“What does the price matter since it suits you to perfection?” he said.
Faust was not in the bill for that evening, but they discovered when they reached the Place du Théâtre Français that they were travelling under a lucky star, for the advertisements at the Comédie Française announced for that evening Œdipus the King with the great Mounet-Sully in the title role.
Chéri-Bibi called a taxi.
“We will go back to our hotel to dress, dearest, and dine out, and then we’ll go to Œdipus the King since you want to see this piece. Let the fun begin.”
Chéri-Bibi had sent their trunks to the Grand Hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. He had engaged a suite of rooms whose windows fronted the gardens of the Tuileries. Cecily was enchanted.
“How pleasant are the trees, the foliage, the grassy slopes, the singing birds, the jolly shouts of children, after the din of the streets and the block of the traffic in the great crossroads” said Cecily, “One could imagine one’s self in the country.”
“Already” said Chéri-Bibi with a laugh, “Do you want to go back?”
“Not yet.”
She put her arms round his neck and they forgot the country and the town in a kiss.
Cecily rang for the maid and Chéri-Bibi went into the sitting room. He picked up a paper that lay on the table and read:
“It is stated that twenty-eight healthy young women from the Departmental prison at Clermont have sailed for Cayenne. Some of them are strikingly handsome. It is proposed to marry them to convicts who have distinguished themselves by their good conduct. It is evident that since the affair of Chéri-Bibi the authorities at the penal settlements cannot do too much to make themselves popular with messieurs the convicts. Having learnt to their cost that iron bars mean little for such sturdy fellows they intend to replace them by the softer chains of a compulsory but respectable marriage. Before he died Chéri-Bibi did a great deal for the hardened criminal. We hope that the latter in their gratitude when they have made themselves masters of our convict prisons, which under the present humanitarian system cannot be long delayed, will not hesitate to erect a monument to him in the public square in Numea in Cayenne.”
Chéri-Bibi flung aside the paper with a gesture of disgust as the Marchioness opened the door of her room and gave him one of her sweetest smiles. She wore a light wrapper negligently thrown over her shoulders. Chéri-Bibi looked askance, but Cecily with a swift and graceful movement darted forward and picked up the newspaper and searched for the passage which was the cause of his ill-humour.
“It’s nothing” he protested, “Please, Cecily, don’t read it. Writers in these days have no brains, and newspapers are driven to make a fuss about nothing so as to fill their columns. Dress as quickly as you can, for if you want to go to the theatre we haven’t much time to spare.”
But she would have her way, and she read the paragraph. She, too, threw down the paper in horror.
“That name again” she cried. “I can’t get away from it; it follows me everywhere. In vain I try to forget the monster who murdered my father and yours. To think that I was nice to him when I was a girl and treated him as a friend though he was only our lodge-keeper’s son. Oh, I should like to have my life over again simply to wring his neck for him! What a number of disasters we should have been spared! And he wouldn’t have terrorised the world.”
Suddenly she went up to the Marquis who had sunk back in a chair.
“What’s the matter? How pale you are. Aren’t you well?”
“Give me a glass of sugared water” he murmured with white lips. “I’m not feeling at all well.”
“It’s my fault” exclaimed Cecily in a distracted voice, as she crushed a lump of sugar in a glass of water, and with a trembling hand gave it to her impressionable husband. “I ought not to have revived those frightful memories... How do you feel now?”
“I feel much better, but you see, dearest, whenever anyone speaks of Chéri-Bibi in my presence....”
“It shan’t happen again, I promise you Maxime. Forgive me this time for recalling the past, as I forgive myself because I have at least had another proof of your kindness of heart. Like a good son you are fond of your parents.”
“I am indeed” sighed Chéri-Bibi lifting his eyes to heaven.
“Well, if they can look down upon us now” said Cecily with quiet faith, “they must rejoice to see our happiness.”
She bent over him to kiss him on the forehead and but for the impatience of the maid whose presence in the other room had been overlooked, they would have forgotten that time creeps on apace whether one laughs or cries or kisses or kills.
They entered a restaurant in the Boulevard des Capucines. The head waiter came running up and gave them a hearty welcome as he took them to a table “for monsieur le Marquis.”
Cecily as she left her cloak in the hands of an attendant, experienced a legitimate pride in being seen in the company of a gentleman “so well known in Paris”; while Chéri-Bibi feared some blunder on his part, and regretted coming to a restaurant where the head waiter appeared to know him so well while he knew so little of the head waiter.
The man’s face beamed in a manner that filled him with uneasiness. His expression of satisfaction in seeing “monsieur le Marquis” was dangerous because he talked so much. He enquired after the Marquis’s health, lamented that he had not seen him for so many years, alluded to distant services, and dragged out from the dim recesses of the past the names of old friends and carouses which Chéri-Bibi beard of for the first time.
He determined to cut short the man’s exuberance which, not without reason, he considered in bad form, and which was a torture to him because he felt some difficulty in taking part in it, and he ended by saying drily, at haphazard:
“That’ll do, Henry, give me the menu.”
The head waiter at once became serious and correct and extraordinarily reserved, waiting for the order, after however, remarking that his name was not Henry but Emile.
There was an air of depression over them owing to the frigid manner in which Emile — not Henry — hovered round the table watching the service with a jealous eye. It was as though he feared lest Chéri-Bibi should make off without paying. The latter, perhaps, felt intuitively as much, for he called for the bill without waiting to order liqueurs and cigars.
He left prominently on a plate a “tip” which to his mind was extravagant, but which was barely adequate, and the harsh figure of the head waiter bent towards him and he said in low tones:
“Monsieur le Marquis, I have not seen you for some years, and you have apparently forgotten that you owe me twenty francs.”
Chéri-Bibi turned pale for Cecily had heard him. Nevertheless without hesitation he put two fingers in his waistcoat pocket and drew forth and threw down a louis which Emile picked up with the remark:
“Thank you for the interest! Bring monsieur le Marquis’s coat and hat...”
Chéri-Bibi was furious. From pale he had become white with rage, and he was glad to find himself in the open air for he needed all his self-possession.
“The idiot borrowed money from servants” he could not help exclaiming as he stood on the pavement.
“Whom do you mean dear?” asked Cecily alarmed to see him in such a state of suppressed fury.
“Oh a friend of mine whom I told to pay my accounts in town and who, as you see for yourself, has been unscrupulous enough to leave debts all over the place!”
“Good gracious, my dear Maxime, that’s not very serious; and between ourselves you ought to have rewarded the head waiter’s civility seeing that he did your friend a service, thinking he was doing it for you.”
“The fellow didn’t deserve a sou” said Chéri-Bibi emphatically. “And besides if I am generous and even extravagant” — an allusion to the hundred and fifty franc hat—” confiding and even unselfish, grateful and even self-sacrificing, I can very readily be economical and even parsimonious with servants who are only too eager to rob you. If needs
be I can be resentful and spiteful and vindictive, and I can hate and lay traps and betray.”
“You are libelling yourself” cried Cecily. “You have given me proof that you know how to forgive.”
“You forgave me first, dearest” returned Chéri-Bibi pressing her arm.
“But in that case why do you use such terrible language? Whom do you hate? Whom do you want to be revenged on, and lay traps for and betray?”
He wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He was himself again.
“The friend who borrowed twenty francs from Emile as if they were for me.”
“Well, Maxime, it all happened so long ago. Promise me that if by chance you meet this old friend in Paris, he shall come to no harm.”
“I can promise you that, and don’t let my fit of anger upset you for the old friend is dead.”
They reached the Place du Théâtre Français and as they entered the stately building were exchanging the prettiest speeches and the softest glances, entirely unconscious of the interested gaze of two persons who were the next to take a box at the box office and who, as if by chance, came face to face with them in the auditorium.
It was Cecily who first recognised them.
“Look” she exclaimed. “Monsieur and Madame d’Artigues.”
“Where are they?” asked Chéri-Bibi suddenly remembering the society couple who had been introduced to him when he was Captain of the “Layard.”
“Don’t you see them in front of us? They see us and are bowing. Acknowledge the bow Maxime.”
Maxime grudgingly bowed to them.
“I must tell you dearest that I don’t much care for those people. There’s been a coldness between us since our last voyage. They are annoyed with me and put down all their troubles to me, and I, for my part, have noticed that notwithstanding their society manners they are not quite what they pretend to be.”
“I am very pleased to hear you say so, because I must confess to-day that I always had a feeling of repugnance when I received them at our table, but you brought them, and even in those days I had no wish to thwart you in anything. I tried to be as nice as I could to them.”
“You are a model wife Cecily. You are, shall I say, ‘a saint.’”
“Saints wait for their reward until they go to Heaven” retorted the Marchioness quickly,” but I’ve had my happiness on earth.”
She took his hand and pressed it fondly and he left his big paw in her little white perfumed glove and enfolded her with a tender look. He forgot all the d’Artigues in the world when the curtain went up on the tragedy of Œdipus:
My children, fruit of Cadmus’ ancient tree
New springing, wherefore thus with bended knee
Press ye upon us....
He gradually became absorbed in the piece. The destiny which overhung the life of the son of Laius and Jocasta was familiar to him. He knew from his own experience how relentless fate could be with men. He knew that this was no story, no work of fiction, no figment of some poet’s imagination. He loved and pitied Œdipus like a brother.
During an interval he left the box without saying a word to Cecily much to her astonishment.
He paced to and fro in the gallery of statues, and took a turn in the crush-room under the portrait of Voltaire, muttering incoherent words so that people near him looked at him as if he were out of his wits.
When he came back to the box Cecily said:
“M. d’Artigues has just left me. He was extremely amiable. You had better go to their box in the next interval and be polite to Madame d’Artigues. Tell them that we’re only passing through Paris and are leaving to-morrow; and above all take care not to accept any invitation since you dislike these people as much as I do.”
Chéri-Bibi nodded his head in acquiescence and became immersed in the terrible story of the Theban hero. The more the king was enmeshed in the deadly toils of disaster the more Chéri-Bibi’s excitement increased. Occasionally he uttered exclamations in a muffled voice that surprised Cecily. He mumbled, “That’s it... That’s it” with an approving gesture, and displayed so much emotion that the Marchioness was at first amused and at length touched.
She had to tell him more than once, at the end of the act, that it was his duty to pay his respects to Madame d’Artigues. He went to her box much against his will, determined to be so disagreeable and to show so little inclination to renew their relations, which worried him, that they would regard the friendship between them as definitely at an end.
When he entered the box Madame d’Artigues turned to him with a somewhat haughty demeanour and held out her hand like a queen condescending to a subject.
Chéri-Bibi was taken aback. He expected to find Monsieur d’Artigues with his wife but he had vanished. He recalled to mind the flirtation between the Marquis du Touchais and her which he had noticed on the “Bayard,” and he regarded the position as somewhat disquieting. Unconsciously, perhaps, he had behaved like a “mug” to a woman of the world who seemed to him to have been on the closest intimacy with her dear Maxime, and Maxime had completely ignored her since his return to France.
She asked him to sit down and she stared at him in a peculiar manner through her lorgnette.
“It’s very queer” she said, “but when I see you quite close I can hardly believe my eyes. From the distance it’s THE yon; when you are near, I have my doubts. Besides it’s not the first time that you have produced this effect on me. When, in the end, we were able to see you on the “Bayard” after your illness, I found you, somehow, changed. I knew that an illness could alter a man but not to such an extent.”
Chéri-Bibi listened to her in stupefied silence his whole being demoralised. How unfortunate that his evil star should still pursue him, and at the beginning of his honeymoon, which in his dreams he pictured as a path bestrewn with roses and free from any unpleasant complication, he should come upon this crafty woman whose every word made him shudder!
Madame d’Artigues eyes which he could discern behind her lorgnette frightened him. He who had braved the worst dangers, who had not feared to meet Cecily, asked himself, his heart rent with anguish, whether the miracle which had made him a marquis was about to lose its potency under her penetrating gaze.
She went on:
“You have changed completely for others as well as for me. As soon as you were able to get up from your sick bed on board the ship you shunned us. Why? What had we done to you? Were we not your principal victims? Had we not followed you through thick and thin? And when a certain person left you, did I not remain at your side, facing death with you? Oh, Monsieur I can never forgive your attitude towards us... towards me. You left us to ourselves, you sailed for Europe without paying any more heed to us... to me... than if we had never existed. And yet... and yet Maxime do you remember that terrible night, that last night, which we spent on the “Belle of Dieppe” when she was but a wreck, and you lamented that the Baroness Proskof had deserted you? Who was it that comforted you?”
“Yes, yes I remember” whispered Chéri-Bibi anxious above all to check this exuberant flood of reminiscences... And he thought: “Absurd! Here’s another to whom I owe gratitude and who won’t leave me alone until I have proved it to her.” But in so saying he began to “breathe freely” once more, because those violent reproaches demonstrated that his secret was safe; and he realised that his impression that she was subjecting him to a dangerous scrutiny was false, and came from the lorgnette that she still levelled at him.
“Madame” he said, “I like you better without your lorgnette.”
She lowered it and condescended to smile at him. Stranger still she placed her hand in his and bent over him, but with the fidelity of a Hector and the purity of a Joseph he started back. She gave expression to her irritation.
“You are very particular.”
“Upon my word” he said rising, “I believe that this is the end of the interval and I must return to my wife.”
“Give her my kind regards” Madame d’Artigues t
hrew at him in exasperated accents... “My dear Maxime you won’t be astonished to hear that since you treat me as a woman of no importance, I shall revenge myself like one. The Marchioness will I am sure read certain letters with great interest...
“What letters?.... What letters?” stammered Chéri-Bibi.
“I say, you have a very short memory!.... The letters you wrote to me on the “Belle of Dieppe” when you promised to give up Baroness Proskof, and even to divorce your Cecily so as to marry Madame d’Artigues one day when she also was free.”
“How complicated the brute’s love affairs are” thought Chéri-Bibi with increasing rage and dismay, “I shall never manage to get out of them.”
Madame d’Artigues observing his bewilderment went on pitilessly:
“Well my dear man if your memory is short your letters are long. Your wife will certainly be delighted to see what you thought of her in those days, how you appreciated her, and how you spoke of her. A woman can forget ill treatment, infidelities, humiliations, but there are certain things, Little things, which she can never forgive. The most painful things are those which turn her into ridicule.”
Chéri-Bibi felt that he was stifling. He drew back to a corner of the box. It seemed to him that the du Touchais family had no luck in the matter of letters.
“How much?” he said in a choking voice.
But Madame d’Artigues burst into a fit of laughter which set off her beautiful teeth. She realised that he was at her mercy and she pitilessly played with him.
“Good gracious, you have become very blunt, my dear Marquis “she said. “Have you forgotten that a present loses in value by the manner in which it is given? I decline your gifts unless you offer them with good grace. Wait a bit... there’s the signal for the curtain to go up. Return to the Marchioness and say nice things to her on my behalf.”
“When shall I see you again?” asked Chéri-Bibi in trepidation humbly kissing the hand that she held out to him though he would have liked to bite it.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 172