master! you the master!… You know better than that. It is I who am your master. I could break your arms if I were spiteful; you are no stronger than a girl.”
And as he struggled, she twisted his arms with all the nervous violence of her anger. He uttered a faint cry. Then she let go, resuming:
“See? we’d better not fight; I should only beat you.”
He remained pallid, with the shame of the pain he felt at his wrists. He watched her coming and going in the dressing-room. She pushed back the furniture, reflecting, fixing on the plan that had been revolving in her head since her husband had told her of the marriage.
“I shall lock you up here,” she said at last; “and as soon as it’s daylight we’ll start for Havre.”
He grew still paler with alarm and stupor.
“But this is madness!” he cried. “We can’t run away together. You are going off your head.”
“Very likely. In any case it is you and your father who have driven me so…. I want you, and I mean to have you. So much the worse for the fools!”
A red light gleamed from her eyes. She continued, approaching Maxime once more, scorching his face with her breath:
“What do you think would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would laugh at me between you, I should perhaps be obliged to take back that great noodle of a Mussy, who would leave my very feet indifferent…. When people have done what you and I have done, they stick to one another. Besides, it’s quite plain. I am bored when you’re not there, and as I’m going away, I shall take you with me…. You can tell Céleste what you want her to fetch from your place.”
The unfortunate Maxime held out his hands, beseeching her:
“Look here, Renée dear, don’t be silly. Be yourself…. Just think of the scandal.”
“What do I care for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down to the drawingroom and cry out that I have slept with you, and that you’re base enough now to want to marry the hunchback.”
He bent his head, listened to her, already yielding, accepting this will that thrust itself so rudely upon him.
“We will go to Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, caressing her dream, “and from there we shall cross to England. Nobody shall ever interfere with us again. If that is not far enough away, we shall go to America. I who am always so cold shall be better there. I have often envied the Creoles….”
But in the measure that she enlarged upon her proposal, Maxime’s terror was renewed. To leave Paris, to go so far away with a woman who was undoubtedly mad, to leave behind him a tale whose scandalous side would exile him for ever! it was as though he were being stifled by a hideous nightmare. He sought desperately for a means of escape from this dressing-room, from this rose-coloured retreat where tolled the passing-bell of Charenton. He thought he had hit upon something.
“You see, I have no money,” he said, gently, so as not to exasperate her. “If you lock me in, I can’t procure any.”
“But I have,” she replied, triumphantly. “I have a hundred thousand francs. It all fits in capitally….”
She took from the looking-glass wardrobe the deed of transfer which her husband had left with her, in the vague hope that she might lose her senses. She laid it on the toilet-table, ordered Maxime to give her a pen and ink from the bedroom, and pushing back the soap-dishes, said, as she signed the deed:
“There, the folly’s done. If I am robbed, it is because I choose to be…. we will call at Larsonneau’s on the way to the station…. Now, my little Maxime, I am going to lock you in, and we will escape through the garden when I’ve turned all these people out of the house. We don’t even need to take any luggage.”
She resumed her gaiety. This mad freak delighted her. It was a piece of supreme eccentricity, a finish which, in her crisis of raging fever, seemed to her entirely original. It far surpassed her desire for the balloon voyage. She came and took Maxime in her arms, murmuring:
“My poor darling, did I hurt you just now? You see, you refused…. But you shall see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback ever love you as I love you? She’s not a woman, that little darkie….”
She laughed, she drew him to her, kissed him on the lips, when a sound made them both turn round. Saccard stood on the threshold.
A terrible silence ensued. Slowly, Renée took her arms from around Maxime’s neck; and she did not lower her brow, she continued staring at her husband with wide eyes, fixed like those of one dead; while the young man, dumbfoundered and terrified, staggered with bowed head, now that he was no longer sustained by her embrace. Stunned by this culminating blow which at last made the husband and the father cry out within him, Saccard stood where he was, livid, burning them from afar with the fire of his glances. In the moist, fragrant atmosphere of the room, the three candles flared very high, their flames erect, with the immobility of fiery tears. And alone to break the silence, the terrible silence, a breath of music floated up through the narrow staircase: the waltz, with its serpentine modulations, glided, coiled, died away on the snow-white carpet, among the split tights and the skirts fallen on the floor.
Then the husband stepped forward. A desire for brutality mottled his complexion, he clenched his fists to strike down the guilty pair. Anger in this small, turbulent man burst forth with the report of firearms. He gave a strangled chuckle, and always approaching:
“You were announcing your marriage to her, I suppose?”
Maxime retreated, leaned up against the wall.
“Listen,” he stammered, “it was she….”
He was about to accuse her like a coward, to cast the crime upon her shoulders, to say that she wanted to carry him off, to defend himself with the meekness and the trepidation of a child detected in fault. But his strength failed him, the words expired in his throat. Renée kept her statuesque rigidity, her mute air of defiance. Then Saccard, no doubt to find a weapon, threw a rapid glance around him. And on the corner of the toilet-table, among the combs and nail-brushes, he caught sight of the deed of transfer, whose stamped paper lay yellow on the marble. He looked at the deed, looked at the guilty pair. Then, leaning forward, he saw that the deed was signed. His eyes went from the open inkstand to the pen still wet, lying at the foot of the candlestick. He remained standing before this signature, reflecting.
The silence seemed to increase, the flames of the candles grew longer, the waltz passed along the hangings with a softer lullaby. Saccard gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. He looked again at his wife and son with a penetrating air, as though to wring from their faces an explanation that he was unable to supply. Then he slowly folded up the deed, placed it in the pocket of his dress-coat. His cheeks had become quite pale.
“You did well to sign it, my dear,” he said, quietly, to his wife….”It’s a hundred thousand francs in your pocket. I will give you the money this evening.”
He almost smiled, and his hands alone still trembled. He took one or two steps, and added:
“It is stifling here. What an idea to come and hatch one of your jokes in this vapour-bath…!”
And addressing Maxime, who had raised his head, surprised at his father’s mollified voice:
“Here, come downstairs, you!” he resumed. “I saw you come up, I came to fetch you to say goodnight to M. de Mareuil and his daughter.”
The two men went downstairs, talking together. Renée remained behind alone, standing in the middle of the dressing-room, staring at the gaping well of the little staircase, down which she had just seen the shoulders of the father and the son disappear. She could not take away her eyes from this well. What! they had gone off quietly, amicably! These two men had not smashed one another! She lent an ear, she listened whether some hideous struggle were not causing the bodies to roll down the stairs. Nothing. In the tepid darkness, nothing but a sound of dancing, a long lullaby. She thought she could