Part 37

And the story he narrated I will do my best to set down.

* * * * *

The good M. Bocardon, of the Hôtel de la Curatterie at Nîmes, whose grateful devotion to Aristide has already been recorded, had a brother in Paris who managed the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse (strange conjuncture), a flourishing third-rate hostelry in the neighbourhood of the Halles Centrales. Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American school-marms realizing at last the dream of their modest and laborious lives. Accommodation was cheap, manners were easy, and knowledge of the gay city less than rudimentary.

To M. Bocardon of Paris Aristide, one August morning, brought glowing letters of introduction from M. and Mme. Bocardon of Nîmes. M. Bocardon of Paris welcomed Aristide as a Provençal and a brother. He brought out from a cupboard in his private bureau an hospitable bottle of old Armagnac, and discoursed with Aristide on the seductions of the South. It was there that he longed to retire--to a dainty little hotel of his own with a smart clientèle. The clientèle of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse was not to his taste. He spoke slightingly of his guests.

"There are people who know how to travel," said he, "and people who don't. These lost muttons here don't, and they make hotel-keeping a nightmare instead of a joy. A hundred times a day have I to tell them the way to Notre Dame. Pouah!" said he, gulping down his disgust and the rest of his Armagnac, "it is back-breaking."

"Tu sais, mon vieux," cried Aristide--he had the most lightning way of establishing an intimacy--"I have an idea. These lost sheep need a shepherd."

"Eh bien?" said M. Bocardon.

"Eh bien," said Aristide. "Why should not I be the shepherd, the official shepherd attached to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse?"

"Explain yourself," said M. Bocardon.

Aristide, letting loose his swift imagination, explained copiously, and hypnotized M. Bocardon with his glittering eye, until he had assured to himself a means of livelihood. From that moment he became the familiar genius of the hotel. Scorning the title of "guide," lest he should be associated in the minds of the guests with the squalid scoundrels who infest the Boulevard, he constituted himself "Directeur de l'Agence Pujol." An obfuscated Bocardon formed the rest of the agency and pocketed a percentage of Aristide's earnings, and Aristide, addressed as "Director" by the Anglo-Saxons, "M. le Directeur" by the Latins, and "Herr Direktor" by the Teutons, walked about like a peacock in a barn-yard.

At that period, and until he had learned up Baedeker by heart, a process which nearly gave him brain-fever, and still, he declares, brings terror into his slumbers, he knew little more of the history, topography, and art-treasures of Paris than the flock he shepherded. He must have dealt out paralyzing information. The Britons and the Germans seemed not to heed; but now and then the American school-marms unmasked the charlatan. On such occasions his unfaltering impudence reached heights truly sublime. The sharp-witted ladies looked in his eyes, forgot their wrongs, and, if he had told them that the Eiffel Tower had been erected by the Pilgrim Fathers, would have accepted the statement meekly.

"My friend," said Aristide, with Provençal flourish and braggadocio, "I never met a woman that would not sooner be misled by me than be taught by the whole Faculty of the Sorbonne."

He had been practising this honourable profession for about a month, lodging with the good Mme. Bidoux at 213 bis, Rue Saint-Honoré, when, one morning, in the vestibule of the hotel, he ran into his old friend Batterby, whom he had known during the days of his professorship of French at the Academy for Young Ladies in Manchester. The pair had been fellow-lodgers in the same house in the Rusholme Road; but, whereas Aristide lived in one sunless bed-sitting-room looking on a forest of chimney-pots, Batterby, man of luxury and ease, had a suite of apartments on the first floor and kept an inexhaustible supply of whisky, cigars, and such-like etceteras of the opulent, and the very ugliest prize bull-pup you can imagine. Batterby, in gaudy raiment, went to an office in Manchester; in gaudier raiment he often attended race meetings. He had rings and scarf-pins and rattled gold in his trousers pockets. He might have been an insufferable young man for a poverty-stricken teacher of French to have as a fellow-lodger; but he was not. Like all those born to high estate, he made no vulgar parade of his wealth, and to Aristide he showed the most affable hospitality. A friendship had arisen between them, which the years had idealized rather than impaired. So when they met that morning in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse their greetings were fervent and prolonged.

In person Batterby tended towards burliness. He had a red, jolly face, divided unequally by a great black moustache, and his manner was hearty. He slapped Aristide on the back many times and shook him by the shoulders.

"We must have a drink on this straight away, old man," said he.

"You're so strange, you English," said Aristide. "The moment you have an emotion you must celebrate it by a drink. 'My dear fellow, I've just come into a fortune; let us have a drink.' Or, 'My friend, my poor old father has just been run over by an omnibus; let us have a drink.' My good Reginald, look at the clock. It is only nine in the morning."

"Rot!" said Reginald. "Drink is good at any time."

They went into the dark and deserted smoking-room, where Batterby ordered Scotch and soda and Aristide, an abstemious man, a plain vermouth.

"What's that muck?" asked Batterby, when the waiter brought the drinks. Aristide explained. "Whisky's good enough for me," laughed the other. Aristide laughed too, out of politeness and out of joy at meeting his old friend.

"With you playing at guide here," said Batterby, when he had learned Aristide's position in the hotel, "it seems I have come to the right shop. There are no flies on me, you know, but when a man comes to Paris for the first time he likes to be put up to the ropes."

"Your first visit to Paris?" cried Aristide. "Mon vieux, what wonders are going to ravish your eyes! What a time you are going to have!"

Batterby bit off the end of a great black cigar.

"If the missus will let me," said he.

"Missus? Your wife? You are married, my dear Reginald?" Aristide leaped, in his unexpected fashion, from his chair and almost embraced him. "Ah, but you are happy, you are lucky. It was always like that. You open your mouth and the larks fall ready roasted into it! My congratulations. And she is here, in this hotel, your wife? Tell me about her."

Batterby lit his cigar. "She's nothing to write home about," he said, modestly. "She's French."

"French? No--you don't say so!" exclaimed Aristide, in ecstasy.

"Well, she was brought up in France from her childhood, but her parents were Finns. Funny place for people to come from--Finland--isn't it? You could never expect it--might just as well think of 'em coming from Lapland. She's an orphan. I met her in London."

"But that's romantic! And she is young, pretty?"