspect. Aristide, his head full of Zette and Bondon, scarcely noticed her. The train started and sped through the sunny land of vine and olive.

They had almost reached Tarascon when a sudden thought hit him between the eyes, like the blow of a fist. He gasped for a moment, then he burst into shrieks of laughter, kicking his legs up and down and waving his arms in maniacal mirth. After that he rose and danced. The sour-faced Englishwoman, in mortal terror, fled into the corridor. She must have reported Aristide’s behaviour to the guard, for in a minute or two that official appeared at the doorway.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

Aristide paused in his demonstrations of merriment. “Monsieur,” said he, “I have just discovered what I am going to do to M. Bondon.”

Delight bubbled out of him as he walked from the Avignon Railway Station up the Cours de la République. The wretch Bondon lay at his mercy. He had not proceeded far, however, when his quick eye caught sight of an object in the ramshackle display of a curiosity dealer’s. He paused in front of the window, fascinated. He rubbed his eyes.

“No,” said he; “it is not a dream. The bon Dieu is on my side.”

He went into the shop and bought the object. It was a pair of handcuffs.

At a little after three o’clock the small and dilapidated hotel omnibus drove up before the Hôtel de la Curatterie, and from it descended Aristide Pujol, radiant-eyed, and a scrubby little man with a goatee beard, pince-nez, and a dome-like forehead, who, pale and trembling, seemed stricken with a great fear. It was Bondon. Together they entered the little hall. As soon as Bocardon saw his enemy his eyes blazed with fury, and, uttering an inarticulate roar, he rushed out of the bureau with clenched fists murderously uplifted. The terrified Bondon shrank into a corner, protected by Aristide, who, smiling like an angel of peace, intercepted the onslaught of the huge man.

“Be calm, my good Bocardon, be calm.”

But Bocardon would not be calm. He found his voice.

“Ah, scoundrel! Miscreant! Wretch! Traitor!” When his vocabulary of vituperation and his breath failed him, he paused and mopped his forehead.

Bondon came a step or two forward.

“I know, monsieur, I have all the wrong on my side. Your anger is justifiable. But I never dreamt of the disastrous effect of my acts. Let me see her, my good M. Bocardon, I beseech you.”

“Let you see her?” said Bocardon, growing purple in the face.

At this moment Zette came running up the passage.

“What is all this noise about?”

“Ah, madame!” cried Bondon, eagerly, “I am heart-broken. You who are so kind – let me see her.”

“Hein?” exclaimed Bocardon, in stupefaction.

“See whom?” asked Zette.

“My dear dead one. My dear Euphémie, who has committed suicide.”

“But he’s mad!” shouted Bocardon, in his great voice. “Euphémie! Euphémie! Come here!”

At the sight of Euphémie, pale and shivering with apprehension, Bondon sank upon a bench by the wall. He stared at her as if she were a ghost.

“I don’t understand,” he murmured, faintly, looking like a trapped hare at Aristide Pujol, who, debonair, hands on hips, stood a little way apart.

“Nor I, either,” cried Bocardon.

A great light dawned on Zette’s beautiful face. “I do understand.” She exchanged glances with Aristide. He came forward.

“It’s very simple,” said he, taking the stage with childlike exultation. “I go to find Bondon this morning to kill him. In the train I have a sudden inspiration, a revelation from Heaven. It is not Zette but Euphémie that is the bonne amie of Bondon. I laugh, and frighten a long-toothed English old maid out of her wits. Shall I get out at Tarascon and return to Nîmes and tell you, or shall I go on? I decide to go on. I make my plan. Ah, but when I make a plan, it’s all in a second, a flash, pfuit! At Avignon I see a pair of handcuffs. I buy them. I spend hours tracking that animal there. At last I find him at the station about to start for Lyon. I tell him I am a police agent. I let him see the handcuffs, which convince him. I tell him Euphémie, in consequence of the discovery of his letter, has committed suicide. There is a procès-verbal at which he is wanted. I summon him to accompany me in the name of the law – and there he is.”

“Then that letter was not for my wife?” said Bocardon, who was not quick-witted.

“But, no, imbecile!” cried Aristide.

Bocardon hugged his wife in his vast embrace. The tears ran down his cheeks.

“Ah, my little Zette, my little Zette, will you ever pardon me?”

“Oui, je te pardonne, gros jaloux,” said Zette.

“And you!” shouted Bocardon, falling on Aristide; “I must embrace you also.” He kissed him on both cheeks, in his expansive way, and thrust him towards Zette.

“You can also kiss my wife. It is I, Bocardon, who command it.”

The fire of a not ignoble pride raced through Aristide’s veins. He was a hero. He knew it. It was a moment worth living.

The embraces and other expressions of joy and gratitude being temporarily suspended, attention was turned to the unheroic couple who up to then had said not one word to each other. The explanation of their conduct, too, was simple, apparently. They were in love. She had no dowry. He could not marry her, as his parents would not give their consent. She, for her part, was frightened to death by the discovery of the letter, lest Bocardon should turn her out of the house.

“What dowry will satisfy your parents?”

“Nothing less than twelve thousand francs.”

“I give it,” said Bocardon, reckless in his newly-found happiness. “Marry her.”

The clock in the bureau struck four. Aristide pulled out his watch.

“Saperlipopette!” he cried, and disappeared like a flash into the street.

“But what’s the matter with him?” shouted Bocardon, in amazement.

Zette went to the door. “He’s running as if he had the devil at his heels.”

“Was he always like that?” asked her husband.

“How always?”

“Parbleu! When you used to see him at your Aunt Léonie’s.”

Zette flushed red. To repudiate the saviour of her entire family were an act of treachery too black for her ingenuous heart.

“Ah, yes,” she replied, calmly, coming back into the hall. “We used to call him Cousin Quicksilver.”

In the big avenue Aristide hailed a passing cab.

“To the Hôtel du Luxembourg – at a gallop!”

In the joyous excitement of the past few hours this child of impulse and sunshine, this dragon-fly of a man, had entirely forgotten the appointment at two o’clock with the American millionaire and the fortune that depended on it. He would be angry at being kept waiting. Aristide had met Americans before. His swift brain invented an elaborate excuse.

He leaped from the cab and entered the vestibule of the hotel.

“Can I see M. Congleton?” he asked at the bureau.

“An American gentleman? He has gone, monsieur. He left by the three-thirty train. Are you M. Pujol? There is a letter for you.”

With a sinking heart he opened it and read: —

Dear Sir, – I was in this hotel at two o’clock, according to arrangement. As my last train to Japan leaves at three-thirty, I regret I cannot await your convenience. The site of the hotel is satisfactory. Your business methods are not. I am sorry, therefore, not to be able to entertain the matter further. – Faithfully,

William B. Congleton.

He stared at the words for a few paralyzed moments. Then he stuffed the letter into his pocket and broke into a laugh.

“Zut!” said he, using the inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most adequately expresses his scorn of circumstance. “Zut! If I have lost a fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on the day’s work.”

Whereupon he returned gaily to the bosom of the Bocardon family and remained there, its Cousin Quicksilver and its entirely happy and idolized hero, until the indignation of the eminent M. Say summoned him to Paris.

And that is how Aristide Pujol could live thenceforward on nothing at all at Nîmes, whenever it suited him to visit that historic town.

III
THE ADVENTURE OF THE KIND MR. SMITH

Aristide Pujol started life on his own account as a chasseur in a Nice café – one of those luckless children tightly encased in bottle-green cloth by means of brass buttons, who earn a sketchy livelihood by enduring with cherubic smiles the continuous maledictions of the establishment. There he soothed his hours of servitude by dreams of vast ambitions. He would become the manager of a great hotel – not a contemptible hostelry where commercial travellers and seedy Germans were indifferently bedded, but one of those white palaces where milords (English) and millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night for a bedroom and five louis for a glass of beer. Now, in order to derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon a knowledge of English was indispensable. He resolved to learn the language. How he did so, except by sheer effrontery, taking linguistic toll of frequenters of the café, would be a mystery to anyone unacquainted with Aristide. But to his friends his mastery of the English tongue in such circumstances is comprehensible. To Aristide the impossible was ever the one thing easy of attainment; the possible the one thing he never could achieve. That was the paradoxical nature of the man. Before his days of hunted-little-devildom were over he had acquired sufficient knowledge of English to carry him, a few years later, through various vicissitudes in England, until, fired by new social ambitions and self-educated in a haphazard way, he found himself appointed Professor of French in an academy for young ladies.

One of these days, when I can pin my dragon-fly friend down to a plain, unvarnished autobiography, I may be able to trace some chronological sequence in the kaleidoscopic changes in his career. But hitherto, in his talks with me, he flits about from any one date to any other during a couple of decades, in a manner so confusing that for the present I abandon such an attempt. All I know of the date of the episode I am about to chronicle is that it occurred immediately after the termination of his engagement at the academy just mentioned. Somehow, Aristide’s history is a category of terminations.

If the head mistress of the academy had herself played dragon at his classes, all would have gone well. He would have made his pupils conjugate irregular verbs, rendered them adepts in the mysteries of the past participle and the subjunctive mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But dis aliter visum. The gods always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess – and in a governess a sense of humour and of novelty is always a sign of a weak mind – played dragon during Aristide’s lessons. She appreciated his method, which was colloquial. The colloquial Aristide was jocular. His lessons therefore were a giggling joy from beginning to end. He imparted to his pupils delicious knowledge. En avez-vous des-z-homards? Oh, les sales bêtes, elles ont du poil aux pattes, which, being translated, is: “Have you any lobsters? Oh, the dirty animals, they have hair on their feet” – a catch phrase which, some years ago, added greatly to the gaiety of Paris, but in which I must confess to seeing no gleam of wit – became the historic property of the school. He recited to them, till they were word-perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early ’eighties —Sur le bi, sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc, and delighted them with dissertations on Mme. Yvette Guilbert’s earlier repertoire. But for him they would have gone to their lives’ end without knowing that pognon meant money; rouspétance, assaulting the police; thune, a five-franc piece; and bouffer, to take nourishment. He made (according to his own statement) French a living language. There was never a school in Great Britain, the Colonies, or America on which the Parisian accent was so electrically impressed. The retort, Eh! ta sœur, was the purest Montmartre; also Fich’-moi la paix, mon petit, and Tu as un toupet, toi; and the delectable locution, Allons étrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious cocoa-parties.

The progress that academy made in a real grip of the French language was miraculous; but the knowledge it gained in French grammar and syntax was deplorable. A certain mid-term examination – the paper being set by a neighbouring vicar – produced awful results. The phrase, “How do you do, dear?” which ought, by all the rules of Stratford-atte-Bowe, to be translated by Comment vous portez-vous, ma chère? was rendered by most of the senior scholars Eh, ma vieille, ca boulotte? One innocent and anachronistic damsel, writing on the execution of Charles I., declared that he cracha dans le panier in 1649, thereby mystifying the good vicar, who was unaware that “to spit into the basket” is to be guillotined. This wealth of vocabulary was discounted by abject poverty in other branches of the language. No one could give a list of the words in “al” that took “s” in the plural, no one knew anything at all about the defective verb échoir, and the orthography of the school would have disgraced a kindergarten. The head mistress suspected a lack of method in the teaching of M. Pujol, and one day paid his class a surprise visit.

The sight that met her eyes petrified her. The class, including the governess, bubbled and gurgled and shrieked with laughter. M. Pujol, his bright eyes agleam with merriment and his arms moving in frantic gestures, danced about the platform. He was telling them a story – and when Aristide told a story, he told it with the eloquence of his entire frame. He bent himself double and threw out his hands.

“Il était saoûl comme un porc,” he shouted.

And then came the hush of death. The rest of the artless tale about the man as drunk as a pig was never told. The head mistress, indignant majesty, strode up the room.

“M. Pujol, you have a strange way of giving French lessons.”

“I believe, madame,” said he, with a polite bow, “in interesting my pupils in their studies.”

“Pupils have to be taught, not interested,” said the head mistress. “Will you kindly put the class through some irregular verbs.”

So for the remainder of the lesson Aristide, under the freezing eyes of the head mistress, put his sorrowful class through irregular verbs, of which his own knowledge was singularly inexact, and at the end received his dismissal. In vain he argued. Outraged Minerva was implacable. Go he must.

We find him, then, one miserable December evening, standing on the arrival platform of Euston Station (the academy was near Manchester), an unwonted statue of dubiety. At his feet lay his meagre valise; in his hand was an enormous bouquet, a useful tribute of esteem from his disconsolate pupils; around him luggage-laden porters and passengers hurried; in front were drawn up the long line of cabs, their drivers’ waterproofs glistening with wet; and in his pocket rattled the few paltry coins that, for Heaven knew how long, were to keep him from starvation. Should he commit the extravagance of taking a cab or should he go forth, valise in hand, into the pouring rain? He hesitated.

“Sacré mille cochons! Quel chien de climat!” he muttered.

A smart footman standing by turned quickly and touched his hat.

“Beg pardon, sir; I’m from Mr. Smith.”

“I’m glad to hear it, my friend,” said Aristide.

“You’re the French gentleman from Manchester?”

“Decidedly,” said Aristide.

“Then, sir, Mr. Smith has sent the carriage for you.”

“That’s very kind of him,” said Aristide.

The footman picked up the valise and darted down the platform. Aristide followed. The footman held invitingly open the door of a cosy brougham. Aristide paused for the fraction of a second. Who was this hospitable Mr. Smith?

“Bah!” said he to himself, “the best way of finding out is to go and see.”

He entered the carriage, sank back luxuriously on the soft cushions, and inhaled the warm smell of leather. They started, and soon the pelting rain beat harmlessly against the windows. Aristide looked out at the streaming streets, and, hugging himself comfortably, thanked Providence and Mr. Smith. But who was Mr. Smith? Tiens, thought he, there were two little Miss Smiths at the academy; he had pitied them because they had chilblains, freckles, and perpetual colds in their heads; possibly this was their kind papa. But, after all, what did it matter whose papa he was? He was expecting him. He had sent the carriage for him. Evidently a well-bred and attentive person. And tiens! there was even a hot-water can on the floor of the brougham. “He thinks of everything, that man,” said Aristide. “I feel I am going to like him.”

The carriage stopped at a house in Hampstead, standing, as far as he could see in the darkness, in its own grounds. The footman opened the door for him to alight and escorted him up the front steps. A neat parlour-maid received him in a comfortably-furnished hall and took his hat and greatcoat and magnificent bouquet.

“Mr. Smith hasn’t come back yet from the City, sir; but Miss Christabel is in the drawing-room.”

“Ah!” said Aristide. “Please give me back my bouquet.”

The maid showed him into the drawing-room. A pretty girl of three-and-twenty rose from a fender-stool and advanced smilingly to meet him.

“Good afternoon, M. le Baron. I was wondering whether Thomas would spot you. I’m so glad he did. You see, neither father nor I could give him any description, for we had never seen you.”

This fitted in with his theory. But why Baron? After all, why not? The English loved titles.

“He seems to be an intelligent fellow, mademoiselle.”

There was a span of silence. The girl looked at the bouquet, then at Aristide, who looked at the girl, then at the bouquet, then at the girl again.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “will you deign to accept these flowers as a token of my respectful homage?”

Miss Christabel took the flowers and blushed prettily. She had dark hair and eyes and a fascinating, upturned little nose, and the kindest little mouth in the world.

“An Englishman would not have thought of that,” she said.

Aristide smiled in his roguish way and raised a deprecating hand.

“Oh, yes, he would. But he would not have had – what you call the cheek to do it.”

Miss Christabel laughed merrily, invited him to a seat by the fire, and comforted him with tea and hot muffins. The frank charm of his girl-hostess captivated Aristide and drove from his mind the riddle of his adventure. Besides, think of the Arabian Nights’ enchantment of the change from his lonely and shabby bed-sitting-room in the Rusholme Road to this fragrant palace with princess and all to keep him company! He watched the firelight dancing through her hair, the dainty play of laughter over her face, and decided that the brougham had transported him to Bagdad instead of Hampstead.

“You have the air of a veritable princess,” said he.

“I once met a princess – at a charity bazaar – and she was a most matter-of-fact, businesslike person.”

“Bah!” said Aristide. “A princess of a charity bazaar! I was talking of the princess in a fairytale. They are the only real ones.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Christabel, “that when men pay such compliments to English girls they are apt to get laughed at?”

“Englishmen, yes,” replied Aristide, “because they think over a compliment for a week, so that by the time they pay it, it is addled, like a bad egg. But we of Provence pay tribute to beauty straight out of our hearts. It is true. It is sincere. And what comes out of the heart is not ridiculous.”

Again the girl coloured and laughed. “I’ve always heard that a Frenchman makes love to every woman he meets.”

“Naturally,” said Aristide. “If they are pretty. What else are pretty women for? Otherwise they might as well be hideous.”

“Oh!” said the girl, to whom this Provençal point of view had not occurred.

“So, if I make love to you, it is but your due.”

“I wonder what my fiancé would say if he heard you?”

“Your – ?”

“My fiancé! There’s his photograph on the table beside you. He is six foot one, and so jealous!” she laughed again.

“The Turk!” cried Aristide, his swiftly-conceived romance crumbling into dust. Then he brightened up. “But when this six feet of muscle and egotism is absent, surely other poor mortals can glean a smile?”

“You will observe that I’m not frowning,” said Miss Christabel. “But you must not call my fiancé a Turk, for he’s a very charming fellow whom I hope you’ll like very much.”

Aristide sighed. “And the name of this thrice-blessed mortal?”

Miss Christabel told his name – one Harry Ralston – and not only his name, but, such was the peculiar, childlike charm of Aristide Pujol, also many other things about him. He was the Honourable Harry Ralston, the heir to a great brewery peerage, and very wealthy. He was a member of Parliament, and but for Parliamentary duties would have dined there that evening; but he was to come in later, as soon as he could leave the House. He also had a house in Hampshire, full of the most beautiful works of art. It was through their common hobby that her father and Harry had first made acquaintance.

“We’re supposed to have a very fine collection here,” she said, with a motion of her hand.

Aristide looked round the walls and saw them hung with pictures in gold frames. In those days he had not acquired an extensive culture. Besides, who having before him the firelight gleaming through Miss Christabel’s hair could waste his time over painted canvas? She noted his cursory glance.

“I thought you were a connoisseur?”

“I am,” said Aristide, his bright eyes fixed on her in frank admiration.

She blushed again; but this time she rose.

“I must go and dress for dinner. Perhaps you would like to be shown your room?”

He hung his head on one side.

“Have I been too bold, mademoiselle?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You see, I’ve never met a Frenchman before.”

“Then a world of undreamed-of homage is at your feet,” said he.

A servant ushered him up broad, carpeted staircases into a bedroom such as he had never seen in his life before. It was all curtains and hangings and rugs and soft couches and satin quilts and dainty writing-tables and subdued lights, and a great fire glowed red and cheerful, and before it hung a clean shirt. His poor little toilet apparatus was laid on the dressing-table, and (with a tact which he did not appreciate, for he had, sad to tell, no dress-suit) the servant had spread his precious frock-coat and spare pair of trousers on the bed. On the pillow lay his night-shirt, neatly folded.