CHAPTER VIII
There is always a silent corner in a woman’s most sincere confession. There was one in Camille’s. In telling me, with the pauses of jealousy maddened by its certainty, of the dramatic discovery at the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle she had not revealed the whole truth to me. She had already resolved on an audacious plan for vengeance even at the time she affirmed that she would not revenge herself. She confessed to me later that she was afraid of my advice and reproaches. Among the phrases audible through the thin partition which separated her from the bed where her rival gave herself to their joint lover, she had seized upon a few words more important to her than the rest. It was the day and hour of their next meeting. This slender Madam de Bonnivet, in whom I had diagnosed signs of the most immovable coldness—a detail which in parenthesis Molan later on brutally confirmed—was like most women of this kind, a seeker after sensations. At each fresh intrigue those depraved women without temperaments persist in the hope that this time they will experience that much-desired ecstasy of love which has always shunned them.
I have learned since that it was she who, in spite of the danger, or rather because of the danger, had multiplied the meetings each of which risked a tragic termination. Camille had ascertained the secret of the real relations between the two lovers one Tuesday, and on the Friday, three days later, they were to meet at the same place. Knowing the exact moment of the appointment a mad resolution took possession of the suffering mind of the poor Blue Duchess: to wait for her rival at the door of the house, to approach her as she got out of her cab and spit out into her face her hatred and contempt there on the pavement in the street. At the thought of the arrogant Madam de Bonnivet trembling before her like a thief caught in the act, the outraged actress experienced a tremor of satisfied revenge. Her vengeance would be more complete still. The infamous trap into which Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet had lured her, the abominable invitation to perform at her rival’s evening party to reassure the husband, would be of use to her. Out of prudence and with the idea of not compromising herself with her husband, Madam de Bonnivet must give her that evening in spite of everything. She, Camille, would appear there! She would see the woman who had stolen her lover tremble before her gaze, the lover himself pale with terror lest she should make a scene, and the fear of the guilty couple was in advance of those atrocious pleasures which hatred conjures up in the mind.
The three days which separated her from this Friday passed for Camille in increasing expectancy. I did not see her during that time, for she took a jealous care in avoiding me, for fear I should derange her plan. But she told me afterwards that never since the beginning of her liaison with Jacques had she felt such a fever of impatience. She passed the night from Thursday to Friday like a mad woman, and when she left the Rue de la Barouillére to go to the Rue Nouvelle, she had neither slept nor eaten for thirty-six hours. At half-past three she was on the pavement in front of the windows of the rooms walking up and down wrapped in her cloak and unrecognizable through her double veil, never losing sight of the door through which her rival must go. There was at the corner of the Rue de Clichy a cabstand which she fixed as the boundary of her promenade. Each time she passed she noticed the clock on the cabstand. First it was twenty minutes to four, and more than twenty minutes to wait. Then it was ten minutes to four, and she had ten minutes to wait. Four o’clock struck. They were late. At twenty minutes past four neither Jacques nor Madam de Bonnivet had appeared. What had happened?
In face of this delay, the more inexplicable as, in the case of a woman of position like the one for whom revenge was watching, her moments of leisure are few, it seemed obvious to Camille that the lovers had altered the time and place of the appointment, and the idea maddened her. They had seen one another so often since she had listened to their caresses and familiarity so close to her. Who knows? Perhaps the porter had noticed her when she went out the other day, although she had taken advantage of a moment when he was absent from the lodge and talking in the courtyard to replace the key. Perhaps he had warned Jacques of the visit!
It was half-past four, and still no one had appeared. Camille was at last convinced that to remain longer watching was useless, all the more since, as happens at this time in a cold February day, a bitter fog had come down mixed with sleet, which made her shiver. She cast a desperate glance at the impenetrable windows with their closed shutters from which no gleam of light came, and was preparing to depart, when in searching the short street with her eyes for the last time she saw a carriage stop opposite the cabstand and a face look out of it which gave her one of those attacks of terror which dissolve the forces of the body and soul: it was the face of Pierre de Bonnivet!
Yes, it was indeed the husband of Molan’s mistress, no longer in his laughable function as the shy and intimidated husband of a woman of the world who endured the coquetry of the woman who bore his name, submitting to it to profit by it. It was the assassin in his hiding-place, the assassin in whom jealousy had suddenly awakened the primitive male, the murderous brute, and whose eyes, nostrils, mouth announced his desire to kill whatever happened. He was there scanning the street with savage glances. The half turned-up otter-skin collar of his overcoat gave to his red hair and high colour a more sinister look, and the bare ungloved hand with which he lifted the curtain of the window to enable him to see better seemed ready to grasp the weapon which should avenge his honour at once on that pavement, without any more thought of the world and of scandal than if Paris were still the primeval forest of 3,000 years before, where prehistoric men fought with stone axes for possession of a female clad in skins.
How had the jealous husband discovered the retreat where Queen Anne and Jacques took shelter during their brief intrigue? Neither Camille, I, nor Jacques himself have ever known. An anonymous letter had informed him; but by whom was it written? Molan had at his heels a mob of the envious; Madam de Bonnivet was in the same position, even without reckoning her more or less disappointed suitors. Perhaps Bonnivet had simply recourse to the vulgar but sure method of espionage. It is quite certain that the porter had been questioned, and but for the fact that he was a good fellow, who had been well supplied with theatre tickets by his lodger, and was proud of the latter’s fame as an author, the rooms which had seen the poor Blue Duchess so happy and so miserable in turn without doubt would have served as the theatre for a sanguinary dénouement. It was indeed the desire for a tragic vengeance which Camille Favier saw upon the face, in the nostrils, around the mouth, and in the eyes of the man’s face she had seen at the carriage window in the dim light furnished by a gas jet in the darkness, looking for a proof of his dishonour, and decided upon immediate vengeance. It is very likely, too, that he had noticed the young woman. But he had only met her once off the stage, and the high collar of her coat, a fur boa wound several times round her neck, a hat worn over her eyes and a double veil made Camille into an indecisive figure, a vague and indistinctive silhouette. Bonnivet without doubt saw in her, if his fixed plan allowed him to reason at all, a wanderer of the prostitute class exercising her miserable trade as the darkness came on. Then he took no further notice of her.
As for the charming and noble girl who was so magnanimous by nature that it seemed a pity that she should have experienced such depraving adventures, she had no sooner recognized Bonnivet than her first spite, her furious jealousy, the legitimate sorrow of her wounded passion and her appetite for revenge all combined into one feeling. She realized nothing but the danger Jacques was in, and the necessity of warning him, not to-morrow, or that evening, but at once. A few minutes before she had made up her mind that the lovers had postponed their appointment till another day.