Part 11

It was the beginning of many long days for Fleurette. Reginald did not write from Cherbourg or cable from New York, as he had promised, and the return American mail brought no letter. The days passed drearily. Sometimes, for the sake of human society, she accompanied the tourist

## parties of the Agence Pujol; but the thrill had passed from the Morgue

and the glory had departed from Versailles. Sometimes she wandered out by herself into the streets and public gardens; but, pretty, unprotected, and fragile, she attracted the attention of evil or careless men, which struck cold terror into her heart. Most often she sat alone and listless in the hotel, reading the feuilleton of the _Petit Journal_, and waiting for the post to bring her news.

"_Mon Dieu_, M. Pujol, what can have happened?"

"Nothing at all, _chère petite madame_"--question and answer came many times a day. "Only some foolish mischance which will soon be explained. The good Reginald has written and his letter has been lost in the post. He has been obliged to go on business to San Francisco or Buenos Ayres--_et, que voulez-vous?_ one cannot have letters from those places in twenty-four hours."

"If only he had taken me with him!"

"But, dear Mme. Fleurette, he could not expose you to the hardships of travel. You, who are as fragile as a cobweb, how could you go to Patagonia or Senegal or Baltimore, those wild places where there are no comforts for women? You must be reasonable. I am sure you will get a letter soon--or else in a day or two he will come, with his good, honest face as if nothing had occurred--these English are like that--and call for whisky and soda. Be comforted, _chère petite madame_."

Aristide did his best to comfort her, threw her in the companionship of decent women staying at the hotel, and devoted his evenings to her entertainment. But the days passed, and Reginald Batterby, with the good, honest face, neither wrote nor ordered whisky and soda. Fleurette began to pine and fade.

One day she came to Aristide.

"M. Pujol, I have no more money left."

"_Bigre!_" said Pujol. "The good Bocardon will have to give you credit. I'll arrange it."

"But I already owe for three weeks," said Fleurette.

Aristide sought Bocardon. One week more was all the latter dared allow.

"But her husband will return and pay you. He is my old and intimate friend. I make myself hoarse in telling it to you, wooden-head that you are!"

But Bocardon, who had to account to higher powers, the proprietors of the hotel, was helpless. At the end of the week Fleurette was called upon to give up her room. She wept with despair; Aristide wept with fury; Bocardon wept out of sympathy. Already, said Bocardon, the proprietors would blame him for not using the legal right to detain madame's luggage.

"_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ what is to become of me?" wailed Fleurette.

"You forget, madame," said Aristide, with one of his fine flourishes, "that you are the sacred trust of Aristide Pujol."

"But I can't accept your money," objected Fleurette.

"_Tron de l'air!_" he cried. "Did your husband put you in my charge or did he not? Am I your legal guardian, or am I not? If I am your legal guardian, what right have you to question the arrangements made by your husband? Answer me that."

Fleurette, too gentle and too miserable for intricate argument, sighed.

"But it is your money, all the same."

Aristide turned to Bocardon. "Try," said he, "to convince a woman! Do you want proofs? Wait there a minute while I get them from the safe of the Agence Pujol."

He disappeared into the bureau, where, secure from observation, he tore an oblong strip from a sheet of stiff paper, and, using an indelible pencil, wrote out something fantastic halfway between a cheque and a bill of exchange, forged as well as he could from memory the signature of Reginald Batterby--the imitation of handwriting was one of Aristide's many odd accomplishments--and made the document look legal by means of a receipt stamp, which he took from Bocardon's drawer. He returned to the vestibule with the strip folded and somewhat crumpled in his hand. "_Voilà_," said he, handing it boldly to Fleurette. "Here is your husband's guarantee to me, your guardian, for four thousand francs."

Fleurette examined the forgery. The stamp impressed her. For the simple souls of France there is magic in _papier timbré_.

"It was my husband who wrote this?" she asked, curiously.

"_Mais, oui_," said Aristide, with an offended air of challenge.

Fleurette's eyes filled again with tears.

"I only inquired," she said, "because this is the first time I have seen his handwriting."

"_Ma pauvre petite_," said Aristide.

"I will do whatever you tell me, M. Pujol," said Fleurette, humbly.

"Good! That is talking like _une bonne petite dame raisonnable_. Now, I know a woman made up of holy bread whom St. Paul and St. Peter are fighting to have next them when she goes to Paradise. Her name is Mme. Bidoux, and she sells cabbages and asparagus and charcoal at No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré. She will arrange our little affair. Bocardon, will you have madame's trunks sent to that address?"

He gave his arm to Fleurette, and walked out of the hotel, with serene confidence in the powers of the sainted Mme. Bidoux. Fleurette accompanied him unquestioningly. Of course she might have said: "If you hold negotiable security from my husband to the amount of four thousand francs, why should I exchange the comforts of the hotel for the doubtful accommodation of the sainted Mme. Bidoux who sells cabbages?" But I repeat that Fleurette was a simple soul who took for granted the wisdom of so flamboyant and virile a creature as Aristide Pujol.

Away up at the top of No. 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, was a little furnished room to let, and there Aristide installed his sacred charge. Mme. Bidoux, who, as she herself maintained, would have cut herself into four pieces for Aristide--did he not save her dog's life? Did he not marry her daughter to the brigadier of gendarmes (_sale voyou!_), who would otherwise have left her lamenting? Was he not the most wonderful of God's creatures?--Mme. Bidoux, although not quite appreciating Aristide's quixotic delicacy, took the forlorn and fragile wisp of misery to her capacious bosom. She made her free of the cabbages and charcoal. She provided her, at a risible charge, with succulent meals. She told her tales of her father and mother, of her neighbours, of the domestic differences between the concierge and his wife (soothing idyll for an Ariadne!), of the dirty thief of a brigadier of gendarmes, of her bodily ailments--her body was so large that they were many; of the picturesque death, through apoplexy, of the late M. Bidoux; the brave woman, in short, gave her of her heart's best. As far as human hearts could provide a bed for Fleurette, that bed was of roses. As a matter of brutal fact, it was narrow and nubbly, and the little uncarpeted room was ten feet by seven; but to provide it Aristide went to his own bed hungry. And if the bed of a man's hunger is not to be accounted as one of roses, there ought to be a vote for the reduction of the Recording Angel's salary.

It must not be imagined that Fleurette thought the bed hard. Her bed of life from childhood had been nubbly. She never dreamed of complaining of her little room under the stars, and she sat among the cabbages like a tired lily, quite contented with her material lot. But she drooped and drooped, and the cough returned and shook her; and Aristide, realizing the sacredness of his charge, became a prey to anxious terrors.

"Mère Bidoux," said he, "she must have lots of good, nourishing, tender, underdone beef, good fillets, and _entrecôtes saignantes_."

Mme. Bidoux sighed. She had a heart, but she also had a pocket which, like Aristide's, was not over-filled. "That costs dear, my poor friend," she said.

"What does it matter what it costs? It is I who provide," said Aristide, grandly.

And Aristide gave up tobacco and coffee and the mild refreshment at cafés essential to the existence of every Frenchman, and degraded his soul by taking half-franc tips from tourists--a source of income which, as Director, M. le Directeur, Herr Direktor of the Agence Pujol, he had hitherto scorned haughtily--in order to provide Fleurette with underdone beefsteaks.

All his leisure he devoted to her. She represented something that hitherto had not come into his life--something delicate, tender, ethereal, something of woman that was exquisitely adorable, apart from the flesh. Once, as he was sitting in the little shop, she touched his temple lightly with her fingers.

"Ah, you are good to me, Aristide."

He felt a thrill such as no woman's touch had ever caused to pass through him--far, far sweeter, cleaner, purer. If the _bon Dieu_ could have given her to him then and there to be his wife, what bond could have been holier? But he had bound himself by a sacred obligation. His friend on his return should find him loyal.

"Who could help being good to you, little Fleurette?" said he. "Even an Apache would not tread on a lily of the valley!"

"But you put me in water and tend me so carefully."

"So that you can be fresh whenever the dear Reginald comes back."

She sighed. "Tell me what I can do for you, my good Aristide."

"Keep well and happy and be a valiant little woman," said he.

Fleurette tried hard to be valiant; but the effort exhausted her strength. As the days went on, even Aristide's inexhaustible conversation failed to distract her from brooding. She lost the trick of laughter. In the evenings, when he was most with her, she would sit, either in the shop or in the little room at the back, her blue childish eyes fixed on him wistfully. At first he tried to lure her into the gay street; but walking tired her. He encouraged her to sit outside on the pavement of the Rue Saint-Honoré and join with Mme. Bidoux in the gossip of neighbours; but she listened to them with uncomprehending ears. In despair Aristide, to coax a smile from her lips, practised his many queer accomplishments. He conjured with cards; he juggled with oranges; he had a mountebank's trick of putting one leg round his neck; he imitated the voices of cats and pigs and ducks, till Mme. Bidoux held her sides with mirth. He spent time and thought in elaborating what he called _bonnes farces_, such as dressing himself up in Mme. Bidoux's raiment and personifying a crabbed customer.

Fleurette smiled but listlessly at all these comicalities.

One day she was taken ill. A doctor, summoned, said many learned words which Aristide and Mme. Bidoux tried hard to understand.

"But, after all, what is the matter with her?"

[Illustration: 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 a _bureau 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 the window. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all postmarked. He stared at them, fascinated.

"_Mon brave Aristide!_" he cried. "If the _bon Dieu_ does 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 going to 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 the interior, 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 with spelling 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 other _charcuterie_ next 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 for _ce 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 and thrust 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 not what--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.

[Illustration: 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 had _des 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!

VII

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 the monument 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."