“You’re a damned corsair,” he cried, thickly, banging his ham-like fist upon the table. “A corsair! First you sail in and plunder me of half my legitimate gains; and now you want to carry off my daughter. But I’ll be damned if I’ll give her to a graceless, nameless scoundrel like you, for whom the gallows are waiting already.”
Scaramouche pulled the bell-rope, not at all discomposed. He smiled. There was a flush on his cheeks and a gleam in his eyes. He was very pleased with the world that night. He really owed a great debt to M. de Lesdiguieres.
“Binet,” said he, “forget for once that you are Pantaloon, and behave as a nice, amiable father-in-law should behave when he has secured a son-in-law of exceptionable merits. We are going to have a bottle of Burgundy at my expense, and it shall be the best bottle of Burgundy to be found in Redon. Compose yourself to do fitting honour to it. Excitations of the bile invariably impair the fine sensitiveness of the palate.”
The Binet Troupe opened in Nantes—as you may discover in surviving copies of the “Courrier Nantais”—on the Feast of the Purification with “Les Fourberies de Scaramouche.” But they did not come to Nantes as hitherto they had gone to little country villages and townships, unheralded and depending entirely upon the parade of their entrance to attract attention to themselves. Andre-Louis had borrowed from the business methods of the Comedie Francaise. Carrying matters with a high hand entirely in his own fashion, he had ordered at Redon the printing of playbills, and four days before the company’s descent upon Nantes, these bills were pasted outside the Theatre Feydau and elsewhere about the town, and had attracted—being still sufficiently unusual announcements at the time—considerable attention. He had entrusted the matter to one of the company’s latest recruits, an intelligent young man named Basque, sending him on ahead of the company for the purpose.
You may see for yourself one of these playbills in the Carnavalet Museum. It details the players by their stage names only, with the exception of M. Binet and his daughter, and leaving out of account that he who plays Trivelin in one piece appears as Tabarin in another, it makes the company appear to be at least half as numerous again as it really was. It announces that they will open with “Les Fourberies de Scaramouche,” to be followed by five other plays of which it gives the titles, and by others not named, which shall also be added should the patronage to be received in the distinguished and enlightened city of Nantes encourage the Binet Troupe to prolong its sojourn at the Theatre Feydau. It lays great stress upon the fact that this is a company of improvisers in the old Italian manner, the like of which has not been seen in France for half a century, and it exhorts the public of Nantes not to miss this opportunity of witnessing these distinguished mimes who are reviving for them the glories of the Comedie de l’Art. Their visit to Nantes—the announcement proceeds—is preliminary to their visit to Paris, where they intend to throw down the glove to the actors of the Comedie Francaise, and to show the world how superior is the art of the improviser to that of the actor who depends upon an author for what he shall say, and who consequently says always the same thing every time that he plays in the same piece.
It is an audacious bill, and its audacity had scared M. Binet out of the little sense left him by the Burgundy which in these days he could afford to abuse. He had offered the most vehement opposition. Part of this Andre-Louis had swept aside; part he had disregarded.
“I admit that it is audacious,” said Scaramouche. “But at your time of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds like audacity.”
“I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it,” M. Binet insisted.
“I knew you would. Just as I know that you’ll be very grateful to me presently for not obeying you.”
“You are inviting a catastrophe.”
“I am inviting fortune. The worst catastrophe that can overtake you is to be back in the market-halls of the country villages from which I rescued you. I’ll have you in Paris yet in spite of yourself. Leave this to me.”
And he went out to attend to the printing. Nor did his preparations end there. He wrote a piquant article on the glories of the Comedie de l’Art, and its resurrection by the improvising troupe of the great mime Florimond Binet. Binet’s name was not Florimond; it was just Pierre. But Andre-Louis had a great sense of the theatre. That article was an amplification of the stimulating matter contained in the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who had relations in Nantes, to use all the influence he could command, and all the bribery they could afford, to get that article printed in the “Courrier Nantais” a couple of days before the arrival of the Binet Troupe.
Basque had succeeded, and, considering the undoubted literary merits and intrinsic interest of the article, this is not at all surprising.
And so it was upon an already expectant city that Binet and his company descended in that first week of February. M. Binet would have made his entrance in the usual manner—a full-dress parade with banging drums and crashing cymbals. But to this Andre-Louis offered the most relentless opposition.
“We should but discover our poverty,” said he. “Instead, we will creep into the city unobserved, and leave ourselves to the imagination of the public.”
He had his way, of course. M. Binet, worn already with battling against the strong waters of this young man’s will, was altogether unequal to the contest now that he found Climene in alliance with Scaramouche, adding her insistence to his, and joining with him in reprobation of her father’s sluggish and reactionary wits. Metaphorically, M. Binet threw up his arms, and cursing the day on which he had taken this young man into his troupe, he allowed the current to carry him whither it would. He was persuaded that he would be drowned in the end. Meanwhile he would drown his vexation in Burgundy. At least there was abundance of Burgundy. Never in his life had he found Burgundy so plentiful. Perhaps things were not as bad as he imagined, after all. He reflected that, when all was said, he had to thank Scaramouche for the Burgundy. Whilst fearing the worst, he would hope for the best.
And it was very much the worst that he feared as he waited in the wings when the curtain rose on that first performance of theirs at the Theatre Feydau to a house that was tolerably filled by a public whose curiosity the preliminary announcements had thoroughly stimulated.
Although the scenario of “Lee Fourberies de Scaramouche” has not apparently survived, yet we know from Andre-Louis’ “Confessions” that it is opened by Polichinelle in the character of an arrogant and fiercely jealous lover shown in the act of beguiling the waiting-maid, Columbine, to play the spy upon her mistress, Climene. Beginning with cajolery, but failing in this with the saucy Columbine, who likes cajolers to be at least attractive and to pay a due deference to her own very piquant charms, the fierce humpbacked scoundrel passes on to threats of the terrible vengeance he will wreak upon her if she betrays him or neglects to obey him implicitly; failing here, likewise, he finally has recourse to bribery, and after he has bled himself freely to the very expectant Columbine, he succeeds by these means in obtaining her consent to spy upon Climene, and to report to him upon her lady’s conduct.
The pair played the scene well together, stimulated, perhaps, by their very nervousness at finding themselves before so imposing an audience. Polichinelle was everything that is fierce, contemptuous, and insistent. Columbine was the essence of pert indifference under his cajolery, saucily mocking under his threats, and finely sly in extorting the very maximum when it came to accepting a bribe. Laughter rippled through the audience and promised well. But M. Binet, standing trembling in the wings, missed the great guffaws of the rustic spectators to whom they had played hitherto, and his fears steadily mounted.
Then, scarcely has Polichinelle departed by the door than Scaramouche bounds in through the window. It was an effective entrance, usually performed with a broad comic effect that set the people in a roar. Not so on this occasion. Meditating in bed that morning, Scaramouche had decided to present himself in a totally different aspect. He would cut out all the broad play, all the usual clowning which had delighted their past rude audiences, and he would obtain his effects by subtlety instead. He would present a slyly humorous rogue, restrained, and of a certain dignity, wearing a countenance of complete solemnity, speaking his lines drily, as if unconscious of the humour with which he intended to invest them. Thus, though it might take the audience longer to understand and discover him, they would like him all the better in the end.
True to that resolve, he now played his part as the friend and hired ally of the lovesick Leandre, on whose behalf he came for news of Climene, seizing the opportunity to further his own amour with Columbine and his designs upon the money-bags of Pantaloon. Also he had taken certain liberties with the traditional costume of Scaramouche; he had caused the black doublet and breeches to be slashed with red, and the doublet to be cut more to a peak, a la Henri III. The conventional black velvet cap he had replaced by a conical hat with a turned-up brim, and a tuft of feathers on the left, and he had discarded the guitar.
M. Binet listened desperately for the roar of laughter that usually greeted the entrance of Scaramouche, and his dismay increased when it did not come. And then he became conscious of something alarmingly unusual in Scaramouche’s manner. The sibilant foreign accent was there, but none of the broad boisterousness their audiences had loved.
He wrung his hands in despair. “It is all over!” he said. “The fellow has ruined us! It serves me right for being a fool, and allowing him to take control of everything!”
But he was profoundly mistaken. He began to have an inkling of this when presently himself he took the stage, and found the public attentive, remarked a grin of quiet appreciation on every upturned face. It was not, however, until the thunders of applause greeted the fall of the curtain on the first act that he felt quite sure they would be allowed to escape with their lives.
Had the part of Pantaloon in “Les Fourberies” been other than that of a blundering, timid old idiot, Binet would have ruined it by his apprehensions. As it was, those very apprehensions, magnifying as they did the hesitancy and bewilderment that were the essence of his part, contributed to the success. And a success it proved that more than justified all the heralding of which Scaramouche had been guilty.
For Scaramouche himself this success was not confined to the public. At the end of the play a great reception awaited him from his companions assembled in the green-room of the theatre. His talent, resource, and energy had raised them in a few weeks from a pack of vagrant mountebanks to a self-respecting company of first-rate players. They acknowledged it generously in a speech entrusted to Polichinelle, adding the tribute to his genius that, as they had conquered Nantes, so would they conquer the world under his guidance.
In their enthusiasm they were a little neglectful of the feelings of M. Binet. Irritated enough had he been already by the overriding of his every wish, by the consciousness of his weakness when opposed to Scaramouche. And, although he had suffered the gradual process of usurpation of authority because its every step had been attended by his own greater profit, deep down in him the resentment abode to stifle every spark of that gratitude due from him to his partner. To-night his nerves had been on the rack, and he had suffered agonies of apprehension, for all of which he blamed Scaramouche so bitterly that not even the ultimate success—almost miraculous when all the elements are considered—could justify his partner in his eyes.
And now, to find himself, in addition, ignored by this company—his own company, which he had so laboriously and slowly assembled and selected among the men of ability whom he had found here and there in the dregs of cities—was something that stirred his bile, and aroused the malevolence that never did more than slumber in him. But deeply though his rage was moved, it did not blind him to the folly of betraying it. Yet that he should assert himself in this hour was imperative unless he were for ever to become a thing of no account in this troupe over which he had lorded it for long months before this interloper came amongst them to fill his purse and destroy his authority.
So he stepped forward now when Polichinelle had done. His make-up assisting him to mask his bitter feelings, he professed to add his own to Polichinelle’s acclamations of his dear partner. But he did it in such a manner as to make it clear that what Scaramouche had done, he had done by M. Binet’s favour, and that in all M. Binet’s had been the guiding hand. In associating himself with Polichinelle, he desired to thank Scaramouche, much in the manner of a lord rendering thanks to his steward for services diligently rendered and orders scrupulously carried out.
It neither deceived the troupe nor mollified himself. Indeed, his consciousness of the mockery of it but increased his bitterness. But at least it saved his face and rescued him from nullity—he who was their chief.
To say, as I have said, that it did not deceive them, is perhaps to say too much, for it deceived them at least on the score of his feelings. They believed, after discounting the insinuations in which he took all credit to himself, that at heart he was filled with gratitude, as they were. That belief was shared by Andre-Louis himself, who in his brief, grateful answer was very generous to M. Binet, more than endorsing the claims that M. Binet had made.
And then followed from him the announcement that their success in Nantes was the sweeter to him because it rendered almost immediately attainable the dearest wish of his heart, which was to make Climene his wife. It was a felicity of which he was the first to acknowledge his utter unworthiness. It was to bring him into still closer relations with his good friend M. Binet, to whom he owed all that he had achieved for himself and for them. The announcement was joyously received, for the world of the theatre loves a lover as dearly as does the greater world. So they acclaimed the happy pair, with the exception of poor Leandre, whose eyes were more melancholy than ever.
They were a happy family that night in the upstairs room of their inn on the Quai La Fosse—the same inn from which Andre-Louis had set out some weeks ago to play a vastly different role before an audience of Nantes. Yet was it so different, he wondered? Had he not then been a sort of Scaramouche—an intriguer, glib and specious, deceiving folk, cynically misleading them with opinions that were not really his own? Was it at all surprising that he should have made so rapid and signal a success as a mime? Was not this really all that he had ever been, the thing for which Nature had designed him?
On the following night they played “The Shy Lover” to a full house, the fame of their debut having gone abroad, and the success of Monday was confirmed. On Wednesday they gave “Figaro-Scaramouche,” and on Thursday morning the “Courrier Nantais” came out with an article of more than a column of praise of these brilliant improvisers, for whom it claimed that they utterly put to shame the mere reciters of memorized parts.
Andre-Louis, reading the sheet at breakfast, and having no delusions on the score of the falseness of that statement, laughed inwardly. The novelty of the thing, and the pretentiousness in which he had swaddled it, had deceived them finely. He turned to greet Binet and Climene, who entered at that moment. He waved the sheet above his head.
“It is settled,” he announced, “we stay in Nantes until Easter.”
“Do we?” said Binet, sourly. “You settle everything, my friend.”
“Read for yourself.” And he handed him the paper.
Moodily M. Binet read. He set the sheet down in silence, and turned his attention to his breakfast.
“Was I justified or not?” quoth Andre-Louis, who found M. Binet’s behaviour a thought intriguing.
“In what?”
“In coming to Nantes?”
“If I had not thought so, we should not have come,” said Binet, and he began to eat.
Andre-Louis dropped the subject, wondering.
After breakfast he and Climene sallied forth to take the air upon the quays. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and less cold than it had lately been. Columbine tactlessly joined them as they were setting out, though in this respect matters were improved a little when Harlequin came running after them, and attached himself to Columbine.
Andre-Louis, stepping out ahead with Climene, spoke of the thing that was uppermost in his mind at the moment.
“Your father is behaving very oddly towards me,” said he. “It is almost as if he had suddenly become hostile.”
“You imagine it,” said she. “My father is very grateful to you, as we all are.”
“He is anything but grateful. He is infuriated against me; and I think I know the reason. Don’t you? Can’t you guess?”
“I can’t, indeed.”
“If you were my daughter, Climene, which God be thanked you are not, I should feel aggrieved against the man who carried you away from me. Poor old Pantaloon! He called me a corsair when I told him that I intend to marry you.”
“He was right. You are a bold robber, Scaramouche.”
“It is in the character,” said he. “Your father believes in having his mimes play upon the stage the parts that suit their natural temperaments.”
“Yes, you take everything you want, don’t you?” She looked up at him, half adoringly, half shyly.
“If it is possible,” said he. “I took his consent to our marriage by main force from him. I never waited for him to give it. When, in fact, he refused it, I just snatched it from him, and I’ll defy him now to win it back from me. I think that is what he most resents.”
She laughed, and launched upon an animated answer. But he did not hear a word of it. Through the bustle of traffic on the quay a cabriolet, the upper half of which was almost entirely made of glass, had approached them. It was drawn by two magnificent bay horses and driven by a superbly livened coachman.
In the cabriolet alone sat a slight young girl wrapped in a lynx-fur pelisse, her face of a delicate loveliness. She was leaning forward, her lips parted, her eyes devouring Scaramouche until they drew his gaze. When that happened, the shock of it brought him abruptly to a dumfounded halt.
Climene, checking in the middle of a sentence, arrested by his own sudden stopping, plucked at his sleeve.
“What is it, Scaramouche?”
But he made no attempt to answer her, and at that moment the coachman, to whom the little lady had already signalled, brought the carriage to a standstill beside them. Seen in the gorgeous setting of that coach with its escutcheoned panels, its portly coachman and its white-stockinged footman—who swung instantly to earth as the vehicle stopped—its dainty occupant seemed to Climene a princess out of a fairy-tale. And this princess leaned forward, with eyes aglow and cheeks aflush, stretching out a choicely gloved hand to Scaramouche.
“Andre-Louis!” she called him.
And Scaramouche took the hand of that exalted being, just as he might have taken the hand of Climene herself, and with eyes that reflected the gladness of her own, in a voice that echoed the joyous surprise of hers, he addressed her familiarly by name, just as she had addressed him.
“Aline!”
“The door,” Aline commanded her footman, and “Mount here beside me,” she commanded Andre-Louis, in the same breath.
“A moment, Aline.”
He turned to his companion, who was all amazement, and to Harlequin and Columbine, who had that moment come up to share it. “You permit me, Climene?” said he, breathlessly. But it was more a statement than a question. “Fortunately you are not alone. Harlequin will take care of you. Au revoir, at dinner.”
With that he sprang into the cabriolet without waiting for a reply. The footman closed the door, the coachman cracked his whip, and the regal equipage rolled away along the quay, leaving the three comedians staring after it, open-mouthed... Then Harlequin laughed.
“A prince in disguise, our Scaramouche!” said he.
Columbine clapped her hands and flashed her strong teeth. “But what a romance for you, Climene! How wonderful!”
The frown melted from Climene’s brow. Resentment changed to bewilderment.
“But who is she?”
“His sister, of course,” said Harlequin, quite definitely.
“His sister? How do you know?”
“I know what he will tell you on his return.”
“But why?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe him if he said she was his mother.”
Following the carriage with their glance, they wandered on in the direction it had taken. And in the carriage Aline was considering Andre-Louis with grave eyes, lips slightly compressed, and a tiny frown between her finely drawn eyebrows.
“You have taken to queer company, Andre,” was the first thing she said to him. “Or else I am mistaken in thinking that your companion was Mlle. Binet of the Theatre Feydau.”
“You are not mistaken. But I had not imagined Mlle. Binet so famous already.”
“Oh, as to that...” mademoiselle shrugged, her tone quietly scornful. And she explained. “It is simply that I was at the play last night. I thought I recognized her.”
“You were at the Feydau last night? And I never saw you!”
“Were you there, too?”
“Was I there!” he cried. Then he checked, and abruptly changed his tone. “Oh, yes, I was there,” he said, as commonplace as he could, beset by a sudden reluctance to avow that he had so willingly descended to depths that she must account unworthy, and grateful that his disguise of face and voice should have proved impenetrable even to one who knew him so very well.
“I understand,” said she, and compressed her lips a little more tightly.
“But what do you understand?”
“The rare attractions of Mlle. Binet. Naturally you would be at the theatre. Your tone conveyed it very clearly. Do you know that you disappoint me, Andre? It is stupid of me, perhaps; it betrays, I suppose, my imperfect knowledge of your sex. I am aware that most young men of fashion find an irresistible attraction for creatures who parade themselves upon the stage. But I did not expect you to ape the ways of a man of fashion. I was foolish enough to imagine you to be different; rather above such trivial pursuits. I conceived you something of an idealist.”
“Sheer flattery.”
“So I perceive. But you misled me. You talked so much morality of a kind, you made philosophy so readily, that I came to be deceived. In fact, your hypocrisy was so consummate that I never suspected it. With your gift of acting I wonder that you haven’t joined Mlle. Binet’s troupe.”
“I have,” said he.
It had really become necessary to tell her, making choice of the lesser of the two evils with which she confronted him.
He saw first incredulity, then consternation, and lastly disgust overspread her face.
“Of course,” said she, after a long pause, “that would have the advantage of bringing you closer to your charmer.”
“That was only one of the inducements. There was another. Finding myself forced to choose between the stage and the gallows, I had the incredible weakness to prefer the former. It was utterly unworthy of a man of my lofty ideals, but—what would you? Like other ideologists, I find it easier to preach than to practise. Shall I stop the carriage and remove the contamination of my disgusting person? Or shall I tell you how it happened?”
“Tell me how it happened first. Then we will decide.”
He told her how he met the Binet Troupe, and how the men of the marechaussee forced upon him the discovery that in its bosom he could lie safely lost until the hue and cry had died down. The explanation dissolved her iciness.
“My poor Andre, why didn’t you tell me this at first?”
“For one thing, you didn’t give me time; for another, I feared to shock you with the spectacle of my degradation.”
She took him seriously. “But where was the need of it? And why did you not send us word as I required you of your whereabouts?”
“I was thinking of it only yesterday. I have hesitated for several reasons.”
“You thought it would offend us to know what you were doing?”
“I think that I preferred to surprise you by the magnitude of my ultimate achievements.”
“Oh, you are to become a great actor?” She was frankly scornful.
“That is not impossible. But I am more concerned to become a great author. There is no reason why you should sniff. The calling is an honourable one. All the world is proud to know such men as Beaumarchais and Chenier.”
“And you hope to equal them?”
“I hope to surpass them, whilst acknowledging that it was they who taught me how to walk. What did you think of the play last night?”
“It was amusing and well conceived.”
“Let me present you to the author.”
“You? But the company is one of the improvisers.”
“Even improvisers require an author to write their scenarios. That is all I write at present. Soon I shall be writing plays in the modern manner.”
“You deceive yourself, my poor Andre. The piece last night would have been nothing without the players. You are fortunate in your Scaramouche.”
“In confidence—I present you to him.”
“You—Scaramouche? You?” She turned to regard him fully. He smiled his close-lipped smile that made wrinkles like gashes in his cheeks. He nodded. “And I didn’t recognize you!”
“I thank you for the tribute. You imagined, of course, that I was a scene-shifter. And now that you know all about me, what of Gavrillac? What of my godfather?”
He was well, she told him, and still profoundly indignant with Andre-Louis for his defection, whilst secretly concerned on his behalf.
“I shall write to him to-day that I have seen you.”
“Do so. Tell him that I am well and prospering. But say no more. Do not tell him what I am doing. He has his prejudices too. Besides, it might not be prudent. And now the question I have been burning to ask ever since I entered your carriage. Why are you in Nantes, Aline?”
“I am on a visit to my aunt, Mme. de Sautron. It was with her that I came to the play yesterday. We have been dull at the chateau; but it will be different now. Madame my aunt is receiving several guests to-day. M. de La Tour d’Azyr is to be one of them.”
Andre-Louis frowned and sighed. “Did you ever hear, Aline, how poor Philippe de Vilmorin came by his end?”
“Yes; I was told, first by my uncle; then by M. de La Tour d’Azyr, himself.”
“Did not that help you to decide this marriage question?”
“How could it? You forget that I am but a woman. You don’t expect me to judge between men in matters such as these?”
“Why not? You are well able to do so. The more since you have heard two sides. For my godfather would tell you the truth. If you cannot judge, it is that you do not wish to judge.” His tone became harsh. “Wilfully you close your eyes to justice that might check the course of your unhealthy, unnatural ambition.”
“Excellent!” she exclaimed, and considered him with amusement and something else. “Do you know that you are almost droll? You rise unblushing from the dregs of life in which I find you, and shake off the arm of that theatre girl, to come and preach to me.”
“If these were the dregs of life I might still speak from them to counsel you out of my respect and devotion, Aline.” He was very, stiff and stern. “But they are not the dregs of life. Honour and virtue are possible to a theatre girl; they are impossible to a lady who sells herself to gratify ambition; who for position, riches, and a great title barters herself in marriage.”
She looked at him breathlessly. Anger turned her pale. She reached for the cord.
“I think I had better let you alight so that you may go back to practise virtue and honour with your theatre wench.”
“You shall not speak so of her, Aline.”
“Faith, now we are to have heat on her behalf. You think I am too delicate? You think I should speak of her as a...”
“If you must speak of her at all,” he interrupted, hotly, “you’ll speak of her as my wife.”
Amazement smothered her anger. Her pallor deepened. “My God!” she said, and looked at him in horror. And in horror she asked him presently: “You are married—married to that—?”
“Not yet. But I shall be, soon. And let me tell you that this girl whom you visit with your ignorant contempt is as good and pure as you are, Aline. She has wit and talent which have placed her where she is and shall carry her a deal farther. And she has the womanliness to be guided by natural instincts in the selection of her mate.”
She was trembling with passion. She tugged the cord.
“You will descend this instant!” she told him fiercely. “That you should dare to make a comparison between me and that...”
“And my wife-to-be,” he interrupted, before she could speak the infamous word. He opened the door for himself without waiting for the footman, and leapt down. “My compliments,” said he, furiously, “to the assassin you are to marry.” He slammed the door. “Drive on,” he bade the coachman.
The carriage rolled away up the Faubourg Gigan, leaving him standing where he had alighted, quivering with rage. Gradually, as he walked back to the inn, his anger cooled. Gradually, as he cooled, he perceived her point of view, and in the end forgave her. It was not her fault that she thought as she thought. Her rearing had been such as to make her look upon every actress as a trull, just as it had qualified her calmly to consider the monstrous marriage of convenience into which she was invited.
He got back to the inn to find the company at table. Silence fell when he entered, so suddenly that of necessity it must be supposed he was himself the subject of the conversation. Harlequin and Columbine had spread the tale of this prince in disguise caught up into the chariot of a princess and carried off by her; and it was a tale that had lost nothing in the telling.
Climene had been silent and thoughtful, pondering what Columbine had called this romance of hers. Clearly her Scaramouche must be vastly other than he had hitherto appeared, or else that great lady and he would never have used such familiarity with each other. Imagining him no better than he was, Climene had made him her own. And now she was to receive the reward of disinterested affection.
Even old Binet’s secret hostility towards Andre-Louis melted before this astounding revelation. He had pinched his daughter’s ear quite playfully. “Ah, ah, trust you to have penetrated his disguise, my child!”
She shrank resentfully from that implication.
“But I did not. I took him for what he seemed.”
Her father winked at her very solemnly and laughed. “To be sure, you did. But like your father, who was once a gentleman, and knows the ways of gentlemen, you detected in him a subtle something different from those with whom misfortune has compelled you hitherto to herd. You knew as well as I did that he never caught that trick of haughtiness, that grand air of command, in a lawyer’s musty office, and that his speech had hardly the ring or his thoughts the complexion of the bourgeois that he pretended to be. And it was shrewd of you to have made him yours. Do you know that I shall be very proud of you yet, Climene?”
She moved away without answering. Her father’s oiliness offended her. Scaramouche was clearly a great gentleman, an eccentric if you please, but a man born. And she was to be his lady. Her father must learn to treat her differently.
She looked shyly—with a new shyness—at her lover when he came into the room where they were dining. She observed for the first time that proud carriage of the head, with the chin thrust forward, that was a trick of his, and she noticed with what a grace he moved—the grace of one who in youth has had his dancing-masters and fencing-masters.
It almost hurt her when he flung himself into a chair and exchanged a quip with Harlequin in the usual manner as with an equal, and it offended her still more that Harlequin, knowing what he now knew, should use him with the same unbecoming familiarity.
“Do you know,” said Climene, “that I am waiting for the explanation which I think you owe me?”
They were alone together, lingering still at the table to which Andre-Louis had come belatedly, and Andre-Louis was loading himself a pipe. Of late—since joining the Binet Troupe—he had acquired the habit of smoking. The others had gone, some to take the air and others, like Binet and Madame, because they felt that it were discreet to leave those two to the explanations that must pass. It was a feeling that Andre-Louis did not share. He kindled a light and leisurely applied it to his pipe. A frown came to settle on his brow.
“Explanation?” he questioned presently, and looked at her. “But on what score?”
“On the score of the deception you have practised on us—on me.”
“I have practised none,” he assured her.
“You mean that you have simply kept your own counsel, and that in silence there is no deception. But it is deceitful to withhold facts concerning yourself and your true station from your future wife. You should not have pretended to be a simple country lawyer, which, of course, any one could see that you are not. It may have been very romantic, but... Enfin, will you explain?”
“I see,” he said, and pulled at his pipe. “But you are wrong, Climene. I have practised no deception. If there are things about me that I have not told you, it is that I did not account them of much importance. But I have never deceived you by pretending to be other than I am. I am neither more nor less than I have represented myself.”
This persistence began to annoy her, and the annoyance showed on her winsome face, coloured her voice.
“Ha! And that fine lady of the nobility with whom you are so intimate, who carried you off in her cabriolet with so little ceremony towards myself? What is she to you?”
“A sort of sister,” said he.
“A sort of sister!” She was indignant. “Harlequin foretold that you would say so; but he was amusing himself. It was not very funny. It is less funny still from you. She has a name, I suppose, this sort of sister?”
“Certainly she has a name. She is Mlle. Aline de Kercadiou, the niece of Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac.”
“Oho! That’s a sufficiently fine name for your sort of sister. What sort of sister, my friend?”
For the first time in their relationship he observed and deplored the taint of vulgarity, of shrewishness, in her manner.
“It would have been more accurate in me to have said a sort of reputed left-handed cousin.”
“A reputed left-handed cousin! And what sort of relationship may that be? Faith, you dazzle me with your lucidity.”
“It requires to be explained.”
“That is what I have been telling you. But you seem very reluctant with your explanations.”
“Oh, no. It is only that they are so unimportant. But be you the judge. Her uncle, M. de Kercadiou, is my godfather, and she and I have been playmates from infancy as a consequence. It is popularly believed in Gavrillac that M. de Kercadiou is my father. He has certainly cared for my rearing from my tenderest years, and it is entirely owing to him that I was educated at Louis le Grand. I owe to him everything that I have—or, rather, everything that I had; for of my own free will I have cut myself adrift, and to-day I possess nothing save what I can earn for myself in the theatre or elsewhere.”
She sat stunned and pale under that cruel blow to her swelling pride. Had he told her this but yesterday, it would have made no impression upon her, it would have mattered not at all; the event of to-day coming as a sequel would but have enhanced him in her eyes. But coming now, after her imagination had woven for him so magnificent a background, after the rashly assumed discovery of his splendid identity had made her the envied of all the company, after having been in her own eyes and theirs enshrined by marriage with him as a great lady, this disclosure crushed and humiliated her. Her prince in disguise was merely the outcast bastard of a country gentleman! She would be the laughing-stock of every member of her father’s troupe, of all those who had so lately envied her this romantic good fortune.
“You should have told me this before,” she said, in a dull voice that she strove to render steady.
“Perhaps I should. But does it really matter?”
“Matter?” She suppressed her fury to ask another question. “You say that this M. de Kercadiou is popularly believed to be your father. What precisely do you mean?”
“Just that. It is a belief that I do not share. It is a matter of instinct, perhaps, with me. Moreover, once I asked M. de Kercadiou point-blank, and I received from him a denial. It is not, perhaps, a denial to which one would attach too much importance in all the circumstances. Yet I have never known M. de Kercadiou for other than a man of strictest honour, and I should hesitate to disbelieve him—particularly when his statement leaps with my own instincts. He assured me that he did not know who my father was.”
“And your mother, was she equally ignorant?” She was sneering, but he did not remark it. Her back was to the light.
“He would not disclose her name to me. He confessed her to be a dear friend of his.”
She startled him by laughing, and her laugh was not pleasant.
“A very dear friend, you may be sure, you simpleton. What name do you bear?”
He restrained his own rising indignation to answer her question calmly: “Moreau. It was given me, so I am told, from the Brittany village in which I was born. But I have no claim to it. In fact I have no name, unless it be Scaramouche, to which I have earned a title. So that you see, my dear,” he ended with a smile, “I have practised no deception whatever.”
“No, no. I see that now.” She laughed without mirth, then drew a deep breath and rose. “I am very tired,” she said.
He was on his feet in an instant, all solicitude. But she waved him wearily back.
“I think I will rest until it is time to go to the theatre.” She moved towards the door, dragging her feet a little. He sprang to open it, and she passed out without looking at him.
Her so brief romantic dream was ended. The glorious world of fancy which in the last hour she had built with such elaborate detail, over which it should be her exalted destiny to rule, lay shattered about her feet, its debris so many stumbling-blocks that prevented her from winning back to her erstwhile content in Scaramouche as he really was.
Andre-Louis sat in the window embrasure, smoking and looking idly out across the river. He was intrigued and meditative. He had shocked her. The fact was clear; not so the reason. That he should confess himself nameless should not particularly injure him in the eyes of a girl reared amid the surroundings that had been Climene’s. And yet that his confession had so injured him was fully apparent.
There, still at his brooding, the returning Columbine discovered him a half-hour later.
“All alone, my prince!” was her laughing greeting, which suddenly threw light upon his mental darkness. Climene had been disappointed of hopes that the wild imagination of these players had suddenly erected upon the incident of his meeting with Aline. Poor child! He smiled whimsically at Columbine.
“I am likely to be so for some little time,” said he, “until it becomes a commonplace that I am not, after all, a prince.
“Not a prince? Oh, but a duke, then—at least a marquis.”
“Not even a chevalier, unless it be of the order of fortune. I am just Scaramouche. My castles are all in Spain.”
Disappointment clouded the lively, good-natured face.
“And I had imagined you...”
“I know,” he interrupted. “That is the mischief.” He might have gauged the extent of that mischief by Climene’s conduct that evening towards the gentlemen of fashion who clustered now in the green-room between the acts to pay their homage to the incomparable amoureuse. Hitherto she had received them with a circumspection compelling respect. To-night she was recklessly gay, impudent, almost wanton.
He spoke of it gently to her as they walked home together, counselling more prudence in the future.
“We are not married yet,” she told him, tartly. “Wait until then before you criticize my conduct.”
“I trust that there will be no occasion then,” said he.
“You trust? Ah, yes. You are very trusting.”
“Climene, I have offended you. I am sorry.”
“It is nothing,” said she. “You are what you are.” Still was he not concerned. He perceived the source of her ill-humour; understood, whilst deploring it; and, because he understood, forgave. He perceived also that her ill-humour was shared by her father, and by this he was frankly amused. Towards M. Binet a tolerant contempt was the only feeling that complete acquaintance could beget. As for the rest of the company, they were disposed to be very kindly towards Scaramouche. It was almost as if in reality he had fallen from the high estate to which their own imaginations had raised him; or possibly it was because they saw the effect which that fall from his temporary and fictitious elevation had produced upon Climene.
Leandre alone made himself an exception. His habitual melancholy seemed to be dispelled at last, and his eyes gleamed now with malicious satisfaction when they rested upon Scaramouche, whom occasionally he continued to address with sly mockery as “mon prince.”
On the morrow Andre-Louis saw but little of Climene. This was not in itself extraordinary, for he was very hard at work again, with preparations now for “Figaro-Scaramouche” which was to be played on Saturday. Also, in addition to his manifold theatrical occupations, he now devoted an hour every morning to the study of fencing in an academy of arms. This was done not only to repair an omission in his education, but also, and chiefly, to give him added grace and poise upon the stage. He found his mind that morning distracted by thoughts of both Climene and Aline. And oddly enough it was Aline who provided the deeper perturbation. Climene’s attitude he regarded as a passing phase which need not seriously engage him. But the thought of Aline’s conduct towards him kept rankling, and still more deeply rankled the thought of her possible betrothal to M. de La Tour d’Azyr.
This it was that brought forcibly to his mind the self-imposed but by now half-forgotten mission that he had made his own. He had boasted that he would make the voice which M. de La Tour d’Azyr had sought to silence ring through the length and breadth of the land. And what had he done of all this that he had boasted? He had incited the mob of Rennes and the mob of Nantes in such terms as poor Philippe might have employed, and then because of a hue and cry he had fled like a cur and taken shelter in the first kennel that offered, there to lie quiet and devote himself to other things—self-seeking things. What a fine contrast between the promise and the fulfilment!
Thus Andre-Louis to himself in his self-contempt. And whilst he trifled away his time and played Scaramouche, and centred all his hopes in presently becoming the rival of such men as Chenier and Mercier, M. de La Tour d’Azyr went his proud ways unchallenged and wrought his will. It was idle to tell himself that the seed he had sown was bearing fruit. That the demands he had voiced in Nantes for the Third Estate had been granted by M. Necker, thanks largely to the commotion which his anonymous speech had made. That was not his concern or his mission. It was no part of his concern to set about the regeneration of mankind, or even the regeneration of the social structure of France. His concern was to see that M. de La Tour d’Azyr paid to the uttermost liard for the brutal wrong he had done Philippe de Vilmorin. And it did not increase his self-respect to find that the danger in which Aline stood of being married to the Marquis was the real spur to his rancour and to remembrance of his vow. He was—too unjustly, perhaps—disposed to dismiss as mere sophistries his own arguments that there was nothing he could do; that, in fact, he had but to show his head to find himself going to Rennes under arrest and making his final exit from the world’s stage by way of the gallows.
It is impossible to read that part of his “Confessions” without feeling a certain pity for him. You realize what must have been his state of mind. You realize what a prey he was to emotions so conflicting, and if you have the imagination that will enable you to put yourself in his place, you will also realize how impossible was any decision save the one to which he says he came, that he would move, at the first moment that he perceived in what direction it would serve his real aims to move.
It happened that the first person he saw when he took the stage on that Thursday evening was Aline; the second was the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. They occupied a box on the right of, and immediately above, the stage. There were others with them—notably a thin, elderly, resplendent lady whom Andre-Louis supposed to be Madame la Comtesse de Sautron. But at the time he had no eyes for any but those two, who of late had so haunted his thoughts. The sight of either of them would have been sufficiently disconcerting. The sight of both together very nearly made him forget the purpose for which he had come upon the stage. Then he pulled himself together, and played. He played, he says, with an unusual nerve, and never in all that brief but eventful career of his was he more applauded.
That was the evening’s first shock. The next came after the second act. Entering the green-room he found it more thronged than usual, and at the far end with Climene, over whom he was bending from his fine height, his eyes intent upon her face, what time his smiling lips moved in talk, M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He had her entirely to himself, a privilege none of the men of fashion who were in the habit of visiting the coulisse had yet enjoyed. Those lesser gentlemen had all withdrawn before the Marquis, as jackals withdraw before the lion.
Andre-Louis stared a moment, stricken. Then recovering from his surprise he became critical in his study of the Marquis. He considered the beauty and grace and splendour of him, his courtly air, his complete and unshakable self-possession. But more than all he considered the expression of the dark eyes that were devouring Climene’s lovely face, and his own lips tightened.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr never heeded him or his stare; nor, had he done so, would he have known who it was that looked at him from behind the make-up of Scaramouche; nor, again, had he known, would he have been in the least troubled or concerned.
Andre-Louis sat down apart, his mind in turmoil. Presently he found a mincing young gentleman addressing him, and made shift to answer as was expected. Climene having been thus sequestered, and Columbine being already thickly besieged by gallants, the lesser visitors had to content themselves with Madame and the male members of the troupe. M. Binet, indeed, was the centre of a gay cluster that shook with laughter at his sallies. He seemed of a sudden to have emerged from the gloom of the last two days into high good-humour, and Scaramouche observed how persistently his eyes kept flickering upon his daughter and her splendid courtier.
That night there, were high words between Andre-Louis and Climene, the high words proceeding from Climene. When Andre-Louis again, and more insistently, enjoined prudence upon his betrothed, and begged her to beware how far she encouraged the advances of such a man as M. de La Tour d’Azyr, she became roundly abusive. She shocked and stunned him by her virulently shrewish tone, and her still more unexpected force of invective.
He sought to reason with her, and finally she came to certain terms with him.
“If you have become betrothed to me simply to stand as an obstacle in my path, the sooner we make an end the better.”
“You do not love me then, Climene?”
“Love has nothing to do with it. I’ll not tolerate your insensate jealousy. A girl in the theatre must make it her business to accept homage from all.”
“Agreed; and there is no harm, provided she gives nothing in exchange.”
White-faced, with flaming eyes she turned on him at that.
“Now, what exactly do you mean?”
“My meaning is clear. A girl in your position may receive all the homage that is offered, provided she receives it with a dignified aloofness implying clearly that she has no favours to bestow in return beyond the favour of her smile. If she is wise she will see to it that the homage is always offered collectively by her admirers, and that no single one amongst them shall ever have the privilege of approaching her alone. If she is wise she will give no encouragement, nourish no hopes that it may afterwards be beyond her power to deny realization.”
“How? You dare?”
“I know my world. And I know M. de La Tour d’Azyr,” he answered her. “He is a man without charity, without humanity almost; a man who takes what he wants wherever he finds it and whether it is given willingly or not; a man who reckons nothing of the misery he scatters on his self-indulgent way; a man whose only law is force. Ponder it, Climene, and ask yourself if I do you less than honour in warning you.”
He went out on that, feeling a degradation in continuing the subject.
The days that followed were unhappy days for him, and for at least one other. That other was Leandre, who was cast into the profoundest dejection by M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s assiduous attendance upon Climene. The Marquis was to be seen at every performance; a box was perpetually reserved for him, and invariably he came either alone or else with his cousin M. de Chabrillane.
On Tuesday of the following week, Andre-Louis went out alone early in the morning. He was out of temper, fretted by an overwhelming sense of humiliation, and he hoped to clear his mind by walking. In turning the corner of the Place du Bouffay he ran into a slightly built, sallow-complexioned gentleman very neatly dressed in black, wearing a tie-wig under a round hat. The man fell back at sight of him, levelling a spy-glass, then hailed him in a voice that rang with amazement.
“Moreau! Where the devil have you been hiding yourself these months?”
It was Le Chapelier, the lawyer, the leader of the Literary Chamber of Rennes.
“Behind the skirts of Thespis,” said Scaramouche.
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t intend that you should. What of yourself, Isaac? And what of the world which seems to have been standing still of late?”
“Standing still!” Le Chapelier laughed. “But where have you been, then? Standing still!” He pointed across the square to a café under the shadow of the gloomy prison. “Let us go and drink a bavaroise. You are of all men the man we want, the man we have been seeking everywhere, and—behold!—you drop from the skies into my path.”
They crossed the square and entered the café.
“So you think the world has been standing still! Dieu de Dieu! I suppose you haven’t heard of the royal order for the convocation of the States General, or the terms of them—that we are to have what we demanded, what you demanded for us here in Nantes! You haven’t heard that the order has gone forth for the primary elections—the elections of the electors. You haven’t heard of the fresh uproar in Rennes, last month. The order was that the three estates should sit together at the States General of the bailliages, but in the bailliage of Rennes the nobles must ever be recalcitrant. They took up arms actually—six hundred of them with their valetaille, headed by your old friend M. de La Tour d’Azyr, and they were for slashing us—the members of the Third Estate—into ribbons so as to put an end to our insolence.” He laughed delicately. “But, by God, we showed them that we, too, could take up arms. It was what you yourself advocated here in Nantes, last November. We fought them a pitched battle in the streets, under the leadership of your namesake Moreau, the provost, and we so peppered them that they were glad to take shelter in the Cordelier Convent. That is the end of their resistance to the royal authority and the people’s will.”
He ran on at great speed detailing the events that had taken place, and finally came to the matter which had, he announced, been causing him to hunt for Andre-Louis until he had all but despaired of finding him.
Nantes was sending fifty delegates to the assembly of Rennes which was to select the deputies to the Third Estate and edit their cahier of grievances. Rennes itself was being as fully represented, whilst such villages as Gavrillac were sending two delegates for every two hundred hearths or less. Each of these three had clamoured that Andre-Louis Moreau should be one of its delegates. Gavrillac wanted him because he belonged to the village, and it was known there what sacrifices he had made in the popular cause; Rennes wanted him because it had heard his spirited address on the day of the shooting of the students; and Nantes—to whom his identity was unknown—asked for him as the speaker who had addressed them under the name of Omnes Omnibus and who had framed for them the memorial that was believed so largely to have influenced M. Necker in formulating the terms of the convocation.
Since he could not be found, the delegations had been made up without him. But now it happened that one or two vacancies had occurred in the Nantes representation; and it was the business of filling these vacancies that had brought Le Chapelier to Nantes.
Andre-Louis firmly shook his head in answer to Le Chapelier’s proposal.
“You refuse?” the other cried. “Are you mad? Refuse, when you are demanded from so many sides? Do you realize that it is more than probable you will be elected one of the deputies, that you will be sent to the States General at Versailles to represent us in this work of saving France?”
But Andre-Louis, we know, was not concerned to save France. At the moment he was concerned to save two women, both of whom he loved, though in vastly different ways, from a man he had vowed to ruin. He stood firm in his refusal until Le Chapelier dejectedly abandoned the attempt to persuade him.
“It is odd,” said Andre-Louis, “that I should have been so deeply immersed in trifles as never to have perceived that Nantes is being politically active.”
“Active! My friend, it is a seething cauldron of political emotions. It is kept quiet on the surface only by the persuasion that all goes well. At a hint to the contrary it would boil over.”
“Would it so?” said Scaramouche, thoughtfully. “The knowledge may be useful.” And then he changed the subject. “You know that La Tour d’Azyr is here?”
“In Nantes? He has courage if he shows himself. They are not a docile people, these Nantais, and they know his record and the part he played in the rising at Rennes. I marvel they haven’t stoned him. But they will, sooner or later. It only needs that some one should suggest it.”
“That is very likely,” said Andre-Louis, and smiled. “He doesn’t show himself much; not in the streets, at least. So that he has not the courage you suppose; nor any kind of courage, as I told him once. He has only insolence.”
At parting Le Chapelier again exhorted him to give thought to what he proposed. “Send me word if you change your mind. I am lodged at the Cerf, and I shall be here until the day after to-morrow. If you have ambition, this is your moment.”
“I have no ambition, I suppose,” said Andre-Louis, and went his way.
That night at the theatre he had a mischievous impulse to test what Le Chapelier had told him of the state of public feeling in the city. They were playing “The Terrible Captain,” in the last act of which the empty cowardice of the bullying braggart Rhodomont is revealed by Scaramouche.
After the laughter which the exposure of the roaring captain invariably produced, it remained for Scaramouche contemptuously to dismiss him in a phrase that varied nightly, according to the inspiration of the moment. This time he chose to give his phrase a political complexion:
“Thus, O thrasonical coward, is your emptiness exposed. Because of your long length and the great sword you carry and the angle at which you cock your hat, people have gone in fear of you, have believed in you, have imagined you to be as terrible and as formidable as you insolently make yourself appear. But at the first touch of true spirit you crumple up, you tremble, you whine pitifully, and the great sword remains in your scabbard. You remind me of the Privileged Orders when confronted by the Third Estate.”
It was audacious of him, and he was prepared for anything—a laugh, applause, indignation, or all together. But he was not prepared for what came. And it came so suddenly and spontaneously from the groundlings and the body of those in the amphitheatre that he was almost scared by it—as a boy may be scared who has held a match to a sun-scorched hayrick. It was a hurricane of furious applause. Men leapt to their feet, sprang up on to the benches, waving their hats in the air, deafening him with the terrific uproar of their acclamations. And it rolled on and on, nor ceased until the curtain fell.
Scaramouche stood meditatively smiling with tight lips. At the last moment he had caught a glimpse of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s face thrust farther forward than usual from the shadows of his box, and it was a face set in anger, with eyes on fire.
“Mon Dieu!” laughed Rhodomont, recovering from the real scare that had succeeded his histrionic terror, “but you have a great trick of tickling them in the right place, Scaramouche.”
Scaramouche looked up at him and smiled. “It can be useful upon occasion,” said he, and went off to his dressing-room to change.
But a reprimand awaited him. He was delayed at the theatre by matters concerned with the scenery of the new piece they were to mount upon the morrow. By the time he was rid of the business the rest of the company had long since left. He called a chair and had himself carried back to the inn in solitary state. It was one of many minor luxuries his comparatively affluent present circumstances permitted.
Coming into that upstairs room that was common to all the troupe, he found M. Binet talking loudly and vehemently. He had caught sounds of his voice whilst yet upon the stairs. As he entered Binet broke off short, and wheeled to face him.
“You are here at last!” It was so odd a greeting that Andre-Louis did no more than look his mild surprise. “I await your explanations of the disgraceful scene you provoked to-night.”
“Disgraceful? Is it disgraceful that the public should applaud me?”
“The public? The rabble, you mean. Do you want to deprive us of the patronage of all gentlefolk by vulgar appeals to the low passions of the mob?”
Andre-Louis stepped past M. Binet and forward to the table. He shrugged contemptuously. The man offended him, after all.
“You exaggerate grossly—as usual.”
“I do not exaggerate. And I am the master in my own theatre. This is the Binet Troupe, and it shall be conducted in the Binet way.”
“Who are the gentlefolk the loss of whose patronage to the Feydau will be so poignantly felt?” asked Andre-Louis.
“You imply that there are none? See how wrong you are. After the play to-night M. le Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr came to me, and spoke to me in the severest terms about your scandalous outburst. I was forced to apologize, and...”
“The more fool you,” said Andre-Louis. “A man who respected himself would have shown that gentleman the door.” M. Binet’s face began to empurple. “You call yourself the head of the Binet Troupe, you boast that you will be master in your own theatre, and you stand like a lackey to take the orders of the first insolent fellow who comes to your green-room to tell you that he does not like a line spoken by one of your company! I say again that had you really respected yourself you would have turned him out.”
There was a murmur of approval from several members of the company, who, having heard the arrogant tone assumed by the Marquis, were filled with resentment against the slur cast upon them all.
“And I say further,” Andre-Louis went on, “that a man who respects himself, on quite other grounds, would have been only too glad to have seized this pretext to show M. de La Tour d’Azyr the door.”
“What do you mean by that?” There was a rumble of thunder in the question.
Andre-Louis’ eyes swept round the company assembled at the supper-table. “Where is Climene?” he asked, sharply.
Leandre leapt up to answer him, white in the face, tense and quivering with excitement.
“She left the theatre in the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr’s carriage immediately after the performance. We heard him offer to drive her to this inn.”