The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

“But you mustn’t fight. It would be too dreadful. Is there no other way?”

“You must consult first with your daughter,” said Aristide.

He dined in the hotel with Eugene Miller. Neither the Erringtons nor the Comte de Lussigny were anywhere to be seen. After dinner, however, he found the elder lady waiting for him in the hall. They walked out into the quiet of the garden. She had been too upset to dine, she explained, having had a terrible scene with Betty. Nothing but absolute proofs of her lover’s iniquity would satisfy her. The world was full of slanderous tongues; the noblest and purest did not escape. For herself, she had never been comfortable with the Comte de Lussigny. She had noticed too that he had always avoided the best French people in hotels. She would give anything to save her daughter. She wept.

“And the unhappy girl has written him compromising letters,” she lamented.

“They must be got back.”

“But how? Oh, Monsieur Pujol, do you think he would take money for them?”

“A scoundrel like that would take money for his dead mother’s shroud,” said Aristide.

“A thousand pounds?”

She looked very haggard and helpless beneath the blue arc-lights. Aristide’s heart went out to her. He knew her type – the sweet gentlewoman of rural England who comes abroad to give her pretty daughter a sight of life, ingenuously confident that foreign watering-places are as innocent as her own sequestered village.

“That is much money, chère madame,” said Aristide.

“I am fairly well off,” said Mrs. Errington.

Aristide reflected. At the offer of a smaller sum the Count would possibly bluff. But to a Knight of Industry, as he knew the Count to be, a certain thousand pounds would be a great temptation. And after all to a wealthy Englishwoman what was a thousand pounds?

“Madame,” said he, “if you offer him a thousand pounds for the letters, and a written confession that he is not the Comte de Lussigny, but a common adventurer, I stake my reputation that he will accept.”

They walked along for a few moments in silence; the opera had begun at the adjoining Villa des Fleurs and the strains floated through the still August air. After a while she halted and laid her hand on his sleeve.

“Monsieur Pujol, I have never been faced with such a thing, before. Will you undertake for me this delicate and difficult business?”

“Madame,” said he, “my life is at the service of yourself and your most exquisite daughter.” She pressed his hand. “Thank God, I’ve got a friend in this dreadful place,” she said brokenly. “Let me go in.” And when they reached the lounge, she said, “Wait for me here.”

She entered the lift. Aristide waited. Presently the lift descended and she emerged with a slip of paper in her hand.

“Here is a bearer cheque, Monsieur Pujol, for a thousand pounds. Get the letters and the confession if you can, and a mother’s blessing will go with you.”

She left him and went upstairs again in the lift. Aristide athirst with love, living drama and unholy hatred of the Comte de Lussigny, cocked his black, soft-felt evening hat at an engaging angle on his head and swaggered into the Villa des Fleurs. As he passed the plebeian crowd round the petits-chevaux table – these were the days of little horses and not the modern equivalent of la boule– he threw a louis on the square marked 5, waited for the croupier to push him his winnings, seven louis and his stake on the little white horse, and walked into the baccarat room. A bank was being called for thirty louis at the end table.

“Quarante,” said Aristide.

“Ajugé à quarante louis,” cried the croupier, no one bidding higher.

Aristide took the banker’s seat and put down his forty louis. Looking round the long table he saw the Comte de Lussigny sitting in the punt. The two men glared at each other defiantly. Someone went “banco.” Aristide won. The fact of his holding the bank attracted a crowd round the table. The regular game began. Aristide won, lost, won again. Now it must be explained, without going into the details of the game, that the hand against the bank is played by the members of the punt in turn.

Suddenly, before dealing the cards, Aristide asked, “A qui la main?”

“C’est à Monsieur,” said the croupier, indicating Lussigny.

“Il y a une suite,” said Aristide, signifying, as was his right, that he would retire from the bank with his winnings. “The face of that gentleman does not please me.”

There was a hush at the humming table. The Count grew dead white and looked at his fingernails. Aristide superbly gathered up his notes and gold, and tossing a couple of louis to the croupiers, left the table, followed by all eyes. It was one of the thrilling moments of Aristide’s life. He had taken the stage, commanded the situation. He had publicly offered the Comte de Lussigny the most deadly insult and the Comte de Lussigny sat down beneath it like a lamb. He swaggered slowly through the crowded room, twirling his moustache, and went into the cool of the moonlit deserted garden beyond, where he waited gleefully. He had a puckish knowledge of human nature. After a decent interval, and during the absorbing interest of the newly constituted bank, the Comte de Lussigny slipped unnoticed from the table and went in search of Aristide. He found him smoking a large corona and lounging in one wicker chair with his feet on another, beside a very large whisky and soda.

“Ah, it’s you,” said he without moving.

“Yes,” said the Count furiously.

“I haven’t yet had the pleasure of kicking your friends over Mont Revard,” said Aristide.

“Look here, mon petit, this has got to finish,” cried the Count.

“Parfaitement. I should like nothing better than to finish. But let us finish like well-bred people,” said Aristide suavely. “We don’t want the whole Casino as witnesses. You’ll find a chair over there. Bring it up.”

He was enjoying himself immensely. The Count glared at him, turned and banged a chair over by the side of the table.

“Why do you insult me like this?”

“Because,” said Aristide, “I’ve talked by telephone this evening with my good friend Monsieur Lepine, Prefect of Police of Paris.”

“You lie,” said the Count.

“Vous verrez. In the meantime, perhaps we might have a little conversation. Will you have a whisky and soda? It is one of my English habits.”

“No,” said the Count emphatically.

“You permit me then?” He drank a great draught. “You are wrong. It helps to cool one’s temper. Eh bien, let us talk.”

He talked. He put before the Count the situation of the beautiful Miss Errington. He conducted the scene like the friend of the family whose astuteness he had admired as a boy in the melodramas that found their way to Marseilles.

“Look,” said he, at last, having vainly offered from one hundred to eight hundred pounds for poor Betty Errington’s compromising letters. “Look – ” He drew the cheque from his note-case. “Here are twenty-five thousand francs. The signature is that of the charming Madame Errington herself. The letters, and a little signed word, just a little word. ‘Mademoiselle, I am a chevalier d’industrie. I have a wife and five children. I am not worthy of you. I give you back your promise.’ Just that. And twenty-five thousand francs, mon ami.”

“Never in life!” exclaimed the Count rising. “You continue to insult me.”

Aristide for the first time abandoned his lazy and insolent attitude and jumped to his feet.

“And I’ll continue to insult you, canaille that you are, all through that room,” he cried, with a swift-flung gesture towards the brilliant doorway. “You are dealing with Aristide Pujol. Will you never understand? The letters and a confession for twenty-five thousand francs.”

“Never in life,” said the Count, and he moved swiftly away.

Aristide caught him by the collar as he stood on the covered terrace, a foot or two from the threshold of the gaming-room.

“I swear to you, I’ll make a scandal that you won’t survive.”

The Count stopped and pushed Aristide’s hand away.

“I admit nothing,” said he. “But you are a gambler and so am I. I will play you for those documents against twenty-five thousand francs.”

“Eh?” said Aristide, staggered for the moment.

The Comte de Lussigny repeated his proposition.

“Bon,” said Aristide. “Trés bon. C’est entendu. C’est fait.”

If Beelzebub had arisen and offered to play beggar-my-neighbour for his soul, Aristide would have agreed; especially after the large whisky and soda and the Mumm Cordon Rouge and the Napoleon brandy which Eugene Miller had insisted on his drinking at dinner.

“I have a large room at the hotel,” said he.

“I will join you,” said the Count. “Monsieur,” he took off his hat very politely. “Go first. I will be there in three minutes.”

Aristide trod on air during the two minutes’ walk to the Hôtel de l’Europe. At the bureau he ordered a couple of packs of cards and a supply of drinks and went to his palatial room on the ground floor. In a few moments the Comte de Lussigny appeared. Aristide offered him a two francs corona which was ceremoniously accepted. Then he tore the wrapping off one of the packs of cards and shuffled.

“Monsieur,” said he, still shuffling. “I should like to deal two hands at ecarté. It signifies nothing. It is an experiment. Will you cut?”

“Volontiers,” said the Count.

Aristide took up the pack, dealt three cards to the Count, three cards to himself, two cards to the Count, two to himself and turned up the King of Hearts as the eleventh card.

“Monsieur,” said he, “expose your hand and I will expose mine.”

Both men threw their hands face uppermost on the table. Aristide’s was full of trumps, the Count’s of valueless cards.

He looked at his adversary with his roguish, triumphant smile. The Count looked at him darkly.

“The ordinary card player does not know how to deal like that,” he said with sinister significance.

“But I am not ordinary in anything, my dear sir,” laughed Aristide, in his large boastfulness. “If I were, do you think I would have agreed to your absurd proposal? Voyons, I only wanted to show you that in dealing cards I am your equal. Now, the letters – ” The Count threw a small packet on the table. “You will permit me? I do not wish to read them. I verify only. Good,” said he. “And the confession?”

“What you like,” said the Count, coldly. Aristide scribbled a few lines that would have been devastating to the character of a Hyrcanean tiger and handed the paper and fountain pen to the Count.

“Will you sign?”

The Count glanced at the words and signed.

“Voilà,” said Aristide, laying Mrs. Errington’s cheque beside the documents. “Now let us play. The best of three games?”

“Good,” said the Count. “But you will excuse me, monsieur, if I claim to play for ready money. The cheque will take five days to negotiate and if I lose, I shall evidently have to leave Aix to-morrow morning.”

“That’s reasonable,” said Aristide.

He drew out his fat note-case and counted twenty-five one-thousand-franc notes on to the table. And then began the most exciting game of cards he had ever played. In the first place he was playing with another person’s money for a fantastic stake, a girl’s honour and happiness. Secondly he was pitted against a master of ecarté. And thirdly he knew that his adversary would cheat if he could and that his adversary suspected him of fraudulent designs. So as they played, each man craned his head forward and looked at the other man’s fingers with fierce intensity.

Aristide lost the first game. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. In the second game, he won the vole in one hand. The third and final game began. They played slowly, carefully, with keen quick eyes. Their breathing came hard. The Count’s lips parted beneath his uptwisted moustache showed his teeth like a cat’s. Aristide lost sense of all outer things in the thrill of the encounter. They snarled the stereotyped phrases necessary for the conduct of the game. At last the points stood at four for Aristide and three for his adversary. It was Aristide’s deal. Before turning up the eleventh card he paused for the fraction of a second. If it was the King, he had won. He flicked it neatly face upward. It was not the King.

“J’en donne.”

“Non. Le roi.”

The Count played and marked the King. Aristide had no trumps. The game was lost.

He sat back white, while the Count smiling gathered up the bank-notes.

“And now, Monsieur Pujol,” said he impudently, “I am willing to sell you this rubbish for the cheque.”

Aristide jumped to his feet. “Never!” he cried. Madness seized him. Regardless of the fact that he had nothing like another thousand pounds left wherewith to repay Mrs. Errington if he lost, he shouted: “I will play again for it. Not ecarté. One cut of the cards. Ace lowest.”

“All right,” said the Count.

“Begin, you.”

Aristide watched his hand like cat, as he cut. He cut an eight. Aristide gave a little gasp of joy and cut quickly. He held up a Knave and laughed aloud. Then he stopped short as he saw the Count about to pounce on the documents and the cheque. He made a swift movement and grabbed them first, the other man’s hand on his.

“Canaille!”

He dashed his free hand into the adventurer’s face. The man staggered back. Aristide pocketed the precious papers. The Count scowled at him for an undecided second, and then bolted from the room.

“Whew!” said Aristide, sinking into his chair and wiping his face. “That was a narrow escape.”

He looked at his watch. It was only ten o’clock. It had seemed as if his game with Lussigny had lasted for hours. He could not go to bed and stood confronted with anti-climax. After a while he went in search of Eugene Miller and having found him in solitary meditation on stained glass windows in the dim-lit grounds of the Villa, sat down by his side and for the rest of the evening poured his peculiar knowledge of Europe into the listening ear of the young man from Atlanta.

On the following morning, as soon as he was dressed, he learned from the Concierge that the Comte de Lussigny had left for Paris by the early train.

“Good,” said Aristide.

A little later Mrs. Errington met him in the lounge and accompanied him to the lawn where they had sat the day before.

“I have no words to thank you, Monsieur Pujol,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I have heard how you shamed him at the tables. It was brave of you.”

“It was nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he were in the habit of doing deeds like that every day of his life. “And your exquisite daughter, Madame?”

“Poor Betty! She is prostrate. She says she will never hold up her head again. Her heart is broken.”

“It is young and will be mended,” said Aristide.

She smiled sadly. “It will be a question of time. But she is grateful to you, Monsieur Pujol. She realizes from what a terrible fate you have saved her.” She sighed. There was a brief silence.

“After this,” she continued, “a further stay in Aix would be too painful. We have decided to take the Savoy express this evening and get back to our quiet home in Somerset.”

“Ah, madame,” said Aristide earnestly. “And shall I not have the pleasure of seeing the charming Miss Betty again?”

“You will come and stay with us in September. Let me see? The fifteenth. Why not fix a date? You have my address? No? Will you write it down?” she dictated: “Wrotesly Manor, Burnholme, Somerset. There I’ll try to show you how grateful I am.”

She extended her hand. He bowed over it and kissed it in his French way and departed a very happy man.

The Erringtons left that evening. Aristide waylaid them as they were entering the hotel omnibus, with a preposterous bouquet of flowers which he presented to Betty, whose pretty face was hidden by a motor-veil. He bowed, laid his hand on his heart and said: “Adieu, mademoiselle.”

“No,” she said in a low voice, but most graciously, “Au revoir, Monsieur Pujol.”

For the next few days Aix seemed to be tame and colourless. In an inexplicable fashion, too, it had become unprofitable. Aristide no longer knew that he was going to win; and he did not win. He lost considerably. So much so that on the morning when he was to draw the cash for the cheque, at the Crédit Lyonnais, he had only fifty pounds and some odd silver left. Aristide looking at the remainder rather ruefully made a great resolution. He would gamble no more. Already he was richer than he had ever been in his life. He would leave Aix. Tiens! why should he not go to his good friends the Bocardons at Nîmes, bringing with him a gold chain for Bocardon and a pair of ear-rings for the adorable Zette? There he would look about him. He would use the thousand pounds as a stepping-stone to legitimate fortune. Then he would visit the Erringtons in England, and if the beautiful Miss Betty smiled on him – why, after all, sacrebleu he was an honest man, without a feather on his conscience.

So, jauntily swinging his cane, he marched into the office of the Crédit Lyonnais, went into the inner room and explained his business.

“Ah, your cheque, monsieur, that we were to collect. I am sorry. It has come back from the London bankers.”

“How come back?”

“It has not been honoured. See, monsieur. ‘Not known. No account.’” The cashier pointed to the grim words across the cheque.

“Comprends pas,” faltered Aristide.

“It means that the person who gave you the cheque has no account at this bank.”

Aristide took the cheque and looked at it in a dazed way.

“Then I do not get my twenty-five thousand francs?”

“Evidently not,” said the cashier.

Aristide stood for a while stunned. What did it mean? His thousand pounds could not be lost. It was impossible. There was some mistake. It was an evil dream. With a heavy weight on the top of his head, he went out of the Crédit Lyonnais and mechanically crossed the little street separating the Bank from the café on the Place Carnot. There he sat stupidly and wondered. The waiter hovered in front of him. “Monsieur désire?” Aristide waved him away absently. Yes, it was some mistake. Mrs. Errington in her agitation must have used the wrong cheque book. But even rich English people do not carry about with them a circulating library assortment of cheque books. It was incomprehensible – and meanwhile, his thousand pounds…

The little square blazed before him in the August sunshine. Opposite flashed the white mass of the Etablissement des Bains. There was the old Roman Arch of Titus, gray and venerable. There were the trees of the gardens in riotous greenery. There on the right marking the hour of eleven on its black face was the clock of the Comptoir National. It was Aix; familiar Aix; not a land of dreams. And there coming rapidly across from the Comptoir National was the well knit figure of the young man from Atlanta.

“Nom de Dieu,” murmured Aristide. “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!”

Eugene Miller, in a fine frenzy, threw himself into a chair beside Aristide.

“See here. Can you understand this?”

He thrust into his hand a pink strip of paper. It was a cheque for a hundred pounds, made payable to Eugene Miller, Esquire, signed by Mary Errington, and marked “Not known. No account.”

“Tonnerre de Dieu!” cried Aristide. “How did you get this?”

“How did I get it? I cashed it for her – the day she went away. She said urgent affairs summoned her from Aix – no time to wire for funds – wanted to pay her hotel bill – and she gave me the address of her old English home in Somerset and invited me to come there in September. Fifteenth of September. Said that you were coming. And now I’ve got a bum cheque. I guess I can’t wander about this country alone. I need blinkers and harness and a man with a whip.”

He went on indignantly. Aristide composed his face into an expression of parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening upheaval. He saw it all, the whole mocking drama…

He, Aristide Pujol, was the most sweetly, the most completely swindled man in France.

The Comte de Lussigny, the mild Mrs. Errington and the beautiful Betty were in league together and had exquisitely plotted. They had conspired, as soon as he had accused the Count of cheating. The rascal must have gone straight to them from Miller’s room. No wonder that Lussigny, when insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in the garden. No wonder he had accepted the accusation of adventurer. No wonder he had refused to play for the cheque which he knew to be valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying for success on his manipulation of the cards. Finally he had desired to get hold of a dangerous cheque. In that he had been foiled. But the trio has got away with his thousand pounds, his wonderful thousand pounds. He reflected, still keeping an attentive eye on young Eugene Miller and interjecting a sympathetic word, that after he had paid his hotel bill, he would be as poor on quitting Aix-les-Bains as he was when he had entered it. Sic transit… As it was in the beginning with Aristide Pujol, is now and ever shall be…

“But I have my clothes – such clothes as I’ve never had in my life,” thought Aristide. “And a diamond and sapphire tie-pin and a gold watch, and all sorts of other things. Tron de l’air, I’m still rich.”

“Who would have thought she was like that?” said he. “And a hundred pounds, too. A lot of money.”

For nothing in the world would he have confessed himself a fellow-victim.

“I don’t care a cent for the hundred pounds,” cried the young man. “Our factory turns out seven hundred and sixty-seven million pairs of boots per annum.” (Aristide, not I, is responsible for the statistics.) “But I have a feeling that in this hoary country I’m just a little toddling child. And I hate it. I do, sir. I want a nurse to take me round.”

Aristide flashed the lightning of his wit upon the young man from Atlanta, Georgia.

“You do, my dear young friend. I’ll be your nurse, at a weekly salary – say a hundred francs – it doesn’t matter. We will not quarrel.” Eugene Miller was startled. “Yes,” said Aristide, with a convincing flourish. “I’ll clear robbers and sirens and harpies from your path. I’ll show you things in Europe – from Tromsö to Cap Spartivento that you never dreamed of. I’ll lead you to every stained glass window in the world. I know them all.”

“I particularly want to see those in the church of St. Sebald in Nuremberg.”

“I know them like my pocket,” said Aristide. “I will take you there. We start to-day.”

“But, Mr. Pujol,” said the somewhat bewildered Georgian. “I thought you were a man of fortune.”

“I am more than a man. I am a soldier. I am a soldier of Fortune. The fickle goddess has for the moment deserted me. But I am loyal. I have for all worldly goods, two hundred and fifty dollars, with which I shall honorably pay my hotel bill. I say I am a soldier of Fortune. But,” he slapped his chest, “I am the only honorable one on the Continent of Europe.”

The young man fixed upon him the hard blue eyes, not of the enthusiast for stained glass windows, but of the senior partner in the boot factory of Atlanta, Georgia.

“I believe you,” said he. “It’s a deal. Shake.”

“And now,” said Aristide, after having shaken hands, “come and lunch with me at Nikola’s for the last time.”

He rose, stretched out both arms in a wide gesture and smiled with his irresistible Ancient Mariner’s eyes at the young man.

“We lunch. We eat ambrosia. Then we go out together and see the wonderful world through the glass-blood of saints and martyrs and apostles and the good Father Abraham and Louis Quatorze. Viens, mon cher ami. It is the dream of my life.”

Practically penniless and absolutely disillusioned, the amazing man was radiantly happy.