THE SECOND MEETING
Europe's beauty-spots of to-day were the beauty-spots of the Roman
Empire two thousand years ago. Wherever the traveller around Europe now
reaches a place that makes instant appeal; where harsh winds are
screened away and blazing sunshine filters through feathery foliage;
where all Nature beckons one to halt and rest awhile--there he is
practically certain to find Roman remains. The wealthy Romans wintered
at Nice and Cannes and St Raphael; took the waters at Baden-Baden and
Aix in Savoy; made sporting centres of Treves on the Moselle and Ronda
in Andalusia; dallied by the marble baths of Nîmes.
Nîmes had captured Rivière at sight. His first day in that leisured,
peaceful, fragrant town, nestling amongst the hills against the keen
_mistral_, had decided him to settle there for some weeks. He had taken
a couple of furnished rooms in a villa with a delightful old-world
garden. For a lengthy stay he much preferred his own rooms to the
transiency and restlessness of a hotel, and at the Villa Clémentine he
had found exactly what he required. The living-room opened wide to the
sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a
little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf
oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a
home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun.
Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Rivière took
breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with
the suddenness of the impetuousness Midi, and his evening meal was
accordingly taken indoors.
Besides this little private preserve of his own, there was the beautiful
public garden of Nîmes--called the Jardin de la Fontaine--draping a
hillside that looks down upon the marble baths of the Romans, almost as
freshly new to-day as two thousand years ago. A thick battalion of trees
at the summit of the hillside makes stubborn insistence to the northern
_mistral_, so that even when the wind tears over the plains of Provence
like a wild fury, scourging and freezing, the Jardin de la Fontaine is
serene and windless. The _mistral_ goes always with a cloudless sky, as
though the clouds were fleeing from its icy keenness, and the sun pours
full upon the semi-circle of the Jardin de la Fontaine, turning it to a
hothouse where the most delicate plants and shrubs can find a home.
Here men and women in toga and flowing draperies have whiled away
leisure hours, spun day-dreams, made love, or schemed affairs of state
and personal ambition. To-day, it is still the resort of Nîmes where
everyone meets everyone else, either by design or by the chance
intercourse of a small town.
On a morning of _mistral_, Rivière was seated in the pleasant warmth of
the Jardin, planning out a special piece of apparatus for his coming
research-work. He was concentrating intently--so intently that he did
not notice Miss Verney passing him with a very professional-looking
campstool, easel and sketch-book.
This second encounter was pure accident. Elaine had no intentions
whatever of following the man who had left Arles with such boorish
brusqueness, without even the conventional good-bye at the
breakfast-table. She had come to Nîmes because she was a worker, because
this town contained special material necessary to her bread-winning.
She had guessed that Rivière's hurried departure from Arles was made in
order to avoid meeting her. It hurt. Woman-like, she set more value on a
few pleasant words of farewell over a breakfast-table and a warm
handshake than on a defence from assault at the risk of a man's life.
The seeming illogicality of woman is of course a mere surface illusion.
It hides a train of reasoning very different to a man's. It is a mental
short-cut like an Irishman's "bull," which condenses a whole chain of
thought into a single link.
In this case Elaine knew that Rivière's rescue held no personal
significance. He did not know at the time that it was _she_ who was
being attacked. He would have gone to the defence of any woman under
similar circumstances. While altruism appealed to her strongly in a
broad, general way, it did not appeal when it came home in such a
specific, individual fashion.
On the other hand, a warm handshake at the breakfast-table would have
its personal significance. It would be a homage to herself, and not to
women in general. Its value would lie in its personal meaning.
While she knew this thought was ungenerous, yet at the same time she
knew that behind it there lay a sound basis of reason.
Her pride--that form of pride which is a very wholesome
self-respect--made her flush at the thought that Rivière would see her
and imagine, in a man's way, that she had followed him to Nîmes. She
hurried on past him with a rapid side-glance. The situation was an
awkward one. She had her work to do by the old Roman baths and the
Druid's Tower on the hillside, and she could not leave Nîmes without
doing it.
When he came face to face with her, perhaps it would be best to give a
cold bow of formal recognition--the kind of bow that says "Good morning.
I'm busy. You're not wanted."
And yet, there was news for him in her possession of which he ought to
be informed. It was only fair to the man who had defended her at
considerable personal risk that she should do him this small service in
return. In her pocket was a cutting of an advertisement in a Parisian
paper, several days old, asking for the whereabouts of John Rivière.
Very possibly he had not seen it himself. It was only fair to let him
know of it. The stitches in his forehead, which she had noted as she
hurried past--these called mutely for the small service in return.
Elaine decided to wait until he recognized her, to give him the
advertisement, and then to conclude their acquaintanceship with a few
formal words of which the meaning would be unmistakable. Accordingly she
set her campstool not far away from him, and began her sketching in a
vigorous, characteristic fashion.
It was an hour or more before her intuition warned her that Rivière was
approaching from behind. As he passed, she raised her eyes quite
naturally as though to look at the subject she was finishing. Their eyes
met. Rivière raised his hat politely but without any special
significance. His attitude conveyed no desire to renew their
acquaintance. He did not stop to exchange a few words, as she expected.
Elaine was hurt. She felt that he should at least have given her the
opportunity to refuse acquaintanceship. And a sudden resolve fired up
within her to humble this man of ice--to melt him, and bring him to her
feet, and then to dismiss him.
"Mr Rivière," she called.
He stopped, and answered with a formal "Good morning."
"I have something for you--some news."
"Yes?"
"Do you know that your friends are getting anxious about you?"
Rivière's attention concentrated. "Which friends?" he asked.
"I don't know which friends. But there's an advertisement in a Paris
paper asking for your whereabouts."
"Thank you for letting me know. What does it say?"
She produced the cutting and handed it to him. He studied it in silence.
There was no hint in its wording as to who was making inquiry--the
advertisement merely asked for replies to be sent to a box number care
of the journal. It struck Rivière that it must have been inserted by
Olive.
"Thank you," he said. "I hadn't seen it before."
"I'm going to ask something in return," said Elaine, and smiled at him
frankly. "I want to know why you're running away from your Monte Carlo
friends."
Most women of Rivière's world would have cloaked their curiosity under
some conventional, indirect form of question. Her frank directness
struck him as refreshing, and he answered readily: "The lady you saw in
the Côte d'Azur Rapide was my sister-in-law, Mrs Matheson. Mrs Clifford
Matheson."
"The wife of that man!" she interrupted. There was anger and contempt in
her voice.
"You know him?"
"My father lost the last remains of his money in one of that man's
companies. It hastened his death."
"Which company?"
"The Saskatchewan Land Development Co. My father bought during the early
boom in the shares."
Rivière remembered that he himself had cleared £50,000 over the
flotation, and the remembrance jarred on him. The company was a
moderately successful one, but in its early days the shares had been
"rigged" to an unreal figure. Still, he felt compelled, almost against
his will, to defend his past action.
"Did he buy for investment or merely for speculation?" asked Rivière.
"I know very little about such matters."
"As an investment, it would to-day be paying a moderate dividend."
"My father had to sell again at a big loss."
"It sounds very like speculation."
"Possibly."
"I'm very sorry to hear of the loss; but a man who speculates in the
stock market must look out for himself. It's a risky game for the
outsider to play."
Elaine silently recognized the truth of his words. Then it came to her
suddenly that Rivière had, a few moments ago, used the word
"sister-in-law," and she said: "I was forgetting that Mr Matheson must
be a relative of yours."
"My half-brother."
She looked at him with a searching frankness that was in its way a tacit
compliment. He was radically different to the mental picture she had
formed of the financier.
He continued: "The lady you saw in the train was my sister-in-law. As
you already know, she expects me to join her at Monte Carlo. I don't
want to be drawn into that kind of life. I want to remain quiet. I have
important work to do."
"Scientific work, isn't it?"
"Yes. And there's a big stretch of it in front of me. That's why I'm not
travelling on to Monte Carlo. You understand my position now, Miss
Verney?"
"Quite."
"I'm right in calling you _Miss_ Verney?"
"Yes." Then she added: "And you're wondering why an unmarried woman
should be wandering alone amongst the by-ways of France?"
"I can see that you also have work to do."
Rivière looked towards her almost finished sketch of the Roman baths.
She removed it and passed him the rest of the book. He found the book
filled with curiously formal sketches and paintings of scenery--woodland
glades, open heaths, temples, arenas, and so on. These sketches caught
boldly at the high-lights of what they pictured, and ignored detail. The
colouring was also very noticeably simplified--"impressionistic" would
better express it.
"They look like stage scenes," he commented.
"They are. Sketches for stage scenes. I'm a scene painter. Just now I'm
gathering material for the staging of a Roman drama with a setting in
Roman Provence. Barrèze is to produce it at the Odéon. It's my first big
chance."
Rivière pointed to one of her sketches. "Wasn't this worked into a scene
for 'Ames Nues,' at the Chatelet?"
"Quite right!"
"I remember being very much impressed by it at the time.... Yours must
be particularly interesting work?"
"The work one likes best is always peculiarly interesting. That's
happiness--to have the work one likes best."
Seeing that Rivière was genuinely interested, she began to dilate on her
work, explaining something of its technique, telling of its peculiar
difficulties. She showed him her sketches taken at Arles; mentioned
Orange, for its Roman arch and theatre, as a stopping-place on her
return journey to Paris. There was a glow in her voice that told clearly
of her absorption in her chosen work.
Rivière 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 advertisement, 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 advertisement and answered it, letting her know of
Rivière'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.
Rivière solved the difficulty in his usual decisive fashion. "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 Nîmes."
"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 sunshine caressed the little garden of the Villa Clémentine,
coquetting with the flaming cannas, twinkling amongst the pebbles of the
paths, stroking the backs of the lazy goldfish. Seating Elaine in the
arbour, Rivière 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 Nîmes 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 Nîmes 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
provençals_ they chatted in easy, friendly fashion about impersonal
matters--the strange charm of Provence, art, music, the theatre.
From that the conversation passed 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 Rivière.
"'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 shivered, and moved a little into the full blaze of the sunshine.
* * * * *
In the afternoon Rivière 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 Rivière 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 Nîmes. 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. Rivière 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 Rivière 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 sportsmanship. He resented it with the
white-hot passion of the Midi.
The meeting was pure chance. Crau, the young Provençal, 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 Nîmes. 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 Nîmes, Rivière alighted from a first-class
compartment, quite unconscious of being followed by the young Provençal
from a third-class compartment. Outside the station, in the broad Avenue
de la Gare that leads to the heart of the town, Rivière hailed a cab and
gave the address, Villa Clémentine.
Crau was near enough to overhear.
"Villa Clémentine," he repeated to himself, and again "Villa
Clémentine," to fit it securely in his memory. Then his lips worked with
passionate 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.