The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol Part 4

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 Nimes 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 bal.u.s.traded 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 Arlesienne'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 l.u.s.trous 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 Arlesienne, "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 Arlesienne 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 att.i.tude, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 pa.s.s 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 Provencal.

"And, by the way, who is your husband?"

"He is M. emile Bocardon, proprietor of the Hotel 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 Leonie at Raphele, 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 Leonie, a very busy woman, with no time for superfluous syllables, called her Zette.