homme to marry her, what is he to do? Besides, did I not say that the Café de l’Univers was the most prosperous one in Carcassonne? I’m afraid you English, my dear friend, have such sentimental ideas about marriage. Now, we in France – Attendez, attendez!” He suddenly broke off his story, lurched forward, and gripped the back of the front seat.
“To the right, man, to the right!” he cried excitedly to McKeogh.
We had reached the point where the straight road from Aigues-Mortes branches into a fork, one road going to Montpellier, the other to Nîmes. Montpellier being to the west, McKeogh had naturally taken the left fork.
“To the right!” shouted Aristide.
McKeogh pulled up and turned his head with a look of protesting inquiry. I intervened with a laugh.
“You’re wrong in your geography, M. Pujol. Besides, there is the signpost staring you in the face. This is the way to Montpellier.”
“But, my dear, heaven-sent friend, I no more want to go to Montpellier than you do!” he cried. “Montpellier is the last place on earth I desire to visit. You want to go to Nîmes, and so do I. To the right, chauffeur.”
“What shall I do, sir?” asked McKeogh.
I was utterly bewildered. I turned to the goat-skin-clad, pointed-bearded, bright-eyed Aristide, who, sitting bolt upright in the car, with his hands stretched out, looked like a parody of the god Pan in a hard felt hat.
“You don’t want to go to Montpellier?” I asked, stupidly.
“No – ten thousand times no; not for a king’s ransom.”
“But your four thousand francs – your meeting Mme. Gougasse’s train – your getting on to Carcassonne?”
“If I could put twenty million continents between myself and Carcassonne I’d do it,” he explained, with frantic gestures. “Don’t you understand? The good Lord who is always on my side sent you especially to deliver me out of the hands of that unspeakable Xantippe. There are no four thousand francs. I’m not going to meet her train at Montpellier, and if she marries anyone to-morrow at Carcassonne it will not be Aristide Pujol.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’ll go to Nîmes.”
“Very good, sir,” said McKeogh.
“And now,” said I, as soon as we had started on the right-hand road, “will you have the kindness to explain?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he cried, gleefully. “Here am I delivered. I am free. I can breathe God’s good air again. I’m not going to marry Yum-Yum, Yum-Yum. I feel ten years younger. Oh, I’ve had a narrow escape. But that’s the way with me. I always fall on my feet. Didn’t I tell you I’ve never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the House of Bondage. I took it, and here I am! For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Aigues-Mortes, when suddenly you – a Deus ex machina– a veritable god out of the machine – come to my aid. Don’t say there isn’t a Providence watching over me.”
I suggested that his mode of escape seemed somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn’t he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied?
“For the simple reason,” said he, with a gay laugh, “that I haven’t a single penny piece in the world.”
He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously.
“Not one tiny bronze sou,” said he.
“You seem to take it pretty philosophically,” said I.
“Les gueux, les gueux, sont des gens heureux,” he quoted.
“You’re the first person who has made me believe in the happiness of beggars.”
“In time I shall make you believe in lots of things,” he retorted. “No. I hadn’t one sou to buy a ticket, and Amélie never left me. I spent my last franc on the journey from Carcassonne to Aigues-Mortes. Amélie insisted on accompanying me. She was taking no chances. Her eyes never left me from the time we started. When I ran to your assistance she was watching me from a house on the other side of the place. She came to the hotel while we were lunching. I thought I would slip away unnoticed and join you after you had made the tour des remparts. But no. I must present her to my English friend. And then —voyons– didn’t I tell you I never lost a visiting-card? Look at this?”
He dived into his pocket, produced the letter-case, and extracted a card.
“Voilà.”
I read: “The Duke of Wiltshire.”
“But, good heavens, man,” I cried, “that’s not the card I gave you.”
“I know it isn’t,” said he; “but it’s the one I showed to Amélie.”
“How on earth,” I asked, “did you come by the Duke of Wiltshire’s visiting-card?”
He looked at me roguishly.
“I am – what do you call it? – a – a ‘snapper up of unconsidered trifles.’ You see I know my Shakespeare. I read ‘The Winter’s Tale’ with some French pupils to whom I was teaching English. I love Autolycus. C’est un peu moi, hein? Anyhow, I showed the Duke’s card to Amélie.”
I began to understand. “That was why you called me ‘monseigneur’?”
“Naturally. And I told her that you were my English patron, and would give me four thousand francs as a wedding present if I accompanied you to your agent’s at Montpellier, where you could draw the money. Ah! But she was suspicious! Yesterday I borrowed a bicycle. A friend left it in the courtyard. I thought, ‘I will creep out at dead of night, when everyone’s asleep, and once on my petite bicyclette, bonsoir la compagnie.’ But, would you believe it? When I had dressed and crept down, and tried to mount the bicycle, I found both tyres had been punctured in a hundred places with the point of a pair of scissors. What do you think of that, eh? Ah, là, là! it has been a narrow escape. When you invited her to accompany us to Montpellier my heart was in my mouth.”
“It would have served you right,” I said, “if she had accepted.”
He laughed as though, instead of not having a penny, he had not a care in the world. Accustomed to the geometrical conduct of my well-fed fellow-Britons, who map out their lives by rule and line, I had no measure whereby to gauge this amazing and inconsequential person. In one way he had acted abominably. To leave an affianced bride in the lurch in this heartless manner was a most ungentlemanly proceeding. On the other hand, an unscrupulous adventurer would have married the woman for her money and chanced the consequences. In the tussle between Perseus and the Gorgon the odds are all in favour of Perseus. Mercury and Minerva, the most sharp-witted of the gods, are helping him all the time – to say nothing of the fact that Perseus starts out by being a notoriously handsome fellow. So a handsome rogue can generally wheedle an elderly, ugly wife into opening her money-bags, and, if successful, leads the enviable life of a fighting-cock. It was very much to his credit that this kind of life was not to the liking of Aristide Pujol.
Indeed, speaking from affectionate
