Fromont and Risler Part 32

"Risler, Risler--where are you going?"

She thought that he was going up to Georges' room.

Risler understood her and smiled in superb disdain.

"Never fear, Madame. Monsieur Georges can sleep in peace. I have something more urgent to do than avenge my honor as a husband. Wait for me here. I will come back."

He darted toward the narrow staircase; and Claire, relying upon his word, remained with Pla.n.u.s during one of those supreme moments of uncertainty which seem interminable because of all the conjectures with which they are thronged.

A few moments later the sound of hurried steps, the rustling of silk filled the dark and narrow staircase. Sidonie appeared first, in ball costume, gorgeously arrayed and so pale that the jewels that glistened everywhere on her dead-white flesh seemed more alive than she, as if they were scattered over the cold marble of a statue. The breathlessness due to dancing, the trembling of intense excitement and her rapid descent, caused her to shake from head to foot, and her floating ribbons, her ruffles, her flowers, her rich and fashionable attire drooped tragically about her. Risler followed her, laden with jewel-cases, caskets, and papers. Upon reaching his apartments he had pounced upon his wife's desk, seized everything valuable that it contained, jewels, certificates, t.i.tle-deeds of the house at Asnieres; then, standing in the doorway, he had shouted into the ballroom:

"Madame Risler!"

She had run quickly to him, and that brief scene had in no wise disturbed the guests, then at the height of the evening's enjoyment.

When she saw her husband standing in front of the desk, the drawers broken open and overturned on the carpet with the mult.i.tude of trifles they contained, she realized that something terrible was taking place.

"Come at once," said Risler; "I know all."

She tried to a.s.sume an innocent, dignified att.i.tude; but he seized her by the arm with such force that Frantz's words came to her mind: "It will kill him perhaps, but he will kill you first." As she was afraid of death, she allowed herself to be led away without resistance, and had not even the strength to lie.

"Where are we going?" she asked, in a low voice.

Risler did not answer. She had only time to throw over her shoulders, with the care for herself that never failed her, a light tulle veil, and he dragged her, pushed her, rather, down the stairs leading to the counting-room, which he descended at the same time, his steps close upon hers, fearing that his prey would escape.

"There!" he said, as he entered the room. "We have stolen, we make rest.i.tution. Look, Pla.n.u.s, you can raise money with all this stuff." And he placed on the cashier's desk all the fashionable plunder with which his arms were filled--feminine trinkets, trivial aids to coquetry, stamped papers.

Then he turned to his wife:

"Take off your jewels! Come, be quick."

She complied slowly, opened reluctantly the clasps of bracelets and buckles, and above all the superb fastening of her diamond necklace on which the initial of her name-a gleaming S-resembled a sleeping serpent, imprisoned in a circle of gold. Risler, thinking that she was too slow, ruthlessly broke, the fragile fastenings. Luxury shrieked beneath his fingers, as if it were being whipped.

"Now it is my turn," he said; "I too must give up everything. Here is my portfolio. What else have I? What else have I?"

He searched his pockets feverishly.

"Ah! my watch. With the chain it will bring four-thousand francs. My rings, my wedding-ring. Everything goes into the cash-box, everything.

We have a hundred thousand francs to pay this morning. As soon as it is daylight we must go to work, sell out and pay our debts. I know some one who wants the house at Asnieres. That can be settled at once."

He alone spoke and acted. Sigismond and Madame Georges watched him without speaking. As for Sidonie, she seemed unconscious, lifeless.

The cold air blowing from the garden through the little door, which was opened at the time of Risler's swoon, made her shiver, and she mechanically drew the folds of her scarf around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her thoughts wandering. Did she not hear the violins of her ball, which reached their ears in the intervals of silence, like bursts of savage irony, with the heavy thud of the dancers shaking the floors? An iron hand, falling upon her, aroused her abruptly from her torpor. Risler had taken her by the arm, and, leading her before his partner's wife, he said:

"Down on your knees!"

Madame Fromont drew back, remonstrating:

"No, no, Risler, not that."

"It must be," said the implacable Risler. "Rest.i.tution, reparation!

Down on your knees then, wretched woman!" And with irresistible force he threw Sidonie at Claire's feet; then, still holding her arm;

"You will repeat after me, word for word, what I say: Madame--"

Sidonie, half dead with fear, repeated faintly: "Madame--"

"A whole lifetime of humility and submission--"

"A whole lifetime of humil--No, I can not!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet with the agility of a deer; and, wresting herself from Risler's grasp, through that open door which had tempted her from the beginning of this horrible scene, luring her out into the darkness of the night to the liberty obtainable by flight, she rushed from the house, braving the falling snow and the wind that stung her bare shoulders.

"Stop her, stop her!--Risler, Pla.n.u.s, I implore you! In pity's name do not let her go in this way," cried Claire.

Pla.n.u.s stepped toward the door.

Risler detained him.

"I forbid you to stir! I ask your pardon, Madame, but we have more important matters than this to consider. Madame Risler concerns us no longer. We have to save the honor of the house of Fromont, which alone is at stake, which alone fills my thoughts at this moment."

Sigismond put out his hand.

"You are a n.o.ble man, Risler. Forgive me for having suspected you."

Risler pretended not to hear him.

"A hundred thousand francs to pay, you say? How much is there left in the strong-box?"

He sat bravely down behind the gratin, looking over the books of account, the certificates of stock in the funds, opening the jewel-cases, estimating with Pla.n.u.s, whose father had been a jeweller, the value of all those diamonds, which he had once so admired on his wife, having no suspicion of their real value.

Meanwhile Claire, trembling from head to foot, looked out through the window at the little garden, white with snow, where Sidonie's footsteps were already effaced by the fast-falling flakes, as if to bear witness that that precipitate departure was without hope of return.

Up-stairs they were still dancing. The mistress of the house was supposed to be busy with the preparations for supper, while she was flying, bare-headed, forcing back sobs and shrieks of rage.

Where was she going? She had started off like a mad woman, running across the garden and the courtyard of the factory, and under the dark arches, where the cruel, freezing wind blew in eddying circles. Pere Achille did not recognize her; he had seen so many shadows wrapped in white pa.s.s his lodge that night.

The young woman's first thought was to join the tenor Cazaboni, whom at the last she had not dared to invite to her ball; but he lived at Montmartre, and that was very far away for her to go, in that garb; and then, would he be at home? Her parents would take her in, doubtless; but she could already hear Madame Chebe's lamentations and the little man's sermon under three heads. Thereupon she thought of Delobelle, her old Delobelle. In the downfall of all her splendors she remembered the man who had first initiated her into fashionable life, who had given her lessons in dancing and deportment when she was a little girl, laughed at her pretty ways, and taught her to look upon herself as beautiful before any one had ever told her that she was so. Something told her that that fallen star would take her part against all others. She entered one of the carriages standing at the gate and ordered the driver to take her to the actor's lodgings on the Boulevard Beaumarchais.

For some time past Mamma Delobelle had been making straw hats for export-a dismal trade if ever there was one, which brought in barely two francs fifty for twelve hours' work.

And Delobelle continued to grow fat in the same degree that his "sainted wife" grew thin. At the very moment when some one knocked hurriedly at his door he had just discovered a fragrant soup 'au fromage', which had been kept hot in the ashes on the hearth. The actor, who had been witnessing at Beaumarchais some dark-browed melodrama drenched with gore even to the ill.u.s.trated headlines of its poster, was startled by that knock at such an advanced hour.

"Who is there?" he asked in some alarm.

"It is I, Sidonie. Open the door quickly."

She entered the room, shivering all over, and, throwing aside her wrap, went close to the stove where the fire was almost extinct. She began to talk at once, to pour out the wrath that had been stifling her for an hour, and while she was describing the scene in the factory, lowering her voice because of Madame Delobelle, who was asleep close by, the magnificence of her costume in that poor, bare, fifth floor, the dazzling whiteness of her disordered finery amid the heaps of coa.r.s.e hats and the wisps of straw strewn about the room, all combined to produce the effect of a veritable drama, of one of those terrible upheavals of life when rank, feelings, fortunes are suddenly jumbled together.

"Oh! I never shall return home. It is all over. Free--I am free!"

"But who could have betrayed you to your husband?" asked the actor.