Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 27

  And he cast a quick look toward the building behind him.

  “No — no: it is all right — beside the mortuary. There is the same door at the right through which she came. We shall go there as soon as Pere Simon is out of the way.”

  And he set his teeth.

  “I believe that I am going crazy!” he said with a short laugh. “But I can’t help my feelings. They are stronger than I. To think that I am going to see the parlor — where she waited for me! I had been living only in the hope of seeing her, and after she had gone, although I had promised to be good and sensible, I fell into such a despondent state that after each of her visits, they feared for my health. They were only able to save me from utter prostration by telling me that if I fell ill they would not let me see her any more. So from one visit to another, I had her memory and her perfume to comfort me. Never having seen her dear face distinctly, and being so weak that I was ready to swoon with joy every time she pressed me to her heart, I lived less with her image than with the heavenly odor. Often on the days after she had come and gone, I would escape from my comrades during the recreation hours and steal to the parlor, and when I found it empty, I would draw deep breaths of the air which she had breathed and remain there like a little devotee, and leave with a heart filled with the sense of her presence. The perfume which she always used and which was indissolubly associated in my mind with her, was the most delicate, the most subtle, and the sweetest odor I have ever known, and I never breathed it again in all the years which followed until the day I spoke of it to you, Sainclair. You remember — the day we first went to the Glandier?”

  “You mean the day that you met Mathilde Stangerson?”

  “That is what I mean,” responded the lad in a trembling voice.

  (Ah, if I had known at that moment that Professor Stangerson’s daughter, as the result of her first marriage in America, had had a child, a son, who would have been, if he had lived, the same age as Rouletabille, perhaps I would have at last comprehended his emotion and grief, and the strange reluctance which he showed to pronounce the name of Mathilde Stangerson there at the school, to which, in the past, had come so often the Lady in Black!)

  There was a long silence, which I finally broke.

  “And you have never known why the Lady in Black did not return?”

  “Oh!” cried Rouletabille. “I am sure that she did return. It was I who was not here.”

  “Who took you away?”

  “No one: I ran away.”

  “Why? To look for her?”

  “No — no! To flee from her — to flee from her, I tell you, Sainclair. But she came back — I know that she came back.”

  “She may have been broken hearted at not finding you.”

  Rouletabille raised his arms toward the sky and shook his head.

  “I don’t know — how can I know? Ah, what an unhappy wretch I am! But, hush, Sainclair! Here comes Pere Simon! Now, he’s gone again. Quick — to the parlor!”

  We were there in three seconds. It was a commonplace room enough, rather large, with cheap white curtains in front of the shadeless windows. It was furnished with six leather chairs placed against the wall, a mantel mirror, and a clock. The whole appearance of the place was sombre.

  As we entered the room, Rouletabille uncovered his head with an appearance of respect and reverence which one rarely assumes except in a sacred place. His face became flushed, he advanced with short steps, rolling his travelling cap in his hands as if he were embarrassed. He turned to me and said in low tones — far lower than he used in the chapel:

  “Oh, Sainclair, this is it — the parlor. Feel how my hands burn. My face is flushed, is it not? I was always flushed when I came here, knowing that I should find her. I used to run. I felt smothered — I do now. I was not able to wait. Oh, my heart beats just as it used when I was a little lad! I would come to the door — right here — and then I would pause, bashful and shamefaced. But I would see her dark shadow in the corner: she would take me in her arms and hold me there in silence, and before we knew it, we were both weeping, as we clung together. How dear those meetings were. She was my mother, Sainclair. Oh, she never told me so: on the contrary, she used to say that my mother was dead, and that she had been her friend. But she told me to call her Mamma — and when she wept as I kissed her, I knew that she really was my mother. See — she always sat there in the dark corner, and she came always at nightfall, when the parlor had not yet been lit up for the evening. And every time she came, she would place on the window sill a big, white package, tied with pink cord. It was a fruit cake. I have loved fruit cake ever since, Sainclair!”

  The poor lad could no longer contain himself. He rested his arms on the mantel and wept like a little child. When he was able to control himself a little, he raised his head and looked at me with a sad smile. And then he sank into a chair as though he were tired out. I had not had the heart to say one word to him during his reminiscences. I knew well that he was not talking with me, but with his memories.

  I saw him draw from his breast the letter which he had placed there in the train, and tear it open with trembling fingers. He read it slowly. Suddenly his hand fell, and he uttered a groan. His flushed face grew pallid — so pallid that it seemed as though every drop of blood had left his heart. I stepped toward him, but he waved me away and closed his eyes. He looked almost as though he were sleeping. I walked across the room, moving as softly as one does in the chamber of death. I looked up at the wall, where bung a heavy wooden crucifix. How long did I stand gazing on the cross? I have no idea. Nor do I know what we said to someone belonging to the house, who came into the parlor. I was pondering with all my strength of concentration on the strange and mysterious destiny of my friend — on this mysterious woman who might or might not have been his mother. Rouletabille had been so young in those school days. He longed so for a mother, that he might have imagined that he had found one in his visitor. Rouletabille — what other name did we know him by? Joseph Josephin. It was without doubt under that name that he had pursued his early studies here. Joseph Josephin, the queer appellation of which the editor of the Epoch had said to him, “It is no name at all!” And now, what was he about to do here? Seek the trace of a perfume? Revive a memory — an illusion? I turned as I heard him stir. He was standing erect and seemed quite calm. His features had taken on the serenity which comes from assurance of victory.

  “We must go now, Sainclair. Come, my friend.”

  And he left the parlor without even looking back. I followed him.

  In the deserted street, which we regained without meeting anyone, I stopped him by asking anxiously:

  “Well — did you find the perfume of the Lady in Black?”

  He must have seen that all my heart was in the question and that I was filled with an ardent desire that this visit to the scenes of his childhood might have brought a little peace to his soul.

  “Yes,” he said, very gravely. “Yes, Sainclair, I found it.”

  And he handed me the letter from Professor Stangerson’s daughter.

  I looked at him, doubting the evidence of my own senses — not understanding, because I knew nothing. Then he took my two hands and looked into my eyes.

  “I am going to confide a secret to you, Sainclair — the secret of my life, and perhaps some day the secret of my death. Let what will come, it must die with you and me. Mathilde Stangerson had a child — a son. He is dead — is dead to everyone except to the two of us who stand here.”

  I recoiled, struck with horror under such a revelation. Rouletabille the son of Mathilde Stangerson! And then suddenly I received a still more violent shock. In that case, Rouletabille must be the son of Larsan.

  Oh, I understood now, all the wretchedness of the boy. I understood why he had said this morning: “Why did he not die? If he is living, I wish to God that I were dead!”

  Rouletabille must have read my thoughts in my eyes, and he simply made a gesture which seemed to say, “And now you understand, Saincla
ir.” Then he finished his sentence aloud. The word which he spoke was “Silence!”

  When we reached Paris we separated, to meet again at the train. There, Rouletabille handed me a new dispatch, which had come from Valence, and which was signed by Professor Stangerson. It said, “M. Darzac tells me that you have a few days’ leave. We should all be very glad if you could come and spend them with us. We will wait for you at Arthur Rance’s place, Rochers Rouges — he will be delighted to present you to his wife. My daughter will be pleased to see you. She joins me in kindest greetings.”

  Just as the train was starting, a concierge from Rouletabille’s hotel came rushing up and handed us a third dispatch. This one was sent from Mentone, and signed by Mathilde. It contained two words: “Rescue us.”

  CHAPTER IV

  EN ROUTE

  NOW I KNEW all. As we continued on our journey, Rouletabille related to me the remarkable and adventurous story of his childhood, and I knew, also, why he dreaded nothing so much as that Mme. Darzac should penetrate the mystery which separated them. I dared say nothing more — give my friend no advice. Ah, the poor unfortunate lad! When he read the words “Rescue us,” he carried the dispatch to his lips, and then, pressing my hand, he said: “If I arrive too late, I can avenge her, at least.” I have never heard anything more filled with resolution than the cold determination of his tone. From time to time a quick movement betrayed the passion of his soul, but for the most part he was calm — terribly calm. What resolution had he taken in the silence of the parlor, when he sat motionless and with closed eyes in the shadow of the corner where he had used to see the Lady in Black?

  While we journeyed toward Lyons, and Rouletabille lay dreaming, stretched out fully dressed in his berth, I will tell you how and why the child that he had been ran away from school at Eu, and what had happened to him.

  Rouletabille had fled from the school like a thief. There was no need to seek for another expression, because he had been accused of stealing. This was how it happened.

  At the age of nine, he had already an extraordinarily precocious intelligence, and could arrive easily at the solution of the most perplexing problems. By logical deductions of an almost amazing kind, he astonished his professor of mathematics by his philosophical method of work. He had never been able to learn his multiplication tables, and always counted upon his fingers. He would usually get the answers to the problems himself, leaving the working out to be done by his fellow pupils, as one will leave an irksome task to a servant. But first, he would show them exactly how the example ought to be done. Although as yet ignorant of the rudiments of algebra, he had invented for his own personal use a system of algebra carried on with queer signs, looking like hieroglyphics, by the aid of which he marked all the steps of his mathematical reasoning, and thus he was able to write down the general formulae so that he alone could interpret them. His professor used proudly to compare him to Pascal, discovering for himself without knowledge of geometry, the first propositions of Euclid. He applied his admirable faculties of reasoning to his daily life, as well as to his studies, using the rules both materially and morally. For example, an act had been committed in the school — I have forgotten whether it was of cheating or talebearing — by one of ten persons whom he knew, and he picked out the right one with a divination which seemed almost supernatural, simply by using the powers of reasoning and deduction, which he had practiced to such an extent. So much for the moral aspect of his strange gift, and as for the material, nothing seemed more simple to him than to find any lost or hidden object — or even a stolen one. It was in the detection of thefts especially that he displayed a wonderful resourcefulness, as if nature, in her wondrous fitting together of the parts that make an equal whole, after having created the father a thief of the worst kind, had caused the son to be born the evil genius of thieves.

  This strange aptitude, after having won for the boy a sort of fame in the school, on account of his detection of several attempts at pilfering, was destined one day to be fatal to him. He found in this abnormal fashion a small sum of money which had been stolen from the superintendent, who refused to believe that the discovery was due only to the lad’s intelligence and clearness of insight. This hypothesis, indeed, appeared impossible to almost everyone who knew of the matter, and, thanks to an unfortunate coincidence of time and place, the affair finished up by having Rouletabille himself accused of being the thief. They tried to make him acknowledge his fault; he defended himself with such indignation and anger that it drew upon him a severe punishment. The principal held an investigation and a trial, at which Joseph Josephin was accused by some of his youthful comrades in that spirit of falsehood which children sometimes possess. Some of them complained of having had books, pencils, and tablets stolen at different times, and declared that they believed that Joseph had taken them. The fact that the boy seemed to have no relatives, and that no one knew where he came from, made him particularly likely, in that little world, to be suspected of crime. When the boys spoke of him, it was as “that thief.” The contempt in which he was held preyed upon him, for he was not a strong child at best, and he was plunged in despair. He almost prayed to die. The principal, who was really the most kind hearted of men, was persuaded that he had a vicious little creature to deal with, because he was unable to produce an impression on the child, and make him comprehend the horror of what he had done. Finally, he told the lad that if he did not confess his guilt, it had been decided not to keep him in the school any longer, and that a letter would be written to the lady who interested herself in him — Mme. Darbel was the name which she had given — to tell her to come after him.

  The child made no reply and allowed himself to be taken to his little room, where he had been kept a prisoner. Upon the morrow he had disappeared. He had run away. He had felt that the principal, to whose care he had been entrusted during the earliest years of his childhood (for in all his little life he could remember no other home than the school), and who had always been so kind to him, was no longer his friend, since he believed him guilty of theft. And he could see no reason why the Lady in Black would not believe it, too — that he was a thief. To appear as a thief in the sight of the Lady in Black! He would far rather have died.

  And he made his escape from the place by climbing over the wall of the garden at night. He rushed to the canal, sobbing, and, with a prayer, uttered as much to the Lady in Black as to God Himself, threw himself in the water. Happily, in his despair, the poor child had forgotten that he knew how to swim.

  If I have reported this passage in the life of Rouletabille at some length, it is because it seems to me that it is all important to the thorough comprehension of his future. At that time, of course, he was ignorant that he was the son of Larsan. Rouletabille, even as a child of nine years, could not without agony harbor the idea that the Lady in Black might believe him to be a thief, and thus, when the time came that he imagined — an imagination too well founded, alas! — that he was bound by ties of blood to Larsan, what infinite misery he experienced! His mother, in hearing of the crime of which he had been accused, must have felt that the criminal instincts of the father were coming to light in the son, and, perhaps — thought more cruel than death itself — she may have rejoiced in believing him dead.

  For everyone believed him dead. They found his footsteps leading to the canal, and they fished out his cap. How had he lived after leaving the school? In a most singular fashion. After swimming to dry land and making up his mind to fly the country, the lad, while they were searching for him everywhere in the canal and out of it, devised a most original plan for travelling to a distance without being disturbed. He had not read that most interesting tale, The Stolen Letter. His own invention served him. He reasoned the thing out, as he always did.

  He knew — for he had often heard them told by the heroes themselves — many stories of little rascals who had run away from their parents in search of adventures, hiding themselves by day in the fields and the wood, and travelling by nig
ht — only to find themselves speedily captured by the gendarmes, or forced to return home because they had no money and no food, and dared not ask for anything to eat along the road which they followed, and which was too well guarded to admit of their escape if they applied for aid. Our little Rouletabille slept at night like everyone else, and travelled in broad daylight, without hiding himself. But, after having dried his garments (the warm weather was coming on, and he did not suffer from cold), he tore them to tatters. He made rags of them, which barely covered him, and begged in the open streets, dirty and unkempt, holding out his hands and declaring to passers-by that if he did not bring home any money his parents would beat him. And everyone took him for some gypsy child, hordes of which constantly roamed through the locality. Soon came the time of wild strawberries. He gathered the fruit and sold it in little baskets of leaves. And he assured me, in telling the story, that if it had not been for the terrible thought that the Lady in Black must believe that he was a thief, that time would have been the happiest of his life. His astuteness and natural courage stood him well in stead through these wanderings, which lasted for several months. Where was he going? To Marseilles. This was his plan: