A ripple of laughter from the audience had been steadily enheartening him, and helping him to recover his natural impudence. It was clear they found him comical. They were to find him far more comical than ever he had intended, and this was largely due to a fortuitous circumstance upon which he had insufficiently reckoned. The fear of recognition by some one from Gavrillac or Rennes had been strong upon him. His face was sufficiently made up to baffle recognition; but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he had availed himself of the fact that Figaro was a Spaniard. He had known a Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary French, with a grotesque excess of sibilant sounds. It was an accent that he had often imitated, as youths will imitate characteristics that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him of that Spanish student, and it was upon his speech that to-night he modelled his own. The audience of Guichen found it as laughable on his lips as he and his fellows had found it formerly on the lips of that derided Spaniard.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Binet — listening to that glib impromptu of which the scenario gave no indication — had recovered from his fears.
“Dieu de Dieu!” he whispered, grinning. “Did he do it, then, on purpose?”
It seemed to him impossible that a man who had been so terror-stricken as he had fancied Andre–Louis, could have recovered his wits so quickly and completely. Yet the doubt remained.
To resolve it after the curtain had fallen upon a first act that had gone with a verve unrivalled until this hour in the annals of the company, borne almost entirely upon the slim shoulders of the new Scaramouche, M. Binet bluntly questioned him.
They were standing in the space that did duty as green-room, the company all assembled there, showering congratulations upon their new recruit. Scaramouche, a little exalted at the moment by his success, however trivial he might consider it to-morrow, took then a full revenge upon Climene for the malicious satisfaction with which she had regarded his momentary blank terror.
“I do not wonder that you ask,” said he. “Faith, I should have warned you that I intended to do my best from the start to put the audience in a good humour with me. Mademoiselle very nearly ruined everything by refusing to reflect any of my terror. She was not even startled. Another time, mademoiselle, I shall give you full warning of my every intention.”
She crimsoned under her grease-paint. But before she could find an answer of sufficient venom, her father was rating her soundly for her stupidity — the more soundly because himself he had been deceived by Scaramouche’s supreme acting.
Scaramouche’s success in the first act was more than confirmed as the performance proceeded. Completely master of himself by now, and stimulated as only success can stimulate, he warmed to his work. Impudent, alert, sly, graceful, he incarnated the very ideal of Scaramouche, and he helped out his own native wit by many a remembered line from Beaumarchais, thereby persuading the better informed among the audience that here indeed was something of the real Figaro, and bringing them, as it were, into touch with the great world of the capital.
When at last the curtain fell for the last time, it was Scaramouche who shared with Climene the honours of the evening, his name that was coupled with hers in the calls that summoned them before the curtains.
As they stepped back, and the curtains screened them again from the departing audience, M. Binet approached them, rubbing his fat hands softly together. This runagate young lawyer, whom chance had blown into his company, had evidently been sent by Fate to make his fortune for him. The sudden success at Guichen, hitherto unrivalled, should be repeated and augmented elsewhere. There would be no more sleeping under hedges and tightening of belts. Adversity was behind him. He placed a hand upon Scaramouche’s shoulder, and surveyed him with a smile whose oiliness not even his red paint and colossal false nose could dissemble.
“And what have you to say to me now?” he asked him. “Was I wrong when I assured you that you would succeed? Do you think I have followed my fortunes in the theatre for a lifetime without knowing a born actor when I see one? You are my discovery, Scaramouche. I have discovered you to yourself. I have set your feet upon the road to fame and fortune. I await your thanks.”
Scaramouche laughed at him, and his laugh was not altogether pleasant.
“Always Pantaloon!” said he.
The great countenance became overcast. “I see that you do not yet forgive me the little stratagem by which I forced you to do justice to yourself. Ungrateful dog! As if I could have had any purpose but to make you; and I have done so. Continue as you have begun, and you will end in Paris. You may yet tread the stage of the Comedie Francaise, the rival of Talma, Fleury, and Dugazon. When that happens to you perhaps you will feel the gratitude that is due to old Binet, for you will owe it all to this soft-hearted old fool.”
“If you were as good an actor on the stage as you are in private,” said Scaramouche, “you would yourself have won to the Comedie Francaise long since. But I bear no rancour, M. Binet.” He laughed, and put out his hand.
Binet fell upon it and wrung it heartily.
“That, at least, is something,” he declared. “My boy, I have great plans for you — for us. To-morrow we go to Maure; there is a fair there to the end of this week. Then on Monday we take our chances at Pipriac, and after that we must consider. It may be that I am about to realize the dream of my life. There must have been upwards of fifteen louis taken to-night. Where the devil is that rascal Cordemais?”
Cordemais was the name of the original Scaramouche, who had so unfortunately twisted his ankle. That Binet should refer to him by his secular designation was a sign that in the Binet company at least he had fallen for ever from the lofty eminence of Scaramouche.
“Let us go and find him, and then we’ll away to the inn and crack a bottle of the best Burgundy, perhaps two bottles.”
But Cordemais was not readily to be found. None of the company had seen him since the close of the performance. M. Binet went round to the entrance. Cordemais was not there. At first he was annoyed; then as he continued in vain to bawl the fellow’s name, he began to grow uneasy; lastly, when Polichinelle, who was with them, discovered Cordemais’ crutch standing discarded behind the door, M. Binet became alarmed. A dreadful suspicion entered his mind. He grew visibly pale under his paint.
“But this evening he couldn’t walk without the crutch!” he exclaimed. “How then does he come to leave it there and take himself off?”
“Perhaps he has gone on to the inn,” suggested some one.
“But he couldn’t walk without his crutch,” M. Binet insisted.
Nevertheless, since clearly he was not anywhere about the market-hall, to the inn they all trooped, and deafened the landlady with their inquiries.
“Oh, yes, M. Cordemais came in some time ago.”
“Where is he now?”
“He went away again at once. He just came for his bag.”
“For his bag!” Binet was on the point of an apoplexy. “How long ago was that?”
She glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. “It would be about half an hour ago. It was a few minutes before the Rennes diligence passed through.”
“The Rennes diligence!” M. Binet was almost inarticulate. “Could he . . . could he walk?” he asked, on a note of terrible anxiety.
“Walk? He ran like a hare when he left the inn. I thought, myself, that his agility was suspicious, seeing how lame he had been since he fell downstairs yesterday. Is anything wrong?”
M. Binet had collapsed