The moment her mother was gone Marie Thérèse dressed, opened her door and listened. Hearing no sound, she slipped into the passage and thence to the entrance lobby. The key was in the door. Soon she was on the landing. Descending the stairs, she asked the concierge to open the door, and went out. An empty cab was passing the corner of the street. She hailed it, and gave the driver the address of the Marchioness de Touchais.
Some minutes later she rang the bell of the porter’s lodge in the de Touchais’s courtyard. The concierge woke up and looked through the wicket. It was half-past three in the morning.
“I must see Mlle de la Morlière at once,” she said, and as the man stood there dumbfounded, trying to understand, she went on: “If you won’t let me in, send her word by Mlle Jacqueline, but whatever you do don’t disturb the Marchioness.”
“Well, we’ll see about that. Come in,” he said, half opening one of the wings of the carriage entrance, and closing it carefully again he added: “Mlle Jacqueline gets up every morning at four o’clock to go to Mass at St. Paul’s, which is at five o’clock. We shall only be taking half an hour from her sleep. Please wait here.”
Two minutes later he returned and beckoned her to follow him. The aged Jacqueline, wrapped in a long shawl, her eyes still swollen with sleep, stood waiting at the door of her room apprehensive, bewildered.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, showing her in.
“Let me go to Lydia at once, my dear Jacqueline.”
“Hush! Not so loud. What is it? Heavens, are you bringing us bad news? What makes you come at this hour?”
“Calm yourself, Jacqueline, it’s only my own affairs. I don’t want to go back to my parent’s flat. I want to put myself under the protection of the Marchioness and my dear Lydia. If you only knew how miserable I am, Jacqueline! Let me see Lydia at once, will you?”
“Wait here.... I’ll go and tell her.... What a pity!”
She drew the shawl closely round her and left the room. Soon she returned, and showed Marie Thérèse to Lydia’s room, and, telling them that she had to dress for Mass at five o’clock, left them.
Lydia remained seated on her bed. She was unable to say a word when Marie Thérèse came in. She stared at her without understanding, but feared lest some terrible calamity had happened. Marie Thérèse closed and locked the door. Then she went over to Lydia, who could now see her deathly pallor. She hadn’t the strength to question her, and Marie Thérèse said simply:
“I want to die with you.”
“Are they dead?” exclaimed the unhappy child, pressing her hand to her heart.
“No, Lydia, they are not dead, but they no longer love us....”
“Oh, was it to tell me this that you came here so early?”
“Yes, and to show you this. You will be able to say if it is really Jacques’s writing.... I thought I recognized it.”
“And I recognize that scent.”
Lydia turned over in her trembling hands the sachet bearing Sonia’s initials. Marie Thérèse, losing patience, drew the letters from the bag and ruthlessly read in a low breathless voice:— “My dear Sonia...”
She read them all while Lydia, stretched on her bed, her great eyes filled with tears, stared at her. And she wept for her shattered love, her young life spoilt, for she knew that she would never survive the blow. But it was to no purpose that Marie Thérèse tried to get her to glance through the letters. She refused:
“I have no need to recognize his writing,” she said. “I know his phrases. He used to tell me, too, that ‘there was no one like me.’ Marie Thérèse, how are we going to die?”
“I thought it would be quite easy,” returned Marie Thérèse, gently placing her arm under her friend’s head. “You have gas here, and we have only to remain in the room and turn on the taps.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Lydia. “As it happens, Jacqueline always turns on the main every morning to make some coffee for herself before going to Mass. When she returns we shall certainly be dead if only we send her on one or two errands.” Marie Thérèse kissed Lydia affectionately, then, taking the sachet and letters, went over to the writing-desk standing in a corner of the room.
“What are you doing?” asked Lydia.
“I’m writing a message for Jacqueline. I promised my mother to return these letters to Baron d’Askof. I am going to put them in an envelope with the sachet and when Jacqueline leaves church she will take them home.”
“Was it your stepfather who discovered the correspondence?” asked Lydia.
“Yes. It’s the first time he has done me a good turn. Oh, and what else do you think I learnt tonight? I learnt that the Baron killed my father at a shoot. My mother knew it, and I told her so. She hadn’t the strength to deny it — at any rate it was a very weak denial. So you can understand why I have had enough of life.... To live with people like that or risk being married to a — Frederic Héloni!”
“Don’t let’s speak ill of our fiancés, my dear,” interrupted Lydia in her gentlest tones. “We were so much in love with them. I — I think I still love Jacques....”
“Then let me die alone. You have friends. Jacques’s family has adopted you, the Marchioness loves you as a daughter, and you can still be happy. But I have no one, and I don’t love Frederic any more.... Let me die alone.”
“Why do you say that, my dear? It is because I still love Jacques that I wish to die.”
She had the strength to get up, drag herself to the desk, take the seat that Marie Thérèse after enclosing the sachet and letters in an envelope gave up to her. She opened a drawer, drew out a withered flower which she had placed in it the evening when Jacques first spoke the soft language of love to her — the flower whose perfume she had inhaled that evening as it lay in the button-hole of his dinner jacket — that evening when they had vowed eternal love.... She bent over the desk and wrote in a hand rendered almost firm by despair:
“You thought you loved me, but you loved only fame. It has kept me too long in expectation, and now you have forgotten me. Good-bye, dearest, good-bye for ever. I forgive you.... Keep this flower in remembrance of me as I was keeping it in remembrance of my love.”
She signed her name and a tear-drop fell. She slipped the flower into the envelope, sealed it, and wrote: “To be delivered by hand to Jacques de Touchais, Avenue de Jena.”
“That’s done,” said Lydia, passing the envelope to Marie Thérèse. “Take the letters yourself to Jacqueline and tell her to deliver them after Mass.”
“Suppose I, too, write a line to Frederic,” said Marie Thérèse, suddenly. “I want him to know one thing — that it is he who has killed me and I cannot forgive him.”
She wrote:
“Frederic — You and Jacques by your conduct have taken away from us the desire to live. So good-bye, and may you be happy with those ladies. A last word of advice: Don’t enter Lydia’s room with a light.”
CHAPTER XIV
CHÉRI-BIBI AND THE DODGER
M. HILAIRE FOLLOWED the peanut dealer as he slowly started to walk along the quays. It could not have been far from three o’clock in the morning.
Strange forms suddenly appeared and disappeared in the darkness, brushing against Daddy Peanuts apparently in no way surprised at anything but jogging along steadily, his keg under his arm, with the aspect of an old woman returning home with her shopping. On the other side of the water strange sounds of whistles rang out as though signalling and answering each other. The night was ominous with mystery. M. Hilaire longed to be sleeping peacefully in his bed.
And yet he had just met Chéri-Bibi once more. It was Chéri-Bibi right enough. He could no longer doubt it; and his last words about cod prepared in the Spanish way with which in the old days he used to regale his friend positively confirmed his suspicions.
Chéri-Bibi, whom he had so greatly loved, whose death he had so long mourned, was still alive! How came it then that M. Hilaire’s heart was not filled with an unspeakable joy?...
“See how the poor fellow hobbles along!” apostrophized M. Hilaire under his breath. “It is enough to make one cry! He must be crippled with rheumatism. Why didn’t he come to see me before? Of course, because he was ashamed.... I will make him a small allowance without telling Mme Hilaire. Poor Chéri-Bibi!... But where’s he going?... Ah, we’re entering the historic alley.”
M. Hilaire recognized the historic alley. It was here that the Duc d’Orleans was assassinated in the days of the Armagnacs.... They were now in the Francs Bourgeois quarter, M. Hilaire’s quarter.
When M. Hilaire came to the end of the alley, lit dimly by the pale gleam of the moon, he raised his head and saw Daddy Peanuts deep in talk with a youth wearing a peak cap over a little curl flattened down on his forehead, whose very appearance caused M. Hilaire such unutterable repugnance. “That’s the sort of person he mixes with now.” The youth was standing between the shafts of a handcart heavily laden with two sacks. The youth had dragged the cart so far and was apparently waiting for orders. It was then that Daddy Peanuts gave a shrill whistle which caused M. Hilaire to hasten up from the semi-darkness as he used to do in the old days when Chéri-Bibi called him for some urgent piece of work. M. Hilaire did not realize the pathetic spontaneity of his gesture until he was close to him. He reddened in the darkness, and Daddy Peanuts began to laugh in disagreeable little jerks, grinding his teeth, for they were all still sound, between his terrible jaws.
“Well done, M. Hilaire!”
M. Hilaire gave a start and took a step back. Clearly Chéri-Bibi would compromise him, and he had a mind to whisper: “No names — I live in these parts.” But after what he had just seen it was unnecessary to tell Chéri-Bibi that he lived in that quarter!
“We have never met because he starts off to sell his peanuts at a time when I am going to bed.”
“M. Hilaire, let me introduce you to young Mazeppa, employed at a coffee house, where his duty is to empty the dregs of brandy from the glasses. Between whiles he does jobs for me. He has just brought me a couple of sacks of peanuts, and I will ask you to help me unload them for Mazeppa is in a hurry and his boss wants him. Can I rely on you, M. Hilaire?”
“Yes, yes.... Why, of course.”
M. Hilaire did not know what to do with himself. It was very different when Mazeppa, after touching his cap respectfully to Daddy Peanuts, shook M. Hilaire’s hand as though he were a real pal....
Chéri-Bibi set him to work. With his assistance he had to lift up one of the sacks. He would never have believed that a sack of peanuts was so heavy. The extraordinary part was that he bent under the load while Chéri-Bibi lifted it without apparent effort. “Hullo,” he thought, “he is not so worn out as I assumed.”
Daddy Peanuts opened the low door of his cellar, for he lived here, and led the way.
“Mind you don’t break your neck,” he warned in his hoarse voice. “That once happened in this spot in days gone by to the Duc d’Orleans. It won’t do to have the same thing over again. What?... Look out for the steps. There’s ten of ’em to go down, and we are on the first floor!”
They were in murky darkness. M. Hilaire was sweating and puffing....
“You’re getting old, Dodger,” grunted the old man.
“Hush!”
“Beg your pardon, M. Hilaire.”
“Do shut up!”
“Well, what do you want me to call you?”
“Nothing.”
A kind of roar broke forth in the darkness and M. Hilaire let fall his sack, which rolled down without him.
“Get upstairs!” said the voice.
M. Hilaire mounted the steps backwards as though to repel the attack of the shadowy figure.
He reached the level of the valley safe and sound. But the terrible form of the peanut dealer showed up almost at once in the moonlight. He was shaking with rage. He went over to the handcart, whose shafts pointed heavenwards as though in supplication, and with a simple effort and a “Ha!” of hideous pride, threw the second sack of peanuts on his back and, turning to M. Hilaire, pointed to the end of the lane where the wan light of a street lamp flickered.
“Beat it!” he ordered, and plunged into his cellar with the heavy burden of the sack on his shoulders, thrusting back with a contemptuous kick the door behind him, which closed and cut him off from his companion.
M. Hilaire hung about the door, shook the latch, gave vent to the most pitiable moans, and uttered words of infinite softness, for he was sincerely repentant. He understood Chéri-Bibi’s wrath and his own unworthiness. And he begged forgiveness. “Chéri-Bibi, I am sorry,” he wailed. “Open the door.... Open your heart to me. It’s the Dodger imploring you. It’s your servant, monsieur le Marquis, at your feet.”
He was unable to continue his speech; emotion choked him, tears deluged his eyes, and he was certainly on the verge of collapse in his despair when the low door opened once more, a hand clutched him as he stood on the pavement in misery and remorse, drew him into the underground cellar, into this dark cave, where suddenly he felt himself in powerful arms that held him close to a heart beating fiercely to the rhythm of the noblest friendship — the friendship that can forgive!...
“My dear Hilaire! Are you still fond of me?”
“Why, of course I am. Ah, monsieur le Marquis!”
“No, no. Call me Chéri-Bibi as in the old days.”
“Why, of course I am fond of you, Chéri-Bibi — I mean I have never been so fond of you. My life, all I possess is yours — they belong to you. Command me as you did of old.”
“Of old! Oh, my Dodger of old! There let me cry, old man.... Do you remember when we walked down the sloping road to Dieppe for the first time? We arrived at Le Pollet, and I pointed out the butcher’s shop where I served my apprenticeship and learnt how to use the knife!”
“I should think I do remember, monsieur le Marquis. How excited you were when you saw the shop front. You said: ‘It’s the same old place. I recognize the “bleeder” and the “gambrel.” Here you can always get pork....’”
“And when the Marchioness, my sweet and kind-hearted Cecily, used to wait for us and greet us from the distance by waving her lace handkerchief.”
“With one hand, monsieur le Marquis, for with the other she held your boy in her arms!”
The revival of that memory was followed by a silence charged with emotion. Each was thinking with regret of those days.
“Come, we must be sensible. There, let me light a candle. Don’t stir. You might break your leg.” Soon a modest light shone in Chéri-Bibi’s hand, and he showed M. Hilaire round his apartments. They were somewhat depressing, bare, musty. Real cellars! Cellars with furniture of so crude a character that M. Hilaire, who possessed a real Louis Philippe mahogany bedroom suite, turned up his nose. He sighed.
“My dear Dodger, you think all this very poverty-stricken. That’s because I haven’t shown you everything. Come, now you shall see my riches.”
He took a bunch of keys and opened a door hidden behind the wooden wall at the end of a damp passage. Then he lighted six candles.... M. Hilaire started back, dazzled.
The walls of this little cellar, now resplendent with light, were covered with portraits of a woman and child. But such wonderful portraits! Never even on the walls of Byzantine churches had so many jewels, pearls, necklaces been suspended with more loving care round an ikon of the Virgin and Child. They were portraits of Cecily in the happiest days of her beauty and motherhood, and of Jacques from ba
byhood onwards.
“Ah yes, I always said that you were a family man,” exclaimed M. Hilaire, touched to the heart by the wonderful sight.
“I have never wanted anything but to live quietly with my wife and son as a good husband and father,” returned the old man, “and it’s not my fault if things have worked out differently.”
M. Hilaire began to think that if all the jewels on those walls were genuine then the cellar contained a very respectable fortune.
“All the money I make goes in this,” said Daddy Peanuts, answering M. Hilaire’s unspoken thought.
M. Hilaire gave a start. He reflected that it could not be by the sale of peanuts that the old man was able to afford the luxury of presenting such jewels to his wife and son.
Chéri-Bibi stood entranced before the portraits. “I never fail to give these portraits a little present on their patron saint’s days and birthdays, and whenever I see a date in the calendar reminding me of some happy event in the good old days.... My dear wife, my dear son!... Look here, Dodger, I am going to show you something.”
While speaking he opened a chest and went on: “When I learned of his intention to join the army I was as proud as could be.... It was splendid. A de Touchais! A de Touchais must needs be a soldier — a dashing officer with a fine sword.... And I presented him with his first sword. There, you see his first sword!... Now I’m going to show you something else. Here’s the cross of the Legion of Honor. I must tell you that I presented it to him long before the Government did. I sent the cross anonymously to his mother, explaining that one of her son’s admirers would be glad if she would accept the gift and herself pin it on his breast.... You can imagine my thoughts as I waited for her reply.... Alas, the reply soon came. Cecily returned the cross, saying that she could not accept it from an unknown person. I didn’t get over it for a week.... She probably regarded the cross as too costly.... Look at those diamonds. Ah, how sorry I was. My son is the cleverest, handsomest, strongest, of them all.... He’ll hold the Republic in the hollow of his hand. He’ll be a king. I am having a crown made for him in Paris by the best jeweller in the Rue de la Paix.... Besides, I’ll tell you something else — something beyond expression. I see Cecily every day.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 217