Fromont and Risler Part 38

And the husband's eye seemed to reply:

"Ah! 'dame', yes, he's quite a das.h.i.+ng buck, that fellow."

Being decidedly indifferent to heroism of that stamp, Risler and Sigismond were drinking their beer without paying much attention to the music, when, at the end of the song, amid the applause and cries and uproar that followed it, Pere Pla.n.u.s uttered an exclamation:

"Why, that is odd; one would say--but no, I'm not mistaken. It is he, it's Delobelle!"

It was, in fact, the ill.u.s.trious actor, whom he had discovered in the front row near the platform. His gray head was turned partly away from them. He was leaning carelessly against a pillar, hat in hand, in his grand make-up as leading man: dazzlingly white linen, hair curled with the tongs, black coat with a camellia in the b.u.t.tonhole, like the ribbon of an order. He glanced at the crowd from time to time with a patronizing air: but his eyes were most frequently turned toward the platform, with encouraging little gestures and smiles and pretended applause, addressed to some one whom Pere Pla.n.u.s could not see from his seat.

There was nothing very extraordinary in the presence of the ill.u.s.trious Delobelle at a cafe concert, as he spent all his evenings away from home; and yet the old cas.h.i.+er felt vaguely disturbed, especially when he discovered in the same row a blue cape and a pair of steely eyes. It was Madame Dobson, the sentimental singing-teacher. The conjunction of those two faces amid the pipe-smoke and the confusion of the crowd, produced upon Sigismond the effect of two ghosts evoked by a bad dream. He was afraid for his friend, without knowing exactly why; and suddenly it occurred to him to take him away.

"Let us go, Risler. The heat here is enough to kill one."

Just as they rose--for Risler was no more desirous to stay than to go--the orchestra, consisting of a piano and several violins, began a peculiar refrain. There was a flutter of curiosity throughout the room, and cries of "Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ sit down!"

They were obliged to resume their seats. Risler, too, was beginning to be disturbed.

"I know that tune," he said to himself. "Where have I heard it?"

A thunder of applause and an exclamation from Pla.n.u.s made him raise his eyes.

"Come, come, let us go," said the cas.h.i.+er, trying to lead him away.

But it was too late.

Risler had already seen his wife come forward to the front of the stage and curtsey to the audience with a ballet-dancer's smile.

She wore a white gown, as on the night of the ball; but her whole costume was much less rich and shockingly immodest.

The dress was barely caught together at the shoulders; her hair floated in a blond mist low over her eyes, and around her neck was a necklace of pearls too large to be real, alternated with bits of tinsel. Delobelle was right: the Bohemian life was better suited to her. Her beauty had gained an indefinably reckless expression, which was its most characteristic feature, and made her a perfect type of the woman who has escaped from all restraint, placed herself at the mercy of every accident, and is descending stage by stage to the lowest depths of the Parisian h.e.l.l, from which nothing is powerful enough to lift her and restore her to the pure air and the light.

And how perfectly at ease she seemed in her strolling life! With what self-possession she walked to the front of the stage! Ah! could she have seen the desperate, terrible glance fixed upon her down there in the hall, concealed behind a pillar, her smile would have lost that equivocal placidity, her voice would have sought in vain those wheedling, languorous tones in which she warbled the only song Madame Dobson had ever been able to teach her:

Pauv' pit.i.t Mamz'elle Zizi, C'est l'amou, l'amou qui tourne La tete a li.

Risler had risen, in spite of Pla.n.u.s's efforts. "Sit down! sit down!"

the people shouted. The wretched man heard nothing. He was staring at his wife.

C'est l'amou, l'amou qui tourne La tete a li,

Sidonie repeated affectedly.

For a moment he wondered whether he should not leap on the platform and kill her. Red flames shot before his eyes, and he was blinded with frenzy.

Then, suddenly, shame and disgust seized upon him and he rushed from the hall, overturning chairs and tables, pursued by the terror and imprecations of all those scandalized bourgeois.

CHAPTER XXIV. SIDONIE'S VENGEANCE

Never had Sigismond Pla.n.u.s returned home so late without giving his sister warning, during the twenty years and more that he had lived at Montrouge. Consequently Mademoiselle Pla.n.u.s was greatly worried. Living in community of ideas and of everything else with her brother, having but one mind for herself and for him, the old maid had felt for several months the rebound of all the cas.h.i.+er's anxiety and indignation; and the effect was still noticeable in her tendency to tremble and become agitated on slight provocation. At the slightest tardiness on Sigismond's part, she would think:

"Ah! mon Dieu! If only nothing has happened at the factory!"

That is the reason why on the evening in question, when the hens and chickens were all asleep on their perches, and the dinner had been removed untouched, Mademoiselle Pla.n.u.s was sitting in the little ground-floor living-room, waiting, in great agitation.

At last, about eleven o'clock, some one rang. A timid, melancholy ring, in no wise resembling Sigismond's vigorous pull.

"Is it you, Monsieur Pla.n.u.s?" queried the old lady from behind the door.

It was he; but he was not alone. A tall, bent old man accompanied him, and, as they entered, bade her good-evening in a slow, hesitating voice.

Not till then did Mademoiselle Pla.n.u.s recognize Risler Aine, whom she had not seen since the days of the New Year's calls, that is to say, some time before the dramas at the factory. She could hardly restrain an exclamation of pity; but the grave taciturnity of the two men told her that she must be silent.

"Mademoiselle Pla.n.u.s, my sister, you will put clean sheets on my bed.

Our friend Risler does us the honor to pa.s.s the night with us."

The sister hastened away to prepare the bedroom with an almost affectionate zeal; for, as we know, beside "Monsieur Pla.n.u.s, my brother," Risler was the only man excepted from the general reprobation in which she enveloped the whole male s.e.x.

Upon leaving the cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Pla.n.u.s's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the letter and the package.

"Leave me--go away," he said to Sigismond. "I must be alone."

But the other knew better than to abandon him thus to his despair.

Unnoticed by Risler, he led him away from the factory, and as his affectionate heart suggested to the old cas.h.i.+er what he had best say to his friend, he talked to him all the time of Frantz, his little Frantz whom he loved so dearly.

"That was genuine affection, genuine and trustworthy. No treachery to fear with such hearts as that!"

While they talked they left behind them the noisy streets of the centre of Paris. They walked along the quays, skirted the Jardin des Plantes, plunged into Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Risler followed where the other led. Sigismond's words did him so much good!

In due time they came to the Bievre, bordered at that point with tanneries whose tall drying-houses with open sides were outlined in blue against the sky; and then the ill-defined plains of Montsouris, vast tracts of land scorched and stripped of vegetation by the fiery breath that Paris exhales around its daily toil, like a monstrous dragon, whose breath of flame and smoke suffers no vegetation within its range.

From Montsouris to the fortifications of Montrouge is but a step. When they had reached that point, Pla.n.u.s had no great difficulty in taking his friend home with him. He thought, and justly, that his tranquil fireside, the spectacle of a placid, fraternal, devoted affection, would give the wretched man's heart a sort of foretaste of the happiness that was in store for him with his brother Frantz. And, in truth, the charm of the little household began to work as soon as they arrived.

"Yes, yes, you are right, old fellow," said Risler, pacing the floor of the living-room, "I mustn't think of that woman any more. She's like a dead woman to me now. I have n.o.body left in the world but my little Frantz; I don't know yet whether I shall send for him to come home, or go out and join him; the one thing that is certain is that we are going to stay together. Ah! I longed so to have a son! Now I have found one.

I want no other. When I think that for a moment I had an idea of killing myself! Nonsense! it would make Madame What-d'ye-call-her, yonder, too happy. On the contrary, I mean to live--to live with my Frantz, and for him, and for nothing else."

"Bravo!" said Sigismond, "that's the way I like to hear you talk."

At that moment Mademoiselle Pla.n.u.s came to say that the room was ready.

Risler apologized for the trouble he was causing them.

"You are so comfortable, so happy here. Really, it's too bad to burden you with my melancholy."

"Ah! my old friend, you can arrange just such happiness as ours for yourself," said honest Sigismond with beaming face. "I have my sister, you have your brother. What do we lack?"

Risler smiled vaguely. He fancied himself already installed with Frantz in a quiet little quakerish house like that.