CHAPTER VIII

There is always a silent corner in a woman’s most sincere confession. There was one in Camille’s. In telling me, with the pauses of jealousy maddened by its certainty, of the dramatic discovery at the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle she had not revealed the whole truth to me. She had already resolved on an audacious plan for vengeance even at the time she affirmed that she would not revenge herself. She confessed to me later that she was afraid of my advice and reproaches. Among the phrases audible through the thin partition which separated her from the bed where her rival gave herself to their joint lover, she had seized upon a few words more important to her than the rest. It was the day and hour of their next meeting. This slender Madam de Bonnivet, in whom I had diagnosed signs of the most immovable coldness—a detail which in parenthesis Molan later on brutally confirmed—was like most women of this kind, a seeker after sensations. At each fresh intrigue those depraved women without temperaments persist in the hope that this time they will experience that much-desired ecstasy of love which has always shunned them.

193I have learned since that it was she who, in spite of the danger, or rather because of the danger, had multiplied the meetings each of which risked a tragic termination. Camille had ascertained the secret of the real relations between the two lovers one Tuesday, and on the Friday, three days later, they were to meet at the same place. Knowing the exact moment of the appointment a mad resolution took possession of the suffering mind of the poor Blue Duchess: to wait for her rival at the door of the house, to approach her as she got out of her cab and spit out into her face her hatred and contempt there on the pavement in the street. At the thought of the arrogant Madam de Bonnivet trembling before her like a thief caught in the act, the outraged actress experienced a tremor of satisfied revenge. Her vengeance would be more complete still. The infamous trap into which Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet had lured her, the abominable invitation to perform at her rival’s evening party to reassure the husband, would be of use to her. Out of prudence and with the idea of not compromising herself with her husband, Madam de Bonnivet must give her that evening in spite of everything. She, Camille, would appear there! She would see the woman who had stolen her lover tremble before her gaze, the lover himself pale with terror lest she should make a scene, and the fear of the guilty couple was in advance of those atrocious pleasures which hatred conjures up in the mind.

The three days which separated her from this 194Friday passed for Camille in increasing expectancy. I did not see her during that time, for she took a jealous care in avoiding me, for fear I should derange her plan. But she told me afterwards that never since the beginning of her liaison with Jacques had she felt such a fever of impatience. She passed the night from Thursday to Friday like a mad woman, and when she left the Rue de la Barouillére to go to the Rue Nouvelle, she had neither slept nor eaten for thirty-six hours. At half-past three she was on the pavement in front of the windows of the rooms walking up and down wrapped in her cloak and unrecognizable through her double veil, never losing sight of the door through which her rival must go. There was at the corner of the Rue de Clichy a cabstand which she fixed as the boundary of her promenade. Each time she passed she noticed the clock on the cabstand. First it was twenty minutes to four, and more than twenty minutes to wait. Then it was ten minutes to four, and she had ten minutes to wait. Four o’clock struck. They were late. At twenty minutes past four neither Jacques nor Madam de Bonnivet had appeared. What had happened?

In face of this delay, the more inexplicable as, in the case of a woman of position like the one for whom revenge was watching, her moments of leisure are few, it seemed obvious to Camille that the lovers had altered the time and place of the appointment, and the idea maddened her. They had seen one another so often since she had 195listened to their caresses and familiarity so close to her. Who knows? Perhaps the porter had noticed her when she went out the other day, although she had taken advantage of a moment when he was absent from the lodge and talking in the courtyard to replace the key. Perhaps he had warned Jacques of the visit!

It was half-past four, and still no one had appeared. Camille was at last convinced that to remain longer watching was useless, all the more since, as happens at this time in a cold February day, a bitter fog had come down mixed with sleet, which made her shiver. She cast a desperate glance at the impenetrable windows with their closed shutters from which no gleam of light came, and was preparing to depart, when in searching the short street with her eyes for the last time she saw a carriage stop opposite the cabstand and a face look out of it which gave her one of those attacks of terror which dissolve the forces of the body and soul: it was the face of Pierre de Bonnivet!

Yes, it was indeed the husband of Molan’s mistress, no longer in his laughable function as the shy and intimidated husband of a woman of the world who endured the coquetry of the woman who bore his name, submitting to it to profit by it. It was the assassin in his hiding-place, the assassin in whom jealousy had suddenly awakened the primitive male, the murderous brute, and whose eyes, nostrils, mouth announced his desire to kill whatever happened. He was there scanning the street 196with savage glances. The half turned-up otter-skin collar of his overcoat gave to his red hair and high colour a more sinister look, and the bare ungloved hand with which he lifted the curtain of the window to enable him to see better seemed ready to grasp the weapon which should avenge his honour at once on that pavement, without any more thought of the world and of scandal than if Paris were still the primeval forest of 3,000 years before, where prehistoric men fought with stone axes for possession of a female clad in skins.

How had the jealous husband discovered the retreat where Queen Anne and Jacques took shelter during their brief intrigue? Neither Camille, I, nor Jacques himself have ever known. An anonymous letter had informed him; but by whom was it written? Molan had at his heels a mob of the envious; Madam de Bonnivet was in the same position, even without reckoning her more or less disappointed suitors. Perhaps Bonnivet had simply recourse to the vulgar but sure method of espionage. It is quite certain that the porter had been questioned, and but for the fact that he was a good fellow, who had been well supplied with theatre tickets by his lodger, and was proud of the latter’s fame as an author, the rooms which had seen the poor Blue Duchess so happy and so miserable in turn without doubt would have served as the theatre for a sanguinary dénouement. It was indeed the desire for a tragic vengeance which Camille Favier saw upon the face, in the nostrils, around the mouth, and in the eyes of the man’s 197face she had seen at the carriage window in the dim light furnished by a gas jet in the darkness, looking for a proof of his dishonour, and decided upon immediate vengeance. It is very likely, too, that he had noticed the young woman. But he had only met her once off the stage, and the high collar of her coat, a fur boa wound several times round her neck, a hat worn over her eyes and a double veil made Camille into an indecisive figure, a vague and indistinctive silhouette. Bonnivet without doubt saw in her, if his fixed plan allowed him to reason at all, a wanderer of the prostitute class exercising her miserable trade as the darkness came on. Then he took no further notice of her.

As for the charming and noble girl who was so magnanimous by nature that it seemed a pity that she should have experienced such depraving adventures, she had no sooner recognized Bonnivet than her first spite, her furious jealousy, the legitimate sorrow of her wounded passion and her appetite for revenge all combined into one feeling. She realized nothing but the danger Jacques was in, and the necessity of warning him, not to-morrow, or that evening, but at once. A few minutes before she had made up her mind that the lovers had postponed their appointment till another day.

An idea suddenly pierced her heart like a red-hot iron; suppose they had only postponed the appointment till five o’clock? Suppose at that moment they were preparing to set out for this street, at the top of which this sinister watcher was waiting? The thought that, after all, that was 198possible at once transformed itself, as often happens when the imagination works around the danger to a person beloved, into a certainty. She could distinctly see Jacques walking towards this ambuscade. The resolution to stop him at once without a second’s delay possessed her with irresistible force. What could she do but hasten to the Place Delaborde, where she had a last chance of meeting Molan? She was afraid she would be noticed by Bonnivet, or he might hear her voice, if she took one of the cabs on the rank, so she hurried along the Rue de Clichy like a mad woman, calling cab after cab, and feeling, when at last she took her seat in an empty one, the horrible attack of a fresh hypothesis which almost made her faint. Supposing the two lovers had, on the other hand, put forward the time of their meeting and were in the rooms, while the husband warned by a paid or gratuitous spy was waiting for them? Camille could see them once more in her imagination, with the same inability to distinguish the possible from the real. Yes, she could see them, quite sure of their privacy, taking advantage of the gathering darkness to emerge arm in arm, and she could see Bonnivet rush and then.... This unknown conclusion varied between sudden murder and a terrible duel.

The unfortunate creature had hardly conceived this second hypothesis, when a tremor shook her to her very marrow. Her cab had set off at a fast trot in the direction of the Place Delaborde. What could she do then? In these instants when not only seconds, but halves and quarters of a second 199are counted, does real sentiment possess a mysterious double sight which decides persons with more certainty than any calculation or reasoning could do? Or are there, as Jacques Molan loved to say, destinies protected by singular favour of circumstance, which have constantly good luck, just as others constantly have bad luck? Still Camille, between two possibilities, chose by instinct that which turned out to be the true one.

At the precise moment that the cab turned into the Place de la Trinité she directed the driver to turn back to the Rue Nouvelle. Why? She could not have told. She stopped the cab and paid her fare at the top of this street. Her plan was made and she put it into execution with that courageous decision which danger sometimes inspires in souls like hers, passive on their own behalf, but all flame and energy in defence of their love. She could see that Bonnivet’s carriage was still in the same place. Her umbrella up to protect her from the sleet was sure to hide her face as she walked bravely along past the carriage and reached the house, the door of which the jealous husband was watching. Her doubts were removed, for a stream of light through the cracks of the shutters denoted some one’s presence in the rooms. She went in without hesitation and walked straight to the porter, who saluted her in an embarrassed way.

“I can assure you, mademoiselle, that M. Molan is not here,” he replied when she insisted, after his first denial.

200“I tell you he is here with a lady,” she replied. “I saw the light through the windows.” Then sharply with the inexpressible authority which emanates from a person really in despair she said: “Wretch, you will repent for the rest of your life of not answering me frankly now. Stop,” she added, taking the astonished porter’s arm and pulling him out of the lodge. “Look in that carriage at the corner of the street on the right and take care you are not seen. You will see some one watching the house. He is the woman’s husband. If you want blood here directly when she leaves, all you have to do is to prevent me going up to warn them. Good God, what are you afraid of? Search me if you want to make sure I have no weapon and would not harm them. My lover deceives me, I know, but I love him; do you hear? I love him, and I wish to save him. Cannot you see that I am not lying to you?”

Dominated by a will stretched to its uttermost, the man allowed himself to be pulled to the door. Luck, that blind and inexplicable chance which is our salvation and destruction in similar crises, sometimes by the most insignificant of coincidences, that luck whose constant favour to the audacious Jacques I mentioned, willed that at the moment when the porter looked towards the carriage Bonnivet leaned out a little. The man turned to Camille Favier with an agitated look.

“I can see him,” he cried; “it is the gentleman who the day before yesterday asked me some questions about the occupants of the house. He asked 201me if a M. Molan lived here, and when I replied 'No’ according to orders, he took a pocket-book from his pocket. 'What do you take me for?’ I asked him. I ought to have given the rascal a good hiding. Wait while I go and ask him if he has authority from the police to watch houses.”

“He will answer you that the street is common property, which is quite true,” said Camille, whose coolness had returned with the danger. Was it the inspiration of love? Was it a vague remembrance of the usual happenings on the stage? For our profession acts in us like automatic mechanism in the confusion of necessity. A plan formed itself in her imagination in which the honest porter would take a part, she knew, for Molan knew the way to make himself liked. “You will not prevent that man from staying there,” she went on, “you will only make him think there is something it is necessary to hide. He will make no mistake as to what that something is. Before coming here he must have received positive information. You want to help me to save your master, don’t you? Obey me.”

“You are right, mademoiselle,” the porter answered, changing his tone; “if I go and make a scene with him he will understand, and if it is his wife, he has the right not to want to be what he is. I meant to have warned M. Jacques when he went upstairs that I had been questioned, but he came with that lady.”

“I will warn him,” Camille said, “I undertake to do so. Now go and call a cab, but do not bring it 202into the courtyard, and leave me to act. I swear I will save him.”

She ran upstairs while the porter called a cab as she had ordered him. The simple object, if there must be a drama, of doing everything to prevent it taking place in his house, had made him as docile as if Camille had been the owner of the house, that incarnation of omnipotence to the Paris porter. When the plucky girl reached the landing before that door she had opened so many times with such sweet emotion, she had, in spite of the imminent danger, a moment’s weakness. The woman in her in a momentary flash revolted against the devotion love had suggested in such a rapid, almost animal, way, just as she would have jumped into the water to save Jacques if she had seen him drowning. Alas! she was not saving him alone! The image of her rival rose in front of her with that almost unbearable clearness of vision which accompanies the bitter attacks of the jealousy which knows it is not mistaken. Vengeance was there, however, so certain, so complete, so immediate and impersonal! It was sufficient to allow events to take their course down the slope upon which they had started.

When the poor child afterwards told me the details of this terrible day she did not make herself better than she really was. She confessed to me that the temptation was so strong that she had to act with frenzy and fury to put something irreparable between herself that moment, so she began to ring the bell at the door, first of all once, 203then twice, then three times, then ten times, with that prolonged ring which gives an accent of mad insistence to the bell. She could see in her mind as clearly as if she were in the room the two lovers, attracted by the bell, first laughing at the thought that it was an inopportune visitor, then exchanging glances in silence, Madam de Bonnivet in affright, and Jacques trying to reassure her, as they both got up. How she would have liked to have shouted “quick, quick!” Then she began to knock repeatedly at the door with her clenched fist. Afterwards she listened. It seemed to her, for the over-excitement of her anguish doubled the power of her senses, that she could distinguish a noise, a creaking of the floor beneath a stealthy step on the other side of the still closed door; and applying her mouth to the crack of the door to make sure of being heard—

“It is I, Jacques,” she cried, “It is I, Camille. Open the door, I beg of you, your life is in danger. Open the door, Pierre de Bonnivet is in the street.”

There was no reply. She was silent, listening once more and asking herself whether she were mistaken in thinking she heard a footstep. Then still more maddened, she began again to ring the bell at the risk of attracting the attention of some other resident in the house; she knocked at the door and called out: “Jacques, Jacques, open the door!” and she repeated: “Pierre de Bonnivet is below!” There was still no reply. In her paroxysm of fear a new idea occurred to her. She went down to the porter, who had come back with 204the cab, and who was now distracted and moaning in na?ve egoism.

“This comes of being too good. If anything happens we shall get discharged. Where shall we go then? Where shall we get another place?”

“Give me pencil and paper,” she said, “and see if the watcher is still there.”

“He is still there,” the porter answered, and seeing Camille fold the paper on which she had feverishly scribbled a few lines, “I see,” he said, “you are going to slip the note under the door. But that won’t get the lady out. If I had a row with the fellow, we should both be locked up, and while explanations were taking place she could escape and there would be no scandal in the house.”

“That would be one way,” Camille replied, though she could not, in spite of the gravity of the danger, help smiling at the idea of a struggle between the man of the people and the elegant sportsman Pierre de Bonnivet; “but I think mine is the better plan.”

She rushed up the staircase once more, and after ringing the bell as loudly as before, she slipped under the door, as the porter had guessed, the bit of paper on which she had written: “Jacques, I want to save you. At least believe in the love you have betrayed. What more can I say? Open the door. I swear to you that B—— is at the corner of the street watching for you. If you look to the right you will see his carriage, and I swear to you, too, that I will save you.”

205What a note, and how I preserve it, having obtained it from Jacques himself, as a monument of harrowing tenderness! It is impossible for me to transcribe it without shedding tears. The sublime lover had calculated that sooner or later Jacques would have to come to the door to go out. She also told herself that she would stand against the staircase wall till, after reading her supplication, he opened the door. With what a beating heart she watched her white note immediately disappear! A hand drew it inside. She could hear the rustle of the paper as the hand unfolded it and the noise of a window opening. Jacques was looking into the street, as she had told him to do, to verify for himself, in spite of the increasing darkness, the accuracy of the information contained in the strange missive. To the poor Duchess, although she had indicated the method of verification, this proof of distrust at that moment was really like the probing of a wound, the most painful spot in a painful wound! She had no time to think of this fresh humiliation. The door opened at last and the two lovers were in the anteroom facing one another: Camille a prey to her exaltation of sacrifice and martyrdom so strangely mingled with contempt and almost hatred; he pale and haggard, and looking untidy from his hasty toilet.

“Come,” he began in a low voice, “what is it? You know if you are lying, and have come to make a scene.”

“Be quiet, wretch!” she replied without 206deigning to lower her voice; “if I were a woman to make scenes, should I have neglected the opportunity when you came here with her last Tuesday at three o’clock? Yes, I was in that room, there behind the alcove, and I heard everything; do you understand? everything, I did not come out and I let you go. There is no question of that. The husband of that woman is at the corner of the street watching for you. You looked out of the window and saw the carriage. I don’t want him to kill you in spite of what you have done to me. I love you too well. That is the reason I am here.”

Molan had watched this strange girl’s face while she talked. Suspicious though he was, that being the punishment of men who have lied to women too often, he realized that Camille was speaking the truth. Then he made a generous movement, his first. If he is an egoist, comedian, and a knave, he does not lack courage. He has several times, because of slanderous articles, fought very unnecessarily and very bravely. Perhaps too, for the idea of playing to the gallery is never absent from certain minds even in solemn moments, he was thinking of the report of the drama, if drama there was, which the newspapers would publish far and wide. A few words he said to me later make one think so: “You must admit that I missed a magnificent advertisement!” But who can tell what the thought at the back of his head was, and perhaps after all those words were only the after-thought of a man of his kind 207to conceal his rare natural outbursts. Still, adjusting his jacket and taking his hat from a peg in the anteroom, he answered in a loud voice—

“I believe you and thank you. It is enough. I know now what I have to do.”

“Do you mean to go down?” she said. “You are going to meet danger? Will that save you, answer me, when you go and ask that man—what? What he is doing there? It would be sacrificing this woman, and you have no right to do so. If Bonnivet himself followed you, he saw a woman enter. If he had you followed, he knows that a woman is here. He must see a woman leave with you in a cab and conceal herself. He must follow the cab and leave this street clear for her to escape during that time. Ah, well! you must go out with me. There is a cab waiting. I have had it fetched. We will get into it; do not refuse and do not argue. Bonnivet will see us do so and will follow us in his carriage. He will expect to surprise you with her; he will surprise you with me, and you will be saved.” She took him in her arms unconsciously, then pushed him violently away from her and went on in a low voice: “We are almost the same height, go and ask for her cloak. She will take mine and go five minutes after us, after she has seen her husband’s carriage go. Wish her good-bye, and be sure she does not come to thank me. If I saw her I might not be able to control myself.”

She took off her long black cloak as she spoke and handed it to Jacques, who received it without a 208word. Certain women’s sacrifices have a magnificent simplicity which crushes the man who receives them. He can only accept them and be ashamed. Besides there was no time to hesitate. Necessity was there, implacable and inevitable. Jacques went into the drawing-room into which the anteroom opened, while Camille remained standing against the wall in the outer room. “I had a knife in my heart,” she told me afterwards, “and also a savage joy at the idea that I was overwhelming her by what I was doing; it was a sorrowful joy. I also loved him again, and I have never loved him so much as at that moment. I realized how pleasant it is to die for some one! At the same time I was obliged to master myself to prevent entering and insulting this wretch, tearing her chemise and striking her with my hands. Oh, God, what moments they were!”

While this miracle of love was taking place in the commonplace surroundings of this abode of love, the darkness had come. The street noises penetrated into this anteroom with a sort of sinister far-away sound, and the poor actress could hear a whispering quite close to her, the discussion taking place in the other room between the traitor for whom her devotion was meant and the accomplice in his treachery. At last the door opened and Jacques reappeared. He had his hat on his head and his fur collar turned up to conceal half his face. He had in his hand Madam de Bonnivet’s astrakhan jacket which Camille put on with a shudder. It was a little too large for her at the 209breast. “I thought she must be more beautiful than I am in spite of her slender appearance,” she said to me when telling me of this very feminine impression, and it was another puncture in her wound.

“Come,” Jacques went on after a period of silence. He watched her put on the jacket with an expression in which appeared the last gleam of that distrust, the first sign of which had been the opening of the window after the note to make sure that Bonnivet was really there. They descended the staircase without exchanging a word. At the lodge, while Jacques was telling the porter to call another cab as soon as the first had gone, Camille fastened her double veil over her face and slipped into the cab, hiding her face with a muff which she showed to Jacques once the door was shut.

“It is my poor plush muff,” she said jokingly to make his courage return by this proof of her coolness. “It does not go very well with this millionairess’ jacket. But at this distance and this time in the evening it will not be noticeable. Look through the window at the back of the cab and see whether the carriage at the corner of the street is following us.”

“He is following us,” Jacques said.

“Then you are saved,” she replied. She pressed his hand passionately, in her clasp allaying the anxiety of the cruel moments which she had been through and burst into tears. He could still find no words to thank her, and to relieve 210his embarrassment he tried, as he had often done when they were in a cab together, and had had a quarrel, to put his arm round the young woman’s waist, draw her towards him and snatch a kiss. His movement brought back her furious hatred and jealousy, and repulsing him fiercely she said—

“No, never, never again.”

“My poor Mila,” he said, calling her by a pet name he used in moments of passion.

“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted, “the woman of whom you are talking is dead, you have killed her.”

“But you love me,” he insisted. “Ah! how you love me to have done what you did just now!”

It was her turn to make him no answer. The cab reached the top of the Rue de Babylone without the two lovers exchanging any other words than this question which Camille asked from time to time: “Are we still being followed?” and Jacques’ reply: “Yes.”

This furious pursuit by the jealous husband displayed such an evident resolve for vengeance that the actress and her companion felt again the anguish they had already experienced—she when she recognized the face of the watcher at the window of the stationary carriage, he when the sound of the bell surprised him in Madam de Bonnivet’s arms. Would the husband be duped by the plan Camille had thought out? The fact of his waiting till their cab stopped to approach 211the two fugitives testified to his uncertainty, or else, sure of not losing sight of the cab, he preferred to have an explanation with the man whom he believed to be his wife’s lover in a more out-of-the-way place, where he would alight. At last Camille recognized the church of Saint Fran?ois Xavier which reared its two slender towers through the mist.

“Here is a good place to stop,” she said as she tapped for the driver to do so. “You will see the other carriage stop too and Bonnivet get out. He will rush towards us, and then we shall need all our coolness. Let me get out first, and if he asks why we conceal ourselves like this, talk of mother.”

It was one of those rapid scenes, which the actors themselves, when they recall them, think they have dreamt, and do not know whether they have experienced a sensation of tragedy or comedy. Life is like that, oscillating from one to the other of these two poles with an instantaneousness which has never been expressed, I think, by any writer and never will be. The change is too sudden. At the moment Camille set foot upon the pavement at the foot of the church steps, she saw Pierre de Bonnivet suddenly rise up before her; he took her arm and suddenly recognized her.

“Mademoiselle Favier!” he cried. Then he stopped, quite out of countenance, while Camille in terror cowered against Molan who had by this time also got out of the cab, and who, as if surprised at recognizing the man who had rushed toward 212his mistress, cried in a voice in which there was a tremor—

“Why, it is M. de Bonnivet!”

“Good gracious, mademoiselle,” Queen Anne’s husband stammered after a moment’s dead silence, “I must have seemed very strange to you just now, but I thought I recognized some one else.” In his hesitation a sudden, immense and unhoped-for joy quivered. The jealous husband had a proof that his suspicions were false. “I thought I recognized the friend of a friend of mine, and in Molan the friend himself. You will excuse me, will you not? What would have been a joke to her becomes to a person like yourself, whom I admire so much, and with whom I am so little acquainted, an unpardonable familiarity.”

“You are quite forgiven,” said Camille with a laugh, adding with as much presence of mind as if she had pronounced the phrase on the Vaudeville stage in the course of an imaginary crisis, instead of finding herself face to face with a real danger: “I live quite close here. I asked the famous author to see me home after rehearsal, and I had scruples about letting him return alone and on foot to civilization. I am going to get into my cab and leave you my cavalier to accompany you, M. de Bonnivet. Molan will explain to you that a woman can be an actress and a simple ordinary woman as well, very simple and very ordinary. Good-bye, Molan; good-bye, sir.”

She bowed her pretty head coquettishly, enveloping the two men in her lovely smile, and 213made towards the left side of the church where the sacristy was, while Jacques said to Bonnivet putting his finger to his lips—

“Because of her mother, you know.”

“I understand, you bad boy,” the other man replied with a hearty laugh. He continued to feel that gaiety of deliverance, so sweet as to be almost intoxicating, on emerging from a torturing crisis like the one he had just been through. He could have kissed where he stood the lover of his wife, whom he had all day been planning to kill, and he pushed him into his carriage, which was splashed with mud right up to the box through this fierce pursuit across Paris, saying as he did so: “Where shall I drop you? You know your Mademoiselle Favier is quite charming, with such distinction of manner too! She had such a way, too, of justifying her drive with you! Mind, I am asking no questions. I will apologize again to her when she is acting at my house. You might do so, too, for me, if you don’t mind! A likeness, you know, and at that hour a mistake is so easily made.”