The prefecture made a minute investigation, which established the real cause of the accident. The delinquent manufacturer got away with a large fine and the payment of serious damages. His notoriety as a merchant put him above all suspicion—but his employee had all the difficulty in the world is extracting himself from the claws of the law, and the businessman, hearing about his two prior convictions, did not want to have any more to do with him.
That event having caused him to lose his job and put the former waiter on their tracks, they thought about changing domicile again. Mariette had made great progress; her dialogue was vivacious, compelling and astonishingly natural, and she knew a dozen fashionable scores; she could now grasp the first favorable moment to make her debut. The recent threats of arrest pushed him to encourage his mistress’ impatience. Rose Gontran—she had resumed the name known to and loved by the public—made a tour of all the generic theaters.
In the most outwardly amiable fashion, the directors sent her away one after another; although the pretexts were polite and enlivened by the warmest eulogies, the refusals were nevertheless categorical.
Poor Rose came back in the evening desperate and dejected, putting her disappointments down to her ugliness. He did his best to console her. Was it not necessary to expect such hitches? When she had proved her talent, all the obstacles would disappear; it would no longer be her who was petitioning, it was the directors who would come to put themselves at her feet.
“How am I going to prove to them that I have talent?” exclaimed the poor young woman. “They don’t even want to give me an audition!”
For his part, luck was not showing itself any more clement; all his attempts failed miserably. Hidden machinations and detestable allegations, whose source it was easy to divine, had him rejected everywhere. He had to dip into the money put in reserve.
In the meantime, a new and violent blow struck him in a sensitive place. The Revue des Sciences published a translation of an article signed by a young German scientist, Ludwig Keller, which also attacked Dr. Albin’s theories and announced in veiled terms that he would soon be able to publish decisive experiments.
Thus, while he was wasting time preparing operetta debuts, someone else—a foreigner—was about to rob him of his future glory, and he had in hand the money that would permit him to act...
He spent several days in a state of overexcitement that skirted madness.
“My God!” said the frightened Rose, repeatedly. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I need to leave,” he murmured. “A great misfortune, the greatest one that could befall me, is threatening me, and it’s my fault because...”
“Because it’s mine, perhaps,” she replied, weeping.
He consoled her rapidly, but in a fashion nevertheless to make her comprehend that she was, indeed, a real obstacle.
“No, Rose, darling, but it’s absolutely necessary that you make your debut, that you can earn your living, that you can do without my help, and that I’m free.”
“Debut!” cried the actress, in despair. “You know full well that it’s my most ardent desire, but no one wants me. What can I do? Great God, what can I do?”
A few days later, Rose Gontran, overexcited in her turn, seemed completely changed. An influential journalist that she had met in the offices of a theater had taken an interest in her and had formally promised to arrange a debut for her in the imminent future. She never ceased chattering, building castles in Spain. He was a serious young man, a talented playwright, he was going to introduce her to several directors; if necessary, he would impose himself upon them. Her slightest desires would be taken into account. Her new friend had heard her, judged her and had seemed enthusiastic.
He feared that he understood, and frowned, but she did not notice, or did not want to notice anything.
Seen she was absent for long periods, came back well after nightfall on various pretexts, excited by drink and troubled by remorse. He no longer had any doubt that Rose Gontran, in order to arrive more rapidly at her goal, was deceiving him.
After all, it was an excellent opportunity, an opportune denouement. He resolved to bring the situation to a head. He did not go to bed that night and waited up fir her until three o’clock in the morning.
Anticipating the storm and following her habit when she wanted to avoid any explanation, she threw himself into his arms when she came in. She finally had an opportunity to make her debut!
“Where?” he asked, coldly.
“At the Théâtre de la Gaité-Belleville.” He pulled a face. “Oh, I know that it isn’t famous,” she hastened to add, “but what do you expect? My protector hasn’t been able to find anything else for the moment. It’s a means to have me judged. Didn’t I make my debut at Père Antoine’s when you got me into the concerts?”
“The circumstances aren’t the same. In that epoch, you hadn’t yet been on stage; you didn’t have a reputation to sustain; you made your debut before my eyes; I was sure of the audience; I accompanied you, and your success was absolutely dependent on you. Here you’re going to be hindered by ridiculous nonentities, comrades devoid of talent, an insufficient setting, an improvised orchestra, an audience prejudiced by your previous successes or ill-disposed to your attempt, and many other things.”
“My God! What can I do? I’ve accepted, I’ve given my word.”
“Debut, then, but instruct your new lover to make sure that you can show yourself in favorable conditions.”
There was a long and painful moment of silence.
“My lover,” she finally stammered, in a low voice, bowing her head. “My only, my true lover, is you.”
“I have been, Rose, and always will be, but the time for our temporary separation has come. I’ll leave France tomorrow.”
She looked at him with an imploring expression, as if, knowing that she had been divined, she were humbly begging his pardon. He read her thoughts.
“I have nothing to forgive you for, my dear. On the contrary; it’s me who’s demanding your indulgence. The implacable logic of things has once again created the incidents that have happened to us. If I had not been resolved for a long time to leave you, for pitiless reasons, I wouldn’t have pushed you into the path you’re taking. I’m therefore the only one responsible for your actions; I know the reasons for which you’ve committed them, and I have no right to reproach you for them.”
She threw herself into his arms, weeping.
He told her that his resolution was irrevocable, that he had already put off his duty for too long, that he did not feel any resentment toward her, that they would meet again in time, and that then, without reticence, they could swear an eternal fidelity to one another. Their liaison was a mutual obstacle that it was necessary to break through; he was even glad to know that, when he was gone, she would not be without support. He had learned from hearsay that her protector was a man of intelligence and heart; without egotism, he hoped that their liaison would be serious.
He spent the night giving her advice, begging her not to have the slightest acquaintance, under any pretext, with her old milieu. He implored her not to allow herself to be discouraged by the difficulty of her first forays, to work courageously, always to aim at higher goals.
He recommended her, above all, to avoid the slightest intemperance.
Rose never ceased to weep, trailing at his knees, swearing to him that she still lived him, that she was ready to give up everything to go with him. He was inexorable.
“Since I have to leave,” he declared, “since it’s necessary that I leave and that an action, although already pardoned, gives me the strength to do it, it’s today that I shall leave.”
He took six thousand francs, as agreed, gave her the other six thousand, promised her one last time that he would see her again, tore himself from her arms and fled in haste.
This time, it was Rose who leaned all her anguish on the banister. It was him who did not look up. It was him who did not come back.
Rose Gont
ran remained plunged in her dolorous stupor for a long time.
“Gone! Gone!” she murmured, her heart torn. “He doesn’t want to understand, then. He doesn’t want to know that since the moment that I met him, if my body has failed—what does a little more or less soiling signify to Mariette?—my soul and my heart have never ceased for a single instant to belong to him.”
Then she clutched stubbornly at one last hope. He wanted to teach her a lesson; he knew that she had deceived him, he wanted to punish her—but he was good; he would come back; he was going to come back.
She waited for several days without going out, shivering at every sound of footsteps, waking up with a start in the middle of the night. The absentee still did not come back.
Gradually, her despair changed face; anger invaded her, muted at first and then explosive. She was very stupid, after all, to take the thing so much to heart! He had wanted to leave her; any pretext would do. A motive that she hated profoundly without knowing what it was, tore him away from her; she was not loved as she loved. Why, then, abandon herself to her chagrin?
She went out, returned to her new lover, ran around all the brasseries and cabarets in Montmartre, got abominably drunk and did not go home for several days.
Then regrets came to assail her again, she returned in haste to the communal abode, as if she were going to find him there.
“No letters, no visitors,” the concierge told her. “Has Monsieur gone traveling, then?
“Yes,” she replied, confused. “He might not be back for some time.”
The apartment was in the name of Charles Balin. She paid a quarter’s rent in advance, took her money and effects, ordered a fiacre and confided the keys to the concierge.
“Give them to Monsieur Balin when he comes back,” she instructed.
“You’re going too, Madame? But you’ll come back.”
“It’s only the dead who don’t come back,” she murmured.
She gave the coachman the address of her protector and fled, swallowing her tears.
A few weeks later, on the eve of her debut as an operetta performer, Rose Gontran had returned to work ardently.
The intelligent and handsome young man, attracted to her by a keen sympathy, and whom she had abandoned, partly on impulse but mostly by calculation, made her a thousand protestations of love. She looked at him, astonished, smiling and sad. She surrendered herself mechanically to the slightest of his desires, strove to please him, even tried to love him, but it was the other, always the other, the mysterious individual she had helped, the first man that had not treated her as a whore, who still took up all the room in her heart.
The theatrical papers had already announced that Rose Gontran, the much-applauded star of the Folies Nouvelles, was about to return to the generic stage. Perhaps her friend had not put enough discretion into the publicity that his situation as a critic and author permitted him to make. Perhaps the newspapers made a little too much of the exceptional talent that the actress was about to demonstrate and the admiring astonishment that the public was about to experience. At any rate, Rose Gontran’s debut was considered as a Parisian event, and the public, blasé about great premières, although grumbling, deigned to climb the hill.
In memory of the evening when her lover had taken her to the Variétés, the actress had chosen the role of La Périchole.
That evening, the Théatre de la Gaité-Belleville presented an unexpected aspect. Men in suits, former admirers of Rose Gontran of the Folies Nouvelles, journalists, critics, gossip columnists, socialites on the lookout for novelties, theater directors come to judge the debutant, and former comrades of the concert hall who did not consider that ascension toward a genre in vogue without jealousy, had taken possession of all the best sets and chased the small local theater’s regulars from the boxes and the stalls. The hall was literally packed with spectators; the worthy public, relegated to the highest galleries, betrayed their ill humor by demanding with deafening cries and obstinate foot-stamping the raising of the curtain, which was late.
In the wings, Rose Gontran, emotional and immeasurably nervous, was running around madly, jostling belated employees and the bit-part players that it was necessary to drag away from the seductions of the bar, criticizing at the last moment the poverty of the costumes and the dilapidation of the set. Furthermore, in order to hide the traces of the smallpox, she was outrageously made up. Her first appearance on the stage cast a chill that augured badly. The gentlemen in suits, disappointed, interrogated one another with their eyes, with characteristic grimaces, the little comrades of old stifled laughter and whispered among themselves. The bulk of the audience remained indifference.
The first couplets were sung with vigor; she received a little timid applause; the entire first act passed without any notable incident.
She had vaguely perceived that several individuals among the spectators had cards suspended from their buttonholes or affecting to keep them in view in their hands, but she had not attached any importance to the observation.
“I hope you placed the advertisement,” the actor playing the Viceroy said to her during the entr’acte.
“What advertisement are you talking about?” she asked, astonished.
“Well, the cards that are being distributed gratuitously at the door; all the spectators have a card,” he added, with a coarse laugh. She snatched the piece of cardboard that he held out to her from his hand. It was, in form and color, exactly similar to her old prostitute’s registration card. On one side she read in large letters: Mariette Gantron, and in parentheses, Rose Gontran; on the other was the program of the play.
The blow struck home! A mortal anguish gripped her throat; a stifled cry escaped her, and she fainted. People gathered around her. She gradually recovered consciousness, collected her ideas, and wanted to leave. The director, who put the indisposition to the account of emotion, begged her not to do anything, assuring her that everything would go well. Inertly, she allowed herself to be persuaded, but only consented that the manager would announce to the audience that she had fainted and ask for its indulgence.
When her lover wanted to comfort her in his turn, suddenly gripped by an inexplicable surge of anger, thinking that he might perhaps have anticipated the blow or warded it off, she ordered him dryly to leave her alone.
The gallery, impatient with the length of the delay, recommenced its infernal racket. The curtain finally went up, and she made a superhuman effort. She knew now where the odious conspiracy originated. Émile, the former waiter, surrounded by shady accomplices, applauded madly without rhyme or reason.
“Shh! Down with the claque!” shouted the regulars, furiously.
The performance was interrupted in that fashion continually, and the disconcerted actors were obliged to await the reestablishment of silence before resuming the dialogue.
Soon, laughter and cries of every sort accentuated the disorder; poor Périchole, at her wit’s end, lost her head and her memory, stopped dead. The prompter raised his voice clumsily; the curious heads of carpenters and scene-shifters emerged from the wings. The actors on stage could scarcely dissimulate their laughter, and the cabal profited from the opportunity to go full tilt.
Then the actress, her eyes haggard and her lips trembling, showed her fist to her implacable enemy, shouted: “Coward!” with all the force of her anger and her voice. The public, thinking that it had been insulted, demanded apologies.
“She’s drunk!” cried some.
“It’s her habit!” replied others.
“To the carnival!”
“Apologies!”
“We want our money back!”
The fashionable people smiled; the journalists and directors watched the debacle, almost indifferently; the little friends gave free rein to their laughter. Rose Gontran, half mad, leaned against an upright on the stage, breathlessly.
Suddenly, she summoned up all her strength, came resolutely to the front of the stage and made a sign that she wanted to speak. A silence
full of curiosity immediately fell in the hall.
“My insult,” she roared, “was not addressed to the public, whom I have always respected, and whom I respect more than ever, but to the agent of the secret police who has mounted an infamous conspiracy against me.” She indicated Émile with a gesture.
All gazes turned in that direction; the agent, of course, was indistinguishable from everyone else, and no one could tell whom she intended to indicate. Cries of “Down with the cop!” and “Throw the nark out!” burst out on all sides.
If Rose had had a modicum of self-composure; if the slightest authorized advice had come to support her; if anyone, in fact, had even been able to identify the author of the disorder, the game might have turned around and the fall changed into a triumph; but Rose Gontran was alone; her lover, discouraged by the first rebuff and ashamed of the defeat, was hiding in the depths of the dressing-rooms or had perhaps already left; the dreamer who loved her had been unable to understand her and had removed himself from the action.
She left the stage and refused to go back on.
“I’ll be obliged to return the money,” begged the director again, who had followed her to her dressing-room. “You’ve caused me considerable damage; at least go on to the end; I’ve gone to considerable expense.”
“How much have you spent?” she demanded, curtly.
“About two thousand.”
“Here it is,” she said, extracting two bills from her handbag. “Return the money; I’m going.”
She undressed in haste, put on her ordinary clothes and left without saying another word. In the hall, the racket was at its height; people mistaken for policemen had been challenged and jostled; there was fighting.
It had begun to rain. She went down the Rue du Faubourg du Temple on foot, almost running, without knowing exactly where she was going. A fiacre, coming up behind her at the gallop, nearly crushed her; she threw herself instinctively to one side, and the movement dislodged her poorly-pinned hat. She did not even think of picking it up.
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 27