CHAPTER XIX

A BAD NIGHT FOLLOWED BY BAD DAYS

Didier met the two women at the corner of the street almost frightened out of their senses. He calmed them in a faltering voice. The man, he said, had rushed away as soon as he caught sight of him. The d'Haumonts at once took leave of Giselle, who implored them to forgive her foolish outburst.

In the taxi in which they drove back to Cape Ferrat, Didier and Françoise exchanged but an occasional remark. She was in a state of depression. She thought that her husband would be annoyed with her for her remarks regarding his exaggerated kindness to Giselle.

She took his hand in hers, and was no little surprised and even alarmed to feel that it was icy cold.

"Oh, good gracious, how cold you are! Aren't you well, dear?"

"Yes, yes, I am quite well, I assure you."

She put her hand to his forehead and found that it was covered with an icy perspiration. She was startled.

"Something must be the matter with you. Do say something. Why don't you talk? I've never seen you like this before."

He endeavored to make a jest of it, but his voice was quite different from his usual voice. She began to weep.

"I don't know what has happened. I don't know what is the matter with you. You are concealing something from me."

He took her in his arms and kissed her in a sudden outburst of passion which was far from reassuring her.

"Heavens, you are crying too," she said.

"Only because you are grieved. You must know I worship you."

"Yes, yes. Tell me so! Say it again!"

"Can you doubt it, dearest?"

"I should die if I doubted it. But all the same, tell me that you love me. I like it. Take me in your arms again and kiss me . . . kiss me. Let us mingle our tears. It's so good."

"What nonsense we talk! We don't know why we are crying. We are behaving like children. It's a shame."

"So, my love, it's true. You are not hiding anything from me. You didn't face that wretched man?"

"No, I scarcely saw him. He literally took to his heels. I advised him not to show himself in this quarter again, that's all. We'll say no more about it."

"Don't let's speak of him."

They dropped the subject, and indeed the rest of the drive to the villa was passed in silence. Then, when they were in the house, she said:

"Listen, dear, you must let me take care of you. A moment ago you were as cold as ice, and now your hands are burning. You are still suffering from fever. It's only a short time since you recovered from your wounds, and we are behaving very unwisely. You must have caught a cold on leaving Madame d'Erlande's. . . . But what are you doing? Leave the doors. The servants will dose them."

He was surprised to see himself locking the doors like a child who is overcome with fear.

And yet he had become slightly more composed. He longed to remain in doubt. He tried to doubt still. Might he not have made a mistake, for after all the vision of that man's face under the light of the street lamp was but a momentary one. It was not even a face. A forehead, a pair of eyes, that was all. Was that enough to convince him that he had encountered the Parisian? Surely not. He had to reckon with freaks of resemblance, as well as his own state of mind, ever ready to conjure up dangers and to imagine that they were near.

The Parisian at Nice! No, it was out of the question. The man had been captured and taken back to prison. The newspapers contained a report of the occurrence. And, besides, if the Parisian were at Nice would he not have been occupied in hunting different game from Giselle? Captain d'Haumont would have heard something about him.

Thus his thoughts ran on. Françoise's love, the anxious attentions with which she enveloped him, while they touched his heart also relaxed the tension of his nerves. They were perfectly happy and tranquil; a great peace fell upon them. And he could no longer believe that anything untoward would befall him. He kept quite quiet, took his medicine, allowed himself to be nursed, and--worn out by the new excitement which physically and mentally weighed down upon him--fell asleep.

But Françoise did not fall asleep.

She listened to his irregular breathing; she watched the painful slumber in which the man beside her lay. Resting on her elbow, she bent over the beloved face, distorted by strange dreams, with an ever-increasing anguish which wrung her heart and almost stifled her.

What frightful visions were passing before those closed eyes and the heaving chest? She had never watched her husband asleep. The sight was terrifying.

And then his face changed so that she did not recognize it, and she was appalled. Deep furrows, which she had never seen before, plowed his forehead and temples and the corners of his mouth. The face which, when it was in repose, was calm and dignified and kept under control by a strong, brave mind, was distorted as if the spirit of fear had taken possession of it at a moment when the sentinel was no longer on guard.

It was impossible for her to remain any further beside that tortured face which was unknown to her, and she wakened Didier so as to see once more the face as she knew it--the face of the man she had married.

Didier uttered a hollow groan and opened his haggard eyes. By the light of the night-lamp she watched him come to himself from his nightmare like a swimmer who rises to the surface of the waters and is able at last to breathe again.

"Didier . . . Didier . . . What's the matter? Don't you recognize me? It's I . . . Françoise."

Then his face unbent and his eyes were filled once more with the soft light which illumined them whenever his gaze fell upon her.

"I've had such an awful dream, dearest."

"Yes, it was awful. That's why I woke you up."

"What did I say? What was I talking about?"

"You said nothing, but you were suffering and sighing and groaning terribly."

Françoise's gentle voice seemed to drive away for good and all the cruel shadows of the night.

"But what were you dreaming about?" she asked. "I had the worst dream that it is possible to conceive, dear. I dreamt that you had ceased to love me."

"Oh, my Didier!"

She took him in her arms and he lay his head upon her breast

"Listen to my heart," she said.

They listened in silence. Didier did not speak again, and he pretended to yield to a sweet and refreshing sleep. But he did not sleep. He would not allow himself to sleep. He feared to be betrayed by his dreams. . . .

She, too, closed her eyes and made believe to sleep, and he really thought that she was asleep, but she knew that he was still awake.

They were deceiving each other for the first time in their married life. Didier, like a sufferer who seeks a corner in which to lie down so as to suffer less, laid down his secret there with her, and from that moment she did not doubt that the secret was worthy of its refuge.

With a man of Didier's character--assuming that there was a secret which made him suffer in his dreams as he lay beside the woman he loved--it could only be some trouble which it was his duty to hide from her but which, if she knew what it was, would not make her blush for him.

Ever since Didier's strange behavior at the beginning of what might be called their engagement, she fancied that there was something mysterious in his past life. She persisted in thinking that it was a story of some former woman--of some bad woman of course--who had taken advantage of Didier's goodness, and even now was trying to hold him up to ransom. Whether this was the explanation or not, she felt convinced that Didier was the victim.

At an early hour next morning Captain d'Haumont was in Nice. He waited to see Giselle at the corner of the Rue d'Angleterre and the Rue Bardin, pacing up and down outside a fashionable hairdressing and massage establishment. The sound of his footsteps coming and going put the porter in a general flutter.

Didier knew that Giselle had to be at the shop at nine o'clock and passed that way; and as he had no wish, in view of the incident of the evening before, for Mlle. Violette to know anything about the step he was taking, he waited for her in the street. To call at her own place at that hour would have been difficult to explain. At the same time he hoped that, impelled by some necessity of house-keeping, Giselle would make a very early appearance in the quarter.

As the minutes went by his impatience became painful to see. The porter at the establishment felt sorry for him; and he stopped some of the customers as they came in to point to the man on the pavement.

"Someone has made an appointment and failed to turn up!"

At a quarter to nine a lady who was in the habit of visiting the shop every day for her "high frequency" treatment, with the object, apparently, of renewing her youth in so far as it was possible, alighted from her car, and at the moment when she was about to enter the vestibule stopped with a face like stone.

Her eyes had fallen upon Captain d'Haumont running up to Giselle and entering into an animated talk with her.

"Well, Madame d'Erlande, the girl has turned up, and not a moment too soon," said the porter. "Just fancy, the poor man has been cooling his heels on the pavement for more than an hour."

"You don't mean to say so!"

"I assure you that he was here at half-past seven. He must be gone on her."

Madame d'Erlande was incensed.

"The wretch," she exclaimed. "And I treated the whole thing as a joke. Poor Françoise!"

Meantime Captain d'Haumont had received certain details regarding the man who was pursuing Giselle which were to some extent reassuring. Giselle was greatly astonished to meet the Captain on her way to the shop, and as soon as she learned what had brought him, she straightway assumed that a somewhat violent scene had occurred between the two men the evening before and that the Captain intended to follow it up with a challenge to a duel.

Taking alarm at the prospect, she implored him to overlook the incident, but he expressed himself in such strong language in order to obtain from her the real truth, that in the end she told him the little that she knew about the stranger; that is to say, that he was a friend of one of Mlle. Violette's customers; that the first time she saw him was in Paris where, it seemed, he was well known in artistic and society circles; that he offered to get her on the stage, explaining that he had considerable influence in the theater; and that his name was de Saynthine.

When he left Giselle, d'Haumont said to himself: "I lost my head. I've been dreaming."

An hour later--after thinking things over--nothing remained of what he called his fancy of the evening before, but he made up his mind to escape from the scene and surroundings which prevented him from enjoying as he might, in the soft light of his honeymoon, the last precious hours of his sick leave; and he would take Françoise for a little trip in which he hoped he might encounter neither the form of Nina Noha nor the shade of the Parisian.

He attributed the confusion into which, for the time being, he was thrown to the reappearance of the dancer on his horizon. From that moment his dearest wish was to leave the place in which she was to be met. Obsessed by this thought he turned his steps towards the building at which, during the war, safe-conducts and passports were issued. Thus he passed through a part of the old town, taking a short cut. In that quarter the streets are narrow and winding. He found himself stopping outside a low-storied shop containing secondhand clothes and cheap carpets, the signboard of which bore the name "Monsieur Toulouse."

How was it that his attention was attracted by this signboard? Why did he remember the name? Later on when he asked himself these questions, he was unable to offer any explanation, except that in the subconscious depths within him, some mysterious faculty knew that the signboard would be mixed up in his life.

A hand-cart laden with vegetables was being moved, thus clearing the street. When the cart was dragged away, a sort of human specter was revealed to view, which shot past the walls and entered a dark passage adjoining Monsieur Toulouse's shop. Didier leaned for support against the wall. He had recognized the Burglar!

He summoned up sufficient strength of mind to slip away from the place. His entire being cried aloud: Fly . . . escape with Françoise to the uttermost comers of the earth!

His face was ghastly white when he entered the room in which passes were made out. He was almost sure that the Burglar had not caught sight of him. He waited a moment in order to recover his breath and the use of his voice.

When he went up to the main table at which were seated the clerics whose duty it was to answer inquiries from the public, he saw a man standing before him, holding a number of papers in his hand--a man wearing a long, flowing overcoat who stared him steadily in the face. Didier felt giddy. His mind was giving way.

He never knew how he managed to get outside, or how he found the strength to throw himself into a taxi and to give his address. He had recognized the Joker!