McClure's Magazine/Volume 12/Number 1/The Actress of the Chateau
THE ACTRESS OF THE CHATEAU
BY ROBT BARR
Author of "In the Midst of Alarums," "The Mutable Many," etc.
THE 11.18 a.m. express for the southwest stood under the great arch of the Orleans railway station in Paris. A rather sumptuous private car was attached to the end of it, and Adolph Gerard, a man who, Paris said, looked like Moliere, paced anxiously up and down the platform in front of the car, which was there because his money paid for it. Gerard was manager of the Theatre Tragique, the company of which had been rehearsing the play entitled "The Duc de Guise," for which all Paris was eagerly waiting. The famous dramatist Durand, it was said, had, in the construction of his play and the creation of his heroine, kept in mind the requirements of that imperious actress whose celebrity was world-wide, Madame Clement.
There was an expression of worry on the manager's face as he paced to and fro, with nervous glances now and then towards the door where a railway official stood examining the tickets of those who entered upon the platform. A young man of perhaps twenty-five descended from the private car, and accosted the troubled manager.
"No sign of madame yet, father?" he asked.
The older man shook his head, casting a look up at the big station clock whose minute-hand was relentlessly approaching the figure three on the dial, "No," he said, mournfully, "she has not come, and in a very short time the doors will be closed."
"What are we to do," continued the young man, "if she does not arrive? Shall we go on to Blois without her, or shall we have this carriage detached and go by a later train?"
"Oh, the Lord only knows!" exclaimed the elder Gerard, raising his hands tragically above his head and letting them fall hopelessly to his sides. "It is a foolish business at best, this Blois tour, and now when we can so ill spare the time, when all Paris is on the qui vive, and we need every moment of our two months for preparation, what must this capricious woman do but hale us on a wild goose chase half across France. I have been thanking the fates that she did not demand a special train, and now when all arrangements are made she has probably changed her mind, without even taking the trouble of informing us."
The railway officials were now, with loud voices, requesting intended passengers to take their places in the train. The ticket-examiners were preparing to close the doors that led to the platform, when, at the very last moment, there sailed majestically past the portal official a tall woman well on in middle age, followed by a maid carrying wraps and other impedimenta. She made entrance as if the platform were a stage, and indeed the news of her presence spread electrically up and down, and many craned their necks to get a glimpse of her.
"It is the great Madame Clement," ran the word.
Porters were obsequious to her, and the guards of the train touched their gold-laced caps to her in salutation as she passed, taking little notice of them all. France had dethroned more than one queen, yet here was another who demanded and received universal adulation.
The change in the manner of old Gerard was instantaneous. He rapidly approached the tragedienne, bowing and smiling and rubbing his hands one over the other.
"Ah, my good Gerard," said the actress, "am I late?"
"Oh, no, Madame," lied the manager, fawning. "There is ample time, and we have everything prepared for your comfort. Dejeuner will he served when you do us the honor to command it, any time you please between here and Blois, and I sincerely trust it will be to your liking, Madame."
The young man held the open door of the private carriage while his father, with cringing officiousness, assisted Madame Clement to enter. There were, in the lengthy compartment, some half dozen actors and actresses belonging to the company of which Madame was the star. They rose as she came in: she inclined her head with some hauteur towards them, and proceeded to arrange herself to her satisfaction, paying scant regard to the convenience of any of her traveling companions, an attitude to which everyone had long since become accustomed. Hardly was this accomplished when the train drew out from the shadow of the station into the brilliant sunlight, and proceeded with ever increasing speed through the suburbs of Paris towards Orleans. The manager, his face wreathed in smiles, still rubbing his hands like a benignant grocer, said, addressing the assemblage: "We have a beautiful day for our moat charming excursion; and for the little outing, which I hope we shall all enjoy, we have to thank Madame Clement. The Duc de Guise, as you are doubtless aware, was murdered in the Chateau de Blois, second floor. It has been most opportunely suggested by Madame that it might be well for her leading associates to see the actual surroundings among which this tragic event took place. While we are rehearsing the play which the illustrious Durand has written, it has been wisely thought that if we view the scene where the culmination occurred, something of the spirit of the time may influence you, and thus"
"Oh, what superb nonsense you are talking, Father Gerard!" interrupted Madame Clement. "These poor creatures will act neither better nor worse for having seen the room in which the murder was committed. It is my caprice that we go to Blois, and see you to it, Gerard, that the journals are informed of our excursion, and that paragraphs are inserted showing at what pains Madame Clement is to bestow historical accuracy upon the dear silly public. But what is more to the purpose than bombastic speeches, open a bottle of champagne at once, and cause dejeuner to be served as speedily as may be. What time does this train reach Blois?"
"At two o'clock, Madame," murmured the abject manager, effectually crushed. The younger Gerard writhed under the contumely which his father had to bear, but all were alike helpless in the august presence of the feminine despot of the stage.
Promptly at two o'clock the express drew up at the station of Blois. The distinguished company descended, and the private car was uncoupled from the train, to be attached later to the "Rapide" for Paris, which left Blois at twelve minutes after three, giving them therefore little more than an hour to view the castle, where, three centuries before, the Duc de Guise had been murdered, while his brother, the cardinal, met a similar fate the day after, at a spot but a few yards distant from the place where the previous tragedy had been enacted.
At the foot of the grand circular stairway, the roof of which was decorated with the salamanders of Francis I., the party met a tall and very beautiful young woman, who held in her hand a bunch of keys.
"We are desirous," said the manager to this queenly girl, "of seeing through the chateau. Where should we apply for permission to do so?"
"No permission is required," replied the girl. "I shall be pleased to conduct you. Be so good as to follow me."
The girl preceded them up the winding stairway, when her footsteps were arrested by the commanding tones of Madame Clement's voice.
"Stop, girl!" she cried. "I have no wish to explore the various nooks and crannies of this wretched chateau. I desire you to take us at once to the rooms in which Henri le Balafré, Duc de Guise, was assassinated. We have no time to spare, and I bid you make haste."
The girl paused, her right foot on a step above the one on which her left rested, and she looked over her shoulder and down upon them with a glance and action that would have done credit to the great actress herself. "If you will have the patience to follow me, Madame Clement, I shall lead you directly to those apartments."
"Ah," cried the ancient manager, nervously rubbing his hands and speaking with affected gaiety. "We are known, it seems, even in Blois."
"We!" cried the actress with great scorn. "I am known much farther afield, I trust, than this stupid little provincial town. Lead on, girl, and let us have less chatter."
They entered a large and lofty apartment at the further end of which was a huge fireplace.
"Here," said the beautiful girl, indicating the mantelpiece, "Henry of Guise stood on the morning of Friday the 23d of December, 1588. Outside the rain was pouring, and the day was bitterly cold, so the Duke stood here and warmed himself, kicking the burning logs and eating Brignoles plums. In different parts of the room, seated and standing, were members of the king's council and numerous courtiers, for the hour was six in the morning, and no word had yet come from the king, whose bedchamber was the room adjoining, and entered by that door to my left. The Duke's hat, cloak, and sword lay on the table. A messenger entered from the king's apartment, and"
"In God's name, hussy," cried Madame Clement, "are you going to have the impudence to recite to us the history of France? Did you not hear my order? Show us quickly through the rooms."
The girl drew herself up with offended dignity, but made no reply. Her words had been commonplace enough, but her enunciation was so perfect and her few gestures so superb, that the effect of such finished acting upon a company of actors had been instantaneous. The room, for the time being, seemed peopled with shades of the past, and the rich voice of the girl had held them all as by a spell.
"I beg your pardon, Madame," ventured young Gerard, his face flushing, "but we have ample time, and Mademoiselle has interested me so much in the beginning of the story, that, I confess, I should like to hear it through to the end."
The unfortunate father of the over-bold young man gazed at him in mute, amazed beseechment, and the great tragedienne turned upon him like an enraged tigress.
"How dare you?" she cried.
"Oh, Adolph, Adolph," pleaded the father, "apologize to Madame. You do not think what you are saying, my son."
"I willingly apologize to Madame," replied young Gerard, "if I have said anything to give her offense. I merely wished in suggest that it is somewhat futile to come two hundred kilometers, or thereabout, from Paris in order to rush through these rooms as if we were riders at the Hippodrome."
An expression of agony came upon the face of his down-trodden father us he saw the effect of his son's words upon the actress. What that thoroughly angered woman might have said never will be known, for the girl, already at the door leading out of the guard's hall, spoke in a tone of calm and cutting clarity.
"Will you be so condescending as to follow me into the king's chamber? My time is limited, and I can give only a certain amount of it to those who pass through these rooms. If you wish to engage in private discussions you can do so in the courtyard below, where doubtless other visitors are now waiting for me."
Madame Clement was so thunderstruck at the girl's audacity that for a moment she was speechless, and before she had collected her wits, the whole party was in the smaller room on the north front of the chateau, where King Henry III. had slept. They were all deeply agitated, but pretended not to be so. They gazed about the room and through the windows at the street below, while their conductor stood silent like an offended goddess, and was about to precede them, without speaking into the third room when Madame Clement addressed her in a voice trembling with anger.
"What happened in this room?" she cried. "I would have you understand that we are not here to be the victims of your rural sulkiness. Say your lesson, parrot."
"Madame," replied the girl, "in the guard's room I spoke, and you rudely commanded me to be silent. In the king's chamber I am silent, and you rudely command me to speak. Madame, I find some difficulty in pleasing you."
"You impudent jade, how dare you so address yourself to me? Apparently you know to whom you speak, therefore speak respectfully."
"Respect, Madame," said the girl, "always commands respect. On the walls of this building are graven the words, 'Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.' I considered you my equal, Madame, until your language and your manner to me too clearly proclaimed you my inferior; I cannot, therefore, regard you with feelings of fraternity, and I exercise my liberty in saying to you, that if you do not treat me with civility, I will lock the doors upon you and refuse to conduct you further."
"You vixen!" cried the actress, "I shall make you smart for this. The moment I return to Paris, I shall see friends of mine in the government and have such a custodian as you are turned out into the streets, where you doubtless belong."
The girl laughed in rippling tones, rich and melodious, and unless one caught the flash of her beautiful eyes, the mistake might have been made that she was not angry.
"There," she said. pointing to a spot near the wall, "the Duc de Guise fell and died, having fought his way, covered with forty wounds, from the third room beyond. We now enter the adjoining chapel, where prayers were being said for the success of the crime."
To the great relief of the old manager there were no further hostilities until the party found itself again in the courtyard. The manager, with a sigh of comfort, offered their conductor a piece of gold.
"Stop!" cried Madame Clement. "You shall pay her exactly what the law allows, and nothing more. One franc for each person."
"Madame is right," replied the girl. "I will give you the change, Monsieur; I have it here in my pocket."
The old man held out his hand, and she counted the silver pieces into it.
"That is a franc too much, Mademoiselle," said the manager.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"I refuse to accept a franc for Madame Clement. She has journeyed through the chateau as my guest, and I should like you to know, Madame, that all your interest with the government will not enable you in the least to injure me. I am a Parisian, like yourselves, at Blois for a short holiday. The old man who is custodian of the chateau knows nothing of my presence here, for he is bed-ridden through honorable wounds received in the service of his country: it is his wife and daughter who usually conduct visitors through the chateau. I have taken their place to-day because they are absent at Seuvre, where the wife's sister is ill. You may perhaps have power to injure this poor family, but I warn you that if you do, I have a brother on the staff of a leading Paris journal to whom I shall tell every word that has been spoken, and you, Madame Clement, will wake one fine morning to find all Paris laughing at you and commenting on your bad manners. If I may modestly state my apprehension, I fear a fickle world will say, that for once Madame Clement met a more accomplished actress than herself."
Before any reply could be made, the girl, with a low bow that seemed to include the whole party, turned and fled rapidly up the stair.
It was a sombre and silent procession that walked to the railway station and entered the waiting car. The "Rapide" had not yet come in from the west.
Father and son walked together up and down the platform, and the old man's familiar action resembled the wringing of his hands. He was in a state of the deepest dejection.
"Oh, Adolph, Adolph," he cried. "There will be much to pay for this day's work. What are we to do? Oh, what are we to do?"
"There is plenty of time," replied the young man, soothingly. "Durand's play cannot possibly come on for two months yet, and the Madame cannot break her contract with you until the run of the 'Princess Diaboline' ends. If she cuts up rough about the 'Duc de Guise,' you can keep the 'Princess' running and hold the Madame to her contract."
"It is easy enough to say that, Adolph, but you forget that I also am under contract to produce Durand's tragedy."
"Nothing can be easier," replied Adolph, jauntily. "There is the Theatre Apollon vacant. I should take that, if I were you, and so bring out Durand's play."
"But, my dear son," objected the old man, "there isn't a woman in my company except the Madame who can take the part of Catherine."
"Don't trouble about that, father," replied the son. "I have an actress in my eye for the part, who will burst upon Paris with all the brilliancy of a sky rocket."
"Good heavens!" cried the old man eagerly. "Who is she, Adolph? Do I know her?"
"You may have seen her, but I doubt if you know her."
As he spoke the "Rapide" came thundering in, and the old man hurried towards the private car, the transient elation which he had felt when his son spoke of the new actress rapidly evaporating as he thought of his two hours' journey with the displeased queen of tragedy.
"Oh, Adolph," he beseeched, "you will apologize to her, my boy, for my sake? And don't mind anything she says, and don't reply, if you do not wish to bring your father to an untimely grave."
"I have a better plan than that, father," said Adolph. "I will go on to Paris by a later train. You see, I am not in the cast, and it won't matter. You can speak soothingly to the Madame, as is your custom, and throw all the blame on my shoulders. I should only be a marplot at best."
"Well, perhaps there is wisdom in that," mused the old man, entering the carriage.
Adolph Gerard saw the "Rapide" disappear; then, with a laugh, he turned and walked again to the chateau. The girl with the keys looked up as ho approached the foot of the grand stairway, and she smiled without evincing surprise at seeing him.
"Mademoiselle," said Adolph. raising his hat with the utmost courtesy, "would you do me the honor to conduct me to the room in which the Duc de Guise was assassinated?"
"With pleasure, Monsieur," replied the girl, with a graceful inclination that would have been difficult to excel by the most stately lady in the land. "The charge will be one franc," and her merry laugh echoed in the old courtyard.
Mademoiselle, I assure you the pleasure of accompanying you would be cheap at a thousand."
"Oh, it is quite plain," she said to him over her shoulder, as she lightly mounted the stair, "that I have at last engaged in my proper avocation. If there were many tourists so generous as you are, I might soon buy the castle itself from the government."
They were now in the guard's hall.
"Yes," he said, "if Madame Clement did not use her influence to dispossess you."
"What a dreadful woman!" cried the girl, with something almost resembling a shudder. "And to think that up to this day I have worshiped her from afar."
"She is a beast," said Adolph, with conviction, "and must keep everyone round her in terror or she is not happy."
"But a great actress," sighed the girl.
"You have seen her on the stage then?"
"Oh, often, and always nearly cried my eyes out."
"That did not interfere with their flashing fire to-day. I never saw anything more magnificent," cried the enthusiastic young man, looking the admiration he felt.
The girl veiled the brilliants under discussion, and fixed her gaze on the floor that the Duc de Guise had trodden when he departed on his fatal mission.
"The elderly gentleman is your father, is he not, and manager of the Theatre Tragique? I have often heard of him, but never saw him before. I did not think so distinguished a man could be so cowed and browbeaten by any woman."
"Alas," replied the young man with a sigh, "we are all the victims of some woman, if not in one way, then in another. My name," he continued, "is Adolph Gerard. May I have the happiness of learning yours, Mademoiselle?"
"Pauline Ducharme," she answered, looking up at him. "But I thought, Monsieur Gerard, that you came to study ancient history, and not to learn anything so modern as my undistinguished name."
"It need not remain undistinguished," he cried, with enthusiasm. "I am sure you are an actress."
"My friends have flattered me by calling me so. I had a small part at the Theatre Apollon until it closed, then I came here to rest and study. Monsieur Gerard, I shall be perfectly frank with you. This morning a white dove with a leaf in its beak alighted tor a moment on my window-sill. I had been praying to my saint for success, and when I saw the bird I knew that my chance would come to-day. A dove brought back a branch to the ark to show that the waters had abated. When I saw Madame Clement this morning, my heart leaped with joy, and I said to myself, my chance is coming from the hands of a woman I have adored ever since I was a little girl. But when you spoke, Monsieur, I knew it was to come through you. I was waiting for you at the foot of the stair when you returned."
"I had hoped," said the young man in a plaintive tone, "that your desire to see me return might be partly personal, as well as theatrical."
The girl laughed brightly, and looked frankly into his eager eyes. "If that were true," she said, "you would not expect me to confess it. Therefore let us leave the personal element to take care of itself, and turn our minds entirely towards the actor and the actress and not towards the man and the woman. I know you are an actor, for I have seen you play, although you are not in the present cast at the Theatre Tragique. You have your foot on the boards, and the whole world lies before you. I want you to extend a hand to me, and help me to a position on the stage. If I cannot maintain it, then let me sink: all I want is my chance."
As the girl said this she seemed to grow in stature, tall as she was. Her voice rang with a confidence that confirmed the young man's opinion of her histrionic abilities, and little as his imagination needed spur, he saw before him a woman who could adequately impersonate the Catherine into whose actual apartments below led the narrow winding secret stairway near which they stood.
"You shall have your chance," he cried. "Durand has written a great play called 'The Duc de Guise.' He has taken some liberties with history, and Catherine the queen, is the heroine. Madame Clement has been blowing hot and cold for months past, driving the dramatic author to the verge of distraction. Several times we have come to a deadlock, the Madame wishing more lines put in or others changed, and Durand obstinately inflexible, as he has every right to be, and my poor father the buffer between them. One day she is enthusiastic about the character, another she will not play it on any terms, and we have to circle on our knees about her. I am tired of Madame's attitude myself, and my father's reason is tottering. Durand has fled the the country, and no one knows where he hides. Yesterday Madame was all for the play, and nothing would do but my father must get a private car to bring her and part of the company to Blois. I don't know why they assassinated the Duc de Guise, but if he made himself half so objectionable as Madame Clement, I can find it in my heart to forgive his murderers. Now I feel it in my heart that the Madame is going to make the final outburst and revolt today. She hasn't changed her mind for twenty-four hours, so a revolution is due. You live in Blois, Mademoiselle; may I venture to ask your address?"
"I live with my father, No. 16 Rue de Tours."
"Very well," said Adolph, noting down the number and street. "I will go to Paris at once, and if things are as I hope to find them, I shall briefly console my father, then return here, bringing with me a copy of the play. Old Durand takes the 'Figaro' wherever he is, so I shall put an advertisement in that paper, which he alone will understand. When he communicates with me, I shall induce him to come to Blois and coach you in your part."
"But may not Monsieur Durand object to so unknown a person as I taking the leading part in his great play?"
"Object? Oh, no! How little you understand the conceit of the successful dramatic author; it quite equals that of Madame Clement herself. This is why my poor father is ground between them. Durand fully believes his play would be a success if it were acted by chimney-sweeps. And now, adieu, Mademoiselle. I must return by slow train to Paris."
For an account of La Pauline's tremendous success in Durand's now celebrated play, the reader is referred to files of the Parisian papers of that year. So well did Mademoiselle Ducharme enact the love scenes of the drama with Monsieur Adolph Gerard, that they seemed to have carried their respective parts into private life, for the same journals have related that they began their wedding journey at Tours.