Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “Have you entirely lost your memory?”

  Chéri-Bibi stood aghast.

  “Memory... What memory?” he stammered.

  “Yes” returned the other in the calmest of tones crossing his legs, “because let me tell you that if you’ve lost your memory as a result of your illness, which after all is quite likely, I will undertake to bring it back to you. That’s a slight service which one cannot refuse between old pals like ourselves. And I shan’t need the help of a doctor for that!” went on de Pont-Marie in a hissing voice while his knitted brows and his thin lips gnawing his moustache, betrayed the inward rage which consumed him and which he could scarcely control.

  Suddenly he rose and stood erect before Chéri-Bibi whose face was like stone, looked him straight in the eyes, and slapped him with authority on the shoulder with his right hand.

  “Come” he said, “admit that you have forgotten nothing I insist on it!... Do you understand?... I want to hear you say it to-day. It’s absolutely necessary.”

  Chéri-Bibi was greatly embarrassed, but he gathered from the flash and fury in the eyes of this man that it was not the moment to thwart him, and dreading some mysterious scandal, he knew not what, he submitted murmuring:

  “No, no, I have forgotten nothing...” And he hung his head, flung into consternation.

  “Then hand me over a hundred louis, that will suit me better.”

  “A hundred louis?... Here you are. And, you know, if you want any more to keep away from here...”

  “Not a bit of it! I value above all your friendship” returned de Pont-Marie as he pocketed the two bank notes “and instead of showing me the door, remember that we must meet frequently! My kind regards to the Marchioness. Tell her that I shall call and see her about two o’clock tomorrow or the next day.”

  He left the place whistling.

  Chéri-Bibi sat at his desk in a state of stupefaction. It was thus that the Dodger found him.

  “Well, that’s another nice story! What can I have been up to with that brute?” he asked as he folded his arms.

  “Nothing very seemly, that’s certain” said the secretary in a diffident voice. “Monsieur le Marquis must have had a riotous youth...”

  Chéri-Bibi did not see Cecily again during the day. She sent him word that she was still indisposed and begged him to excuse her. He bore the disappointment patiently hoping that the next day would set things right; in other words, take him back to the point at which they stood a few minutes before the hour fixed for the duel when Cecily’s attitude towards him gave him every reason to hope.

  But next day the Marchioness’s indisposition continued. She did not leave her room: and in fact she was feverish. Chéri-Bibi who was admitted at the same time as Bernard into the privacy of this elegant and perfumed nest in which lay the being whom he most loved on earth, was so moved that he did not know what to say. He could mutter nothing but that they must send for a doctor.

  But Cecily set her face against it, declaring that what she wanted was a little rest. Moreover she could not endure any doctor but Doctor Walter, an Englishman, who sometime before had settled in the district and, as it happened, had left for Marseilles on the day of the Marquis’s arrival, in order to meet his wife who was on her way home from the Indies.

  This particularly clever man had managed in a short time to acquire a practice among the principal families in the district. The Dowager Marchioness had been tended by him with incomparable skill and devotion, and Cecily herself had nothing but praise for the accuracy of his diagnoses and his perfect tact.

  Chéri-Bibi did not give ear to the eulogies which Cecily with a view doubtless of having something to talk about — for she seemed not less perturbed than her husband — showered so lavishly on the doctor whom Chéri-Bibi thought that he “did not know from Adam.” To his thinking Cecily’s voice made sweet music but so long as that voice did not utter the words “I love you” the meaning of what she was saying was as indifferent to him as was Dr. Walter himself.

  Meanwhile he watched her and the sight of her in a charming loose robe accentuated his memories of the night before and fired his imagination. Dark rings had formed round her great eyes from the fever and sleeplessness of two anxious and perhaps tearful nights, but she had never seemed so attractive to him nor so beautiful.

  He diffidently and clumsily pressed a kiss upon her hand but she was all indifference.

  He fled once more. Fatalitas! In the garden he again encountered the intolerable de Pont-Marie.

  “The Marchioness is ill and it is impossible for you to see her old man. She isn’t receiving anyone to-day” he said. But he had no sooner spoken than a lady’s maid came up.

  “The Marchioness hopes that M. de Pont-Marie will not leave without seeing her. She will receive him in a few moments in the drawing room.”

  Chéri-Bibi was struck like a statue. He could not say a word and silently his hand grasped a young elm and crushed it. De Pont-Marie had turned away and was slashing the grass with his stick. Chéri-Bibi ground his teeth and left him without committing the crime for which his fingers itched. He was never so crest-fallen.

  At the gate he met the Dodger who was beaming, for he had just returned from Dieppe where he had seen the handsome Virginie, the young waitress from the restaurant who had made from the first a great impression on him.

  “Oh monsieur le Marquis,” he said full of his subject and failing to observe the agitation which shook his master from head to foot, “I can understand you now. What a splendid thing love is!”

  “Are you in love my dear Hilaire?” asked Chéri-Bibi.

  “I am indeed” returned the Dodger with enthusiasm, clasping his hands.

  “If you’re in love, poor fellow, a day will come when you’ll know the pangs of jealousy. It is the most desperate of evils. It is consuming me. You see that man?”

  “M. de Pont-Marie?”

  “Yes. Well, I suspect him of being in the good graces of the Marchioness. But I want to be certain. He is to see her presently. I shall be glad if you will listen to them behind the door, and come back here to this path and tell me what they say. I shall be walking about waiting for you. Off you go!”

  Hilaire bowed and left to carry out the order while Chéri-Bibi threw up his arms to the inviolable blue of the heavens calling for the storm. He was back again to the time when he longed to surround his actions with the tempest.

  From the place where he stood he watched the entrance to the Villa. In less than a quarter of an hour he saw de Pont-Marie come out twirling his moustache with a sprightly air. The Dodger soon followed with a look on his countenance which to Chéri-Bibi’s mind was pitiful. Doubtless he was the bearer of bad news and was already assuming a special face for the occasion.

  Chéri-Bibi’s heart throbbed wildly. As the Dodger drew nearer he put on an increasingly funereal expression. The other could not contain himself but made a few steps to meet him and before he came up to him cried in a choking voice:

  “Well?”

  “Well” returned the Dodger ill at ease, “it was rather difficult to listen behind the door because I was in constant fear of being caught by the servants.”

  Chéri-Bibi seized the Dodger’s wrist in an iron grip making him groan with pain.

  “Tell me what you heard.”

  “Yes, yes” whimpered the Dodger, “but let me go. You’re hurting me.”

  “Speak...”

  “De Pont-Marie is a blackguard. I didn’t hear much, but he’s a blackguard...”

  “Come to the point I tell you. I’m listening.”

  “Monsieur le Marquis... he is playing you false.”

  “Oh!”

  Chéri-Bibi flinched when the blow fell upon him and did not disguise his discomfiture from the Dodger who would have liked to prevaricate to avoid complications but lacked the courage. He was careful not to mention Cecily’s name, but if de Pont-Marie were playing him false it was with Cecily. That was a self-evident truth which needed
no demonstration.

  Chéri-Bibi turned livid.

  The Dodger who feared lest he should straightway breathe his last, murmured to himself Oh dear, oh dear. “Silently he followed his master who walked with bent back, his legs shaking under him like a man who had suddenly become twenty years older.

  They continued their way until they came to the beach and Chéri-Bibi dropped rather than sat upon a rock. The sea was smooth; the sky cloudless; an aggravating peace held sway over all living things.

  “So she has a lover” said the Marquis in a hoarse voice.

  “Why, yes” sighed the Dodger, “You see, you’ve been away so long.”

  “Spare me your comments. Don’t try to find excuses for her if you don’t mind.... She’s a wretch!”

  He gave full rein to his grief. The Dodger was not unmoved. “But I say what did you hear?”

  “The servants were coming and going all the time...”

  “Now don’t start that over again...”

  “I couldn’t hear more than two or three sentences. He told her that he loved her. She was the dream of his life... a lot of nonsense.”

  “What next?”

  “Next it would be better perhaps if I held my tongue for if I speak, which is unnecessary now that you know, some great misfortune might happen.”

  “The greatest misfortune that can happen Dodger is for you not to speak...”

  Chéri-Bibi became so threatening that the Dodger began to quake.

  “Monsieur, monsieur we were so peaceful... Yes, yes I’ll tell you... He made an appointment with her...”

  “Oh!... When?”

  “The day after tomorrow... in the afternoon” said the Dodger with chattering teeth.

  “Where?”

  “I couldn’t hear where... I tell you... I swear...” Chéri-Bibi glared at him with a fury which the poor fellow made no effort to withstand. He blurted out:

  “The appointment is for three o’clock in the afternoon in a villa called “Sea Mew” at Pourville. She promised to go. That’s all. I don’t know any more. I only just had time to get away after hearing that...”

  That very evening the Marquis du Touchais announced that he was obliged to go away for a few days. Of course he took his secretary with him. The second day after his departure a closed carriage was waiting for the Marchioness outside the Villa on the Cliff. She stepped in after wildly kissing her son without lifting the thick veil which concealed her pallor and despair.

  The brougham put her down before the main door of a church in a narrow street in Dieppe, and drove off as soon as she had entered. However sincere and emotional her prayer may have been, it was none the less short, for a few minutes later the Marchioness left the church by a small door and turned her steps towards a closed motor car which was waiting for her a few yards away.

  Cecily had no need to speak to the chauffeur for he at once set the engine going and drove off in the direction of Pourville.

  The car and the unknown chauffeur, thus placed at the Marchioness’s disposal, were a delicate attention from that perfect man of fashion the Vicomte de Pont-Marie. He had taken upon himself to settle the details of the proceedings so that Cecily’s reputation might not suffer from an adventure into which he had driven her with a patience and determination which were now about to reap their reward.

  At the time when he was looking for a chauffeur — who must be a stranger to the country — to drive his beautiful victim secretly to “Sea Mew,” it so happened that by the good fortune which smiles only on lovers, a man came forward, whose master, a visitor to Dieppe, was away for a few days. De Pont-Marie thus had at his command motor car and chauffeur. The chauffeur’s name was Cadol and, for a certain payment, he promised to act with discretion.

  The car climbed the hill at Pourville at top speed but at once slowed down when it entered a private road leading to an iron gate which was open.

  They drove into a courtyard and stopped at the front steps of a villa which stood in the heart of a little wood after the manner of a Swiss cottage.

  The windows of the chalet were closed and the Venetian blinds drawn. It looked as if the house were empty. Nevertheless at the noise which the car made in drawing up alongside, the door was partly opened.

  Cecily quickly alighted and mounted the steps excitedly, like a terrified animal that is being hunted down and is eager to rush into some dark hole and hide itself. Only she felt as if she were going to her doom.

  She found herself in the partial gloom of a passage, dazed and with throbbing temples. A man closed the door behind her, took her cold hand in his and led her to the staircase. She allowed herself to be guided by him as in a dream, powerless to resist, faltering, leaning heavily on the arm which supported her and closed in upon her as on a prey. She was taken to a bedroom illuminated by candles in a sconce; like the lights which burn round the dead in daytime. It was a sinister, a dismal, a funereal sight. She started back in horror. The wretched man had not shown her the delicacy of first taking her to a drawing room of a boudoir.

  “You are in your own house” he said.

  He made a step to the door with the cynical remark that it would not be long before he returned. She called him back. She was stifling in that mortuary chamber. She leant for support against the dark wall. She asked for air. He moved his head to signify a negative. The room was closed and thick curtains were drawn across the windows. He did not explain, but it was easy to gather that he had taken every precaution to prevent a last resistance, a final revolt. He determined not to incur the risk at the eleventh hour that in her frenzy she might cry for assistance and be heard from the outside. And then, perhaps, he preferred to see his victim half-dead in this tomb.

  “I am coming back. I will bring the letters. You understand” he said and left the room.

  She sank on to a couch staring wild-eyed at the tragic setting, the ominous bed, the two pale lights reflected in the mirror, revealing the ghostly image of her ivory cheeks beneath the veil which she had raised to enable her to breathe She remained without moving until he returned.

  Doubtless he hoped that confronted with the inevitable she would be eager to have done with it, and he would find her submissive. He could not repress a gesture of impatience.

  “You are unreasonable” he said.

  She turned her haggard eyes to him as if she were amazed to see him there, as if she had not expected to see him, as if she were asking herself:— “What does this man want with me?”

  “You are unreasonable Cecily” he repeated, “I see that I’ve got to talk to you again although at the point at which we stand and to which you yourself are a consenting party, words between us are useless. But anyway make yourself at home. Take off your hat and veil if you don’t mind.”

  He went up to her.

  “Don’t touch me... Don’t touch me” she cried.

  She threw out her hands shaken by an uncontrollable tremor. The hardest heart might have been softened in pity of her. He was calm, sure of himself, almost cold in the presence of this woman whom he was torturing and whose sufferings he silently revelled in. Thus they remained for some moments. Only Cecily’s quick breathing could be heard.

  “Am I so distasteful to you?” he asked sneeringly.

  She did not answer him.

  “Why did you come?” he went on. “You ought not to be here if you don’t want to save your son... your son’s honour and good name. See, here are your letters.”

  She held out her hand with a fierce gesture and clutched the packet which he offered to her and allowed her to take. She gave a cry of triumph.

  “You may count the letters” he grinned. “They are all there. When I make a promise I keep it. I am a man of honour. In view of the deplorable fluster in which I find you, I might have kept for my own purposes one of those scraps of paper in which you express, with so much enthusiasm, your secret joy in bringing up a child who hasn’t a drop of the du Touchais blood in his veins, and consequently has a chance of becomi
ng an honest man like his father Marcel Garavan. I might have torn out for my personal use, one of those pages in which you describe with so much discrimination the coming of those marks of resemblance in the child’s features and ways which led you to say: ‘He is the very image of his father. Don’t let the Marquis du Touchais ever see you my dear Marcel.’ Nothing could have prevented me, after making a few extracts from those letters which were returned to you on the death of the worthy sea Captain, nothing could have prevented me, I tell you, from taking to myself a few loving lines — there are so many of them — written by your lover himself in which he celebrates the memory of certain exciting hours which you passed together.”

  He drew nearer and continued:

  “Why do you hide your face? Why do you turn away? Don’t be ashamed of having given a few hours of your unhappy life to love. It was your only consolation. I venture to hope that it will continue to be so, for as you may readily imagine, dear lady, it is not for a casual meeting that I have worked so hard to bring you here. We shall be lovers. I shall make you love me, and though I have been rough with you, owing to your unwillingness, I shall have time to show you that I am a gentleman and you will forgive me. You will see... You will see... So don’t begin by holding aloof from me. It’s absolutely useless. You belong to me... and will belong to me for a long while, for as long as I like. You must resign yourself to that. If you assume that because I have returned those letters to you — all of them mark me — if you assume that because I have restored them to you, you will be relieved of me, once the price has been paid, you strangely misunderstand my character and the strength of my love. I am not prepared to say good-bye to you. You don’t know me!”

  He paused for a moment after indulging in this diatribe to enjoy in silence the effect that he had produced, and the fresh anxiety which he could read in Cecily’s expression, for since she had got back her letters she was wondering in horror by what unsuspected and infernal artifice the miscreant proposed to “hold” her for the rest of her life.