A BAD NIGHT FOLLOWED BY BAD DAYS
Didier met the two women at the corner of the street almost frightened
out of their senses. He calmed them in a faltering voice. The man, he
said, had rushed away as soon as he caught sight of him. The d'Haumonts
at once took leave of Giselle, who implored them to forgive her foolish
outburst.
In the taxi in which they drove back to Cape Ferrat, Didier and
Françoise exchanged but an occasional remark. She was in a state of
depression. She thought that her husband would be annoyed with her for
her remarks regarding his exaggerated kindness to Giselle.
She took his hand in hers, and was no little surprised and even alarmed
to feel that it was icy cold.
"Oh, good gracious, how cold you are! Aren't you well, dear?"
"Yes, yes, I am quite well, I assure you."
She put her hand to his forehead and found that it was covered with an
icy perspiration. She was startled.
"Something must be the matter with you. Do say something. Why don't you
talk? I've never seen you like this before."
He endeavored to make a jest of it, but his voice was quite different
from his usual voice. She began to weep.
"I don't know what has happened. I don't know what is the matter with
you. You are concealing something from me."
He took her in his arms and kissed her in a sudden outburst of passion
which was far from reassuring her.
"Heavens, you are crying too," she said.
"Only because you are grieved. You must know I worship you."
"Yes, yes. Tell me so! Say it again!"
"Can you doubt it, dearest?"
"I should die if I doubted it. But all the same, tell me that you love
me. I like it. Take me in your arms again and kiss me . . . kiss me. Let
us mingle our tears. It's so good."
"What nonsense we talk! We don't know why we are crying. We are behaving
like children. It's a shame."
"So, my love, it's true. You are not hiding anything from me. You didn't
face that wretched man?"
"No, I scarcely saw him. He literally took to his heels. I advised him
not to show himself in this quarter again, that's all. We'll say no more
about it."
"Don't let's speak of him."
They dropped the subject, and indeed the rest of the drive to the villa
was passed in silence. Then, when they were in the house, she said:
"Listen, dear, you must let me take care of you. A moment ago you were
as cold as ice, and now your hands are burning. You are still suffering
from fever. It's only a short time since you recovered from your wounds,
and we are behaving very unwisely. You must have caught a cold on
leaving Madame d'Erlande's. . . . But what are you doing? Leave the
doors. The servants will dose them."
He was surprised to see himself locking the doors like a child who is
overcome with fear.
And yet he had become slightly more composed. He longed to remain in
doubt. He tried to doubt still. Might he not have made a mistake, for
after all the vision of that man's face under the light of the street
lamp was but a momentary one. It was not even a face. A forehead, a pair
of eyes, that was all. Was that enough to convince him that he had
encountered the Parisian? Surely not. He had to reckon with freaks of
resemblance, as well as his own state of mind, ever ready to conjure up
dangers and to imagine that they were near.
The Parisian at Nice! No, it was out of the question. The man had been
captured and taken back to prison. The newspapers contained a report of
the occurrence. And, besides, if the Parisian were at Nice would he not
have been occupied in hunting different game from Giselle? Captain
d'Haumont would have heard something about him.
Thus his thoughts ran on. Françoise's love, the anxious attentions with
which she enveloped him, while they touched his heart also relaxed the
tension of his nerves. They were perfectly happy and tranquil; a great
peace fell upon them. And he could no longer believe that anything
untoward would befall him. He kept quite quiet, took his medicine,
allowed himself to be nursed, and--worn out by the new excitement which
physically and mentally weighed down upon him--fell asleep.
But Françoise did not fall asleep.
She listened to his irregular breathing; she watched the painful slumber
in which the man beside her lay. Resting on her elbow, she bent over the
beloved face, distorted by strange dreams, with an ever-increasing
anguish which wrung her heart and almost stifled her.
What frightful visions were passing before those closed eyes and the
heaving chest? She had never watched her husband asleep. The sight was
terrifying.
And then his face changed so that she did not recognize it, and she was
appalled. Deep furrows, which she had never seen before, plowed his
forehead and temples and the corners of his mouth. The face which, when
it was in repose, was calm and dignified and kept under control by a
strong, brave mind, was distorted as if the spirit of fear had taken
possession of it at a moment when the sentinel was no longer on guard.
It was impossible for her to remain any further beside that tortured
face which was unknown to her, and she wakened Didier so as to see once
more the face as she knew it--the face of the man she had married.
Didier uttered a hollow groan and opened his haggard eyes. By the light
of the night-lamp she watched him come to himself from his nightmare
like a swimmer who rises to the surface of the waters and is able at
last to breathe again.
"Didier . . . Didier . . . What's the matter? Don't you recognize me?
It's I . . . Françoise."
Then his face unbent and his eyes were filled once more with the soft
light which illumined them whenever his gaze fell upon her.
"I've had such an awful dream, dearest."
"Yes, it was awful. That's why I woke you up."
"What did I say? What was I talking about?"
"You said nothing, but you were suffering and sighing and groaning
terribly."
Françoise's gentle voice seemed to drive away for good and all the
cruel shadows of the night.
"But what were you dreaming about?" she asked. "I had the worst dream
that it is possible to conceive, dear. I dreamt that you had ceased to
love me."
"Oh, my Didier!"
She took him in her arms and he lay his head upon her breast
"Listen to my heart," she said.
They listened in silence. Didier did not speak again, and he pretended
to yield to a sweet and refreshing sleep. But he did not sleep. He would
not allow himself to sleep. He feared to be betrayed by his
dreams. . . .
She, too, closed her eyes and made believe to sleep, and he really
thought that she was asleep, but she knew that he was still awake.
They were deceiving each other for the first time in their married life.
Didier, like a sufferer who seeks a corner in which to lie down so as to
suffer less, laid down his secret there with her, and from that moment
she did not doubt that the secret was worthy of its refuge.
With a man of Didier's character--assuming that there was a secret which
made him suffer in his dreams as he lay beside the woman he loved--it
could only be some trouble which it was his duty to hide from her but
which, if she knew what it was, would not make her blush for him.
Ever since Didier's strange behavior at the beginning of what might be
called their engagement, she fancied that there was something mysterious
in his past life. She persisted in thinking that it was a story of some
former woman--of some bad woman of course--who had taken advantage of
Didier's goodness, and even now was trying to hold him up to ransom.
Whether this was the explanation or not, she felt convinced that Didier
was the victim.
At an early hour next morning Captain d'Haumont was in Nice. He waited
to see Giselle at the corner of the Rue d'Angleterre and the Rue Bardin,
pacing up and down outside a fashionable hairdressing and massage
establishment. The sound of his footsteps coming and going put the
porter in a general flutter.
Didier knew that Giselle had to be at the shop at nine o'clock and
passed that way; and as he had no wish, in view of the incident of the
evening before, for Mlle. Violette to know anything about the step he
was taking, he waited for her in the street. To call at her own place at
that hour would have been difficult to explain. At the same time he
hoped that, impelled by some necessity of house-keeping, Giselle would
make a very early appearance in the quarter.
As the minutes went by his impatience became painful to see. The porter
at the establishment felt sorry for him; and he stopped some of the
customers as they came in to point to the man on the pavement.
"Someone has made an appointment and failed to turn up!"
At a quarter to nine a lady who was in the habit of visiting the shop
every day for her "high frequency" treatment, with the object,
apparently, of renewing her youth in so far as it was possible, alighted
from her car, and at the moment when she was about to enter the
vestibule stopped with a face like stone.
Her eyes had fallen upon Captain d'Haumont running up to Giselle and
entering into an animated talk with her.
"Well, Madame d'Erlande, the girl has turned up, and not a moment too
soon," said the porter. "Just fancy, the poor man has been cooling his
heels on the pavement for more than an hour."
"You don't mean to say so!"
"I assure you that he was here at half-past seven. He must be gone on
her."
Madame d'Erlande was incensed.
"The wretch," she exclaimed. "And I treated the whole thing as a joke.
Poor Françoise!"
Meantime Captain d'Haumont had received certain details regarding the
man who was pursuing Giselle which were to some extent reassuring.
Giselle was greatly astonished to meet the Captain on her way to the
shop, and as soon as she learned what had brought him, she straightway
assumed that a somewhat violent scene had occurred between the two men
the evening before and that the Captain intended to follow it up with a
challenge to a duel.
Taking alarm at the prospect, she implored him to overlook the incident,
but he expressed himself in such strong language in order to obtain from
her the real truth, that in the end she told him the little that she
knew about the stranger; that is to say, that he was a friend of one of
Mlle. Violette's customers; that the first time she saw him was in Paris
where, it seemed, he was well known in artistic and society circles;
that he offered to get her on the stage, explaining that he had
considerable influence in the theater; and that his name was de
Saynthine.
When he left Giselle, d'Haumont said to himself: "I lost my head. I've
been dreaming."
An hour later--after thinking things over--nothing remained of what he
called his fancy of the evening before, but he made up his mind to
escape from the scene and surroundings which prevented him from enjoying
as he might, in the soft light of his honeymoon, the last precious hours
of his sick leave; and he would take Françoise for a little trip in
which he hoped he might encounter neither the form of Nina Noha nor the
shade of the Parisian.
He attributed the confusion into which, for the time being, he was
thrown to the reappearance of the dancer on his horizon. From that
moment his dearest wish was to leave the place in which she was to be
met. Obsessed by this thought he turned his steps towards the building
at which, during the war, safe-conducts and passports were issued. Thus
he passed through a part of the old town, taking a short cut. In that
quarter the streets are narrow and winding. He found himself stopping
outside a low-storied shop containing secondhand clothes and cheap
carpets, the signboard of which bore the name "Monsieur Toulouse."
How was it that his attention was attracted by this signboard? Why did
he remember the name? Later on when he asked himself these questions, he
was unable to offer any explanation, except that in the subconscious
depths within him, some mysterious faculty knew that the signboard would
be mixed up in his life.
A hand-cart laden with vegetables was being moved, thus clearing the
street. When the cart was dragged away, a sort of human specter was
revealed to view, which shot past the walls and entered a dark passage
adjoining Monsieur Toulouse's shop. Didier leaned for support against
the wall. He had recognized the Burglar!
He summoned up sufficient strength of mind to slip away from the place.
His entire being cried aloud: Fly . . . escape with Françoise to the
uttermost comers of the earth!
His face was ghastly white when he entered the room in which passes were
made out. He was almost sure that the Burglar had not caught sight of
him. He waited a moment in order to recover his breath and the use of
his voice.
When he went up to the main table at which were seated the clerics whose
duty it was to answer inquiries from the public, he saw a man standing
before him, holding a number of papers in his hand--a man wearing a
long, flowing overcoat who stared him steadily in the face. Didier felt
giddy. His mind was giving way.
He never knew how he managed to get outside, or how he found the
strength to throw himself into a taxi and to give his address. He had
recognized the Joker!