Swirling Waters Part 15

Riviere was enjoying the frank camaraderie of their conversation.

Suddenly the thought of the newspaper cutting came back to him sharply.

If Olive had inserted that advertis.e.m.e.nt, she must have some special reason for it. Perhaps she wanted to communicate with him in reference to the "death" of Matheson. Some hotel-keeper or railway-guard would no doubt have seen the advertis.e.m.e.nt and answered it, letting her know of Riviere's stay at Arles.

It would be prudent to write and allay suspicion. But he could not pen the letter himself, because his handwriting would be recognized by Olive.

Riviere solved the difficulty in his usual decisive fas.h.i.+on. "Miss Verney," he said, "I wonder if you would do me a very big favour without asking for my reasons in detail? It's a most unusual request I'm going to make."

Elaine remembered her resolve to thaw this man of ice, and bring him to her feet, and then dismiss him. She had thawed him already. To do him some special favour would be a most excellent means of attaining the second end. She answered:

"Anything in reason I'll do gladly."

"You know that I want to avoid Monte Carlo. I don't even want my sister-in-law to know that I'm at Nimes."

"Yes?"

"Will you write a letter for me to say that I'm unwell and can't travel away from Arles?"

Elaine looked at him searchingly. "It's certainly a most unusual request to make of a mere acquaintance," she remarked.

"I have good reasons for asking it."

"Then I'll do what you ask."

"Would you mind coming round to my rooms?"

"Certainly; if you'll wait until I've finished this sketch."

She worked on in silence for another quarter of an hour, completing her picture with rapid, vigorous brush-strokes. Then he took up her campstool and easel, and they walked together alongside the Roman aqueduct to the centre of the town, under an avenue of tall, spreading plane trees, yellow with the first delicate leaves of Spring like the feathers of a newborn chick.

The suns.h.i.+ne caressed the little garden of the Villa Clementine, coquetting with the flaming cannas, twinkling amongst the pebbles of the paths, stroking the backs of the lazy goldfish. Seating Elaine in the arbour, Riviere brought out pen and ink and a sheet of paper headed "Hotel du Forum, Place du Forum, Arles," which he happened to have kept by accident from his visit to the town. Then he dictated a formal letter to Mrs Matheson, explaining that he was laid up with a touch of fever and would not be able to join her at Monte Carlo. The illness was not serious, and there was no cause for anxiety. Nevertheless it kept him tied. He hoped she would excuse him.

"There will be a Nimes postmark on the envelope," commented Elaine as she wrote the address.

"No; I shall go over to Arles this afternoon and post it there. As you know, it's scarcely an hour away by train." He glanced at his watch.

"Past twelve o'clock already! Won't you stay and take lunch with me?

Madame Giras is famous in Nimes for her _bouillabaisse_."

She agreed readily, and a dainty lunch was soon served them in the covered arbour. Over the olives and _bouillabaisse_ and the _oeufs provencals_ they chatted in easy, friendly fas.h.i.+on about impersonal matters--the strange charm of Provence, art, music, the theatre.

From that the conversation pa.s.sed imperceptibly to more personal matters. Elaine, keeping to her resolve of the morning, led it in that direction. He learnt that she was an orphan; that her nearest relatives were entirely out of sympathy with her ideas and aspirations, and profoundly distasteful to her; that she took full pride in her independence and the position she was carving out for herself in the world of theatrical art.

"To be free; to be independent; to live your own life; to know that you buy your bread and bed with the money you've earned yourself--it's fine, it's splendid!" said Elaine, with flushed cheek. "I wonder if men ever have that feeling as strongly as we women do?"

"'To be free, sire, is only to change one's master,'" quoted Riviere.

"'Master' is a word I should rule out of the dictionary," she replied.

"And if ever your present freedom were suddenly denied to you by Fate?"

She s.h.i.+vered, and moved a little into the full blaze of the suns.h.i.+ne.

In the afternoon Riviere took train to Arles. The way lies by vineyards and olive orchards alternating with open, wind-swept heathland. The stunted olive trees, twisted and gnarled, pictured themselves to him as little old men worn and weary with their fight against the winds. Here the _mistral_ was master and the olive trees his slaves.

At Arles Riviere posted his letter in a box on the platform of the station, and asked of a porter when the next train would take him back to Nimes. Standing close by as he asked this question was a lean, wiry, crafty-looking peasant of the Camargue--a hard-bit youth toughened by his work on the soil. The most prominent feature of the face was the nose smashed out of shape. Riviere did not know that it was he himself who had left that life-mark on the young man only a few days before--he had almost forgotten the incident--but the latter recognized Riviere at once and went white with anger under the tanned skin.

Whilst he would have taken a blow from the knife as "all in the game," a smash from a bare fist that made a permanent disfigurement was completely outside his code of sportsmans.h.i.+p. He resented it with the white-hot pa.s.sion of the Midi.

The meeting was pure chance. Crau, the young Provencal, was on the station to take train back to his home village in the marshes. Now he made a sudden resolution, and going to the booking-office, asked for a ticket for Nimes. He had relations in that town--small tradespeople--and he would pay a visit to them for a few days.

"Our game is not yet finished, Mr Englishman," he muttered to himself.

"No, not yet finished!"

When the train reached Nimes, Riviere alighted from a first-cla.s.s compartment, quite unconscious of being followed by the young Provencal from a third-cla.s.s compartment. Outside the station, in the broad Avenue de la Gare that leads to the heart of the town, Riviere hailed a cab and gave the address, Villa Clementine.

Crau was near enough to overhear.

"Villa Clementine," he repeated to himself, and again "Villa Clementine," to fit it securely in his memory. Then his lips worked with pa.s.sionate revenge as he thought: "You have spoilt my looks, Mr Englishman; and now, _sangredieu_, to spoil yours!"

Before going to his relations, he went first to a chemist's.

CHAPTER XIII

AT THE MAISON CARReE

The mystery of John Riviere intrigued Elaine. There was certainly a mysterious something about this man which she had not fathomed. His most open confidences held deep reserves. If he had not avowed himself a scientist, she would have cla.s.sed him as a man of business. In those brief comments on Stock Exchange speculation, he had spoken in a tone of easy authority which goes only with intimate knowledge. He was no recluse, but a man of the world--a man who had clearly moved amongst men and women and held his place with ease.

The idea that he was a boor had been entirely shelved. But why that brusque, boorish disappearance from Arles?

Elaine, thinking matters over in the solitude of her room on the evening of the second encounter, was beginning to regret her resolve to humble John Riviere. It began to appear petty and unworthy. She had no doubt now that she could bring him to her feet if she wished, by skilful acting. Or even--in her thoughts she whispered it to herself--or even without acting a part.

But that thought she thrust aside. She had her work to do in the world--the work that she loved. It called imperiously for all her energies. She was free, she was independent, her daily bread was of her own buying; and she wished circ.u.mstances to remain as they were.

Elaine decided to give up her petty resolve. She would avoid meeting him intentionally, and if they met, she would bring the plane of conversation down again to the superficiality of mere tourist acquaintances.h.i.+p--"meet to-day and part to-morrow."

For his part, Riviere had found keen enjoyment in this frank camaraderie. They met as equals on the mental plane. Both were profoundly interested in their respective life-work. They held ideas in common on a score of impersonal topics. He told himself that he had behaved very boorishly in his abrupt departure from Arles. It had been unnecessary, as Chance had now pointed out to him by this second accidental encounter. This acquaintances.h.i.+p was the merest pa.s.sing of "s.h.i.+ps that pa.s.s in the night"--in a day or two she would be away and back to Paris, and in all human probability they would never meet again.

It was generous of her to have greeted him as though she had not noticed the abruptness of his departure from Arles. It was generous of her to have clipped out the newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt and to have called his attention to it. He mentally apologized to her for his curt behaviour.

The next morning, Riviere did not find Elaine at the Jardin de la Fontaine. He wanted to meet her. He wanted to let her know indirectly what he was feeling. And so, almost unconsciously, he found himself walking away from the Jardin towards the centre of the town, towards the ruined arena and the Roman temple known as the Maison Carree. Most probably she would be sketching at one or other of them.

He found her at the Maison Carree--a square Roman temple on which Time has laid no rougher hand than on a white-haired mother still rosy of cheek and young of heart. Elaine was sketching it in her book with the bold lines of the scene-painter, ignoring detail and working only for the high-lights and deep shadows. Round her, peeking over her shoulders and chattering shrilly, were a group of children. In the background lounged a young Provencal peasant with a nose twisted out of shape.