The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol Part 34

"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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 Credit 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 Nimes, 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 Credit 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 cas.h.i.+er 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 cas.h.i.+er.

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 Credit Lyonnais and mechanically crossed the little street separating the Bank from the cafe on the Place Carnot. There he sat stupidly and wondered. The waiter hovered in front of him. "_Monsieur desire?_" 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 a.s.sortment of cheque books. It was incomprehensible--and meanwhile, his thousand pounds....

The little square blazed before him in the August suns.h.i.+ne. Opposite flashed the white ma.s.s of the Etabliss.e.m.e.nt des Bains. There was the old Roman Arch of t.i.tus, 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 b.u.m 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 d.a.m.ning 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 h.o.a.ry 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 Tromso to Cap Spartivento that you never dreamed of. I'll lead you to every stained gla.s.s 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 G.o.ddess 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 gla.s.s windows, but of the senior partner in the boot factory of Atlanta, Georgia.

"I believe you," said he. "It's a deal. Shake."