Cecily seemed to be turned to stone. Her eyes were staring at the miserable wretch before her without giving the least sign of life... She was waiting... She was waiting for the appalling word which was to come, which she could feel was coming. De Pont-Marie paused a moment obviously revelling in the torture that he was inflicting on her.
“Marcel Gara van’s stay in Dieppe he went on was extended and then ceased abruptly at the news of the Marquis’s return. In due course the Marchioness du Touchais had a child, young Bernard. But she took good care to go to England for her confinement. It was thus that she was able to fake the date of the birth of the infant of whom the Marquis believed himself to be the father. His delight knew no bounds. Not that he loved Cecily; not that he loved his son. The Marquis du Touchais never loved anything but himself and his race. Now his race was saved. He had feared lest his family might become extinct. The Marchioness gave him a son. All was for the best. He learnt the news when he was in the Azores where he had landed from the “Belle of Dieppe” after a fresh cruise in the Antilles. As you may well believe there were rejoicings on board. I know it. I was present... Is not all this the truth, Madame?... You don’t answer me.... Am I to understand that we are agreed?”
The lips of the statue opened a little.
“Agreed upon what Monsieur?
“Upon what I have just told you, and on the rest which you can guess... The rest is the ignorance in which it is necessary to keep the poor Marquis, because you know him He is a man without much principle but he has a prejudice, if you like — a family prejudice; and he sticks to it. Yes he sticks to being the father of his son, and you know that he would rather choke the life out of you with his own hands than allow some little thief to enter his house and steal his ancestral name. Young Bernard du Touchais hasn’t a drop of du Touchais blood in his veins... Don’t forget that... I was saying that he would choke the life out of you. That is an extreme measure to which the Marquis would certainly not have recourse because in the circumstances it would serve no purpose. A case in the Courts, a denial of paternity and divorce, would quickly get rid of the mother and son, and enable him, now that he is rich, to marry again and have children, who this time would be his lawful children. What conclusion must we draw? Here is a secret known only to you and me. I will give you a piece of advice. Let us remain friends, and closer friends than ever in order to guard that secret...”
He had done speaking. He bowed and went towards the door. But at a word from Cecily he turned to her.
“Monsieur I see that you will shrink from nothing” she had the strength to say. “But your wickedness won’t avail you anything. And no one will believe this abominable story that you have invented.”
“Not even the Marquis?” asked de Pont-Marie going up to her.
Neither the Marquis nor anyone else... Unless you have manufactured proofs, and in that case it will be easy to expose your imposture.”
“I understand you Cecily, and I’ve always said that you were very quick-witted. You want to know if I have the proofs. Yes I have the proofs. I have Marcel Gara van’s letters. I hope that I’ve told you what you wanted to know.” Letters!” cried the hapless Cecily clutching him with a wild gesture that startled him.
He threw her off.
“Yes, the letters which you think are still in your secret drawer. Do you mean, you haven’t had the curiosity to read them during the last three days?... How women forget!”
“Scoundrel!”
“Oh, nothing is to be gained by abuse. I don’t see why I should keep the principle item of my programme from you. I have taken the villa at Pourville, a quarter of a mile from here, that struck our fancy when we went for our last walk with Bernard. I am having certain alterations made. Tire place is nice and quiet. Everything will be ready in a week from now. To-morrow week at three o’clock in the afternoon I shall expect to see you there.”
“Never.”
“You’ll think it over I’m sure.”
“Never... I loathe you... I would rather die.”
“That wouldn’t save your son. You’re thinking only of yourself. You must give a little consideration to the future Marquis du Touchais.”
“But have you no pity on me?”
“I love you. That’s all I need say.”
“I’ll kill myself and my child.”
“No you won’t. And, look here, I have had enough of this. You must promise me now that you will come. I am tired of all this shuffling. I want you. I want to make sure of you. Say that you’ll come, or I shall at once carry out my threat and send the letters to the Marquis.”
“Scoundrel — Scoundrel—”
The poor woman wrung her hands and gave way to despair. She fell on her knees in her turn and implored her persecutor to have pity, if not on her, at least on her son. Her sobs and entreaties would have softened the heart of a tiger. But de Pont-Marie did not even listen to her. She was very comely in her terrible expression of grief. He told her so.
“You are more beautiful now than you were at the ball. I want your answer. Someone is coming. Get up unless you wish to be caught by your servants.”
He helped her to her feet. Someone was in fact coming; and the sound of footsteps could be heard approaching the reception room. She retired to the embrasure of a window, not wishing her agitation to be seen. M. de Pont-Marie whispered:
“Well, have you made up your mind to come?”
At that moment a footman entered.
“Madame” he said “the Marquis wishes to know if you will receive him.”
“What Marquis?”
“The Marquis du Touchais Madame.”
If a thunderclap had fallen in the room the effect could not have been greater. There was a formidable silence, and then M. de Pont-Marie cheerfully exclaimed:
“The Marquis do you say? What a pleasant surprise. Ask him to come in. Is he not in his own house? I shall be delighted to see him again.”
“Yes ask him in” said the Marchioness in an almost inaudible voice.
The footman went out.
“Well, are we agreed?” asked M. de Pont-Marie eagerly. “You will come?”
“I will come...”
And she flung at M. de Pont-Marie distractedly:
“Tell my husband that I’ve gone to fetch my son and will be back presently.”
She went away wishing to be alone for a few moments to collect her thoughts and compose her distraught features.
Georges de Pont-Marie was beaming. He had triumphed. In truth it was very good of the Marquis to arrive at that decisive moment. Cecily could not possibly fight against him now. As he reached this point in his self-congratulation Chéri-Bibi came in.
He was carefully dressed. The Marquis du Touchais had never looked smarter, more dandified, more pommaded, more spick and span. Nevertheless he was a little pale. Pince-nez with slightly smoked glasses and gold rims rested on his Bourbon nose, the family nose.
He expected to be confronted by Cecily. He had a feeling of satisfaction that she was not yet there. Her absence would give him time to compose himself, but when his eyes fell upon Pont-Marie who smilingly came towards him with outstretched hand, he could not repress a slight grimace. “Well” cried the triumphant de Pont-Marie “this is a surprise, and a pleasant one. Is this how you treat your friends? Not to let any of us know that you’re coming... Well, Maxime, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you going to shake hands?”
“Yes, yes” answered Chéri-Bibi quickly. “What nonsense.”
And he shook hands without effusion.
“But aren’t you going to talk? Tell us about yourself” exclaimed de Pont-Marie. “I find you entirely changed.”
“Where is the Marchioness?” asked Chéri-Bibi.
“What did you say?”
“I asked you where the Marchioness is.”
“Oh yes... I was right, you have changed. Your voice, too, is different you know.”
“Yes, yes I know. I’ve had bronchitis badly...
throat troubles which are very dangerous for the health.”
“I can quite believe you. Apart from that you look well. Still very smart... Still a lady’s man. You still have a good constitution. Upon my word you look stouter. You must be careful you know. A little waist is all very well, but one mustn’t overdo it. At our time of life we must keep an eye on it. I personally diet myself.”
“Tell me Monsieur de Pont-Marie...”
“What! Monsieur de Pont-Marie. You are very ceremonious all at once. Why not call me ‘Monsieur le Viscount’ like my servants. You’re very funny.”
“I say Georges will you do me a favour?”
“How deep your voice is...I shall find it no easy matter to get used to that voice. And how solemn you look. You walk like a ghost at a feast... A favour? Whatever you like. What is it you want?”
“I want you to clear out.”
“You want me to go?”
“Yes, you follow me, it’s a long time since I saw Cecily...”
“Well, I’m hanged... Not to mention that during the three months that you’ve been in France, you might have remembered your friends in Dieppe. Of course, you were always like that. Between ourselves you were always a little mad... So you want to talk to Cecily... That’s all right. I’ll go. You can invite me to lunch another day.... Until we meet again, my dear Maxime.”
“Good-bye Monsieur.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m sorry... Until we meet again Georges.”
“That’s something like.”
M. de Pont-Marie again shook him by the hand and left him, muttering to himself:— “The Marquis is somewhat icy. Of course, people have been gossiping and telling him the story that I’ve been making love to Cecily. And then I don’t know what it is, but his mind seems to me rather affected. Mixing with convicts hasn’t been a success!”
As soon as he was alone Chéri-Bibi walked gravely to a full-length portrait of Cecily, painted when she was a young girl.
She was dressed in a white muslin frock and wore a rose in her hair. His mind harked back to the Cecily of the evening before at the ball in the Casino, and drawing a mental comparison he said: “I like her quite as well like that.”
A door grated on its hinges. He gave a start and turned pale. It was not she but a man-servant who laid some newspapers on the table. Chéri-Bibi had no courage. Not that he imagined for a moment that the change in him would incur the smallest danger of detection; his experience had assured him of that long ago. If anyone had loved him, a vague suspicion as to the Marquis’s identity might have been awakened in that person’s mind. But the Marquis had never been loved by anyone. Chéri-Bibi had nothing to fear from the intuition of the heart. No. He merely dreaded to find himself in his wife’s presence.
At length she appeared.
He saw her steal towards him slowly like a shadow, her little feet dragging, in a light blue kimono flowered in gold. He likened her to a princess in a fairy tale, and stood still, without speaking, his lips closed, his throat dry. She, too, looked at him without saying a word, and they stood like two statues. It seemed as if the silence might last. He tried to speak. He had prepared a few phrases. But his mind was a perfect blank. He was unable to say: “How do you do.” A delicate fragrance was wafted to him from her and intoxicated him. His head “turned giddy.” He thought with dread that he was going to faint. His heart ceased beating. He was afraid lest he should die; and he would have liked to rush from the room.
With the gesture of an automaton she motioned him to a seat into which he sank slowly. Then she spoke. It was none too soon, for he felt that he was going mad. She said in an even voice:
“I went to fetch your son. I thought he was in the house, but he is on the beach with the governess and will be back in a moment.”
“I shall be glad to see him,” he returned, “I hope you are quite well.”
She hesitated slightly at the sound of his voice, but it was long since she had heard him speak, and its new tone was not more unpleasant to her ears — far from it — than its old.
“Yes, I’m quite well. So is your son. I am glad to see that your sufferings in that unfortunate adventure have not apparently, left any ill effects.”
“They were terrible, Cecily.”
He had called her Cecily... her! He would never have believed that the name would slip out so easily as that. He often said to himself: I shall never dare to say Cecily... like that... quite simply. It seems to me that I shan’t be able to help myself. I shall call her ‘Mademoiselle’ as in the old days when I delivered the meat. He had called her Cecily; like a man speaking to his wife in fact. Thenceforward, there would be no difficulty. The blood began to flow freely in his frozen veins, and he was gaining confidence in himself when his “wife” who had been silent for several moments said:
“Cecily! It sounds strange to hear you call me Cecily in the new voice that you have brought back with you. You never used to call me Cecily when we were alone.”
“Now that’s a piece of bad luck,” thought Chéri-Bibi.
“What did these people call each other among themselves in society? Monsieur? Madame? How absurd? Yes, but they had quarrelled. Come Chéri-Bibi now is the time to brazen it out.”
With a swift movement he went nearer his wife. His eyes encountered, resting on the arm of her chair, her white trembling hand. He gazed through his smoked glasses and saw the sunken eyes, the lines of the arched eyebrows, the dark circles of sorrow and fear, and he observed that the colour of her complexion was recent, made up, and false, consisting of paint and powder, and laying bare, in the deadly pallor of her lips, the artificial life which she led. His eyes were bedewed with pity. “Poor woman,” he thought, and he tried to take her hand which she withdrew.
He was abashed, but his immense love lent him strength.
“It’s true this is the first time I’ve called you by your Christian name Cecily,” he said, “and I hope you’ll allow me to continue to do so. If it doesn’t offend you overmuch it will give me pleasure. Many things have happened since we saw each other, dear.” She did not flinch at the word “dear.”
“Yes many things... I said just now that I’ve been through terrible experiences.”
“I know that from the newspapers Monsieur, and from your solicitor.”
“Oh she called me Monsieur,” thought Chéri-Bibi. “It’s just as I imagined; they say ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Madame’ in private. What a husband and wife!”
“Yes, the newspapers have described them, and so has my solicitor,” he went on. “By the way, I am anxious to thank you for so promptly seconding his efforts to secure my liberation. Obviously I ought and might have written to you. I did not do so for the same reason that has kept me away from here for more than a year. I should like to make myself clear. I certainly behaved badly to you. For a long time I have not deserved that you should take any interest in me....”
It was a luckless phrase and Chéri-Bibi at once regretted it for he saw a change pass over the expression of her face.
The mask of icy politeness with which she had listened to him was transformed in a flash, and it was with almost an insulting dignity that she flung at him, “Really Monsieur.”
“All the same” Chéri-Bibi thought’ “how badly the beggar must have treated her to make her speak like that.” And he bowed his head under the crushing pressure of her resentment.
Cecily, moreover, stared at him and listened without understanding, because from her experience of the Marquis, she had no cause even to suspect the greatness, the beauty, the generosity, of the sentiments which a beneficent love had implanted in the heart of this man who had returned to her after so many eccentricities. She wondered, of course, “what he was driving at,” and what new ordeal lay in wait for her behind this fantastic attitude of repentance in which, of course, she could not believe.
The man whose name she bore, moreover, had accustomed her to stand in fear of him. She had never ceased to tremble under the yo
ke. After the frightful tyranny by which he had humbled her, he was quite welcome to say: “I certainly behaved badly to you.” Clearly the wretch was deficient in moral sense. He was about, perhaps, to ask her “to forget.” That would be the finishing stroke!
As it happened Chéri-Bibi did not fail to make the suggestion with a somewhat crude diplomacy which might have been pardonable in any but Cecily’s case.
Emphasising the mawkish and tearful note which, in his belief, was entirely necessitated by the actual position, and the memories of the Marquis’s perfidy and wickedness, of which the house was full, he pleaded with incredible artlessness “extenuating circumstances,” or at least certain reasons which led him to hope for forgiveness in the more or less near future.
He enlarged with piteous weakness on the final disasters which had “opened his eyes.” He had undergone a long captivity among criminals. He had looked death in the face. He was recovering from typhoid fever. And, in short, he let himself go to such an extent on his misfortunes that he surmised that Cecily whose tender-heartedness he knew, would be moved by them.
In order to make sure he ventured to lift his eyes from the carpet whose pattern he had been meekly studying during his melancholy speech; and by degrees his gaze grew bold enough to meet the beloved eyes which, a little while before, had startled him by their flash of pride. She was weeping.
Yes, Cecily, his Cecily, wept as she listened to him. Therefore he had found the path that led to her heart!
It was a pathetic sight when, in a transport of delight over his victory, and no longer knowing what he was doing, the hapless Chéri-Bibi rose and stammered:
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 165
