one of the little girls in pigtails was holding him, while miss anne administered the feeding-bottle
She laughed, holding the feeding-bottle. “The Palace of the Popes has been standing for six centuries, and it will be still standing to-morrow; whereas Jean——” Here Jean, for some reason known to himself, grinned wet and wide. “Isn’t he the most fascinating thing of the twentieth century?” she cried, logically inconsequential, like most of her sex. “You go to Marseilles, M. Pujol.”
So Aristide took the train to Marseilles—a half-hour’s journey—and in a quarter of the city resembling a fusion of Jarrow, an unfashionable part of St. Louis, and a brimstone-manufacturing suburb of Gehenna, he interviewed the high authorities of the Maison Hiéropath. His cajolery could lead men into diverse lunacies, but it could not induce the hard-bitten manufacturer of quack remedies to provide a brand-new automobile for his personal convenience. The old auto had broken down. The manufacturer shrugged his shoulders. The mystery was that it had lasted as long as it did. He had expected it to explode the first day. The idea had originally been that of the junior partner, a scatter-brained youth whom at times they humoured. Meanwhile, there being no beplacarded and beflagged automobile, there could be no advertisement; therefore they had no further use for M. Pujol’s services.
“Good,” said Aristide, when he reached the evil thoroughfare. “It was a degraded occupation, and I am glad I am out of it. Meanwhile, here is Marseilles before me, and it will be astonishing if I do not find some fresh road to fortune before the day is out.”
Aristide tramped and tramped all day through the streets of Marseilles, but the road he sought he did not find. He returned to Aix in dire perplexity. He was used to finding himself suddenly cut off from the means of livelihood. It was his chronic state of being. His gay resourcefulness had always carried him through. But then there had been only himself to think of. Now there was Jean. For the first time for many years the dragon-fly’s wings grew limp. Jean—what could he do with Jean?
Jean had already gone to sleep when he arrived. All day he had been as good as gold, so Miss Anne declared. For herself, she had spent the happiest day of her life.
“I don’t wonder at your being devoted to him, M. Pujol,” she said. “He has the most loving ways of any baby I ever met.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” replied Aristide, with an unaccustomed huskiness in his voice, “I am devoted to him. It may seem odd for a man to be wrapped up in a baby of nine months old—but—it’s like that. It’s true. Je l’adore de tout mon cœur, de tout mon être,” he cried, in a sudden gust of passion.
Miss Anne smiled kindly, not dreaming of his perplexity, amused by his Southern warmth. Miss Janet joined them in the hall. They went in to dinner, Aristide sitting at the central table d’hôte, the ladies at a little table by themselves. After dinner they met again outside the hotel, and drank coffee and talked the evening away. He was not as bright a companion as on the night before. His gaiety was forced. He talked about everything else in the world but Jean. The temptation to pour his financial troubles into the sympathetic ears of these two dear women he resisted. They regarded him as on a social equality, as a man of means engaged in some sort of business at Marseilles; they had invited him to bring Jean to see them at Chislehurst when he should happen to be in England again. Pride forbade him to confess himself a homeless, penniless vagabond. The exquisite charm of their frank intimacy would be broken. Besides, what could they do?