Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “What did she say?”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “I insist on knowing.”

  “She said ‘It’s to let that Bourrelier wench live here.’”

  “And then?”

  “And then your husband hit the Baron a tremendous blow sending him flying among the furniture and smashing priceless china. Oh it was splendidly done. Maxime always had a reliable punch. Thereupon he went off saying: ‘I shall expect you to send me your seconds.’ The Baron asked me to act for him, but I declined. I have always been a greater friend of Maxime’s than of the Baron’s. Besides, Madame, I am also your own friend, and I’ve come to offer the Marquis my services.”

  “Here he is Monsieur” said Cecily who was much more disturbed by this disclosure than she wished to appear; and she went into the garden calling Bernard but in reality to keep herself in countenance.

  Chéri-Bibi came into the verandah. He observed Cecily’s hurried departure and her obvious excitement. When his eyes encountered de Pont-Marie he gave vent to a stifled groan: “Here he is again!” Moreover de Pont-Marie’s presence at his house after the scene that he had witnessed the evening before at the Casino ball, caused him to suffer acutely. He could not understand why Cecily did not close the door against him.

  “What do you want?” he asked with scant courtesy.

  “I am here to place my services at your disposal. I have not forgotten that we used to be great friends. I don’t know why it is that we are not so to-day, but anyhow I am still the Marchioness’s friend.”

  “I know that... I know that.”

  “If you want a second for your duel, here I am! The Baron is sending you his own men almost at once.”

  “I am much obliged to you for thinking of me. It’s very good of you. But I have already chosen my seconds. Would you mind waiting here a moment? I want a word with my wife and I shall be with you again immediately.” Without waiting for a reply, he hastened to join Cecily whom he could see walking alone in the shady avenue of lime-trees where he had so often beheld her long ago lost in girlhood’s day-dreams. She was in a state of agitation.

  “I have just seen de Pont-Marie” he said when he caught up to her. “He’s a man that I can’t stand at any price. I shouldn’t express my feelings if I did not believe that you shared them. I don’t know what he was saying to you just now when I entered the verandah, but clearly he was worrying you, because you left him with a look of distress on your face. I’ve asked him to wait for me and I’ve come to you for your opinion. I have a strong inclination to throw him out by the scruff of his neck.”

  Chéri-Bibi observed, to his great astonishment, that his expression of opinion did not, by any means, produce the effect that he expected. Cecily turned pale and stammered: “Why should you?... You haven’t had any difference with de Pont-Marie I hope. I look upon him as a friend with whom I should like to keep on good terms.”

  “I... I am convinced that this coxcomb does not deserve your friendship and still less your forbearance. Last night at the Casino he behaved almost indecently to you, so that you were obliged to ‘put him in his place ‘ and to return home. I saw the incident. I was present. And when I came to your reception room this morning and found him with you, I said to myself: ‘Hullo here’s that silly ass come to apologise to her.’ And when I met him again in the verandah I was obliged to think: ‘She’s forgiven him.’ But noticing that you left him as if you were upset, I added forthwith: ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’ Ii ever he shows a lack of respect for you, you must tell me.”

  “You forget, Monsieur, that if I had relied on you to make me respected” returned Cecily in a tone which he had not heard from her during lunch time. “I should have run the risk long ago of not being worthy of respect. You appear to have strangely misconstrued M. de Pont-Marie’s attitude last night at the Casino. I have nothing to say against him. I suddenly felt indisposed, and that is why I left early with your mother who was very tired.”

  Chéri-Bibi suffered excruciating torture as he heard hex defence. He felt confident that she was not telling the truth.

  “Bad luck to me” he groaned to himself. “She’s in love with him. It’s no good doubting it any more.”

  In an access of rage he said:

  “I beg your pardon Madame” — now it was he who called her Madame—” for having made so stupid a mistake. Am I to invite him to dinner?”

  “No “she replied in gentler tones “but to lunch the day after to-morrow.”

  Chéri-Bibi left the avenue of lime trees as if staggering under a blow.

  “The day after to-morrow” he swore to himself. “I shall be dead.”

  Cecily, on the other hand, though she was swayed by a thousand conflicting emotions, congratulated herself on the thought of this invitation which would, afford her an opportunity of talking to M. de Pont-Marie, and perhaps of making some definite arrangement with him before the week was out. She had no wish to become acquainted with the mysterious Villa at Pourville.

  In order to distract her mind which was growing obsessed by her “new husband,” she called the governess and Bernard, and told them to get ready to go out with her. She intended to visit the Dowager Marchioness who would be astounded to learn of the exemplary conduct of the son whom she had banished from her good books, and sworn never to see again. They took the sunk road which led between two sloping banks, overhung with a dense arch of foliage, to the rustic dwelling to which the old lady had transferred her household gods with the assistance of the aged Rose, her companion, who had given up her life to her service. The Dowager Marchioness who was very conscientious but very proud, preferred when she left the pretentious Château du Touchais to take this humble country cottage rather than to five in the middle-class Villa Bourrelier where, moreover, she ran the risk of encountering her reprobate son.

  Cecily met Rose on the threshold of the cottage.

  “I’m glad you’ve come” she said. “The Marchioness is not at all well.”

  Cecily entered the house at the moment when two gentlemen immaculately clad in frock coats and glossy silk hats were going up the road from which she had just come.

  “The Baron’s seconds” she thought.

  They were, in fact, the Baron’s seconds and Chéri-Bibi was waiting for them at the Villa Bourrelier. He had returned to the verandah where he met de Pont-Marie once more, with his own seconds M. Hilaire and Maitre Régime, his solicitor from Rouen, who happened to be taking a holiday in Dieppe. Maitre Regime had turned as pale as his shirt-front when he discovered that his assistance was required in the wording of a document which would need no government stamp. Maitre Régime was an excellent lawyer, with a paternal countenance, and his plump little hands had surely never held a sword. He endeavoured, indeed, to advance this argument to his client; but M. de Pont-Marie replied, with an ironical smile, that it was not for him to concern himself with that point inasmuch as it was pretty certain that the fight would be with pistols since the Baron who was the aggrieved party, and had the choice of weapons, was a crack shot.

  “But Monsieur” exclaimed Maitre Regime. “I have never in my life loaded a pistol.”

  “We’ll have them loaded by the gunsmith!” replied M. de Pont-Marie in an absurdly tragic voice.

  Irritated by quibbling which as far as M. de Pont-Marie was concerned had no object but the disparagement of Maitre Régime as a second, Chéri-Bibi turned abruptly to the solicitor.

  “Now, Monsieur, are you my friend or are you not?”

  “Undoubtedly, monsieur le Marquis, undoubtedly, but the nature of my profession...”

  “Will you be my second — yes or no?”

  Maitre Régime gathered from the tone in which the question was put that if he declined to be the Marquis’s second, the Marquis would decline to be his client. He accepted the duty with a groan.

  “Do you suppose” asked M. Hilaire who was almost as pale as the solicitor, “Do you suppose M. de Pont-Marie that the Baron will choose pis
tols? Is he as good a shot as you say?”

  “He won the first prize at our shooting match. He hits the bull’s eye nearly every time.”

  “All the better if he does” growled Chéri-Bibi, fighting a fine cigar, “it will be over sooner.”

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Maître Régime, clasping his plump little hands as if he were about to offer up a prayer.

  “I mean that if he kills me with his first shot there will be no necessity for him to fire another.”

  “Do you wish to exchange more than one shot?” enquired de Pont-Marie in a voice of simulated indifference.

  “I not only desire it” returned Chéri-Bibi glaring at de Pont-Marie so fiercely that he assumed he was suffering from the hectic fever which many men bring back from foreign parts, “I insist on it... I won’t have a mock duel. I want a result. Do you hear, you fellows, who are to be my seconds, I want the firing to continue until there is a definite result.”

  The result, he thought in his desperation, would be his death and the end of his sufferings.

  “One must never say die” said de Pont-Marie. “Who knows what may happen in a duel? It’s one thing to aim at a target and another to aim at a man who is shooting at you. Besides, if my memory serves me, the Marquis himself used to be a pretty good shot.”

  “He’s a much better shot with a revolver” broke in Hilaire hardly knowing what he said. And he added, “Couldn’t they fight with revol...”

  He did not finish the sentence for he started back under a withering glance from Chéri-Bibi.

  “Monsieur my secretary is drivelling.”

  Hilaire dropped into the background and held his peace. The conversation was beginning to flag when the footman came in bearing two visiting cards. These were the cards of the Baron’s seconds. Chéri-Bibi went to the drawing room to receive his visitors, and to put them in touch with Maître Régime and M. Hilaire. Afterwards he left the house, and found M. de Pont-Marie still in the garden. He could not bear the sight of the man. Even before Cecily’s prevarication he detested him, but now he hated him with an intensity which, in itself, was stronger even than his unhappy love.

  When de Pont-Marie caught sight of him he drew near and Chéri-Bibi ground his teeth with every step that he took.

  “Why doesn’t he clear out? Can’t he see, the silly ass, that his presence alone makes me ill?”

  “Marquis, why didn’t you accept me as a second?” asked de Pont-Marie adopting an easy bearing and, seemingly, making up his mind to ignore anything unusual. “Those two wretched persons are shaking in their shoes; that’s evident. Believe me, I don’t understand you. Come out with it, Maxime, what is the trouble between us?... I have a right to know... People have been gossiping about me. They think perhaps that I come here too frequently. Such people don’t know me, Maxime, and they don’t know your wife.”

  “My wife... I won’t allow you, you understand... I won’t allow you to bring my wife into this...”

  “There, you see, you are annoyed with me. You have some feeling against me...”

  “No” Chéri-Bibi interrupted quickly ‘No, no, I have nothing against you. I apologise to you. I’ve come back from abroad not quite myself.” And he added, sinking his voice, after a slight pause: “To prove that I’ve nothing against you I ask you to lunch with us the day after tomorrow. Is that agreed?”

  “But, old fellow, I really don’t know if I can... anyway, tell me that we are friends as we used to be.”

  “Yes, yes... as we used to be.”

  “Then call me by my Christian name as before. Say:

  ‘If you come to lunch I shall be pleased Georges.’”

  “All right: ‘If you come to lunch I shall be pleased Georges.’”

  “Give me your hand on it.”

  “There you are.”

  “Look out, you’re hurting me. You almost smashed my fingers... Oh! I say you know...”

  “And now good-bye for the present” said Chéri-Bibi.

  “Yes, good-bye for the present. By the way, does your wife know that you’ve invited me to lunch for the day after to-morrow? Will she be pleased?”

  “Certainly she knows and, of course, she’ll be pleased.”

  Chéri-Bibi strode quickly away for he felt that he could no longer restrain himself, and might do something rash. When he reached the verandah he flung himself into a chair exclaiming:

  “Cecily!... Cecily!”

  He sat motionless for nearly a quarter of an hour plunged in misery and then he rose in calmer mood.

  “Courage” he said to himself. “Your appeal against the sentence has been rejected.”

  He would know how to die. The thought was uppermost in his mind now that he knew Cecily loved that coxcomb de Pont-Marie.

  His seconds came to him. The discussion was over. They had agreed among themselves that four shots should be exchanged at twenty-five paces, at the word of command, and the Baron’s seconds gave them to understand that their man would do his utmost to bring about a decisive result. The duel was to take place at nine o’clock the following morning in the Du Touchais Park.

  Maître Régime whose agitation only increased with his responsibility took leave of the Marquis and went back to bed again for he could barely stand upright. The Marquis’s secretary, on the other hand, was weeping. He gathered that Chéri-Bibi had undergone such mortifications from Cecily that he had determined to allow himself to be shot like a rabbit. Chéri-Bibi did his best to console him by telling him that he would not forget him in his will, and that he might consider himself henceforward beyond the reach of want.

  “You are too good” groaned the poor fellow. “You may be certain of one thing — I shan’t survive you.”

  Meanwhile the Marchioness and little Bernard came in. The boy kissed his father affectionately which redoubled the secretary’s grief. Cecily stared with astonishment at the great booby who “blubbered” as he turned his head away. Chéri-Bibi introduced him and asked his wife if she would be kind enough to find a corner for him.

  “There’s the Lodge with the bedroom on the ground floor. I think it would suit your secretary admirably.”

  “Yes, the Lodge will do. Would you mind showing Hilaire the place? You must excuse me but I shan’t be dining with you this evening. Perhaps you’ll send me up a cup of tea at eight o’clock. I have a great deal of work to get through and I shall be shut up in my study.”

  Thereupon the secretary started to weep like a fountain.

  “Come, Hilaire, don’t be a baby.”

  “All right monsieur le Marquis.”

  “Did you see my mother Cecily? How was she?”

  “She’s better. She was very pleased with the news that I brought her, and Rose and I both hope that she will soon be well. Besides the doctor expressed himself as quite satisfied.”

  “Did you remember me to her?”

  “No, she would not allow me to speak of you.”

  “What an extraordinary lot of women” thought Chéri-Bibi. “I should never have believed that women of the upper ten could be so resentful.”

  He left them and locked himself in his study which had once been the study of M. Bourrelier senior. Meanwhile the Marchioness took the unhappy Dodger to the Lodge.

  “What is the gentleman crying for?” asked young Bernard.

  “You heard what my son said M. Hilaire” said Cecily after she had sent the boy off to his governess. “He is surprised to see you so upset.”

  “Do you not know Madame” the Dodger replied blowing his nose noisily “that my master has made up his mind to get killed?”

  “I know M. Hilaire that the Marquis is going to fight a duel, but I am equally aware that he is an adept in the use of arms, and will know how to defend himself.”

  “You are mistaken, Madame, if you will forgive me for saying so. These gentlemen are going to exchange four shots, and the Marquis told me that he should fire in the air. You see, therefore, that he wishes to be killed.”

 
; And he burst into a fresh display of grief.

  Chéri-Bibi who was not a communicative person in the important events of life had, in fact, said nothing of the sort to his friend the Dodger.

  “Are you very much attached to the Marquis, Monsieur Hilaire?”

  “Oh, Madame, how could I be other than devoted to him. He is so good... I know that he was not always so, and that he is greatly to blame in his treatment of you...”

  “Monsieur Hilaire” interrupted Cecily in a tone of voice that struck a chill into the doleful secretary’s heart. “Here are your rooms... Good-bye Monsieur Hilaire.”

  Hilaire stood, to use his own expression, flabbergasted. When he recovered his breath he exclaimed:

  “How on earth does one talk to these ladies? What’s the good of being tactful, one can never please them. Certainly Chéri-Bibi’s Cecily takes it out of me... I prefer Virginie...”

  After wiping his eyes he looked round the flat. He was immensely struck with it. His study, his bedroom, his bathroom! In other circumstances he would gladly have danced a jig at the sight of so much splendour. But the deadly fate which continued to dog his master’s footsteps, threw him into the depths of a fresh depression. He brushed his clothes, “tried” the washstand, and after putting his tie straight, walked slowly to the door muttering at every few steps:

  “It was too good to last!”

  Nevertheless he retained a hope that when Chéri-Bibi saw the detectable countenance of Baron Proskof he would feel a new inclination for life, and demonstrate that he, too, knew how to handle a pistol.

  He turned his steps through the row of arches to the little eating house where that morning he had lunched and gossiped with the charming Virginie. In the society of that fair-complexioned daughter of the Caux country, he forgot the great hotels and the inferior quality of the fish. But now he had the ill-luck to find the place closed, the shutters up, and a notice posted on the door: ‘Opening shortly under new management.’