“Good Heavens!” cried Miss Anne in alarm, for Aristide was capable of everything. “What in the world would you do with him there?”
“What would I do with him?” replied Aristide, picking the child up in his arms—the three were strolling on the common—“Parbleu! I would use him to strike the staff of Dulau & Company green with envy. Do you think the united efforts of the whole lot of them, from the good Mr. Blessington to the office boy, could produce a hero like this? You are a hero, Jean, aren’t you?”
“Yes, papa,” said Jean.
“He knows it,” shouted Aristide with a delighted gesture which nearly cast Jean to the circumambient geese. “Miss Anne, we have the most wonderful child in the universe.”
This, as far as Anne was concerned, was a proposition which for the past three years she had regarded as incontrovertible. She smiled at Aristide, who smiled at her, and Jean, seeing them happy, smiled largely at them both.
In a very short time Aristide, who could magically manufacture boats and cocks and pigs and giraffes out of bits of paper, who could bark like a dog and quack like a goose, who could turn himself into a horse or a bear at a minute’s notice, whose pockets were a perennial mine of infantile ecstasy, established himself in Jean’s mind as a kind of tame, necessary and beloved jinn. Being a loyal little soul, the child retained his affection for Auntie Anne, but he was swept off his little feet by his mirific parent. The time came when, if he was not dressed in his tiny woollen jersey and knee breeches and had not his nose glued against the parlour window in readiness to scramble to the front door for Aristide’s morning kiss, he would have thought that chaos had come again. And Anne, humouring the child, hastened to get him washed and dressed in time; until at last, so greatly was she affected by his obsession, she got into the foolish habit of watching the clock and saying to herself: “In another minute he will be here,” or: “He is a minute late. What can have happened to him?”
So Aristide, in his childlike way, found remarkable happiness in Beverly Stoke. A very wet summer had been followed by a dry and mellow autumn. Aristide waxed enthusiastic over the English climate and rejoiced in the mild country air. He was also happy under my friend Blessington, who spoke of him to me in glowing terms. At the back of all Aristide’s eccentricities was the Provençal peasant’s shrewdness. He realized that, for the first time in his life, he had taken up a sound and serious avocation. Also, he was no longer irresponsible. He had found little Jean. Jean’s future was in his hands. Jean was to be an architect—God knows why—but Aristide settled it, definitely, off-hand. He would have to be educated. “And, my dear friend,” said he, when we were discussing Jean—and for months I heard nothing but Jean, Jean, Jean, so that I loathed the brat, until I met the brown-skinned, black-eyed, merry little wretch and fell, like everybody else, fatuously in love with him—“my dear friend,” said he, “an architect, to be the architect that I mean him to be, must have universal knowledge. He must know the first word of the classic, the last word of the modern. He must be steeped in poetry, his brain must vibrate with science. He must be what you call in England a gentleman. He must go to one of your great public schools—Eton, Winchester, Rugby, Harrow—you see I know them all—he must go to Cambridge or Oxford. Ah, I tell you, he is to be a big man. I, Aristide Pujol, did not pick him up on that deserted road, in the Arabia Petrea of Provence, between Salon and Arles, for nothing. He was wrapped, as I have told you, in an old blanket—and ma foi it smelt bad—and I dressed him in my pyjamas and made a Neapolitan cap for him out of one of my socks. The bon Dieu sent him, and I shall arrange just as the bon Dieu intended. Poor Miss Anne Honeywood with her ninety pounds a year, what can she do? Pouf! It is for me to look after the future of little Jean.”
By means of such discourse he convinced Miss Anne that Jean was predestined to greatness and that Providence had appointed him, Aristide, as the child’s agent in advance. Very much bewildered by his riotous flow of language and very reluctant to sacrifice her woman’s pride, she agreed to allow him to contribute towards Jean’s upbringing.
“Dear Miss Anne,” said he, “it is my right. It is Jean’s right. You would love to put him on top of the pinnacle of fame, would you not?”
“Of course,” said Miss Anne.