ACT II
A small drawing-room, in great taste, combined with much luxury. General arrangements of the room rather adapted for repose and sleep – for tête-à-tête – than for general conversation and reception. A closed iron coffer, containing the million which has been spoken of in the First Act, placed on a table.
At the rising of the curtain, the drawing-room is empty. The stage remains thus unoccupied for about a moment. A curtain screen lowered at the left of the spectator, also one equally lowered at the right. A large screen lowered at the back, and concealing, like the other two, a door that can be locked.
Scene I
Lionnette, veiled, enters at the left; draws back the screen, stops, looks around her; goes slowly to the door at the back, which she opens and shuts again, after having looked in. Ten o'clock strikes. She goes and looks through the door at the right, then through the glass between the two rooms over the mantel-piece, and presses the knob of the electric bell, which is by the side of the chimney-piece. Silence reigns for a few seconds. Lionnette, astonished, looks around her. Nourvady appears at the back of the room.
Scene II
LIONNETTE, NOURVADY
(Nourvady stops, after having let fall the screen, and salutes Lionnette very respectfully. He is hat in hand.)
Lionnette (troubled)
Is it you?
Nourvady
You rang.
Lionnette
I thought a footman would answer.
Nourvady
Your most grateful and humble slave has come.
Lionnette (severely)
You were waiting for me?
Nourvady
Yes.
Lionnette
That is the reason you said yesterday that you would be in this house to-day.
Nourvady
Yes.
Lionnette
You were sure that I should come.
Nourvady (a little ironically)
Sure. I only regret that you have had to take the trouble to go and look in your garden for the key that you threw there.
Lionnette
The fact is that you have discovered the only way to compel me, – an infamous way, Sir. (While speaking she has taken off the veils that covered her face, and thrown them on the table.) You acknowledge, Sir, do you not, the infamous means you have adopted. Answer me!
Nourvady
I have no answer. You are in your own house; I could if I wished withdraw myself from your insult and anger: but, apart from the fact that my courage to do so forsook me from the moment you came here, I am sure you have something else to say to me, and I remain to hear it.
Lionnette
Truly, Sir, an explanation between you and me is necessary; and, as you did not wish to return to my house, I am come to seek it in yours. Besides, I like plain and open situations; and I do not fear, especially at this moment in my life, categorical explanations and undisguised expressions, – blunt even, if we can understand each other better in that way. I heard such things yesterday that my ears now can lend themselves to anything. An act such as yours – a step such as I have taken – an interview like this that we are having, and which may lead to results so positive and so serious – are so exceptional that words of double meaning could not explain them. (Seating herself.) I have not long known you; I have never attempted to attract you by the least coquetry; I have never asked anything of you; and you have just dishonoured me morally and socially without my being able to defend myself. It is remarkably clever. Whatever I may say, no one will believe me. My husband, who loves me, will not believe me; and he has treated me accordingly. What have I done to you that you should think yourself authorized to inflict such a public affront on me, for, if it isn't public yet, it will be to-morrow.
Nourvady
I have already told you: I love you.
Lionnette
And this, then, is your fashion of proving your love?
Nourvady
If I had had any other at my disposal, I should have employed it. I love you (changing his tone, and approaching her). I have loved you madly for years. (She recoils involuntarily from the movement of Nourvady.) Fear nothing: I dishonour you, perhaps, in the eyes of others, but I respect you; and you are sacred to me. If ever you are mine, it will only be with your consent; that is, when you will have said, "I return your love." I know well all the kinds of love one can buy! It is not for a love such as that I ask: you would not give it to me, and I do not wish for it from you. You are beautiful; I love you; and you have a great grief, a trouble, a common-place preoccupation, beneath your consideration, that one of your race and character ought never to know. On account of what? On account of some bank notes; of a few hundred pounds that you are in want of; and that I have in such profusion that I know not what to do with them. This grief – this annoyance – may cause you to lose your repose; may cost you your beauty – even your life; for you are a woman who would die in the face of an obstacle that you could not conquer. I have what is wanted to dispel this grief and care. I do it, therefore. Was it necessary to ask your permission? If I had seen your horse running away with you, should I have asked your permission to help you? I should have rushed to your horse's head and saved you, or he would have passed over my body. If I had saved your life, and survived, you would, perhaps, have loved me for that heroic act: if I had been killed, you would certainly have been sorry, and have wept for me. I have not exposed my life in saving you as I have done: I have not accomplished an act of heroism, I have only done a thing that was very easy for me; but I could not control the circumstances.
Lionnette
Ah! Well, your devotion led you astray, Sir; and if I am in your house, it is to call upon you to repair – before it be irremediable – the harm you have done.
Nourvady
It is out of my power to do anything myself. I have expressly employed this method because I knew it to be the only one, and irremediable. It would be now necessary that your creditors should consent to take back their bills, and give back their money. Do you think they would consent to that?
Lionnette
This, then, is what you said to yourself: This woman that I respect, esteem, and love, I am going first to compromise and dishonour her in the eyes of everybody; I am going to make her despised, insulted, and turned out of doors by her husband; and, the first emotion over, she will have nothing left to choose; she will take up her part, and will then be mine.
Nourvady
I did not reflect at all. It did not please me at all that the tradespeople should have the power of hunting and humiliating you. I paid them. I did not wish you to be sorrowful; I could not endure to see you poor. It is a fancy, like any other, and I am willing to take the consequences of my fancy. If you had been in my place you would have done what I have done.
Lionnette
No! If I were a man and pretended to love an honest woman, whatever might come of it, I would respect her dignity and the proprieties of the society in which she moves.
Nourvady
Is it really a woman of your superiority who speaks of the proprieties of society? Are not women like you above all that? Was I to come delicately and hypocritically to offer your husband the sum he stood in need of? "Arrange your affairs, my dear friend; you can give me back that trifle when you are able." I should certainly have acted like that if I had not loved you; loving you, ought I to do it, that is to say, to speculate upon your gratitude, upon the impossibility of your husband discharging his debt, and upon fresh and unavoidable necessities? That is a course that would have been unworthy of him, of me, and of you. No, you know it well, the proprieties and dignity are nothing any longer, when passion or necessity predominates. Did your grandmother respect the dignity of her daughter when she gave her up to a prince?
Lionnette
Sir!..
Nourvady
You do not fear words! There they are, those words, saying quite well all they have to say. Why do you rebel against them? Did your husband respect the dignity of his mother, the traditions of his family, the proprieties of the society in which he moved, when he issued a public summons to that irreproachable mother, to enable him to marry you? And you, yourself, while following your mother's counsel, did you say to that man: "My dignity is entirely opposed to marrying you under those circumstances, disowned, repulsed, disgraced by your mother"? Ah! well, I too, if I had met you when you were a young girl, I should have loved you as I love you now; and if my father had wished to prevent my marrying you, I should have acted like the Count. I envy him the sacrifice he was able to make for you, and that I can never make now.
Lionnette (half mockingly, half sincerely)
It may be so, but now it is too late. I am no longer open to marriage, and, unfortunately for you, I have no longer a mother.
Nourvady
But you may become a widow.
Lionnette
Then, you really hate the Count?
Nourvady
Yes, almost as much as I love you.
Lionnette
And you would like to prove it to him?
Nourvady
That is the second of my dreams. In the service that I rendered you, I knew perfectly well the insult I should inflict upon him, and much as I counted on your visit here, I was waiting in my house first for that of Mr. Godler and Mr. Trévelé, whom I had left expressly at your house yesterday until the Count returned home.
Lionnette
How agreeable and convenient it is to be open and sincere and to play your cards so openly. Ah, well, sir, if my husband has not yet sent his two friends, it is because he wishes first to send you your money. He is gone in search of it.
Nourvady
He will not find it.
Lionnette
I shall find it myself, without the ignominy which you anticipated. The Count will make a public restitution of the sum that you advanced in private, and will add to that restitution all that is required to make you justify your hatred.
Nourvady
He will strike me?
Lionnette
That is not at all doubtful.
Nourvady
And I will kill him.
Lionnette
That is not quite certain; he is courageous. A man who has no fear of death for himself, has a steadier hand to give it to another.
Nourvady
Pray for him; in the first place, it is your duty as a wife, and in the next, my death will be a fortunate event for you, indeed – a very good thing.
Lionnette
In what way?
Nourvady
Because, having no relations, not a single true friend in this world, as is only to be expected in a millionaire like me; because, loving you as you deserve to be loved, in life and in death, I have made my will, in which I have said that you are the loveliest and purest woman I have ever met; that your husband, who will kill me, has unjustly suspected you, and that I entreat you, in compensation for the suspicion of which, my admiration and my esteem have involuntarily been the cause, to graciously accept for your son all that I possess, notwithstanding that I also detest that son.
Lionnette
Why?
Nourvady
Because that child is the living proof of your love for your husband.
Lionnette (aside)
Alas! The child proves nothing. (Aloud) Never mind, all that is not ordinary, and you would, perhaps, finish by convincing me – with your death – provided that all this be true. If it be not true, it is well concocted.
Nourvady
Why should I deceive you? And what would you like me to do with my fortune if I die? What good would it be to me without my life, and in life what should I do with it without you? Whereas, if I die, my will is there by the side of the title deeds of proprietorship of this house, which you would only have had to sign if you had consented to be its owner during my life (he points to a cabinet at the bottom of the room), and your pocket money is here (he shows the coffer).
Lionnette
Ah! yes, it is true. The famous million! There lies the temptation of the present hour. The tabernacle of the golden calf. Ah! well, let me look at it… After all you have told me, who knows? perhaps, your god will convert me.
(She walks towards the coffer, of which she opens the principal side. The gold contained in it is scattered all over the open panel.)
Lionnette (looking at the gold)
It is certainly grand; like all which has power. There is contained ambition, hope, dreams, honour, and dishonour; the perdition and the salvation of hundreds – of thousands – of creatures, perhaps: it has no power for me. If I had loved my husband, I should, probably, take this million to save him: that would be one of the thousand base acts that one is called upon to commit in the name of true love. But, decidedly, I love no one and nothing. (Shutting the coffer violently.) Fight each other; kill each other; live or die, I am indifferent towards you both. You have both insulted me – each in your own way, and, always, in the name of love! Ah! if you only knew how what you call love becomes more and more odious to me. But, to make me believe in love, show me the man who respects that which he loves! I love you; that is to say, you are beautiful, and your flesh tempts me. It is to that temptation that I owed the husband who outrages me; it is to that temptation that I owe the insult that you have inflicted on me. A prince was not able to resist what he, too, called his love for a pretty girl; and I owe my existence to that so-called love! I must suffer on account of that; and, perhaps, in my turn, sell myself always on account of that! And that father dared not love me openly; me, his daughter; himself, a king! But, at least, he sometimes pressed me to his heart in secret: he wept; for he, too, suffered! Holding my head between his hands, he said to me, – he is the only one who ever said it to me, – "Be a virtuous woman always; it is the foundation of all good. Do you understand me?" And I believed him, and wished to be a virtuous woman, as he asked me to be; and it leads me to what? To be treated like one of the worst of creatures by him to whom I have remained faithful. And there is that man who insults me by his offer! His father made many millions by his bank; and he, the son, would like to buy me with them while I am yet young, be it understood. Why not? But, dear Sir, I am born of desire and corruption: they gave me no heart. With what, then, do you expect me to love you? I had no esteem for my mother: you do not know what it is not to esteem one's mother! My husband is an inexperienced, an idle, an unsophisticated man, who ought to have guided me; who did not know how; and whom I will never see any more. That is what I have come to. As to my son, I needed help, I took him in my arms yesterday, and he said to me, "I like better to go and play." Ah, well! let him get on without maternal dishonour. It will be a novelty in the family, and that will be my last luxury. It matters not. Amongst all this impurity and all these errors, there came on the scene, all of a sudden, one of the first gentlemen in the world; and his coming changed everything. I have royal blood in my veins. I shall never belong to you. Adieu! (She goes towards the door at the back. Two violent and quick rings are heard at the bell of the entrance.) What can that be?
Nourvady
A visitor who has made a mistake (ringing). Wait a moment! (The Footman appears.) Who is that?
The Footman
There are several men ringing at the door, but we have not opened it.
(During this time Lionnette has covered herself with her veils.)
Nourvady
Very well! Do not open it.
(Two blows of a hammer are given on the hall door; after a little while, two more.)
A Voice (from outside)
For the third time, open.
Lionnette (who has gone to look through the curtains of the window)
My husband! With these men. Ah! this is complete.
Nourvady
Conceal yourself here. (He shoves the door at the right.)
Lionnette (beyond herself with passion)
I conceal myself! What do you mean? Who do you take me for? I have done no harm. All those people there are mad, decidedly. I want to see them quite close. (Nourvady goes to lock the door at the back. Lionnette has pulled off her veils, torn the fichu that was on her shoulders, and unrolled her hair by shaking her head.) It was when I was like this that my husband thought me most beautiful! It is well, at least, that he should see me once more as he used to like to see me. Am I really beautiful like this?
Nourvady
Ah! yes; beautiful indeed.
Lionnette
And you love me?
Nourvady
Very deeply.
Lionnette
And all your life will be devoted to me?
Nourvady
All my life.
Lionnette
You swear it to me?
Nourvady
On my word of honour.
(He approaches her quickly. At that moment she stretches out her uncovered arms, and crosses them on her face; that she turns away. Nourvady covers her arms with kisses.)
A Voice (outside the door that Nourvady has shut)
Open!
Nourvady
Who are you?
The Voice
In the name of the law.
Nourvady
I am in my own house. I refuse.
John (from outside)
Break open that door.
Lionnette
The coward!
The Voice
It is I who give orders here, and I only. For the last time, will you open the door?
Nourvady
No!
The Voice
Force that door.
Nourvady (to Lionnette)
Tell me that you love me.
Lionnette
Ah! yes, I love you; as he has driven me to it.
(During these words the door was violently shaken, and it opens with a great noise.)
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