Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

The two men and horses now fell upon one another in a bewildering jumble, which Irene would not soon forget. She could see no more for the train described a semi-circle and an estancia blocked out the landscape.

  As soon as she reached Buenos Ayres, Irene sold a diamond ring which she had managed to secrete as a last resource, bought new linen and clothes, visited a hairdresser and a beauty institute, and boarded a French mailboat about to sail. Her last remnant of strength was buoyed up by excitement. She made herself known to the captain of the ship, who treated her with great consideration, and sent a wireless message to her husband, informing him of her departure and imminent arrival in France: “All well. Health completely restored.”

  “Have you been ill?” asked the captain, deceived by her artistic make-up.

  “Why, monsieur, I have been so ill that I had to spend a couple of months in an estancia near Rio Negro.”

  “I can’t make it out,” he returned. Here are Buenos Ayres newspapers stating that you were playing in Valparaiso, Santiago, Bolivia and so forth. Besides, I thought you were still in Peru. Here is the latest news from Lima.”

  “Oh, you don’t say so. That’s a trick of Hauptmann’s.”

  “Who is Hauptmann?”

  “My impresario. Seeing that my illness was lasting some time, and I shouldn’t be able to rejoin the company, he must have got some understudy to play in my name.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  “Do you know if he has made any money?

  “Upon my word, I can’t say.”

  “In any case it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to know what Octave thinks.”

  “Who is Octave?”

  “Octave is my husband.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  OCTAVE

  IRENE DE TROIE had married a prince. That was the least she could do. Still, her husband had not derived his title from his ancestors or the pope. It might have been said that he was the prince of his works had he written any, but his exaggerated modesty, which attained the highest pinnacle of pride, led him jealously to keep to himself the fruit of his labours.

  Octave was a playwright, and on the faith of a few inconsiderate friends, who between them had produced a short one act play called “Klodowig” on a private stage, literary snobism had crowned him Prince of the Theatre.

  Octave Rampon, who was the son of a china dealer in Ardeche, was not himself the instigator of this honour. He regarded his title as grotesque, and was the first to write to another prince in the literary world, for whom he had a sincere admiration, declining to bear a title which he had done nothing to deserve.

  It was this title, however, which constituted his distinction in Irene’s eyes. She invited him to one of her dinner parties. He did not come. She determined to see him. She succeeded only with considerable difficulty.

  “You have great gifts, prince,” she said.

  He made answer that she didn’t know nor did he. As it was rumoured that Octave’s friends were preparing the private production of a new two act play entitled “Ganelon,” in which he was to assume the part of Roland, she asked in the humblest manner to be allowed to play the part of the beautiful Aude. He told her that she was the last person he would think of casting for it since it demanded simplicity and ingenuous charm. Nettled by his answer she abruptly left him. That was what he wanted. He wanted only one thing — to be left in peace.

  Irene was not satisfied. She did not like to be beaten. She had never been beaten before. She returned to the fray. Octave showed her the door. She came in through the window, figuratively speaking, for had she indeed come in through the window he would perhaps have been won over by a gesture so little like Celimene, and considered doubtless that he might make something of her one day; for instance, something more than a great coquette.

  She came back through the window; in other words, she did not give him a moment’s peace. He met her wherever he went. He had been left a small shanty in the country. He was happy in his shanty studying the Merovingian period. Irene rented a country house opposite his shanty and entertained on a large scale.

  In sheer weariness he ended by asking:

  “What do you want?”

  “To be a princess,” she returned.

  He was at the end of his tether. He gave way and they were married. On leaving the church he said to his friends who offered their congratulations:

  “Now that she is a princess perhaps she’ll leave me alone.”

  He was not far out in his reckoning. A few weeks later Irene set out for her American tour.

  Octave possessed his shanty and a country house.

  He remained in his shanty. Meantime Irene’s servants were house-cleaning, for one day he said to them:

  “I’m expecting madame home at any moment.” Octave had abandoned his study of the Merovingians and plunged into Biblical history as a diversion from his more serious labours. He wrote a little thing on “Judith” with which he was by no means dissatisfied. A private performance of it was fixed, and he was rehearsing in his study, the Comtesse de Tardenois, née Sarah Levy, a friend of Irene’s, a Jewess of great beauty. Octave was arranging the folds of Judith’s tunic.

  “Well, aren’t you really going to meet her?” asked the Comtesse.

  “Well, you see for yourself...”

  “Is she quite well now?”

  “It seems so.”

  “What was the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know. I had two letters from Rio de Janeiro. And then not a line. I have heard nothing of the tour but what I have read in the papers. That was how I learnt that Hauptmann’s company had given their performances in Montevideo without her and the advertisements announced that she was ill.”

  “Weren’t you worried about her?”

  “Yes, I cabled to her and received an answer from Mendoza: ‘Am much better. No cause for anxiety.’”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.... Oh, I also received cables from Santiago, Valparaiso, Lima. ‘All well,’ I said to myself. ‘As long as all is well...’”

  “No letters?”

  “Well, no. She must have been very busy, and I imagined that things were not going so well as her telegrams led me to infer. Oh, it was no question of her health, for at that time she was playing.... But we learnt that she had not been received over there with the enthusiasm which she had a right to expect. The tour was not a big financial, success. That is not an easy thing to admit, so she didn’t write.”

  “You don’t worry much about it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “You are a very sensible man, Monsieur Octave Rampon.”

  “Yes.”

  “A wife might feel safe with you.”

  “Very safe. Tell me, Comtesse, is it easy to deceive a husband?”

  “What a question! What are you driving at?”

  “Well, in your circle does this sort of thing happen as a matter of course?”

  “Never in the world. It may be a pardonable thing when it’s done with discretion, and you don’t care for him.”

  “Have you been faithful to your husband?”

  “Yes, since he died.”

  “So you waited until he died to be faithful to him!”

  “He was so unbearable when he was alive!”

  “And now you are good?”

  “Like Judith of Bethulia. A widow, the ideal type of beauty, courage and chastity, as the apocryphal book says. I am looking for someone to take the place of my husband, some handsome, strong and reliable man whom I should be delighted to marry and whom I could remain faithful to.”

  “Yes, one gets tired of everything, even of infidelity, Comtesse...”

  “What is it, prince?”

  “Don’t call me prince or I shan’t let you play the part.... I wanted to ask you, since you have associated with Irene so long, whether women in Irene’s particular circle are faithful to their husbands.”

  “Irene is no ordinary actress.... I may say that she is a woma
n of fashion.”

  “What you tell me is not very comforting.... Do you think my wife plays me false?”

  “Irene unfaithful?... I don’t think so.”

  “Comtesse.”

  “Octave.”

  “In your opinion do people think she is unfaithful to me?”

  “Yes, the idiots.”

  “There’s a goodly number of them!... Comtesse.”

  “Octave.”

  “In your opinion do people think that I think my wife is unfaithful.”

  “You are getting tiresome!... Here’s another man who is supposed not to care for his wife, feigns indifference, and doesn’t go to meet her when he longs to see her home, and yet spends his time in wondering: ‘Is she unfaithful to me.’”

  “Matter of self-love.”

  “Love pure and simple, my dear sir. You have wasted precious time in showing off to each other and don’t know how you stand. After your marriage — I see that now — you must have exchanged a lot of witticisms.”

  “You make a mistake — we scarcely spoke.”

  “You see you are in love with each other.”

  “We treated each other very coolly. I was annoyed with her for forcing me to marry her.”

  “Didn’t you forgive her?”

  “Yes — I didn’t want her to die of grief.”

  “Conceit! A woman like Irene is wasted on you. There are not many of her sort.”

  “What’s the use! She’s enough for me.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow, you suffer through your love for her and you say you don’t care for her.”

  “But I haven’t said anything at all, while you are meddling with what doesn’t concern you. Women have never counted in my life. Art is the only thing that matters.”

  “That’s what she used to say, too, in speaking of men. You will end by understanding each other, and do you know how all your quibbles about art will end?”

  “How?”

  “In a child!”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. She would hate me to death. Ah, here’s Holofernes, and not a moment too soon.”

  Holofernes came into the room. He was Octave’s friend, a sculptor, a somewhat countrified looking person with a long straggling beard. Octave had chosen him to play the part on account of his beard. He could not find anyone else, and false beards, as he said, gave him the horrors.

  “Come, let’s get on with it. Assume this pose, leaning on your elbows. Be nonchalant, gracious and fateful, and above all don’t look as if you knew what was going to happen. Holofernes doesn’t suspect anything. He is supposed to be drunk!” They went on with their rehearsal, that is to say they were beflowered for a couple of hours with all the offensive remarks that a much misunderstood author can draw upon in his efforts to make his work intelligible... and he has a pretty good stock of them!

  “Hang it all, speak like an ordinary mortal.” The Comtesse was tired of it, but nothing would have induced her to throw up the part.

  “Our author is very nervy,” she whispered to Holofernes. “It’s Irene’s arrival that is responsible for his pretty speeches. He reckons, as I do, that she ought to be here by now.”

  But Holofernes took him very calmly.

  “After all,” he said, “neither you nor I was there. We’ve got to find out how they spoke in those days.”

  “Damn it, man, they spoke as people do to-day if they’re not acting at the Comédie Française.... And now be off! No, stay. If only the captain of the fire brigade had a beard I wouldn’t have troubled you.... The Prince of the Theatre is dog-tired.”

  A man-servant came over from the château.

  “Madame has come, monsieur.”

  Octave spun on his heels and leant out of the window.

  “It’s not true,” he exclaimed. “Where’s the band? Show me the band. There’s no band. Well, that’s one comfort.”

  “Now, friends, let’s buck up, and as they say in the theatre: Get on with the rehearsal.”

  “I must tell you, monsieur, that madame has just arrived,” persisted the servant.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone.”

  “I say, I say,” cried Octave. “What does this mean? How she must have changed!”

  And he rushed over to the château where Irene had just arrived.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  OCTAVE AND IRENE

  HE HAD BUT to cross the road to find himself at Irene’s house, the “Chariot d’Or.”

  “Madame has gone to bed,” said a housemaid. This surprised him much less than the absence of the band. She loved to receive her guests in her bedroom after the fashion of the eighteenth century. That was another of her affectations.

  The wooden shutters were drawn to shade the light. In the partial darkness he could not at first distinguish anything. He expected to see Irene sitting in bed as on a throne, carefully propped up with cushions, and under the folds of her lace absent-mindedly holding out her hand to be kissed. Irene de Troie was not the kind of person to be discovered in her pyjamas. But he beheld only a wan face on a pillow.

  “Irene, you are ill,” he exclaimed.

  She made an affirmative sign. She was unable to speak.

  “Good heavens, how you have changed!” he added.

  She made another affirmative sign that she had changed. He drew a chair beside the bed and took her hand.

  “Why, you are feverish We must send for the doctor at once.”

  “No,” she returned.

  “But it’s absurd. And I thought you were quite well!... Had I known, I would have come to meet you. Why cable that your health was completely restored?”

  She made no reply. She wept, and he was greatly taken aback.

  “You didn’t write.... Not one letter since you were in Rio de Janeiro. I had no news of you except what I read in the papers.”

  “Do you read the papers now?” she asked, amid her tears.

  “Yes, since you left France I’ve read every newspaper that might contain anything about you.”

  “Have you read this?”

  She handed him a morning paper. He took it, walked over to the window and read:

  “A STRANGE STORY

  “We are informed that Mademoiselle Irene de Troie’s tour in South America was not so great a success as her triumphs in Rio de Janeiro and San Paulo led her admirers to expect. We may at once say that Monsieur Hauptmann, the impresario, met with a somewhat cola reception in Montevideo, Buenos Ayres and other towns in La Plata where our national Celimene was advertised to appear. The reason is not far to seek. The great actress suddenly fell ill. We are glad to say that news of her complete recovery reached us with the report of her illness. As a matter of fact Mademoiselle Irene de Troie was able to rejoin Monsieur Hauptmann’s company and play her parts in Chile and Peru. On asking Monsieur Octave Rampon for confirmation of the good news, we were shown the latest cables received by him, which were entirely reassuring. A few days ago, however, our correspondents in Lima and Santiago telegraphed that a great scandal was about to come to a head over Monsieur Hauptmann’s tour. The impresario, alarmed at the financial disaster which threatened him, presented in certain theatres, notably in Lima and Santiago, under the name of Irene de Troie, an actress who was merely her understudy. We give the information, of course, with all due reserve.”

  Octave crumpled up the paper and shrugged his shoulders.

  “What rot they write! I hope, my dear Irene, your present state is not due to this nonsense. Your cables...”

  “They were false, Octave. Hauptmann sent them so that the truth should not leak out in Paris and he might be in peace over there.”

  “Did you not rejoin Hauptmann?”

  “No, I wasn’t able to do so, and I only learnt of the trick he had the hardihood to play when I was leaving Buenos Ayres. Here is a copy of the wire I sent him in which I called upon him to put a stop to his illegal game. Next day I received a wireless saying: ‘Give and take. I will stop, but on your part say nothing, and y
ou may rely on my silence.’”

  “Have you any need of Hauptmann’s silence? “ asked Octave in bewilderment.

  “Not at all,” she returned, “and the proof is that I haven’t replied to him.”

  “Then the whole story is incomprehensible.”

  “You must understand, Octave, that I have no need of Hauptmann’s silence, because I have made up my mind to tell you everything.”

  “What do you mean? That you’ve been ill? But that was no secret to anyone.... I assure you, Irene, I’m at an utter loss.”

  “I have not been ill.”

  “Not been ill! Why, you are altered beyond recognition.”

  “I have been made to suffer agonies,” she said, and began to sob again.

  “Made to suffer...”

  Distractedly he took her in his arms.

  “What do you want to tell me? Who has made you suffer agonies?”

  “Look.... Look at my hands, my arms, my chest, my poor head. Oh, if you only knew... if you only knew!”

  He was shocked at what he saw.

  “But speak out.... In heaven’s name, speak out. What’s happened to you?”

  She held him fervently, passionately, against her heart torn with anxiety, against her breast lacerated but steeled by the fire of physical pain through which she had passed. She closed her eyes for a few moments. Then she opened them again. She saw that he was greatly moved. Then she looked at him as she had never looked at a man before, as Celimene would have been incapable of looking at a man.

  “You are very, very good, and I have hurt you like the others. But I shall hurt you still more. That will be my worst punishment, but I can’t lie to you.... I won’t lie to you. Where is the newspaper?”

  “Never mind the newspaper. Tell me about yourself.”

  “You haven’t read it all. Turn over the page to the latest news.... Read it.”

  He was at a loss. He did as she asked, and picking up the paper, read mechanically:

  “It would seem that the matter of Mademoiselle Irene de Troie’s tour is not so simple as we thought. Curious reports have now reached us from Rio de Janeiro, but we cannot too strongly caution our readers against attaching any credence to them. It will be remembered that before Mademoiselle Irene de Troie’s departure a grand fête was held in her honour. Next day Mademoiselle Irene de Troie was to sail with the company in the Bahia for Montevideo. The Bahia, however, sailed without her. A search was at once instituted, but no trace of her could be discovered. Don Manoel de Carangola, the Permanent Secretary of the Fine Arts, was convinced that our great actress was the victim of some odious conspiracy. It was soon learnt, however, that Mademoiselle Irene de Troie had accepted an invitation from a wealthy planter to travel to Montevideo on his yacht. Though there was nothing in this circumstance to which exception could be taken, Don Manoel none the less continued his investigations, and left Rio de Janeiro in a Brazilian dispatch boat. Since then nothing has been seen at Rio of Don Manoel or the planter. This much is a brief statement of the reports contained in the South American papers which arrived this morning, though we have thought it well to spare our readers their comments and suppositions. We should have refrained from reproducing this theatrical gossip, which is the small change of persons indulging a passing vanity, had not the Hauptmann scandal given it a significance from which Hauptmann, as it happens, will alone reap the benefit. As far as we are concerned, we are too well acquainted with the character and the high moral rectitude with which Mademoiselle Irene de Troie has held aloft the banner of French art in foreign countries, not to be content with the simplest explanation — our Celimene was ill. She has remained silent in order that the interests of the company which Hauptmann was staging in South America should not suffer, and Hauptmann may have taken advantage of her silence to present on the Pacific coast a Celimene who cannot be the one we know, since she was a failure.”