"And yet, I'm sure," writes Lackaday, "that every time I cut his business, it nearly broke his heart. And it had come to Prépimpin's business being cut down to an insignificant minimum. I could, of course, have got another dog. But it would have broken his heart altogether. And one doesn't break the hearts of creatures like Prépimpin. I managed to arrange the performance, at last, so that he should think he was doing a devil of a lot...."
Then the end came. It was on the Bridge of Avignon, which, if you will remember, Lackaday superstitiously regards as a spot fraught with his destiny.
Fate had not taken him to the town since his last disastrous appearance. No one recognized in the Petit Patou of provincial fame the lank failure of many years ago. Besides, this time, he played not at the wretched music-hall without the walls, but at the splendid Palace of Varieties in the Boulevard de la Gare. He was a star--en vedette, and he had a dressing-room to himself. He stayed at the Hôtel d'Europe, the famous hostelry by the great entrance gates. To avoid complication, he went everywhere now as Monsieur Patou. Folks passing by the open courtyard of the hotel where he might be taking the air, pointed him out to one another. "Le voilà--Petit Patou"
It was in the middle of his week's engagement--once more in summer time. He lunched, saw to Prépimpin's meal, smoked the cheap cigar of content, and then, crossing the noisy little flagged square, went through the gates, Prépimpin at his heels, and made his way across the dusty road to the bridge. The work-a-day folk, on that week-day afternoon, had all returned to their hives in the town, and the pathways of the bridge contained but few pedestrians.
In the roadway, too, there was but lazy life, an occasional omnibus, the queer old diligence of Provence with its great covered hood in the midst of which sat the driver amid a cluster of peasants, hidden like the queen bee by the swarm, a bullock cart bringing hay into the city, a tradesman's cart, a lumbering wine waggon, with its three great white horses and great barrels. Nothing hurried in the hot sunshine. The Rhone, very low, flowed sluggishly. Only now and then did a screeching, dust-whirling projectile of a motor-car hurl itself across this bridge of drowsy leisure.
Andrew leaned over the parapet, finding rest in a mild melancholy, his thoughts chiefly occupied with the decay of Prépimpin who sat by his heels gazing at the roadway, occupied possibly by the same sere reflections. Presently the flea-catching antics of a ragged mongrel in the middle of the roadway disturbed Prépimpin's sense of the afternoon's decorum. He rose and with stiff dignity stalked towards him. He stood nose to nose with the mongrel, his tufted tail in straight defiance up in the air.
Then suddenly there was a rush and a roar and a yell of voices--and the scrunch of swiftly applied brakes. Andrew turned round and saw a great touring car filled with men and women--and the men were jumping out. And he saw a mongrel dog racing away for dear life. And then at last he saw a black mass stretched upon the ground. With horror in his heart he rushed and threw himself down by the dog's body. He was dead. He had solved the problem--solverat ambulando. Andrew heard English voices around him; he raised a ghastly face.
"You brutes, you have killed my dog."
He scarcely heard the explanations, the apologies. The dog seeing the car far off, had cleared himself. Then without warning he had flung himself suicidally in the path of the car. What could they do now by way of amends? The leader of the little company of tourists, a clean-shaven, florid man, obviously well bred and greatly distressed, drew a card from his pocket-book.
"I am staying a couple of days at the Hôtel Luxembourg at Nîmes--I know that nothing can pay for a dog one loves--but--"