Part 3

Aristide Pujol arrived at Nîmes one blazing day in July. He had money in his pocket and laughter in his soul. He had also deposited his valise at the Hôtel du Luxembourg, which, as all the world knows, is the most luxurious hotel in the town. Joyousness of heart impelled him to a course of action which the good Nîmois regard as maniacal in the sweltering July heat--he walked about the baking streets for his own good pleasure.

Aristide Pujol was floating a company, a process which afforded him as much delirious joy as the floating, for the first time, of a toy yacht affords a child. It was a company to build an hotel in Perpignan, where the recent demolition of the fortifications erected by the Emperor Charles V. had set free a vast expanse of valuable building ground on the other side of the little river on which the old town is situated. The best hotel in Perpignan being one to get away from as soon as possible, owing to restriction of site, Aristide conceived the idea of building a spacious and palatial hostelry in the new part of the town, which should allure all the motorists and tourists of the globe to that Pyrenean Paradise. By sheer audacity he had contrived to interest an eminent Paris architect in his project. Now the man who listened to Aristide Pujol was lost. With the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner he combined the winning charm of a woman. For salvation, you either had to refuse to see him, as all the architects to the end of the R's in the alphabetical list had done, or put wax, Ulysses-like, in your ears, a precaution neglected by the eminent M. Say. M. Say went to Perpignan and returned in a state of subdued enthusiasm.

A limited company was formed, of which Aristide Pujol, man of vast experience in affairs, was managing director. But money came in slowly. A financier was needed. Aristide looked through his collection of visiting-cards, and therein discovered that of a deaf ironmaster at St. Étienne whose life he had once saved at a railway station by dragging him, as he was crossing the line, out of the way of an express train that came thundering through. Aristide, man of impulse, went straight to St. Étienne, to work upon the ironmaster's sense of gratitude. Meanwhile, M. Say, man of more sober outlook, bethought him of a client, an American millionaire, passing through Paris, who had speculated considerably in hotels. The millionaire, having confidence in the eminent M. Say, thought well of the scheme. He was just off to Japan, but would drop down to the Pyrenees the next day and look at the Perpignan site before boarding his steamer at Marseilles. If his inquiries satisfied him, and he could arrange matters with the managing director, he would not mind putting a million dollars or so into the concern. You must kindly remember that I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of everything told me by Aristide Pujol.

The question of the all-important meeting between the millionaire and the managing director then arose. As Aristide was at St. Étienne it was arranged that they should meet at a halfway stage on the latter's journey from Perpignan to Marseilles. The Hôtel du Luxembourg at Nîmes was the place, and two o'clock on Thursday the time appointed.

Meantime Aristide had found that the deaf ironmaster had died months ago. This was a disappointment, but fortune compensated him. This part of his adventure is somewhat vague, but I gathered that he was lured by a newly made acquaintance into a gambling den, where he won the prodigious sum of two thousand francs. With this wealth jingling and crinkling in his pockets he fled the town and arrived at Nîmes on Wednesday morning, a day before his appointment.

That was why he walked joyously about the blazing streets. The tide had turned at last. Of the success of his interview with the millionaire he had not the slightest doubt. He walked about building gorgeous castles in Perpignan--which, by the way, is not very far from Spain. Besides, as you shall hear later, he had an account to settle with the town of Perpignan. At last he reached the Jardin de la Fontaine, the great, stately garden laid out in complexity of terrace and bridge and balustraded parapet over the waters of the old Roman baths by the master hand to which Louis XIV. had entrusted the Garden of Versailles.

Aristide threw himself on a bench and fanned himself with his straw hat.

"_Mon Dieu!_ it's hot!" he remarked to another occupant of the seat.

This was a woman, and, as he saw when she turned her face towards him, an exceedingly handsome woman. Her white lawn and black silk headdress, coming to a tiny crown just covering the parting of her full, wavy hair, proclaimed her of the neighboring town of Arles. She had all the Arlésienne's Roman beauty--the finely chiselled features, the calm, straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. He drew nearer.

"Why, you're crying, madame!" said he.

"Evidently," murmured the lady.

"To cry scalding tears in this weather! It's too hot! Now, if you could only cry iced water there would be something refreshing in it."

"You jest, monsieur," said the lady, drying her eyes.

"By no means," said he. "The sight of so beautiful a woman in distress is painful."

"Ah!" she sighed. "I am very unhappy."

Aristide drew nearer still.

"Who," said he, "is the wretch that has dared to make you so?"

"My husband," replied the lady, swallowing a sob.

"The scoundrel!" said Aristide.

The lady shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her wedding-ring, which gleamed on a slim, brown, perfectly kept hand. Aristide prided himself on being a connoisseur in hands.

"There never was a husband yet," he added, "who appreciated a beautiful wife. Husbands only deserve harridans."

"That's true," said the Arlésienne, "for when the wife is good-looking they are jealous."

"Ah, that is the trouble, is it?" said Aristide. "Tell me all about it."

The beautiful Arlésienne again contemplated her slender fingers.

"I don't know you, monsieur."

"But you soon will," said Aristide, in his pleasant voice and with a laughing, challenging glance in his bright eyes. She met it swiftly and sidelong.

"Monsieur," she said, "I have been married to my husband for four years, and have always been faithful to him."

"That's praiseworthy," said Aristide.

"And I love him very much."

"That's unfortunate!" said Aristide.

"Unfortunate?"

"Evidently!" said Aristide.

Their eyes met. They burst out laughing. The lady quickly recovered and the tears sprang again.

"One can't jest with a heavy heart; and mine is very heavy." She broke down through self-pity. "Oh, I am ashamed!" she cried.

She turned away from him, burying her face in her hands. Her dress, cut low, showed the nape of her neck as it rose gracefully from her shoulders. Two little curls had rebelled against being drawn up with the rest of her hair. The back of a dainty ear, set close to the head, was provoking in its pink loveliness. Her attitude, that of a youthful Niobe, all tears, but at the same time all curves and delicious contours, would have played the deuce with an anchorite.

Aristide, I would have you remember, was a child of the South. A child of the North, regarding a bewitching woman, thinks how nice it would be to make love to her, and wastes his time in wondering how he can do it. A child of the South neither thinks nor wonders; he makes love straight away.

"Madame," said Aristide, "you are adorable, and I love you to distraction."

She started up. "Monsieur, you forget yourself!"

"If I remember anything else in the wide world but you, it would be a poor compliment. I forget everything. You turn my head, you ravish my heart, and you put joy into my soul."

He meant it--intensely--for the moment.

"I ought not to listen to you," said the lady, "especially when I am so unhappy."

"All the more reason to seek consolation," replied Aristide.

"Monsieur," she said, after a short pause, "you look good and loyal. I will tell you what is the matter. My husband accuses me wrongfully, although I know that appearances are against me. He only allows me in the house on sufferance, and is taking measures to procure a divorce."

[Illustration: "MADAME," SAID ARISTIDE, "YOU ARE ADORABLE, AND I LOVE YOU TO DISTRACTION"]

"_A la bonne heure!_" cried Aristide, excitedly casting away his straw hat, which an unintentional twist of the wrist caused to skim horizontally and nearly decapitate a small and perspiring soldier who happened to pass by. "_A la bonne heure!_ Let him divorce you. You are then free. You can be mine without any further question."

"But I love my husband," she smiled, sadly.

"Bah!" said he, with the scepticism of the lover and the Provençal. "And, by the way, who is your husband?"

"He is M. Émile Bocardon, proprietor of the Hôtel de la Curatterie."

"And you?"

"I am Mme. Bocardon," she replied, with the faintest touch of roguery.

"But your Christian name? How is it possible for me to think of you as Mme. Bocardon?"

They argued the question. Eventually she confessed to the name of Zette.

Her confidence not stopping there, she told him how she came by the name; how she was brought up by her Aunt Léonie at Raphèle, some five miles from Arles, and many other unexciting particulars of her early years. Her baptismal name was Louise. Her mother, who died when she was young, called her Louisette. Aunt Léonie, a very busy woman, with no time for superfluous syllables, called her Zette.

"Zette!" He cast up his eyes as if she had been canonized and he was invoking her in rapt worship. "Zette, I adore you!"

Zette was extremely sorry. She, on her side, adored the cruel M. Bocardon. Incidentally she learned Aristide's name and quality. He was an _agent d'affaires_, extremely rich--had he not two thousand francs and an American millionaire in his pocket?

"M. Pujol," she said, "the earth holds but one thing that I desire, the love and trust of my husband."

"The good Bocardon is becoming tiresome," said Aristide.

Zette's lips parted, as she pointed to a black speck at the iron entrance gates.

"_Mon Dieu!_ there he is!"

"He has become tiresome," said Aristide.

She rose, displaying to its full advantage her supple and stately figure. She had a queenly poise of the head. Aristide contemplated her with the frankest admiration.

"One would say Juno was walking the earth again."

Although Zette had never heard of Juno, and was as miserable and heavy hearted a woman as dwelt in Nîmes, a flush of pleasure rose to her cheeks. She too was a child of the South, and female children of the South love to be admired, no matter how frankly. I have heard of Daughters of the Snows not quite averse to it. She sighed.

"I must go now, monsieur. He must not find me here with you. I am suffering enough already from his reproaches. Ah! it is unjust--unjust!" she cried, clenching her hands, while the tears again started into her eyes, and the corners of her pretty lips twitched with pain. "Indeed," she added, "I know it has been wrong of me to talk to you like this. But _que voulez-vous?_ It was not my fault. Adieu, monsieur."

At the sight of her standing before him in her woeful beauty, Aristide's pulses throbbed.

"It is not adieu--it is _au revoir_, Mme. Zette," he cried.

She protested tearfully. It was farewell. Aristide darted to his rejected hat and clapped it on the back of his head. He joined her and swore that he would see her again. It was not Aristide Pujol who would allow her to be rent in pieces by the jaws of that crocodile, M. Bocardon. Faith, he would defend her to the last drop of his blood. He would do all manner of gasconading things.

"But what can you do, my poor M. Pujol?" she asked.

"You will see," he replied.

They parted. He watched her until she became a speck and, having joined the other speck, her husband, passed out of sight. Then he set out through the burning gardens towards the Hôtel du Luxembourg, at the other end of the town.

Aristide had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with Provençal fury. He had done the same thing a hundred times before; but this, he told himself, was the _coup de foudre_--the thunderbolt. The beautiful Arlésienne filled his brain and his senses. Nothing else in the wide world mattered. Nothing else in the wide world occupied his mind. He sped through the hot streets like a meteor in human form. A stout man, sipping syrup and water in the cool beneath the awning of the Café de la Bourse, rose, looked wonderingly after him, and resumed his seat, wiping a perspiring brow.

A short while afterwards Aristide, valise in hand, presented himself at the bureau of the Hôtel de la Curatterie. It was a shabby little hotel, with a shabby little oval sign outside, and was situated in the narrow street of the same name. Within, it was clean and well kept. On the right of the little dark entrance-hall was the _salle à manger_, on the left the bureau and an unenticing hole labelled _salon de correspondance_. A very narrow passage led to the kitchen, and the rest of the hall was blocked by the staircase. An enormous man with a simple, woe-begone fat face and a head of hair like a circular machine-brush was sitting by the bureau window in his shirt-sleeves. Aristide addressed him.

"M. Bocardon?"

"At your service, monsieur."

"Can I have a bedroom?"

"Certainly." He waved a hand towards a set of black sample boxes studded with brass nails and bound with straps that lay in the hall. "The omnibus has brought your boxes. You are M. Lambert?"

"M. Bocardon," said Aristide, in a lordly way, "I am M. Aristide Pujol, and not a commercial traveller. I have come to see the beauties of Nîmes, and have chosen this hotel because I have the honour to be a distant relation of your wife, Mme. Zette Bocardon, whom I have not seen for many years. How is she?"

"Her health is very good," replied M. Bocardon, shortly. He rang a bell.

A dilapidated man in a green baize apron emerged from the dining-room and took Aristide's valise.

"No. 24," said M. Bocardon. Then, swinging his massive form halfway through the narrow bureau door, he called down the passage, "Euphémie!"

A woman's voice responded, and in a moment the woman herself appeared, a pallid, haggard, though more youthful, replica of Zette, with the dark rings of sleeplessness or illness beneath her eyes which looked furtively at the world.

"Tell your sister," said M. Bocardon, "that a relation of yours has come to stay in the hotel."

He swung himself back into the bureau and took no further notice of the guest.

"A relation?" echoed Euphémie, staring at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome and unexpected sister.

"Why, yes. Aristide, cousin to your good Aunt Léonie at Raphèle. Ah--but you are too young to remember me."

"I will tell Zette," she said, disappearing down the narrow passage.

Aristide went to the doorway, and stood there looking out into the not too savoury street. On the opposite side, which was in the shade, the tenants of the modest little shops sat by their doors or on chairs on the pavement. There was considerable whispering among them and various glances were cast at him. Presently footsteps behind caused him to turn. There was Zette. She had evidently been weeping since they had parted, for her eyelids were red. She started on beholding him.

"You?"

He laughed and shook her hesitating hands.

"It is I, Aristide. But you have grown! _Pécaïre!_ How you have grown!" He swung her hands apart and laughed merrily in her bewildered eyes. "To think that the little Zette in pigtails and short check skirt should have grown into this beautiful woman! I compliment you on your wife, M. Bocardon."

M. Bocardon did not reply, but Aristide's swift glance noticed a spasm of pain shoot across his broad face.

"And the good Aunt Léonie? Is she well? And does she still make her _matelotes_ of eels? Ah, they were good, those _matelotes_."

"Aunt Léonie died two years ago," said Zette.

"The poor woman! And I who never knew. Tell me about her."

The _salle à manger_ door stood open. He drew her thither by his curious fascination. They entered, and he shut the door behind them.

"_Voilà!_" said he. "Didn't I tell you I should see you again?"

"_Vous avez un fameux toupet, vous!_" said Zette, half angrily.

He laughed, having been accused of confounded impudence many times before in the course of his adventurous life.

"If I told my husband he would kill you."

"Precisely. So you're not going to tell him. I adore you. I have come to protect you. _Foi de Provençal._"

"The only way to protect me is to prove my innocence."

"And then?"

She drew herself up and looked him straight between the eyes.

"I'll recognize that you have a loyal heart, and will be your very good friend."

"Mme. Zette," cried Aristide, "I will devote my life to your service. Tell me the particulars of the affair."

"Ask M. Bocardon." She left him, and sailed out of the room and past the bureau with her proud head in the air.

If Aristide Pujol had the rapturous idea of proving the innocence of Mme. Zette, triumphing over the fat pig of a husband, and eventually, in a fantastic fashion, carrying off the insulted and spotless lady to some bower of delight (the castle in Perpignan--why not?), you must blame, not him, but Provence, whose sons, if not devout, are frankly pagan. Sometimes they are both.

M. Bocardon sat in his bureau, pretending to do accounts and tracing columns of figures with a huge, trembling forefinger. He looked the picture of woe. Aristide decided to bide his opportunity. He went out into the streets again, now with the object of killing time. The afternoon had advanced, and trees and buildings cast cool shadows in which one could walk with comfort; and Nîmes, clear, bright city of wide avenues and broad open spaces, instinct too with the grandeur that was Rome's, is an idler's Paradise. Aristide knew it well; but he never tired of it. He wandered round the Maison Carrée, his responsive nature delighting in the splendour of the Temple, with its fluted Corinthian columns, its noble entablature, its massive pediment, its perfect proportions; reluctantly turned down the Boulevard Victor Hugo, past the Lycée and the Bourse, made the circuit of the mighty, double-arched oval of the Arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, M. Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named M. Bocardon's habitual café. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Aristide found the huge man gloomily contemplating an absurdly small glass of the bitters known as Dubonnet. Aristide raised his hat, asked permission to join him, and sat down.

"M. Bocardon," said he, carefully mixing the absinthe which he had ordered, "I learn from my fair cousin that there is between you a regrettable misunderstanding, for which I am sincerely sorry."

"She calls it a misunderstanding?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir. There is infamy between us. When a wife betrays a man like me--kind, indulgent, trustful, who has worshipped the ground she treads on--it is not a question of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head, I would turn her out of doors to-night. But she has not. You, who are her relative, know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive."

It was on the tip of Aristide's impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her, but prudently he refrained.

"She has broken my heart," continued Bocardon.

Aristide asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion; but, fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes, he launched with Southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveller in buttons--_buttons!_ To be wronged by a traveller in diamonds might have its compensations--but buttons! Linen buttons, bone buttons, brass buttons, _trouser buttons!_ To be a traveller in the inanity of buttonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bondon--he uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client!--who never ordered a bottle of _vin cacheté_ or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zette gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly, there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zette's room. He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide.

[Illustration: "THE VILLAIN WAS A TRAVELLER IN BUTTONS--BUTTONS!"]

It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely damning epistle. Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bondon's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face, and gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache dripped in splashes on the marble table.

"I loved her so tenderly, monsieur," said he.

The cry, so human, went straight to Aristide's heart. A sympathetic tear glistened in his bright eyes. He was suddenly filled with an immense pity for this grief-stricken, helpless giant. An odd feminine streak ran through his nature and showed itself in queer places. Impulsively he stretched out his hand.

"You're going?" asked Bocardon.

"No. A sign of good friendship."

They gripped hands across the table. A new emotion thrilled through the facile Aristide.

"Bocardon, I devote myself to you," he cried, with a flamboyant gesture. "What can I do?"

"Alas, nothing," replied the other, miserably.

"And Zette? What does she say to it all?"

The mountainous shoulders heaved with a shrug. "She denies everything. She had never seen the letter until I showed it to her. She did not know how it came into her room. As if that were possible!"

"It's improbable," said Aristide, gloomily.

They talked. Bocardon, in a choking voice, told the simple tale of their married happiness. It had been a love-match, different from the ordinary marriages of reason and arrangement. Not a cloud since their wedding-day. They were called the turtle-doves of the Rue de la Curatterie. He had not even manifested the jealousy justifiable in the possessor of so beautiful a wife. He had trusted her implicitly. He was certain of her love. That was enough. They had had one child, who died. Grief had brought them even nearer each other. And now this stroke had been dealt. It was a knife being turned round in his heart. It was agony.