The Nabob Part 43

"Paris, society, the world. Married by its opinion, we were held by it."

"And now you are held no longer?"

"Now something comes before all--it is the idea of losing you, of seeing you no longer. Oh! when I learned of your flight, when I saw the bill over your door TO LET, I felt sure that it was all up with poses and grimaces, that I had nothing else to do but to set out, to run quickly after my happiness, which you were taking away. You were leaving Paris--I have left it. Everything of yours was being sold; everything of mine will be sold."

"And she?" said Felicia trembling. "She, the irreproachable companion, the honest woman whom no one has ever suspected, where will she go?

What will she do? And it is her place you have just offered me. A stolen place, think what a h.e.l.l! Well, and your motto, good Jenkins, virtuous Jenkins, what shall we do with it? '_Le bien sans esperance_,' eh!"

At this sneer, cutting his face like a whip, the wretch answered panting:

"That will do! Do not sneer at me so. It is too horrible now. Does it not touch you, then, to be loved as I love you in sacrificing everything to you--fortune, honour, respect? See, look at me. I have s.n.a.t.c.hed my mask off for you, I have s.n.a.t.c.hed if off before all. And now, see, here is the hypocrite."

He heard the m.u.f.fled noise of two knees falling on the floor. And stammering, distracted with love, weak before her, he begged her to consent to this marriage, to give him the right to follow her everywhere, to defend her. Then the words failed him, stifled in a pa.s.sionate sob, so deep, so lacerating that it should have touched any heart, above all among this splendid impa.s.sible scenery in this perfumed heat. But Felicia was not touched. "Let us have done, Jenkins," said she brusquely. "What you ask is impossible. We have nothing to hide from each other, and after your confidences just now, I wish to make one to you, which humbles my pride, but your degradation makes you worthy. I was Mora's mistress."

Paul knew this. And yet it was so sad to hear this beautiful, pure voice laden with such a confession, in the midst of the intoxicating air, that he felt his heart contract.

"I knew it," answered Jenkins in a low voice, "I have the letters you wrote to him."

"My letters?"

"Oh, I will give them to you--here. I know them by heart. I have read and reread them. It is that which hurts one, when one loves. But I have suffered other tortures. When I think that it was I--" He stopped himself. He choked. "I who had to furnish fuel for your flames, warm this frozen lover, send him to you ardent and young--Ah! he has devoured my pearls--I might refuse over and over again, he was always taking them. At last I was mad. You wish to burn, wretched woman. Well, burn, then!"

Paul rose to his feet in terror. Was he going to hear the confession of a crime? But the shame of hearing more was not inflicted on him.

A violent knocking, this time on his own door, warned him that his _calesino_ was ready.

"Is the French gentleman ready?"

In the next room there was silence, then a whisper.--There had been some one near who had heard them.--Paul de Gery hurried downstairs. He must get out of this room to escape the weight of so much infamy.

As the post-chaise swayed, he saw among the common white curtains, which float at all the windows in the south, a pale figure with the hair of a G.o.ddess, and great burning eyes fixed on him. But a glance at Aline's portrait quickly dispelled this disturbing vision, and forever cured of his old love, he travelled until evening through the magic landscape with the lovely bride of the _dejeuner_, who carried in the folds of her modest robe and mantle all the violets of Bordighera.

THE FIRST NIGHT OF "REVOLT"

"Take your places for the first act!"

The cry of the stage-manager, standing with his hand raised to his mouth to form a trumpet, at the foot of the staircase behind the scenes, echoes under the roof, rises and rolls along, to be lost in the depths of corridors full of the noise of doors banging, of hasty steps, of desperate calls to the _coiffeur_ and the dressers; while there appear one by one on the landings of the various floors, slow and majestic, without moving their heads for fear of disturbing the least detail of their make-up, all the personages of the first act of _Revolt_, in elegant modern ball costumes, with the creaking of new shoes, the silken rustle of the trains, the jingling of rich bracelets pushed up the arm while gloves are being b.u.t.toned. All these people seem excited, nervous, pale beneath their paint, and under the skilfully prepared satin-like surface of the shoulders, tremors flutter like shadows. Dry-mouthed, they speak little. The least nervous, while affecting to smile, have in their eyes and voice the hesitation that marks an absent mind--that apprehension of the battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of the most powerful attractions of the comedian's art, its piquancy, its freshness.

The stage is enc.u.mbered by the pa.s.sage to and fro of machinists and scene-builders hastening about, running into one another in the dim, pallid light falling from above, which will give place directly, as soon as the curtain rises, to the dazzling of the foot-lights. Cardailhac is there in his dress-coat and white tie, his opera hat on one side, giving a final glance to the arrangement of the scenery, hurrying the workmen, complimenting the _ingenue_ who is waiting dressed and ready, beaming, humming an air, looking superb. To see him no one would ever guess the terrible worries which distract him. He is compromised by the fall of the Nabob--which entails the loss of his directorate--and is risking his all on the piece of this evening, obliged, if it be not a success, to leave the cost of this marvellous scenery, these stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid. It is a fourth bankruptcy that stares him in the face. But, bah! our manager is confident. Success, like all the monsters that feed on men, loves youth; and this unknown author, whose name is appearing for the first time on a theatre bill, flatters the gambler's superst.i.tions.

Andre Maranne feels less confident. As the hour for the production of the piece approaches he loses faith in his work, terrified by the sight of the house, at which he looks through the hole in the curtain as through the narrow lens of a stereoscope.

A splendid house, crammed to the roof, notwithstanding the late period of the spring and the fas.h.i.+onable taste for early departure to the country; a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in midwinter. Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central chandelier, erect--bent forward--turning round--questioning amid a great play of shadows and reflections; some ma.s.sed in the obscure corners of the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public which is always the same, that brigand-like _tout Paris_ which goes everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a claim by right of some official position fails to secure them.

In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, s.h.i.+ning bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-gla.s.ses raised and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarra.s.sing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde, ministers, amba.s.sadors, famous authors, critics--these last wearing a grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their _fauteuils_ with the impa.s.sive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt. The boxes near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women _decollete_ and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole a.s.sembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas, that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive, accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fas.h.i.+onable gatherings which ends by establis.h.i.+ng in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the provinces themselves.

Maranne observed this ill-humour, this la.s.situde of the public, and thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety, what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people, to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.

And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, "Who are those people there?" the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal for applause.

The curtain is going up! Maranne has barely time to spring into the wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment. Where should he go?

What should he do? Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining ear and beating heart? Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so much need of encouragement? He prefers rather to look the peril in the face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him softly. "s.h.!.+ It is I." Some one is seated in the shadow--a woman, she whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze.

Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and son tremblingly watch the progress of the play.

It astonished the audience at first. This Theatre des Nouveautes, situated in the very heart of the boulevard, where its portico glitters all illuminated among the great restaurants of the smart clubs; this theatre, to which people were accustomed to come in parties after a luxurious dinner to listen until supper-time to an act or two of some suggestive piece, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most fas.h.i.+onable of all Parisian entertainments, without any very precise character of its own, and partaking something of all, from the fairy-operetta which exhibits undressed women, to the serious modern drama. Cardailhac was especially anxious to justify his t.i.tle of "Manager of the Nouveautes," and, since the Nabob's millions had been at the back of the undertaking, had made a point of preparing for the boulevardiers the most dazzling surprises. That of this evening surpa.s.sed them all; the piece was in verse--and moral.

A moral play!

The old rogue had realized that the moment had arrived to try that effect, and he was trying it. After the astonishment of the first minutes, a few disappointed exclamations here and there in the boxes, "Why, it is in verse!" the house began to feel the charm of this invigorating and healthy piece, as if there had been sprinkled on it, in its rarefied atmosphere, some fresh and pungent essence, an elixir of life perfumed with thyme from the hillside.

"Ah! this is nice--it is restful."

Such was the general sense, a thrill of ease, a spasm of pleasure accompanying each line. That fat old Hemerlingue found it restful, puffing in his stage-box on the ground floor as in a trough of cerise satin. It was restful also to that tall Suzanne Bloch, her hair dressed in the antique way, ringlets flowing over a diadem of gold; and near her, Amy Ferat, all in white like a bride and with sprigs of orange-blossom in her fluffy hair, it was restful to her also, you may be sure.

A crowd of demi-mondaines were present, some very fat, with a dirty greasiness acquired in a hundred seraglios, three chins, and an air of stupidity; others absolutely green in spite of their paint, as if they had been dipped in a bath of that a.r.s.enate of copper which is called in the shops "Paris green." These were wrinkled, faded to such a degree that they hid in the back of their boxes, only allowing a portion of a white arm to be seen, a rounded shoulder protruding. Then there were young men about town, flabby and without backbone, those who at that time used to be called _pet.i.ts creves_, creatures worn out by dissipation, with stooping necks and drooping lids, incapable of standing erect or of articulating a single word perfectly. And all these people exclaimed with one accord: "This is nice--it is restful." The handsome Moessard murmured it like a refrain beneath his little fair mustache, while his queen in the stage-box translated it into the barbarism of her foreign tongue. Positively they found it restful. They did not say after what--after what heart-breaking labour, after what forced, idle and useless task.

All these friendly murmurs, united and mingled, began to give to the house an eventful appearance. Success was felt in the air, faces became serene again, the women seemed the more beautiful for reflecting enthusiasm, for being moved to glances that were as exciting as applause. Andre, at his mother's side, thrilled with such an unknown pleasure, with that proud delight which a man feels when he stirs the mult.i.tude, be he only a singer in a suburban back-yard, with a patriotic refrain and two pathetic notes in his voice. Suddenly the whisperings redoubled, were transformed into a tumult. People were chuckling and fidgeting with excitement. What had happened? Some accident on the stage? Andre, leaning terrified towards the actors as astonished as himself, saw every opera-gla.s.s turned towards the big stage-box which had remained empty until then, and which some one had just entered, who sat down immediately with both his elbows on the velvet ledge, and with his opera-gla.s.s drawn from its case, taking his place in gloomy solitude.

In ten days the Nabob had aged twenty years. Violent southern natures like his, if they are rich in enthusiasms, become also more utterly prostrate than others. Since his unseating the unfortunate man had shut himself up in his bedroom, with drawn curtains, no longer wis.h.i.+ng even to see the light of day nor to cross over the threshold beyond which life was waiting for him, with the engagements he had undertaken, the promises he had made, a ma.s.s of protested bills and writs. The Levantine, gone off to some spa accompanied by her _ma.s.seur_ and her negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment; Bompain--the man in the fez--in frightened bewilderment amid the demands for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to face the disaster, with the knowledge born of her narrow and straitened experience as a village woman, who knows what a stamped doc.u.ment--a signature--is, and thinks honour is the greatest and best thing in the world. Her peasant's cap made its appearance on every floor of the mansion, examining bills, reforming the domestic arrangements, and fearing neither outcries or humiliation. At all hours the good woman might be seen striding about the Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking to herself, and saying aloud: "_Te_, I will go and see the bailiff."

And never did she consult her son about anything save when it was indispensable, and then only in a few discreet words, while avoiding even a glance at him. To rouse Jansoulet from his torpor it had required de Gery's telegram, dated from Ma.r.s.eilles, announcing that he was on his way back, bringing ten million francs. Ten millions!--that is to say, bankruptcy averted, the possibility of recovering his position--of starting life afresh. And behold our southerner rebounding from the depth of his fall, intoxicated with joy, and full of hope. He ordered the windows to be opened and newspapers to be brought to him. What a magnificent opportunity was this first night of _Revolt_ to show himself to the Parisians, who were believing him to have gone under, to enter the great whirlpool once more through the swing door of his box at the Nouveautes! His mother, warned by some instinct, did indeed try to hold him back. Paris now terrified her. She would have liked to carry off her child to some unknown corner of the Midi, to nurse him along with his elder brother--stricken down both of them by the great city. But he was the master. Resistance was impossible to that will of a man spoiled by wealth. She helped him to dress for the occasion, "made him look nice,"

as she said laughing, and watched him not without a certain pride as he departed, dignified, full of new life, having almost got over the prostration of the preceding days.

After his arrival at the theatre, Jansoulet quickly perceived the commotion which his presence caused in the house. Accustomed to similar curious ovations, he acknowledged them ordinarily without the least embarra.s.sment, with a frank display of his wide and good-natured smile; but this time the manifestation was hostile, almost indignant.

"What! It is he?"

"There he is."

"What impudence!"

Such exclamations from the stalls confusedly rose among many others. The retirement in which he had taken refuge for some days past had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation, of the homilies, the statements broadcast in the newspapers, with the corrupting influence of his wealth as their text--articles written for effect, hypocritical phraseology by the aid of which opinion avenges itself from time to time on the innocent for all its own concessions to the guilty. It was a terribly embarra.s.sing exhibition, which gave him at first more sorrow than anger.

Deeply moved, he hid his emotion behind his opera-gla.s.s, fixing his attention on the least details of the stage arrangements, giving a three-quarters view of his back to the house, but unable to escape the scandalous observation of which he was the victim and which made his ears buzz, his temples beat, the dulled lenses of his opera-gla.s.s become full of those whirling multi-coloured circles which are the first symptom of brain disorder.

When the curtain fell at the end of the first act he remained motionless, in the same att.i.tude of embarra.s.sment; the whisperings, now more distinct when they were no longer held in check by the dialogue on the stage, the pertinacity of certain inquisitive people changing their places in order to get a better view of him, obliged him to leave his box and to beat a hurried retreat into the corridors, like a wild beast escaping across a circus from the arena. Beneath the low ceiling in the narrow circular pa.s.sage of the theatre corridors, he found himself suddenly in the midst of a dense crowd of emasculate youths, journalists, tightly laced women wearing their hats, laughing as part of their trade, their backs against the wall. From box-doors opened for air, mixed and disjointed fragments of conversation were escaping:

"A delightful piece. It is fresh; it is good."

"That Nabob! What impudence!"

"Yes, indeed, it is restful. One feels better for it."

"How is it that he has not yet been arrested?"

"Quite a young man, it seems. It is his first play."

"Bois l'Hery at Mazas! It is impossible. Why, there is the marquise opposite, in the balcony, with a new hat."