And at the end: “Like many of our contemporaries we sent a representative to meet the mail boat from which Mademoiselle Irene de Troie was to land in France, but we received word that the great actress was not on board. She put ashore at Vigo, stating that she was about to take a few weeks’ rest in Spain.”
Just then a maid knocked at the door and came in.
“A reporter wishes to see you, monsieur.”
“Tell him and any others who may call that I have just left for Spain to join madame, and we shall not be back for a month.”
The maid reclosed the door. Irene kept silent, watching Octave as he feverishly paced up and down with hands behind his back, dry eyes, and set face. Suddenly he turned to her.
“Come, let’s get away,” he said.
“Yes, but where?”
“To Spain, as you chose Spain. As well go there as anywhere else.”
She crept out of bed. But she tottered, and he just managed to catch her. She clung to him, shivering, her teeth chattering.
“Yes, let’s go away — at once,” she repeated wildly.
She was unable to stand.
“I am a wretch,” he said. “It’s I who am torturing you now.”
He placed her between the sheets again. She still clutched him like a woman who is sinking.
“Tell me you forgive me. I flirted with this man, but not more than with others, I swear.... I swear it, Octave. Tell me you forgive me.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he returned.
She loosed her hold.
“I wish I were dead,” she said.
“Irene, you must swear to tell me the whole truth.”
“I swear to God I will.... This man, this planter, this newly enriched native, remained a savage under his civilized exterior.... I was face to face with a savage. I don’t know — perhaps I was too friendly with him. It looked as if I was showing too great an interest in what he was saying. He told me a fantastic story about his descent from the old kings of Patagonia. Besides, he amused me.... Only think — the king of the Patagonians! He became madly in love with me. I hadn’t the least doubt of that. He was establishing, he said, different concerns in cattle raising, mines and so forth. He proposed to take me away with him. I told him that I had other duties in France. Next morning he had me kidnapped. I thought I was going on board the Bahia. I found myself on his yacht. It was clever play-acting on his part!... He would land me at Montevideo. I was so convinced by him that I wrote to Sylvia to join me on board the yacht with the luggage. Then came the incident of the dispatch boat pursuing us, as described in the newspaper. We were put ashore in the night on the Patagonian coast. We were alone with him and another savage of his country and tribe, and then...”
“What then?... Have courage and tell me. Don’t hide anything from me.”
“If you only knew! If you only knew!”
“I want to know everything.”
“Then...”
She told him the whole story — she recounted the history of every one of her wounds. She gave him the facts about all her amazing sufferings. “See, you who don’t like false hair — they tore out my hair. This scar on my leg was done by children with their bolas. They spat in my face to amuse themselves. Look at the state of my arms which you used to admire so much.... Count the bruises.”
“How horrible.”
“But I did not give way to him.”
“How did you manage to leave that inferno?” he asked.
“Thanks to Sylvia. As he got no satisfaction out of me he fell back on Sylvia. Yes, Sylvia became the queen and I washed the platters! But don’t worry. It’s rather funny what I’m telling you — especially when I think of it now.... But to return to Sylvia, who filched all my wardrobe. She was not sorry to see me out of the way, if only to keep her king whom she greatly admired. Just think — a king of the Patagonians! Ah, you may smile. Of course, as I didn’t die from it, we may well laugh.”
“What a wonderful woman you are, Irene!”
“Yes, I am not a bit like an ordinary woman, eh?”
“No, dear, you are not a bit like an ordinary woman, but you are not looking well.”
“Don’t let’s speak of it. We can have a good laugh now. My troubles are over.... So Sylvia, to make sure that I shouldn’t pinch the king from her, prepared my escape, which, as a matter of fact, would have miscarried had not someone appeared to Save me at the last moment.... Guess...
“I give it up.”
“The Permanent Secretary.”
“Who’s that?”
“The Grand Master of the Fine Arts who left Rio in search of me.”
“Oh yes.... I see.... He had come to look for you in the heart of the pampas.”
“I say, dear, I must tell you something else. The Permanent Secretary would have hunted for me to the uttermost ends of the earth. He had been looking all over the pampas for me with a body of gauchos.”
“Another admirer?”
“Another admirer. And this one, at any rate, was of some service. A worthy man, you know. He, too, had plenty of pluck. In the end all his gauchos deserted him and we had to return, the two of us, across the pampas to Neuquen alone. But that was a mere picnic.”
“Ah!”
Octave had become serious again.
“Where did he leave you?”
“Why, at Neuquen of course, after seeing me in the train.”
“He let you go like that after making such great efforts to trace you?”
“I was going to tell you. He missed the train and I didn’t wait for him.”
“Poor man. He had no one, not even Sylvia, to console him!”
Irene looked up and then with a sudden movement laid her head on Octave’s breast. She was a woman of understanding, but her heart helped her to even greater understanding and seemed to tell her that Sylvia had done enough duty for that one day.
“You know everything now. It’s my turn to listen.”
And she clasped him still closer, for deep down she was overcome with fear. He looked up and fixed his eyes on hers.
“I asked you to confess everything. No one else in your place would have borne what you have suffered. You escaped from that purgatory by a miracle. If you fell into it through your own fault, or if you gave way in order to get out of it, I forgive you by anticipation, but I want to know.... Speak, dearest.... You are forgiven.”
He had not removed his eyes from hers. She did not lower her own.
“I swear on your life,” she said slowly, “ and on mine that those two men got nothing out of me. I swear that I have never been unfaithful to you.” He kissed her passionately.
“So you love me... love me,” she whispered. “Ah, I should think I did love you,” he wailed. “Why did you not tell me so?”
“Because I didn’t know it myself.”
CHAPTER XXXV
“LIFE WAS SWEET”
“LIFE FOR THEM was sweet.” — François Confiée.
FOR a week Irene was very ill. Octave did not leave her bedside. And, indeed, she would not allow him out of her sight.
“It’s so good to have someone with you who loves you,” she said. “The others told me they loved me, but they lied.... They were in love with my looks, my fame — with Mademoiselle Irene de Troie of the Comédie Française. Now I have lost my looks....”
“No, you have not.”
“Yes, yes, I have. I am not looking well, as you say.... Seriously I ask you: Where is Mademoiselle Irene de Troie of the Comédie Française? Perhaps she is with Hauptmann, you never can tell. Everything is possible. She will have had enough of tours for some time, the good lady. In any case, she is not here. Here there’s someone whom I know well now, someone who asks only one thing — to be left in peace with her Octave.... Let no mention be made of her in the papers. Let no photographs be published of her — full face, profile, three-quarter, or even a photograph of her back!... Look at my neck and shoulders, eh? If Mademoiselle Irene de Troie saw them she would
fall ill.”
“As she is at the present time,” said Octave. “And, I fear, when your neck and shoulders are better...”
“That’ll do, you infidel. When my neck and shoulders are well I shall go back to the ranks without show of any kind. I shall do my duty like so many others, and serve our good old theatre and our good old Molière without striving for effect, and they will all be glad to see me because, in reality, I have none but good pals among the actors and actresses there, and have never been disagreeable with any of them. If they laugh over my experiences I shall have the sense to laugh with them. But, Octave, you will come and fetch me, and we will return very sensibly to your little shanty.... I shall sell the château. Is that not what you want? And then no more flirting, I promise you.... But you, of course, will always look at me with those kindly eyes of yours. You won’t assume an air as if you don’t care a rap for the society lady. That expression hurts.”
“Flirting also hurts,” said Octave, smiling.
“I promise to give up being a coquette.”
“I am not scolding you, for perhaps it’s not your fault. Providence made you a coquette and you will always be the same.”
“Never.... Never!”
“Promise me simply to be little less of a coquette.”
“A great deal less.”’
“Besides, dear, you will do your best, because, mark me, husbands are apt to think” (husbands being Octave himself) “that those smiles, those confidences, those indiscreet pressures of the hand — all these things are a part of a wife which is being taken from them, a part of a wife which is leaving them... leaving them never, perhaps, to return.”
“Don’t say another word.... I am sorry....You are right. I have had such a narrow escape that I am not asking for more trouble, I promise you. Kiss me.”
At length they dispensed with the doctor, who was in the way and whose services, moreover, were no longer required. The three weeks that followed were the happiest they had ever known.
And then Irene appeared once more at the Theatre Français in “The Taming of the Shrew,” achieving her customary success. Octave had dreaded her return to the stage. But everything was the same as before. Her brother and sister artists, knowing how greatly she had suffered, overwhelmed her with their sincere affection and refrained from alluding to her adventure. Outside the theatre she endeavoured to pass unnoticed. It was no easy matter, for her former beauty had returned, but after all she made the attempt, and Mademoiselle Irene de Troie endeavouring to pass unnoticed was something of a novelty!
In short, their happiness was complete, and nothing seemed likely to disturb it when one night, while playing the part of Elmira in Molière’s “Le Tartuffe,” her eyes fell on Rosario, seated in the front row of the stalls.
CHAPTER XXXVI
“SHE IS SILENT”
“SHE IS SILENT.... The throng still listens.”
— Lamartine.
SHE was about, as it happened, to say to Tartuffe:
“Ah, how your love enacts the tyrant’s rôle
And throws my mind into a strange confusion!”
when she observed Rosario. He had abandoned the baggy trousers of the camp, but still wore his spectacles, the spectacles of a Permanent Secretary of the Fine Arts, and behind them his eyes seemed to scorch her. She was seated or she would have fallen to the stage. Her cheeks blanched. For a second or two she remained speechless, and then by a supreme effort she stammered the lines that followed:
“With what fierce sway it rules a conquered heart, And violently will have its wishes granted!” so that the audience attributed her unwonted agitation, the veritable agitation which was paralysing her, to the effect of a perfectly natural piece of acting, and found yet another opportunity, which it did not expect, of breaking into applause. She went on:
“What! Is there no escape from your pursuit, No respite even — not a breathing space?”
It seemed to her that the spectator who resembled so singularly Rosario loudly applauded these lines, but she was not altogether sure for she dared not look in his direction. At least she retained the hope of being mistaken, and it was from this possibility that she drew the strength to continue her part.
But Tartuffe himself noticed that his Elmira was not the Elmira to whom he was accustomed. She was acting too well. No actress had ever shown at will such deep dejection at the moment when, to enlighten her husband hidden under the table, she was preparing to yield to the voice of the tempter. Molière intended Elmira to play a comedy, and indeed it was the tradition for actresses to play the part as a comedy which should amuse without moving the audience, whereas now an actress had imagined a rendering which Molière never had in mind — she portrayed the grief, carried to the point of weakness, which a virtuous woman may feel when she stoops to a piece of play-acting which revolts her even when she has an honest aim in view.
“Are you ill?” Tartuffe asked Elmira in a whisper.
“Let’s hurry over the act,” Elmira answered between her teeth.
Tartuffe quickened his utterance, and this, too, seemed a new and wholly rational interpretation. His Elmira was denying herself only as a matter of form. He was eager to get the scene over. He spoke very rapidly. And Elmira came to the lines:
“So then, I see I must resolve to yield,
I must consent to grant you everything.”
“Yes, senhora,” shouted someone in the front row of the stalls.
She recognized his voice this time. It was indeed he — Rosario, the Terror of the Pampas, the Permanent Secretary of the Fine Arts, Don Manoel de Carangola, the descendant of the giant Adamastor — the man who had rescued her from the claws of Ouenetrou the vulture, the man whom she had left behind on American soil like a thing which had done its work and been thrown aside.
She could not utter another word. The audience waited in vain for the end of the speech. Elmira fell lifeless in her seat. The curtain was lowered. The company rushed up to her. They carried her to her dressing-room. The manager announced that the performance could not proceed.
When Irene opened her eyes again, which was almost at once, she saw leaning over her the anxious face of the Comtesse de Tardenois, who had been waiting for her in her dressing-room. The Comtesse was a close friend of long standing.
“I can’t see anybody. I am not receiving to-day,” said Irene, getting rid of her visitors except the Comtesse, whom, with a feverish hand, she held back.
“Will you do me a great service? Have you got your car outside?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll borrow it from you.... No, keep it. It may be useful.... It will be useful.... You must take this man away with you.”
“Take a man away with me! Oh, my poor child, how ill you are. I’m going to drive you home.”
“But he’ll follow us. He’ll never leave me again. I know him.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“The man who was in the front row of the stalls and will be here presently. A gentleman, for that matter, whose acquaintance you will be pleased to make — His Excellency the Permanent Secretary of the Fine Arts in Brazil. Rosario — I beg your pardon — Don Manoel de Carangola.”
“Oh, that’s the man! I’ve seen his name in the papers.”
“Too often! I have my reasons for not meeting him again; in any case for seeing as little of him as possible. He can’t be making a long stay in Paris. Personally, I shall slip away for a fortnight or a month or as long as necessary. I shall take Octave with me, of course. But you mustn’t let Don Manoel out of your sight. I entrust him to your keeping. Don’t leave him until you see him safely on board the boat to Brazil.”
“But this is sheer lunacy. I can’t put your Brazilian in my bag.”
“Take him along with you to-night in your car. Drive him in the Bois, talk to him of anything and everything. To-morrow morning I shall be off with Octave.”
Within five minutes Irene was ready. She darted down a passage, crossed a small bridge on th
e roof, and reached a back staircase which led to a yard giving on to the Palais Royal.
She hailed a taxi, deliberately refraining from using her own car, which would have been detected by Rosario, and drove to her place in the country.
Octave had not left the house that night. He was immersed once more in his study of the Merovingians, but had fallen asleep over them.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 452