shopkeeper at heart."
"I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
madame. Not on my own."
"But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should be
ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as to inform
you. But since you are informed, at least you should be modestly blind to
things that take place outside the... orbit of a properly conducted
demoiselle."
"Will they still be outside my orbit when I am married?"
"If you are wise. You should remain without knowledge of them. It... it
deflowers your innocence. I would not for the world that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr should know you so extraordinarily instructed. Had you been properly
reared in a convent this would never have happened to you."
"But you do not answer me, madame!" cried Aline in despair. "It is not
my chastity that is in question; but that of M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
"Chastity!" Madame's lips trembled with horror. Horror overspread her
face. "Wherever did you learn that dreadful, that so improper word?"
And then Mme. de Sautron did violence to her feelings. She realized
that here great calm and prudence were required. "My child, since you know
so much that you ought not to know, there can be no harm in my adding that a
gentleman must have these little distractions."
"But why, madame? Why is it so?"
"Ah, mon Dieu, you are asking me riddles of nature. It is so because it
is so. Because men are like that."
"Because men are beasts, you mean - which is what I began by asking
you."
"You are incorrigibly stupid, Aline."
"You mean that I do not see things as you do, madame. I am not
over-expectant as you appear to think; yet surely I have the right to expect
that whilst M. de La Tour d'Azyr is wooing me, he shall not be wooing at the
same time a drab of the theatre. I feel that in this there is a subtle
association of myself with that unspeakable creature which soils and insults
me. The Marquis is a dullard whose wooing takes the form at best of stilted
compliments, stupid and unoriginal. They gain nothing when they fall from
lips still warm from the contamination of that woman's kisses."
So utterly scandalized was madame that for a moment she remained
speechless. Then -
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed. "I should never have suspected you of so
indelicate an imagination."
"I cannot help it, madame. Each time his lips touch my fingers I find
myself thinking of the last object that they touched. I at once retire to
wash my hands. Next time, madame, unless you are good enough to convey my
message to him, I shall call for water and wash them in his presence."
"But what am I to tell him? How... in what words can I convey such a
message?" Madame was aghast.
"Be frank with him, madame. It is easiest in the end. Tell him that
however impure may have been his life in the past, however impure he intend
that it shall be in the future, he must at least study purity whilst
approaching with a view to marriage a virgin who is herself pure and without
stain."
Madame recoiled, and put her hands to her ears, horror stamped on her
handsome face. Her massive bosom heaved.
"Oh, how can you?" she panted. "How can you make use of such terrible
expressions? Wherever have you learnt them?"
"In church," said Aline.
"Ah, but in church many things are said that... that one would not
dream of saying in the world. My dear child, how could I possibly say such a
thing to M. le Marquis? How could I possibly?"
"Shall I say it?"
"Aline!"
"Well, there it is," said Aline. "Something must be done to shelter me
from insult. I am utterly disgusted with M. le Marquis
- a disgusting man. And however fine a thing it may be to become
Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr, why, frankly, I'd sooner marry a cobbler who
practised decency."
Such was her vehemence and obvious determination that Mme. de Sautron
fetched herself out of her despair to attempt persuasion. Aline was her
niece, and such a marriage in the family would be to the credit of the whole
of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.
"Listen, my dear," she said. "Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away and
will not be back until to-morrow."
"True. And I know where he has gone - or at least whom he has gone
with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow who intends
to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do anything. I suppose
they agree with you, madame, that a great gentleman must have his little
distractions." Her contempt was as scorching as a thing of fire. "However,
madame, you were about to say?"
"That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac. M. de
La Tour d'Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure."
"You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?"
"Call it what you will." Madame, you see, despaired by now of
controlling the impropriety of her niece's expressions. "At Gavrillac there
will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the past. It is unfortunate
that he should have met her at such a moment. The chit is very attractive,
after all. You cannot deny that. And you must make allowances."
"M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to satisfy
the wishes of the family, and partly... " She broke off, hesitating a
moment, to resume on a note of dull pain, "Partly because it does not seem
greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave him my consent. That consent, for the
reasons I have given you, madame, I desire now definitely to withdraw."
Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. "Aline, I should never
forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not know what
you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing. Have you no sense
of your position, of the station into which you were born?"
"If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I have
tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I realize the
importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense. But I ask of
marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed the decision in my
hands."
"God forgive him!" said madame. And then she hurried on: "Leave this to
me now, Aline. Be guided by me - oh, be guided by me!" Her tone was
beseeching. "I will take counsel with your uncle Charles. But do not
definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over. Charles will
know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis shall do penance, child, since your
tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes. you'll not ask so much?"
Aline shrugged. "I ask nothing at all," she said, which was neither
assent nor dissent.
So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man,
very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense. She
took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself and which
in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate. She even borrowed
several of Aline's phrases.
The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour
d'Azyr's returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le
Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.
"Gervais, you're a fool," was the excellent opening made by M. le
Comte.
"Charles, you give me no news," answered M. le Marquis. "Of what
particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?"
He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body
sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly
handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.
"Of your last. This Binet girl."
"That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly."
"A folly - at such a time," Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a
question. The Count answered it. "Aline," said he, pregnantly. "She knows.
How she knows I can't tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended."
The smile perished on the Marquis' face. He gathered himself up.
"Offended?" said he, and his voice was anxious.
"But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It
wounds her that at such a time - whilst you are here for the purpose of
wooing her - you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that
chit of a Binet girl."
"How do you know?" asked La Tour d'Azyr.
"She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have some
reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her hand
with lips that are still contaminated from... Oh, you understand. You
appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive girl such
as Aline. She said - I had better tell you - that the next time you kiss her
hand, she will call for water and wash it in your presence."
The Marquis' face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent,
intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But no
outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the
window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he spoke,
without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.
"You are right, Charles, I am a fool - a wicked fool! I have just
enough sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I suppose. I
have never known the need to deny myself anything I wanted." Then suddenly
he swung round, and the outburst came. "But, my God, I want Aline as I have
never wanted anything yet! I think I should kill myself in rage if through
my folly I should have lost her." He struck his brow with his hand. "I am a
beast!" he said. "I should have known that if that sweet saint got word of
these petty devilries of mine she would despise me; and I tell you, Charles,
I'd go through fire to regain her respect."
"I hope it is to be regained on easier terms," said Charles; and then
to ease the situation which began to irk him by its solemnity, he made a
feeble joke. "It is merely asked of you that you refrain from going through
certain fires that are not accounted by mademoiselle of too purifying a
nature."
"As to that Binet girl, it is finished - finished," said the Marquis.
"I congratulate you. When did you make that decision?"
"This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago. As it
is-" he shrugged - "why, twenty-four hours of her have been enough for me as
they would have been for any man - a mercenary, self-seeking little baggage
with the soul of a trull. Bah!" He shuddered in disgust of himself and her.
"Ah! That makes it easier for you," said M. de Sautron, cynically.
Don't say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool, you
would have warned me sooner."
"I may prove to have warned you soon enough if you'll profit by the
warning."
"There is no penance I will not do. I will prostrate myself at her
feet. I will abase myself before her. I will make confession in the proper
spirit of contrition, and Heaven helping me, I'll keep to my purpose of
amendment for her sweet sake." He was tragically in earnest.
To M. de Sautron, who had never seen him other than self-contained,
supercilious, and mocking, this was an amazing revelation. He shrank from it
almost; it gave him the feeling of prying, of peeping through a keyhole. He
slapped his friend's shoulder.
"My dear Gervais, here is a magnificently romantic mood. Enough said.
Keep to it, and I promise you that all will presently be well. I will be
your ambassador, and you shall have no cause to complain."
"But may I not go to her myself?"
"If you are wise you will at once efface yourself. Write to her if you
will - make your act of contrition by letter. I will explain why you have
gone without seeing her. I will tell her that you did so upon my advice, and
I will do it tactfully. I am a good diplomat, Gervais. Trust me."
M. le Marquis raised his head, and showed a face that pain was searing.
He held out his hand. "Very well, Charles. Serve me in this, and count me
your friend in all things."
Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle de
Kercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contrition that
compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, the Marquis
rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four hours with La
Binet had been more than enough for a man of his fastidious and discerning
taste. He looked back upon the episode with nausea - the inevitable
psychological reaction - marvelling at himself that until yesterday he
should have found her so desirable, and cursing himself that for the sake of
that ephemeral and worthless gratification he should seriously have
imperilled his chances of winning Mademoiselle de Kercadiou to wife. There
is, after all, nothing very extraordinary in his frame of mind, so that I
need not elaborate it further. It resulted from the conflict between the
beast and the angel that go to make up the composition of every man.
The Chevalier de Chabrillane - who in reality occupied towards the
Marquis a position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting - sat opposite to
him in the enormous travelling berline. A small folding table had been
erected between them, and the Chevalier suggested piquet. But M. le Marquis
was in no humour for cards. His thoughts absorbed him. As they were rattling
over the cobbles of Nantes' streets, he remembered a promise to La Binet to
witness her performance that night in "The Faithless Lover." And now he was
running away from her. The thought was repugnant to him on two scores. He
was breaking his pledged word, and he was acting like a coward. And there
was more than that. He had led the mercenary little strumpet - it was thus
he thought of her at present, and with some justice - to expect favours from
him in addition to the lavish awards which already he had made her. The
baggage had almost sought to drive a bargain with him as to her future. He
was to take her to Paris, put her into her own furniture - as the expression
ran, and still runs - and under the shadow of his powerful protection see
that the doors of the great theatres of the capital should be opened to her
talents. He had not - he was thankful to reflect - exactly committed
himself. But neither had he definitely refused her. It became necessary now
to come to an understanding, since he was compelled to choose between his
trivial passion for her - a passion quenched already - and his deep, almost
spiritual devotion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.
His honour, he considered, demanded of him that he should at once
deliver himself from a false position. La Binet would make a scene, of
course; but he knew the proper specific to apply to hysteria of that nature.
Money, after all, has its uses.
He pulled the cord. The carriage rolled to a standstill; a footman
appeared at the door.
"To the Theatre Feydau," said he.
The footman vanished and the berline rolled on. M. de Chabrillane
laughed cynically.
"I'll trouble you not to be amused," snapped the Marquis. "You don't
understand." Thereafter he explained himself. It was a rare condescension in
him. But, then, he could not bear to be misunderstood in such a matter.
Chabrillane grew serious in reflection of the Marquis' extreme seriousness.
"Why not write?" he suggested. "Myself, I confess that I should find it
easier.
Nothing could better have revealed M. le Marquis' state of mind than
his answer.
"Letters are liable both to miscarriage and to misconstruction. Two
risks I will not run. If she did not answer, I should never know which had
been incurred. And I shall have no peace of mind until I know that I have
set a term to this affair. The berline can wait while we are at the theatre.
We will go on afterwards. We will travel all night if necessary."
"Peste!" said M. de Chabrillane with a grimace. But that was all.
The great travelling carriage drew up at the lighted portals of the
Feydau, and M. le Marquis stepped out. He entered the theatre with
Chabrillane, all unconsciously to deliver himself into the hands of
Andre-Louis.
Andre-Louis was in a state of exasperation produced by Climene's long
absence from Nantes in the company of M. le Marquis, and fed by the
unspeakable complacency with which M. Binet regarded that event of quite
unmistakable import.
However much he might affect the frame of mind of the stoics, and seek
to judge with a complete detachment, in the heart and soul of him
Andre-Louis was tormented and revolted. It was not Climene he blamed. He had
been mistaken in her. She was just a poor weak vessel driven helplessly by
the first breath, however foul, that promised her advancement. She suffered
from the plague of greed; and he congratulated himself upon having
discovered it before making her his wife. He felt for her now nothing but a
deal of pity and some contempt. The pity was begotten of the love she had
lately inspired in him. It might be likened to the dregs of love, all that
remained after the potent wine of it had been drained off. His anger he
reserved for her father and her seducer.
The thoughts that were stirring in him on that Monday morning, when it
was discovered that Climene had not yet returned from her excursion of the
previous day in the coach of M. le Marquis, were already wicked enough
without the spurring they received from the distraught Leandre.
Hitherto the attitude of each of these men towards the other had been
one of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been observed in like
cases. Now, what appeared to be a common misfortune brought them into a sort
of alliance. So, at least, it seemed to Leandre when he went in quest of
Andre-Louis, who with apparent unconcern was smoking a pipe upon the quay
immediately facing the inn.
"Name of a pig!" said Leandre. "How can you take your ease and smoke at
such a time?"
Scaramouche surveyed the sky. "I do not find it too cold," said he.
"The sun is shining. I am very well here."
"Do I talk of the weather?" Leandre was very excited.
"Of what, then?"
"Of Climene, of course."
"Oh! The lady has ceased to interest me," he lied.
Leandre stood squarely in front of him, a handsome figure handsomely
dressed in these days, his hair well powdered, his stockings of silk. His
face was pale, his large eyes looked larger than usual.
"Ceased to interest you? Are you not to marry her?" Andre-Louis
expelled a cloud of smoke. "You cannot wish to be offensive. Yet you almost
suggest that I live on other men's leavings."
"My God!" said Leandre, overcome, and he stared awhile. Then he burst
out afresh. "Are you quite heartless? Are you always Scaramouche?"
"What do you expect me to do?" asked Andre-Louis, evincing surprise in
his own turn, but faintly.
"I do not expect you to let her go without a struggle."
"But she has gone already." Andre-Louis pulled at his pipe a moment,
what time Leandre clenched and unclenched his hands in impotent rage. "And
to what purpose struggle against the inevitable? Did you struggle when I
took her from you?"
"She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won the
race. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison? That was a
thing in honour; this - this is hell."
His emotion moved Andre-Louis. He took Leandre's arm. "You're a good
fellow, Leandre. I am glad I intervened to save you from your fate."
"Oh, you don't love her!" cried the other, passionately. "You never
did. You don't know what it means to love, or you'd not talk like this. My
God! if she had been my affianced wife and this had happened, I should have
killed the man - killed him! Do you hear me? But you... Oh, you, you come
out here and smoke, and take the air, and talk of her as another man's
leavings. I wonder I didn't strike you for the word."
He tore his arm from the other's grip, and looked almost as if he would
strike him now.
"You should have done it," said Andre-Louis. "It's in your part."
With an imprecation Leandre turned on his heel to go. Andre-Louis
arrested his departure.
"A moment, my friend. Test me by yourself. Would you marry her now?"
"Would I?" The young man's eyes blazed with passion. "Would I? Let her
say that she will marry me, and I am her slave."
"Slave is the right word - a slave in hell."
"It would never be hell to me where she was, whatever she had done. I
love her, man, I am not like you. I love her, do you hear me?"
"I have known, it for some time," said Andre-Louis. "Though I didn't
suspect your attack of the disease to be quite so violent. Well, God knows I
loved her, too, quite enough to share your thirst for killing. For myself,
the blue blood of La Tour d'Azyr would hardly quench this thirst. I should
like to add to it the dirty fluid that flows in the veins of the unspeakable
Binet."
For a second his emotion had been out of hand, and he revealed to
Leandre in the mordant tone of those last words something of the fires that
burned under his icy exterior. The young man caught him by the hand.
"I knew you were acting," said he. "You feel - you feel as I do."
"Behold us, fellows in viciousness. I have betrayed myself, it seems.
Well, and what now? Do you want to see this pretty Marquis torn limb from
limb? I might afford you the spectacle."
"What?" Leandre stared, wondering was this another of Scaramouche's
cynicisms.
"It isn't really difficult provided I have aid. I require only a
little. Will you lend it me?"
"Anything you ask," Leandre exploded. "My life if you require it."
Andre-Louis took his arm again. "Let us walk," he said. "I will
instruct you."
When they came back the company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle had
not yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine and Madame
wore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations between Binet and his
troupe were daily growing more strained.
Andre-Louis and Leandre went each to his accustomed place. Binet's
little eyes followed them with a malicious gleam, his thick lips pouted into
a crooked smile.
"You two are grown very friendly of a sudden," he mocked.
"You are a man of discernment, Binet," said Scaramouche, the cold
loathing of his voice itself an insult. "Perhaps you discern the reason?"
"It is readily discerned."
"Regale the company with it!" he begged; and waited. "What? You
hesitate? Is it possible that there are limits to your shamelessness?"
Binet reared his great head. "Do you want to quarrel with me,
Scaramouche?" Thunder was rumbling in his deep, voice.
"Quarrel? You want to laugh. A man doesn't quarrel with creatures like
you. We all know the place held in the public esteem by complacent husbands.
But, in God's name, what place is there at all for complacent fathers?"
Binet heaved himself up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently he
shook off the restraining hand of Pierrot who sat on his left.
"A thousand devils!" he roared; "if you take that tone with me, I'll
break every bone in your filthy body."
"If you were to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the only
provocation I still need to kill you." Andre-Louis was as calm as ever, and
therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the company. He protruded from
his pocket the butt of a pistol - newly purchased. "I go armed, Binet. It is
only fair to give you warning. Provoke me as you have suggested, and I'll
kill you with no more compunction than I should kill a slug, which after all
is the thing you most resemble - a slug, Binet; a fat, slimy body; foulness
without soul and without intelligence. When I come to think of it I can't
suffer to sit at table with you. It turns my stomach."
He pushed away his platter and got up. "I'll go and eat at the ordinary
below stairs."
Thereupon up jumped Columbine.
"And I'll come with you, Scaramouche!" cried she.
It acted like a signal. Had the thing been concerted it couldn't have
fallen out more uniformly. Binet, in fact, was persuaded of a conspiracy.
For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake of Leandre,
Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet found himself
sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room - a badly
shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against the dread by which
he was suddenly invaded.
He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholy
occupation when perhaps a half-hour later his daughter entered the room,
returned at last from her excursion.
She looked pale, even a little scared - in reality excessively
self-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaited her.
Seeing no one but her father in the room, she checked on the threshold.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, in a voice rendered natural by effort.
M. Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were
blood-injected. He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh noises in
his throat. Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and comely and looking so
completely the lady of fashion in her long fur-trimmed travelling coat of
bottle green, her muff and her broad hat adorned by a sparkling Rhinestone
buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair. No need to fear the future
whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramouche play what tricks he would.
He expressed, however, none of these comforting reflections.
"So you're back at last, little fool," he growled in greeting. "I was
beginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening. It wouldn't
greatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time. Indeed, since you
have chosen to play the fine hand you held in your own way and scorning my
advice, nothing can surprise me."
She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked down
upon him almost disdainfully.
"I have nothing to regret," she said.
"So every fool says at first. Nor would you admit it if you had. You
are like that. You go your own way in spite of advice from older heads.
Death of my life, girl, what do you know of men?"
"I am not complaining," she reminded him.
"No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have
done better to have been guided by your old father. So long as your Marquis
languished for you, there was nothing you could not have done with the fool.
So long as you let him have no more than your fingertips to kiss... ah, name
of a name! that was the time to build your future. If you live to be a
thousand you'll never have such a chance again, and you've squandered it,
for what?"
Mademoiselle sat down.- "You're sordid," she said, with disgust.
"Sordid, am I?" His thick lips curled again. "I have had enough of the
dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held a hand on
which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I bade you. Well, you've
played it, and where's the fortune? We can whistle for that as a sailor
whistles for wind. And, by Heaven, we'll need to whistle presently if the
weather in the troupe continues as it's set in. That scoundrel Scaramouche
has been at his ape's tricks with them. They've suddenly turned moral. They
won't sit at table with me any more." He was spluttering between anger and
sardonic mirth. "It was your friend Scaramouche set them the example of
that. He threatened my life actually. Threatened my life! Called me... Oh,
but what does that matter? What matters is that the next thing to happen to
us will be that the Binet Troupe will discover it can manage without M.
Binet and his daughter. This scoundrelly bastard I've befriended has little
by little robbed me of everything. It's in his power to-day to rob me of my
troupe, and the knave's ungrateful enough and vile enough to make use of his
power.
"Let him," said mademoiselle contemptuously.
"Let him?" He was aghast. "And what's to become of us?"
"In no case will the Binet Troupe interest me much longer," said she.
"I shall be going to Paris soon. There are better theatres there than the
Feydau. There's Mlle. Montansier's theatre in the Palais Royal; there's the
Ambigu Comique; there's the Comedie Francaise; there's even a possibility I
may have a theatre of my own."
His eyes grew big for once. He stretched out a fat hand, and placed it
on one of hers. She noticed that it trembled.
"Has he promised that? Has he promised?"
She looked at him with her head on one side, eyes sly and a queer
little smile on her perfect lips.
"He did not refuse me when I asked it," she answered, with conviction
that all was as she desired it.
"Bah!" He withdrew his hand, and heaved himself up. There was disgust
on his face. "He did not refuse!" he mocked her; and then with passion: "Had
you acted as I advised you, he would have consented to anything that you
asked, and what is more he would have provided anything that you asked -
anything that lay within his means, and they are inexhaustible. You have
changed a certainty into a possibility, and I hate possibilities - God of
God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on them."
Had she known of the interview taking place at that moment at the
Chateau de Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at her father's
gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know, which indeed was the
cruellest punishment of all. She was to attribute all the evil that of a
sudden overwhelmed her, the shattering of all the future hopes she had
founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegration of the Binet Troupe,
to the wicked interference of that villain Scaramouche.
She had this much justification that possibly, without the warning from
M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of that evening at
the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending an entanglement that was
fraught with too much unpleasant excitement, whilst the breaking-up of the
Binet Troupe was most certainly the result of Andre-Louis' work. But it was
not a result that he intended or even foresaw.
So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act, he
sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodomont. Polichinelle
was in the act of changing.
"I shouldn't trouble to change," he said. "The piece isn't likely to go
beyond my opening scene of the next act with Leandre."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see." He put a paper on Polichinelle's table amid the
grease-paints. "Cast your eye over that. It's a sort of last will and
testament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the document is in
order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced by my partnership in
the company."
"But you don't mean that you are leaving us?" cried Polichinelle in
alarm, whilst Rhodomont's sudden stare asked the same question.
Scaramouche's shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: "Of
course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one to go? It
is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real head and brains of
the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a real theatrical company. If
any one must go, let it be Binet - Binet and his infernal daughter. Or if
you go, name of a name! we all go with you!"
"Aye," added Rhodomont, "we've had enough of that fat scoundrel."
"I had thought of it, of course," said Andre-Louis. "It was not vanity,
for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may consider it
again, if I survive."
"If you survive?" both cried.
Polichinelle got up. "Now, what madness have you in mind?" he asked.
"For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am
pursuing an old quarrel."
The three knocks sounded as he spoke.
"There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it may not
be necessary.
He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle stared at
Rhodomont.
"What the devil is he thinking of?" quoth the latter.
"That is most readily ascertained by going to see," replied
Polichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite what Scaramouche
had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.
As they approached the wings a roar of applause met them coming from
the audience. It was applause and something else; applause on an unusual
note. As it faded away they heard the voice of Scaramouche ringing clear as
a bell:
"And so you see, my dear M. Leandre, that when you speak of the Third
Estate, it is necessary to be more explicit. What precisely is the Third
Estate?"
"Nothing," said Leandre.
There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and then
swiftly followed Scaramouche's next question:
"True. Alas! But what should it be?"
"Everything," said Leandre.
The audience roared its acclamations, the more violent because of the
unexpectedness of that reply.
"True again," said Scaramouche. "And what is more, that is what it will
be; that is what it already is. Do you doubt it?"
"I hope it," said the schooled Leandre.
"You may believe it," said Scaramouche, and again the acclamations
rolled into thunder.
Polichinelle and Rhodomont exchanged glances: indeed, the former
winked, not without mirth.
"Sacred name!" growled a voice behind them. "Is the scoundrel at his
political tricks again?"
They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread of
his, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now in his
scarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little eyes glaring
from either side of his false nose. But their attention was held by the
voice of Scaramouche. He had stepped to the front of the stage.
"He doubts it," he was felling the audience. "But then this M. Leandre
is himself akin to those who worship the worm-eaten idol of Privilege, and
so he is a little afraid to believe a truth that is becoming apparent to all
the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I tell him how a company of noblemen
backed by their servants under arms - six hundred men in all - sought to
dictate to the Third Estate of Rennes a few short weeks ago? Must I remind
him of the martial front shown on that occasion by the Third Estate, and how
they swept the streets clean of that rabble of nobles - cette canaille
noble... "
Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught. Those
who had writhed under that infamous designation from their betters leapt at
this turning of it against the nobles themselves.
"But let me tell you of their leader - le pins noble de cette canaille,
on bien le plus canaille de ces nobles! You know him
- that one. He fears many things, but the voice of truth he fears most.
With such as him the eloquent truth eloquently spoken is a thing instantly
to be silenced. So he marshalled his peers and their valetailles, and led
them out to slaughter these miserable bourgeois who dared to raise a voice.
But these same miserable bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in the
streets of Rennes. It occurred to them that since the nobles decreed that
blood should flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles. They
marshalled themselves too - this noble rabble against the rabble of nobles -
and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de La Tour d'Azyr
and his warlike following from the field with broken heads and shattered
delusions. They sought shelter at the hands of the Cordeliers; and the
shavelings gave them sanctuary in their convent - those who survived, among
whom was their proud leader, M. de La Tour d'Azyr. You have heard of this
valiant Marquis, this great lord of life and death?"
The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouche
continued:
"Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling to
cover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes has not
seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But if he is valorous,
he is also discreet. And where do you think he has taken refuge, this great
nobleman who wanted to see the streets of Rennes washed in the blood of its
citizens, this man who would have butchered old and young of the
contemptible canaille to silence the voice of reason and of liberty that
presumes to ring through France to-day? Where do you think he hides himself?
Why, here in Nantes."
Again there was uproar.
"What do you say? Impossible? Why, my friends, at this moment he is
here in this theatre - skulking up there in that box. He is too shy to show
himself - oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is behind the curtains.
Will you not show yourself to your friends, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, Monsieur
le Marquis who considers eloquence so very dangerous a gift? See, they would
like a word with you; they do not believe me when I tell them that you are
here."
Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the
subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was certainly not a coward. To
say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came and went there openly
and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais were ignorant until
this moment of his presence among them. But then he would have disdained to
have informed them of it just as he would have disdained to have concealed
it from them.
Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which the
bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche's appeal to
its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to restrain him, the
Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the box, and suddenly showed
himself, pale but self-contained and scornful as he surveyed first the
daring Scaramouche and then those others who at sight of him had given
tongue to their hostility.
Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes were
brandished menacingly.
"Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!"
But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt. He
was waiting for the noise to cease; waiting to address them in his turn. But
he waited in vain, as he very soon perceived.
The contempt he did not trouble to dissemble served but to goad them
on.
In the pit pandemonium was already raging. Blows were being freely
exchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords were being
drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit of their being used
effectively. Those who had women with them and the timid by nature were
making haste to leave a house that looked like becoming a cockpit, where
chairs were being smashed to provide weapons, and parts of chandeliers were
already being used as missiles.
One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxes
narrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort of grim
triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing of what
inflammable material the audience was composed, he had deliberately flung
down amongst them the lighted torch of discord, to produce this
conflagration.
He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side or
the other of this great quarrel that already was beginning to agitate the
whole of France. Their rallying cries were ringing through the theatre.
"Down with the canaille!" from some.
"Down with the privileged!" from others.
And then above the general din one cry rang out sharply and
insistently:
"To the box! Death to the butcher of Rennes! Death to La Tour d'Azyr
who makes war upon the people!"
There was a rush for one of the doors of the pit that opened upon the
staircase leading to the boxes.
And now, whilst battle and confusion spread with the speed of fire,
overflowing from the theatre into the street itself, La Tour d'Azyr's box,
which had become the main object of the attack of the bourgeoisie, had also
become the rallying ground for such gentlemen as were present in the theatre
and for those who, without being men of birth themselves, were nevertheless
attached to the party of the nobles.
La Tour d'Azyr had quitted the front of the box to meet those who came
to join him. And now in the pit one group of infuriated gentlemen, in
attempting to reach the stage across the empty orchestra, so that they might
deal with the audacious comedian who was responsible for this explosion,
found themselves opposed and held back by another group composed of men to
whose feelings Andre-Louis had given expression.
Perceiving this, and remembering the chandelier, he turned to Leandre,
who had remained beside him.
"I think it is time to be going," said he.
Leandre, looking ghastly under his paint, appalled by the storm which
exceeded by far anything that his unimaginative brain could have
conjectured, gurgled an inarticulate agreement. But it looked as if already
they were too late, for in that moment they were assailed from behind.
M. Binet had succeeded at last in breaking past Polichinelle and
Rhodomont, who in view of his murderous rage had been endeavouring to
restrain him. Half a dozen gentlemen, habitues of the green-room, had come
round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created this riot, and it
was they who had flung aside those two comedians who hung upon Binet. After
him they came now, their swords out; but after them again came Polichinelle,
Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel, and Basque the artist, armed with
such implements as they could hastily snatch up, and intent upon saving the
man with whom they sympathized in spite of all, and in whom now all their
hopes were centred.
Well ahead rolled Binet, moving faster than any had ever seen him move,
and swinging the long cane from which Pantaloon is inseparable.
"Infamous scoundrel!" he roared. "You have ruined me! But, name of a
name, you shall pay!"
Andre-Louis turned to face him. "You confuse cause with effect," said
he. But he got no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven, descended and
broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blow fell it
must have taken him across the head, and possibly stunned him. As he moved,
he dropped his hand to his pocket, and swift upon the cracking of Binet's
breaking cane came the crack of the pistol with which Andre-Louis replied.
"You had your warning, you filthy pander!" he cried. And on the word he
shot him through the body.
Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer than
ever in that moment of fierce reality, spoke quickly into Andre-Louis' ear:
"Fool! So much was not necessary! Away with you now, or you'll leave
your skin here! Away with you!"
Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took it. The gentlemen who had
followed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly held in check by
the improvised weapons of the players, partly intimidated by the second
pistol that Scaramouche presented, let him go. He gained the wings, and here
found himself faced by a couple of sergeants of the watch, part of the
police that was already invading the theatre with a view to restoring order.
The sight of them reminded him unpleasantly of how he must stand towards the
law for this night's work, and more particularly for that bullet lodged
somewhere in Binet's obese body. He flourished his pistol.
"Make way, or I'll burn your brains!" he threatened them, and
intimidated, themselves without firearms, they fell back and let him pass.
He slipped by the door of the green-room, where the ladies of the company
had shut themselves in until the storm should be over, and so gained the
street behind the theatre. It was deserted. Down this he went at a run,
intent on reaching the inn for clothes and money, since it was impossible
that he should take the road in the garb of Scaramouche.
"You may agree," wrote Andre-Louis from Paris to Le Chapelier, in a
letter which survives, "that it is to be regretted I should definitely have
discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly there could be no livery
fitter for my wear. It seems to be my part always to stir up strife and then
to slip away before I am caught in the crash of the warring elements I have
aroused. It is a humiliating reflection. I seek consolation in the reminder
of Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?) that we are but actors in a play
"I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
madame. Not on my own."
"But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should be
ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as to inform
you. But since you are informed, at least you should be modestly blind to
things that take place outside the... orbit of a properly conducted
demoiselle."
"Will they still be outside my orbit when I am married?"
"If you are wise. You should remain without knowledge of them. It... it
deflowers your innocence. I would not for the world that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr should know you so extraordinarily instructed. Had you been properly
reared in a convent this would never have happened to you."
"But you do not answer me, madame!" cried Aline in despair. "It is not
my chastity that is in question; but that of M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
"Chastity!" Madame's lips trembled with horror. Horror overspread her
face. "Wherever did you learn that dreadful, that so improper word?"
And then Mme. de Sautron did violence to her feelings. She realized
that here great calm and prudence were required. "My child, since you know
so much that you ought not to know, there can be no harm in my adding that a
gentleman must have these little distractions."
"But why, madame? Why is it so?"
"Ah, mon Dieu, you are asking me riddles of nature. It is so because it
is so. Because men are like that."
"Because men are beasts, you mean - which is what I began by asking
you."
"You are incorrigibly stupid, Aline."
"You mean that I do not see things as you do, madame. I am not
over-expectant as you appear to think; yet surely I have the right to expect
that whilst M. de La Tour d'Azyr is wooing me, he shall not be wooing at the
same time a drab of the theatre. I feel that in this there is a subtle
association of myself with that unspeakable creature which soils and insults
me. The Marquis is a dullard whose wooing takes the form at best of stilted
compliments, stupid and unoriginal. They gain nothing when they fall from
lips still warm from the contamination of that woman's kisses."
So utterly scandalized was madame that for a moment she remained
speechless. Then -
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed. "I should never have suspected you of so
indelicate an imagination."
"I cannot help it, madame. Each time his lips touch my fingers I find
myself thinking of the last object that they touched. I at once retire to
wash my hands. Next time, madame, unless you are good enough to convey my
message to him, I shall call for water and wash them in his presence."
"But what am I to tell him? How... in what words can I convey such a
message?" Madame was aghast.
"Be frank with him, madame. It is easiest in the end. Tell him that
however impure may have been his life in the past, however impure he intend
that it shall be in the future, he must at least study purity whilst
approaching with a view to marriage a virgin who is herself pure and without
stain."
Madame recoiled, and put her hands to her ears, horror stamped on her
handsome face. Her massive bosom heaved.
"Oh, how can you?" she panted. "How can you make use of such terrible
expressions? Wherever have you learnt them?"
"In church," said Aline.
"Ah, but in church many things are said that... that one would not
dream of saying in the world. My dear child, how could I possibly say such a
thing to M. le Marquis? How could I possibly?"
"Shall I say it?"
"Aline!"
"Well, there it is," said Aline. "Something must be done to shelter me
from insult. I am utterly disgusted with M. le Marquis
- a disgusting man. And however fine a thing it may be to become
Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr, why, frankly, I'd sooner marry a cobbler who
practised decency."
Such was her vehemence and obvious determination that Mme. de Sautron
fetched herself out of her despair to attempt persuasion. Aline was her
niece, and such a marriage in the family would be to the credit of the whole
of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.
"Listen, my dear," she said. "Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away and
will not be back until to-morrow."
"True. And I know where he has gone - or at least whom he has gone
with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow who intends
to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do anything. I suppose
they agree with you, madame, that a great gentleman must have his little
distractions." Her contempt was as scorching as a thing of fire. "However,
madame, you were about to say?"
"That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac. M. de
La Tour d'Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure."
"You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?"
"Call it what you will." Madame, you see, despaired by now of
controlling the impropriety of her niece's expressions. "At Gavrillac there
will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the past. It is unfortunate
that he should have met her at such a moment. The chit is very attractive,
after all. You cannot deny that. And you must make allowances."
"M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to satisfy
the wishes of the family, and partly... " She broke off, hesitating a
moment, to resume on a note of dull pain, "Partly because it does not seem
greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave him my consent. That consent, for the
reasons I have given you, madame, I desire now definitely to withdraw."
Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. "Aline, I should never
forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not know what
you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing. Have you no sense
of your position, of the station into which you were born?"
"If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I have
tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I realize the
importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense. But I ask of
marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed the decision in my
hands."
"God forgive him!" said madame. And then she hurried on: "Leave this to
me now, Aline. Be guided by me - oh, be guided by me!" Her tone was
beseeching. "I will take counsel with your uncle Charles. But do not
definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over. Charles will
know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis shall do penance, child, since your
tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes. you'll not ask so much?"
Aline shrugged. "I ask nothing at all," she said, which was neither
assent nor dissent.
So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man,
very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense. She
took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself and which
in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate. She even borrowed
several of Aline's phrases.
The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour
d'Azyr's returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le
Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.
"Gervais, you're a fool," was the excellent opening made by M. le
Comte.
"Charles, you give me no news," answered M. le Marquis. "Of what
particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?"
He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body
sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly
handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.
"Of your last. This Binet girl."
"That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly."
"A folly - at such a time," Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a
question. The Count answered it. "Aline," said he, pregnantly. "She knows.
How she knows I can't tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended."
The smile perished on the Marquis' face. He gathered himself up.
"Offended?" said he, and his voice was anxious.
"But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It
wounds her that at such a time - whilst you are here for the purpose of
wooing her - you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that
chit of a Binet girl."
"How do you know?" asked La Tour d'Azyr.
"She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have some
reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her hand
with lips that are still contaminated from... Oh, you understand. You
appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive girl such
as Aline. She said - I had better tell you - that the next time you kiss her
hand, she will call for water and wash it in your presence."
The Marquis' face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent,
intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But no
outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the
window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he spoke,
without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.
"You are right, Charles, I am a fool - a wicked fool! I have just
enough sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I suppose. I
have never known the need to deny myself anything I wanted." Then suddenly
he swung round, and the outburst came. "But, my God, I want Aline as I have
never wanted anything yet! I think I should kill myself in rage if through
my folly I should have lost her." He struck his brow with his hand. "I am a
beast!" he said. "I should have known that if that sweet saint got word of
these petty devilries of mine she would despise me; and I tell you, Charles,
I'd go through fire to regain her respect."
"I hope it is to be regained on easier terms," said Charles; and then
to ease the situation which began to irk him by its solemnity, he made a
feeble joke. "It is merely asked of you that you refrain from going through
certain fires that are not accounted by mademoiselle of too purifying a
nature."
"As to that Binet girl, it is finished - finished," said the Marquis.
"I congratulate you. When did you make that decision?"
"This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago. As it
is-" he shrugged - "why, twenty-four hours of her have been enough for me as
they would have been for any man - a mercenary, self-seeking little baggage
with the soul of a trull. Bah!" He shuddered in disgust of himself and her.
"Ah! That makes it easier for you," said M. de Sautron, cynically.
Don't say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool, you
would have warned me sooner."
"I may prove to have warned you soon enough if you'll profit by the
warning."
"There is no penance I will not do. I will prostrate myself at her
feet. I will abase myself before her. I will make confession in the proper
spirit of contrition, and Heaven helping me, I'll keep to my purpose of
amendment for her sweet sake." He was tragically in earnest.
To M. de Sautron, who had never seen him other than self-contained,
supercilious, and mocking, this was an amazing revelation. He shrank from it
almost; it gave him the feeling of prying, of peeping through a keyhole. He
slapped his friend's shoulder.
"My dear Gervais, here is a magnificently romantic mood. Enough said.
Keep to it, and I promise you that all will presently be well. I will be
your ambassador, and you shall have no cause to complain."
"But may I not go to her myself?"
"If you are wise you will at once efface yourself. Write to her if you
will - make your act of contrition by letter. I will explain why you have
gone without seeing her. I will tell her that you did so upon my advice, and
I will do it tactfully. I am a good diplomat, Gervais. Trust me."
M. le Marquis raised his head, and showed a face that pain was searing.
He held out his hand. "Very well, Charles. Serve me in this, and count me
your friend in all things."
Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle de
Kercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contrition that
compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, the Marquis
rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four hours with La
Binet had been more than enough for a man of his fastidious and discerning
taste. He looked back upon the episode with nausea - the inevitable
psychological reaction - marvelling at himself that until yesterday he
should have found her so desirable, and cursing himself that for the sake of
that ephemeral and worthless gratification he should seriously have
imperilled his chances of winning Mademoiselle de Kercadiou to wife. There
is, after all, nothing very extraordinary in his frame of mind, so that I
need not elaborate it further. It resulted from the conflict between the
beast and the angel that go to make up the composition of every man.
The Chevalier de Chabrillane - who in reality occupied towards the
Marquis a position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting - sat opposite to
him in the enormous travelling berline. A small folding table had been
erected between them, and the Chevalier suggested piquet. But M. le Marquis
was in no humour for cards. His thoughts absorbed him. As they were rattling
over the cobbles of Nantes' streets, he remembered a promise to La Binet to
witness her performance that night in "The Faithless Lover." And now he was
running away from her. The thought was repugnant to him on two scores. He
was breaking his pledged word, and he was acting like a coward. And there
was more than that. He had led the mercenary little strumpet - it was thus
he thought of her at present, and with some justice - to expect favours from
him in addition to the lavish awards which already he had made her. The
baggage had almost sought to drive a bargain with him as to her future. He
was to take her to Paris, put her into her own furniture - as the expression
ran, and still runs - and under the shadow of his powerful protection see
that the doors of the great theatres of the capital should be opened to her
talents. He had not - he was thankful to reflect - exactly committed
himself. But neither had he definitely refused her. It became necessary now
to come to an understanding, since he was compelled to choose between his
trivial passion for her - a passion quenched already - and his deep, almost
spiritual devotion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.
His honour, he considered, demanded of him that he should at once
deliver himself from a false position. La Binet would make a scene, of
course; but he knew the proper specific to apply to hysteria of that nature.
Money, after all, has its uses.
He pulled the cord. The carriage rolled to a standstill; a footman
appeared at the door.
"To the Theatre Feydau," said he.
The footman vanished and the berline rolled on. M. de Chabrillane
laughed cynically.
"I'll trouble you not to be amused," snapped the Marquis. "You don't
understand." Thereafter he explained himself. It was a rare condescension in
him. But, then, he could not bear to be misunderstood in such a matter.
Chabrillane grew serious in reflection of the Marquis' extreme seriousness.
"Why not write?" he suggested. "Myself, I confess that I should find it
easier.
Nothing could better have revealed M. le Marquis' state of mind than
his answer.
"Letters are liable both to miscarriage and to misconstruction. Two
risks I will not run. If she did not answer, I should never know which had
been incurred. And I shall have no peace of mind until I know that I have
set a term to this affair. The berline can wait while we are at the theatre.
We will go on afterwards. We will travel all night if necessary."
"Peste!" said M. de Chabrillane with a grimace. But that was all.
The great travelling carriage drew up at the lighted portals of the
Feydau, and M. le Marquis stepped out. He entered the theatre with
Chabrillane, all unconsciously to deliver himself into the hands of
Andre-Louis.
Andre-Louis was in a state of exasperation produced by Climene's long
absence from Nantes in the company of M. le Marquis, and fed by the
unspeakable complacency with which M. Binet regarded that event of quite
unmistakable import.
However much he might affect the frame of mind of the stoics, and seek
to judge with a complete detachment, in the heart and soul of him
Andre-Louis was tormented and revolted. It was not Climene he blamed. He had
been mistaken in her. She was just a poor weak vessel driven helplessly by
the first breath, however foul, that promised her advancement. She suffered
from the plague of greed; and he congratulated himself upon having
discovered it before making her his wife. He felt for her now nothing but a
deal of pity and some contempt. The pity was begotten of the love she had
lately inspired in him. It might be likened to the dregs of love, all that
remained after the potent wine of it had been drained off. His anger he
reserved for her father and her seducer.
The thoughts that were stirring in him on that Monday morning, when it
was discovered that Climene had not yet returned from her excursion of the
previous day in the coach of M. le Marquis, were already wicked enough
without the spurring they received from the distraught Leandre.
Hitherto the attitude of each of these men towards the other had been
one of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been observed in like
cases. Now, what appeared to be a common misfortune brought them into a sort
of alliance. So, at least, it seemed to Leandre when he went in quest of
Andre-Louis, who with apparent unconcern was smoking a pipe upon the quay
immediately facing the inn.
"Name of a pig!" said Leandre. "How can you take your ease and smoke at
such a time?"
Scaramouche surveyed the sky. "I do not find it too cold," said he.
"The sun is shining. I am very well here."
"Do I talk of the weather?" Leandre was very excited.
"Of what, then?"
"Of Climene, of course."
"Oh! The lady has ceased to interest me," he lied.
Leandre stood squarely in front of him, a handsome figure handsomely
dressed in these days, his hair well powdered, his stockings of silk. His
face was pale, his large eyes looked larger than usual.
"Ceased to interest you? Are you not to marry her?" Andre-Louis
expelled a cloud of smoke. "You cannot wish to be offensive. Yet you almost
suggest that I live on other men's leavings."
"My God!" said Leandre, overcome, and he stared awhile. Then he burst
out afresh. "Are you quite heartless? Are you always Scaramouche?"
"What do you expect me to do?" asked Andre-Louis, evincing surprise in
his own turn, but faintly.
"I do not expect you to let her go without a struggle."
"But she has gone already." Andre-Louis pulled at his pipe a moment,
what time Leandre clenched and unclenched his hands in impotent rage. "And
to what purpose struggle against the inevitable? Did you struggle when I
took her from you?"
"She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won the
race. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison? That was a
thing in honour; this - this is hell."
His emotion moved Andre-Louis. He took Leandre's arm. "You're a good
fellow, Leandre. I am glad I intervened to save you from your fate."
"Oh, you don't love her!" cried the other, passionately. "You never
did. You don't know what it means to love, or you'd not talk like this. My
God! if she had been my affianced wife and this had happened, I should have
killed the man - killed him! Do you hear me? But you... Oh, you, you come
out here and smoke, and take the air, and talk of her as another man's
leavings. I wonder I didn't strike you for the word."
He tore his arm from the other's grip, and looked almost as if he would
strike him now.
"You should have done it," said Andre-Louis. "It's in your part."
With an imprecation Leandre turned on his heel to go. Andre-Louis
arrested his departure.
"A moment, my friend. Test me by yourself. Would you marry her now?"
"Would I?" The young man's eyes blazed with passion. "Would I? Let her
say that she will marry me, and I am her slave."
"Slave is the right word - a slave in hell."
"It would never be hell to me where she was, whatever she had done. I
love her, man, I am not like you. I love her, do you hear me?"
"I have known, it for some time," said Andre-Louis. "Though I didn't
suspect your attack of the disease to be quite so violent. Well, God knows I
loved her, too, quite enough to share your thirst for killing. For myself,
the blue blood of La Tour d'Azyr would hardly quench this thirst. I should
like to add to it the dirty fluid that flows in the veins of the unspeakable
Binet."
For a second his emotion had been out of hand, and he revealed to
Leandre in the mordant tone of those last words something of the fires that
burned under his icy exterior. The young man caught him by the hand.
"I knew you were acting," said he. "You feel - you feel as I do."
"Behold us, fellows in viciousness. I have betrayed myself, it seems.
Well, and what now? Do you want to see this pretty Marquis torn limb from
limb? I might afford you the spectacle."
"What?" Leandre stared, wondering was this another of Scaramouche's
cynicisms.
"It isn't really difficult provided I have aid. I require only a
little. Will you lend it me?"
"Anything you ask," Leandre exploded. "My life if you require it."
Andre-Louis took his arm again. "Let us walk," he said. "I will
instruct you."
When they came back the company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle had
not yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine and Madame
wore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations between Binet and his
troupe were daily growing more strained.
Andre-Louis and Leandre went each to his accustomed place. Binet's
little eyes followed them with a malicious gleam, his thick lips pouted into
a crooked smile.
"You two are grown very friendly of a sudden," he mocked.
"You are a man of discernment, Binet," said Scaramouche, the cold
loathing of his voice itself an insult. "Perhaps you discern the reason?"
"It is readily discerned."
"Regale the company with it!" he begged; and waited. "What? You
hesitate? Is it possible that there are limits to your shamelessness?"
Binet reared his great head. "Do you want to quarrel with me,
Scaramouche?" Thunder was rumbling in his deep, voice.
"Quarrel? You want to laugh. A man doesn't quarrel with creatures like
you. We all know the place held in the public esteem by complacent husbands.
But, in God's name, what place is there at all for complacent fathers?"
Binet heaved himself up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently he
shook off the restraining hand of Pierrot who sat on his left.
"A thousand devils!" he roared; "if you take that tone with me, I'll
break every bone in your filthy body."
"If you were to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the only
provocation I still need to kill you." Andre-Louis was as calm as ever, and
therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the company. He protruded from
his pocket the butt of a pistol - newly purchased. "I go armed, Binet. It is
only fair to give you warning. Provoke me as you have suggested, and I'll
kill you with no more compunction than I should kill a slug, which after all
is the thing you most resemble - a slug, Binet; a fat, slimy body; foulness
without soul and without intelligence. When I come to think of it I can't
suffer to sit at table with you. It turns my stomach."
He pushed away his platter and got up. "I'll go and eat at the ordinary
below stairs."
Thereupon up jumped Columbine.
"And I'll come with you, Scaramouche!" cried she.
It acted like a signal. Had the thing been concerted it couldn't have
fallen out more uniformly. Binet, in fact, was persuaded of a conspiracy.
For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake of Leandre,
Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet found himself
sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room - a badly
shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against the dread by which
he was suddenly invaded.
He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholy
occupation when perhaps a half-hour later his daughter entered the room,
returned at last from her excursion.
She looked pale, even a little scared - in reality excessively
self-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaited her.
Seeing no one but her father in the room, she checked on the threshold.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, in a voice rendered natural by effort.
M. Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were
blood-injected. He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh noises in
his throat. Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and comely and looking so
completely the lady of fashion in her long fur-trimmed travelling coat of
bottle green, her muff and her broad hat adorned by a sparkling Rhinestone
buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair. No need to fear the future
whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramouche play what tricks he would.
He expressed, however, none of these comforting reflections.
"So you're back at last, little fool," he growled in greeting. "I was
beginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening. It wouldn't
greatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time. Indeed, since you
have chosen to play the fine hand you held in your own way and scorning my
advice, nothing can surprise me."
She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked down
upon him almost disdainfully.
"I have nothing to regret," she said.
"So every fool says at first. Nor would you admit it if you had. You
are like that. You go your own way in spite of advice from older heads.
Death of my life, girl, what do you know of men?"
"I am not complaining," she reminded him.
"No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have
done better to have been guided by your old father. So long as your Marquis
languished for you, there was nothing you could not have done with the fool.
So long as you let him have no more than your fingertips to kiss... ah, name
of a name! that was the time to build your future. If you live to be a
thousand you'll never have such a chance again, and you've squandered it,
for what?"
Mademoiselle sat down.- "You're sordid," she said, with disgust.
"Sordid, am I?" His thick lips curled again. "I have had enough of the
dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held a hand on
which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I bade you. Well, you've
played it, and where's the fortune? We can whistle for that as a sailor
whistles for wind. And, by Heaven, we'll need to whistle presently if the
weather in the troupe continues as it's set in. That scoundrel Scaramouche
has been at his ape's tricks with them. They've suddenly turned moral. They
won't sit at table with me any more." He was spluttering between anger and
sardonic mirth. "It was your friend Scaramouche set them the example of
that. He threatened my life actually. Threatened my life! Called me... Oh,
but what does that matter? What matters is that the next thing to happen to
us will be that the Binet Troupe will discover it can manage without M.
Binet and his daughter. This scoundrelly bastard I've befriended has little
by little robbed me of everything. It's in his power to-day to rob me of my
troupe, and the knave's ungrateful enough and vile enough to make use of his
power.
"Let him," said mademoiselle contemptuously.
"Let him?" He was aghast. "And what's to become of us?"
"In no case will the Binet Troupe interest me much longer," said she.
"I shall be going to Paris soon. There are better theatres there than the
Feydau. There's Mlle. Montansier's theatre in the Palais Royal; there's the
Ambigu Comique; there's the Comedie Francaise; there's even a possibility I
may have a theatre of my own."
His eyes grew big for once. He stretched out a fat hand, and placed it
on one of hers. She noticed that it trembled.
"Has he promised that? Has he promised?"
She looked at him with her head on one side, eyes sly and a queer
little smile on her perfect lips.
"He did not refuse me when I asked it," she answered, with conviction
that all was as she desired it.
"Bah!" He withdrew his hand, and heaved himself up. There was disgust
on his face. "He did not refuse!" he mocked her; and then with passion: "Had
you acted as I advised you, he would have consented to anything that you
asked, and what is more he would have provided anything that you asked -
anything that lay within his means, and they are inexhaustible. You have
changed a certainty into a possibility, and I hate possibilities - God of
God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on them."
Had she known of the interview taking place at that moment at the
Chateau de Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at her father's
gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know, which indeed was the
cruellest punishment of all. She was to attribute all the evil that of a
sudden overwhelmed her, the shattering of all the future hopes she had
founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegration of the Binet Troupe,
to the wicked interference of that villain Scaramouche.
She had this much justification that possibly, without the warning from
M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of that evening at
the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending an entanglement that was
fraught with too much unpleasant excitement, whilst the breaking-up of the
Binet Troupe was most certainly the result of Andre-Louis' work. But it was
not a result that he intended or even foresaw.
So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act, he
sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodomont. Polichinelle
was in the act of changing.
"I shouldn't trouble to change," he said. "The piece isn't likely to go
beyond my opening scene of the next act with Leandre."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see." He put a paper on Polichinelle's table amid the
grease-paints. "Cast your eye over that. It's a sort of last will and
testament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the document is in
order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced by my partnership in
the company."
"But you don't mean that you are leaving us?" cried Polichinelle in
alarm, whilst Rhodomont's sudden stare asked the same question.
Scaramouche's shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: "Of
course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one to go? It
is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real head and brains of
the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a real theatrical company. If
any one must go, let it be Binet - Binet and his infernal daughter. Or if
you go, name of a name! we all go with you!"
"Aye," added Rhodomont, "we've had enough of that fat scoundrel."
"I had thought of it, of course," said Andre-Louis. "It was not vanity,
for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may consider it
again, if I survive."
"If you survive?" both cried.
Polichinelle got up. "Now, what madness have you in mind?" he asked.
"For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am
pursuing an old quarrel."
The three knocks sounded as he spoke.
"There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it may not
be necessary.
He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle stared at
Rhodomont.
"What the devil is he thinking of?" quoth the latter.
"That is most readily ascertained by going to see," replied
Polichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite what Scaramouche
had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.
As they approached the wings a roar of applause met them coming from
the audience. It was applause and something else; applause on an unusual
note. As it faded away they heard the voice of Scaramouche ringing clear as
a bell:
"And so you see, my dear M. Leandre, that when you speak of the Third
Estate, it is necessary to be more explicit. What precisely is the Third
Estate?"
"Nothing," said Leandre.
There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and then
swiftly followed Scaramouche's next question:
"True. Alas! But what should it be?"
"Everything," said Leandre.
The audience roared its acclamations, the more violent because of the
unexpectedness of that reply.
"True again," said Scaramouche. "And what is more, that is what it will
be; that is what it already is. Do you doubt it?"
"I hope it," said the schooled Leandre.
"You may believe it," said Scaramouche, and again the acclamations
rolled into thunder.
Polichinelle and Rhodomont exchanged glances: indeed, the former
winked, not without mirth.
"Sacred name!" growled a voice behind them. "Is the scoundrel at his
political tricks again?"
They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread of
his, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now in his
scarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little eyes glaring
from either side of his false nose. But their attention was held by the
voice of Scaramouche. He had stepped to the front of the stage.
"He doubts it," he was felling the audience. "But then this M. Leandre
is himself akin to those who worship the worm-eaten idol of Privilege, and
so he is a little afraid to believe a truth that is becoming apparent to all
the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I tell him how a company of noblemen
backed by their servants under arms - six hundred men in all - sought to
dictate to the Third Estate of Rennes a few short weeks ago? Must I remind
him of the martial front shown on that occasion by the Third Estate, and how
they swept the streets clean of that rabble of nobles - cette canaille
noble... "
Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught. Those
who had writhed under that infamous designation from their betters leapt at
this turning of it against the nobles themselves.
"But let me tell you of their leader - le pins noble de cette canaille,
on bien le plus canaille de ces nobles! You know him
- that one. He fears many things, but the voice of truth he fears most.
With such as him the eloquent truth eloquently spoken is a thing instantly
to be silenced. So he marshalled his peers and their valetailles, and led
them out to slaughter these miserable bourgeois who dared to raise a voice.
But these same miserable bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in the
streets of Rennes. It occurred to them that since the nobles decreed that
blood should flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles. They
marshalled themselves too - this noble rabble against the rabble of nobles -
and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de La Tour d'Azyr
and his warlike following from the field with broken heads and shattered
delusions. They sought shelter at the hands of the Cordeliers; and the
shavelings gave them sanctuary in their convent - those who survived, among
whom was their proud leader, M. de La Tour d'Azyr. You have heard of this
valiant Marquis, this great lord of life and death?"
The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouche
continued:
"Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling to
cover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes has not
seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But if he is valorous,
he is also discreet. And where do you think he has taken refuge, this great
nobleman who wanted to see the streets of Rennes washed in the blood of its
citizens, this man who would have butchered old and young of the
contemptible canaille to silence the voice of reason and of liberty that
presumes to ring through France to-day? Where do you think he hides himself?
Why, here in Nantes."
Again there was uproar.
"What do you say? Impossible? Why, my friends, at this moment he is
here in this theatre - skulking up there in that box. He is too shy to show
himself - oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is behind the curtains.
Will you not show yourself to your friends, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, Monsieur
le Marquis who considers eloquence so very dangerous a gift? See, they would
like a word with you; they do not believe me when I tell them that you are
here."
Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the
subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was certainly not a coward. To
say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came and went there openly
and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais were ignorant until
this moment of his presence among them. But then he would have disdained to
have informed them of it just as he would have disdained to have concealed
it from them.
Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which the
bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche's appeal to
its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to restrain him, the
Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the box, and suddenly showed
himself, pale but self-contained and scornful as he surveyed first the
daring Scaramouche and then those others who at sight of him had given
tongue to their hostility.
Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes were
brandished menacingly.
"Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!"
But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt. He
was waiting for the noise to cease; waiting to address them in his turn. But
he waited in vain, as he very soon perceived.
The contempt he did not trouble to dissemble served but to goad them
on.
In the pit pandemonium was already raging. Blows were being freely
exchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords were being
drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit of their being used
effectively. Those who had women with them and the timid by nature were
making haste to leave a house that looked like becoming a cockpit, where
chairs were being smashed to provide weapons, and parts of chandeliers were
already being used as missiles.
One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxes
narrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort of grim
triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing of what
inflammable material the audience was composed, he had deliberately flung
down amongst them the lighted torch of discord, to produce this
conflagration.
He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side or
the other of this great quarrel that already was beginning to agitate the
whole of France. Their rallying cries were ringing through the theatre.
"Down with the canaille!" from some.
"Down with the privileged!" from others.
And then above the general din one cry rang out sharply and
insistently:
"To the box! Death to the butcher of Rennes! Death to La Tour d'Azyr
who makes war upon the people!"
There was a rush for one of the doors of the pit that opened upon the
staircase leading to the boxes.
And now, whilst battle and confusion spread with the speed of fire,
overflowing from the theatre into the street itself, La Tour d'Azyr's box,
which had become the main object of the attack of the bourgeoisie, had also
become the rallying ground for such gentlemen as were present in the theatre
and for those who, without being men of birth themselves, were nevertheless
attached to the party of the nobles.
La Tour d'Azyr had quitted the front of the box to meet those who came
to join him. And now in the pit one group of infuriated gentlemen, in
attempting to reach the stage across the empty orchestra, so that they might
deal with the audacious comedian who was responsible for this explosion,
found themselves opposed and held back by another group composed of men to
whose feelings Andre-Louis had given expression.
Perceiving this, and remembering the chandelier, he turned to Leandre,
who had remained beside him.
"I think it is time to be going," said he.
Leandre, looking ghastly under his paint, appalled by the storm which
exceeded by far anything that his unimaginative brain could have
conjectured, gurgled an inarticulate agreement. But it looked as if already
they were too late, for in that moment they were assailed from behind.
M. Binet had succeeded at last in breaking past Polichinelle and
Rhodomont, who in view of his murderous rage had been endeavouring to
restrain him. Half a dozen gentlemen, habitues of the green-room, had come
round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created this riot, and it
was they who had flung aside those two comedians who hung upon Binet. After
him they came now, their swords out; but after them again came Polichinelle,
Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel, and Basque the artist, armed with
such implements as they could hastily snatch up, and intent upon saving the
man with whom they sympathized in spite of all, and in whom now all their
hopes were centred.
Well ahead rolled Binet, moving faster than any had ever seen him move,
and swinging the long cane from which Pantaloon is inseparable.
"Infamous scoundrel!" he roared. "You have ruined me! But, name of a
name, you shall pay!"
Andre-Louis turned to face him. "You confuse cause with effect," said
he. But he got no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven, descended and
broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blow fell it
must have taken him across the head, and possibly stunned him. As he moved,
he dropped his hand to his pocket, and swift upon the cracking of Binet's
breaking cane came the crack of the pistol with which Andre-Louis replied.
"You had your warning, you filthy pander!" he cried. And on the word he
shot him through the body.
Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer than
ever in that moment of fierce reality, spoke quickly into Andre-Louis' ear:
"Fool! So much was not necessary! Away with you now, or you'll leave
your skin here! Away with you!"
Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took it. The gentlemen who had
followed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly held in check by
the improvised weapons of the players, partly intimidated by the second
pistol that Scaramouche presented, let him go. He gained the wings, and here
found himself faced by a couple of sergeants of the watch, part of the
police that was already invading the theatre with a view to restoring order.
The sight of them reminded him unpleasantly of how he must stand towards the
law for this night's work, and more particularly for that bullet lodged
somewhere in Binet's obese body. He flourished his pistol.
"Make way, or I'll burn your brains!" he threatened them, and
intimidated, themselves without firearms, they fell back and let him pass.
He slipped by the door of the green-room, where the ladies of the company
had shut themselves in until the storm should be over, and so gained the
street behind the theatre. It was deserted. Down this he went at a run,
intent on reaching the inn for clothes and money, since it was impossible
that he should take the road in the garb of Scaramouche.
"You may agree," wrote Andre-Louis from Paris to Le Chapelier, in a
letter which survives, "that it is to be regretted I should definitely have
discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly there could be no livery
fitter for my wear. It seems to be my part always to stir up strife and then
to slip away before I am caught in the crash of the warring elements I have
aroused. It is a humiliating reflection. I seek consolation in the reminder
of Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?) that we are but actors in a play