Part 28

In the morning he went round to the garage. The foreman mechanician advanced to meet him.

"Well?"

"There is nothing to be done, monsieur."

"What do you mean by 'nothing to be done'?" asked Aristide.

The other shrugged his sturdy shoulders.

"She is worn out. She needs new carburation, new cylinders, new water-circulation, new lubrication, new valves, new brakes, new ignition, new gears, new bolts, new nuts, new everything. In short, she is not repairable."

Aristide listened in incredulous amazement. His automobile, his wonderful, beautiful, clashing, dashing automobile unrepairable! It was impossible. But a quarter of an hour's demonstration by the foreman convinced him. The car was dead. The engine would never whir again. All the petrol in the world would not stimulate her into life. Never again would he sit behind that wheel rejoicing in the insolence of speed. The car, which, in spite of her manifold infirmities, he had fondly imagined to be immortal, had run her last course. Aristide felt faint.

"And there is nothing to be done?"

"Nothing, monsieur. Fifty francs is all that she is worth."

"At any rate," said Aristide, "send the basket to the Hôtel de Paris."

He went out of the garage like a man in a dream. At the door he turned to take a last look at the Pride of his Life. Her stern was towards him, and all he saw of her was the ironical legend, "Cure your Corns."

At the hotel he found the bench outside occupied chiefly by Jean. One of the little girls in pigtails was holding him, while Miss Anne administered the feeding-bottle. Provincial France is the happiest country in the world--in that you can live your intimate, domestic life in public, and nobody heeds.

"I hope you've not come to tell Jean to boot and saddle," said Miss Anne, a smile on her roughly-hewn, comely face.

"Alas!" said Aristide, cheered by the charming spectacle before him. "I don't know when we can get away. My auto has broken down hopelessly. I ought to go at once to my firm in Marseilles"--he spoke as if he were a partner in the Maison Hiéropath--"but I don't quite know what to do with Jean."

"Oh, I'll look after Jean."

"But you said you were leaving for Avignon to-day."

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 coeur, 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?

They retired early. Aristide again sought the message of the stars; but the sky was clouded over, and soon a fine rain began to fall. A bock at a café brought him neither comfort nor inspiration. He returned to the hotel, and, eluding a gossip-seeking landlady, went up to his room.

What could be done? Neither the sleeping babe nor himself could offer any suggestion. One thing was grimly inevitable. He and Jean must part. To carry him about like an infant prince in an automobile had, after all, been a simple matter; to drag him through Heaven knew what hardships in his makeshift existence was impossible. In his childlike, impulsive fashion he had not thought of the future when he adopted Jean. Aristide always regarded the fortune of the moment as if it would last forever. Past deceptions never affected his incurable optimism. Now Jean and he must part. Aristide felt that the end of the world had come. His pacing to and fro awoke the child, who demanded, in his own way, the soothing rocking of his father's arms. There he bubbled and "goo'd" till Aristide's heart nearly broke.

"What can I do with you, mon petit Jean?"

The Enfants Trouvés, after all? He thought of it with a shudder.