Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 28

  He had seen in his illustrated geography views of the Midi, and he had never looked at those pictures without breathing a sigh and wishing that he might some day visit that enchanted country. Through his gypsy-like manner of living, he had made the acquaintance of a little caravan load of Romanies, who were following the same route as himself, and who were journeying to Ste. Marie’s of the Sea to render homage to a new king of their tribe. The lad had an opportunity to render them some small service, and finding him a pleasant, well-mannered little fellow, these people, not being in the habit of asking everyone whom they met for his history, desired to know nothing more about him. They believed that, on account of ill treatment, the child had run away from some troop of wandering mountebanks, and they invited him to travel with them. Thus he arrived in the Midi.

  In the neighborhood of Arles, he separated himself from his travelling companions, and at last came to Marseilles. There was his paradise! Eternal summer — and the port.

  The port was the favorite resort of all the gamins of the locality, and this fact was the greatest safeguard for Rouletabille. He roamed over the docks as he chose, and served himself according to the measure of his needs, which were not great. For example, he made of himself an “orange fisher.” It was at the time that he exercised this lucrative calling that, one beautiful morning upon the quay, he made the acquaintance of M. Gaston Leroux, a journalist from Paris, and this acquaintance was destined to have such an influence upon the future of Rouletabille that I do not consider it out of place to transcribe here in full the article in which the editor of Le Matin recorded that first memorable interview.

  THE LITTLE ORANGE FISHER.

  As the sun, piercing through the cloudless heavens, struck with its ardent rays the golden robe of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, I descended toward the quay. The scene which met my eyes was one which was worth going far to see. Townfolk, sailors and workmen were moving about, the former idly looking on, while the others tugged at the pulleys and drew up the cables of their vessels. The great merchant vessels glided like huge beasts of burden between the tower of St. Jean and the fort of St. Nicholas, caressing the sparkling waters of the Old Port in their onward motion. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, the smaller barks seemed to bold out their arms to each other, to throw aside their veils of mist and to dance upon the water. Beside them, tired with the long journey, worn out from ploughing for so many days and nights over unknown seas, the heavy laden East Indiamen rested peacefully, lifting their great, motionless sails in rags toward the skies.

  My eyes, sweeping swiftly over the scene through the forest of masts and sails paused at the tower which commemorated the fact that it was twenty-five centuries since the children of Ancient Phœnicia first cast anchor upon this happy shore, and that they had come by the water ways of Ionia. Then my attention returned to the border of the quay, and I perceived the little orange fisher.

  He was standing erect, clad in the rags of a man’s coat which hung down almost to his feet, bareheaded and barefooted, with blonde curly locks and black eyes, and I should think that he was about nine years old. A string passed around his shoulder supported a big sailcloth sack. His left hand rested on his waist and his right hand held a stick three times as tall as himself, which was surmounted by a little wooden book. The child stood motionless and lost in thought. When I asked him what he was doing there, he told me that he was an orange fisher.

  He seemed very proud of being an orange fisher and did not ask me for a penny, as the little vagabonds of the neighborhood are accustomed to demand toll of every bystander. I spoke to him again, but this time he made no answer, for he was too intent on watching the water. On one side of us was the beautiful steamer Fides, in from Castellmare and on the other a three masted schooner from Genoa. Further off were two ships loaded with fruits which had just arrived from Baleares that morning, and I saw that they were spilling a part of their cargo. Oranges were bobbing up and down upon the water and the light current sent them in our direction. My “fisher” leaped into a little canoe, came quickly to the vessel, and, armed with his stick and hook, waited. Then he began his gathering. The hook on his stick brought him one orange then a second, a third and a fourth. They disappeared in the sack. The boy gathered a fifth, jumped upon the quay and tore open the golden fruit. He plunged his little teeth in the pulp and devoured it in an instant.

  “You have a good appetite,” I told him.

  “Monsieur,” he replied, flushing slightly as he spoke, “I don’t care for any food but fruit.”

  “That is a very good diet,” I replied as gravely as he had spoken. “But what do you do when there are no oranges?”

  “I pick up coal.”

  And his little hand, diving into the sack, brought out an enormous piece of coal.

  The orange juice had rolled down his chin to his coat. The coat had a pocket. The little fellow took a clean handkerchief from this pocket and carefully wiped both chin and coat. Then he proudly put the handkerchief back.

  “What is your father’s work?” I asked.

  “He is poor.”

  “Yes, but what does he do?” The orange fisher shrugged his shoulders.

  “He doesn’t do anything, he is poor.”

  My inquiries into his family affairs did not seem to please him. He turned away from the quay and I followed him. We came in a moment to the “shelter,” a little square of sea which holds the small pleasure yachts — the neat little boats all polished wood and brass, the neat little sailors in their irreproachable toilettes. My ragamuffin looked at them with the eye of a connoisseur and seemed to find a keen enjoyment in the spectacle. A new yacht had just been launched and her immaculate sail looked like a white veil against the blue sky.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” exclaimed my little companion.

  The next moment he fell over a board covered with fresh tar and when he picked himself up, he looked with dismay at the stain on his coat which seemed to be his proudest possession. What a disaster! He looked as if he could have burst into tears. But quick as thought he drew out his handkerchief and rubbed and rubbed the spot, then he looked at me piteously and said:

  “Monsieur, are there any other stains? Did I get anything on my back?”

  I assured him that he had not, and with an expression of satisfaction, he put the handkerchief back in his pocket once more.

  A few steps further on, upon the walk which stretches in front of the red and yellow, and blue houses, the windows of which are brave with wares of many kinds, we found an oyster stand. Upon the little tables were displayed piles of oysters in their shells, and flasks of vinegar.

  When we passed by the oyster stand, as the fish appeared fresh and appetizing, I said to the orange fisher.

  “If you cared for anything to cat except fruit, I might ask you to have some oysters with me.”

  His black eyes glistened and we sat down together to eat our oysters. The merchant opened them for us while we waited. He started to bring us vinegar, but my companion stopped him with an imperious feature. He opened his bag carefully and triumphantly produced a lemon. The lemon, having been in close contact with the bit of coal, might have passed for black itself. But my guest took out his handkerchief and wiped it off. Then he cut the fruit and offered me half, but I like oysters without other flavor, so I declined with thanks.

  After our luncheon we went back to the quay. The orange fisher asked me for a cigarette and lighted it with a match which he had in another pocket of his coat.

  Then, the cigarette between his lips, puffing rings toward the sky like a man, the little creature threw himself down on the ground and with his eyes fixed upon the statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, took the very pose of the boy who is the most beautiful ornament of the Brussels tower. He did not lose a line of the attitude, and seemed very proud of the fact and apparently desired to play the part exactly.

  Upon the following day Joseph Josephin met M. Gaston Leroux once more upon the quay, and the man handed him a newspaper which
he carried in his hand. The boy read the article pointed out to him, and the journalist gave him a bright new 100-sous piece. Rouletabille made no difficulties about accepting it, and seemed to even find the gift a natural one. “I take your money,” he said to Gaston Leroux, “because we are collaborators.” With his hundred sous he bought himself a fine new bootblack’s box and installed himself in business opposite the Bregaillon. For two years he polished the boots of those who came to cat the traditional bouillabaisse at this hostelry. When he was not at work, he would sit on his box and read. With the feeling of ownership which his box and his business had brought him, ambition had entered his mind. He had received too good an education and had been too well instructed in rudimentary things not to understand that if he did not himself finish what others had begun for him, he would be deprived of the best chance which he had of making for himself a place in the world.

  His customers grew interested in the little bootblack, who always had on his box some work of history or mathematics, and a harness maker became so attached to him that he took him into his shop.

  Soon Rouletabille was promoted to the dignity of working in leather, and was able to save. At the age of sixteen years, having a little money in his pocket, he took the train for Paris. What did he intend to do there? To look for the Lady in Black.

  Not one day had passed without his having thought of the mysterious visitor to the parlor of the boarding school, and, although no one had ever told him that she lived in Paris, he was persuaded that no other city in the world was worthy to contain a lady who wore so sweet a perfume. And then his little schoolmates, who had been able to see her form when she glided out of the parlor, had often said: “See! the Parisienne is here again today!” It would have been difficult to exactly define the ideas in Rouletabille’s head, and perhaps he himself scarcely knew what they were. His longing was merely to see the Lady in Black — to watch her reverently — at a distance, as a devotee watches the image of a saint. Would he dare to speak to her? The importance of the accusation of theft which had been brought against him had only grown greater in Rouletabille’s imagination as time had gone by, and he believed that it would always be a barrier between himself and the Lady in Black, which he had not the right to try to throw down. Perhaps even — but, come what might, he longed to see her. That was the only thing of which he was sure.

  As soon as he reached the capital, he looked up, and recalled himself to the latter’s memory, telling him that, although he felt no particular liking for the life, which he considered rather a lazy one for a man who liked to be up and doing, he had decided to become a journalist. And he fairly demanded that his old acquaintance should at once give him a trial as a reporter.

  Leroux tried to turn the youth from his project. At last, tired of his persistent requests, the editor said:

  “Well, my lad, since you have nothing special to do just now, go and find the left foot of the body in the Rue Oberkampf.”

  And with these words, M. Leroux turned away, leaving poor Rouletabille standing there with half a dozen young reporters tittering around him. But the boy was not daunted in the least. He searched through the files of the paper and found out that the Epoch was offering a large reward to the person who would bring to its office the foot which was missing from the mutilated body of a woman, which had been found in the Rue Oberkampf.

  The rest we know. In “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” I have told how Rouletabille succeeded on this occasion, and in what manner there revealed itself to him his own singular calling — that of always beginning to reason a matter out from the point where others had finished.

  I have told, too, by what chance he was led one evening to the Elysee, where he inhaled as he passed by the perfume of the Lady in Black. He realized then that it was Mlle. Stangerson who had been his visitor at the school, and for whom he had been seeking so long. What more need I add? Why speak of the sensations which his knowledge as to the wearer of the perfume aroused in the heart of Rouletabille during the events at the Glandier, and, above all, after his trip to America? They may be easily guessed. How simple a thing now to understand his hesitations and his whims! The proofs brought by him from Cincinnati in regard to the child of the woman who had been Jean Roussel’s wife had been sufficiently explicit to awaken in his mind a suspicion that he himself might be that child, but not enough so to render him certain of the fact. However, his instinct drew him so strongly to the professor’s daughter that he could scarcely resist his longing to throw himself into her arms and press her to his heart and cry out to her: “You are my mother! you are my mother!”

  And he fled from her presence just as he had fled from the vestry on the day of her wedding, in order that there should not escape from him any sign of the secret tenderness that had burned in his breast through so many long years. For horrible thoughts dwelt in his mind. Suppose he were to make himself known to her, and she were to repulse him — cast him off — turn from him in horror — from him, the little thief of the boarding school — the son of Roussel — Ballmeyer — the heir of the crimes of Larsan! Suppose she were to order him to get out of her sight, never to come near her again, nor to breathe the same air which brought back to him, whenever he came near her, the perfume of the Lady in Black! Ah, how he had fought, on account of these frightful visions, to restrain himself from yielding to the almost overwhelming impulse to ask each time that he came near her, “Is it you? Are you the Lady in Black?” As to her, she had seemed fond of him from the first, but, doubtless, that was because of the Glandier affair. If she were really the Lady in Black, she must believe that the child whom he had been was dead. And if it were not she — if by some fatality which set at naught both his instincts and his powers of reasoning, it were not she! Could he, through any imprudence, risk having her discover that he had fled from the school at Eu under ban as a thief? No, no — not that! She had often said to him:

  “Where were you brought up, my boy? What school did you attend when you were a child?” And he had replied: “I was in school at Bordeaux.”

  He might as well have answered, “At Pekin.”

  However, this torture could not last always, he told himself. If it were she, he would know how to say things to her that must open her heart. Anything would be better than to be sure that she was not the Lady in Black, but some stranger who had never held him to her heart. But he must be certain — certain beyond any doubt, and he knew how to place himself in the presence of his memories of the Lady in Black, just as a dog is sure of finding its master. The simile which presented itself quite naturally to his imagination was simply that of “following the scent.” And this led us, under the circumstances which I have narrated, to Trepot and to Eu. However, it is by no means certain that decisive results would have been gained from this expedition — at least in the eyes of a third person, like myself — had it not been for the influence of the odor — if the letter from Mathilde, which I had handed to Rouletabille in the train, had not suddenly, with its faint, sweet perfume, brought to us directly the evidence which we were seeking. I have never read this letter. It is a document so sacred in the eyes of my friend, that other eyes will never behold it, but I know that the gentle reproaches which it contained for the boy’s rudeness and lack of confidence in the writer, had been so tender that Rouletabille could no longer deceive himself, even if the daughter of Professor Stangerson had not concluded the note with a final sentence, through which throbbed the heart of a despairing mother, and which said that “the interest which she felt in him arose less from the services he had rendered her, than because of the memories which she had of a little boy, the son of a friend, whom she had loved very dearly, and who had killed himself ‘like a little man with a broken heart’ at the age of nine years, and whom Rouletabille greatly resembled.”

  CHAPTER V

  PANIC

  DIJON — MACON — Lyons — certainly the boy could not be sleeping all this time. I called him softly and he did not reply, but I would have wagere
d my hand that he was not sleeping. What was he planning? How quiet he was! What could it be that had given him such a strange calmness? I seemed to see him again as he had been in the parlor, suddenly standing erect as he said: “Let us go on!” in that voice so composed and tranquil and resolute. Go on to whom? Toward what was he resolved to go? Toward Her, evidently, who was in danger, and who could be rescued only by him — toward her who was his mother and who did not know it.

  “It is a secret which must remain between you and me! That child is dead to the whole world, except to us two!”

  That was his decision, taken almost in a single moment, never to reveal himself to her. And the poor child had come to seek the certainty that she was indeed the Lady in Black, only to have the right to speak to her! In the very moment that the assurance which he sought was his, he had determined to forget it; he condemned himself to endless silence. Poor little hero soul, which had understood that the Lady in Black, who had such dire need of his help, would have shrunk from a safety bought by the warfare of a son against his father! Where might not such warfare lead? To what bloody conflict? Everything must be expected, no matter how terrible, and Rouletabille must have his hands free to fight to the death for the Lady in Black.

  The boy was so quiet that I could not even hear him breathing. I leaned over him; his eyes were open.

  “Do you know what I have been thinking of?” he said. “Of the dispatch that came to us from Bourg and was signed ‘Darzac,’ and the other dispatch which came from Valence and was signed ‘Stangerson.’”

  “And the more I think of them, the stranger they seem to me. At Bourg, M. and Mme. Darzac were not with M. Stangerson, who left them at Dijon. Besides, the dispatch says: ‘We are going to rejoin M. Stangerson.’ But the Stangerson dispatch proves that M. Stangerson, who had continued on his journey toward Marseilles, is again with the Darzacs. The Darzacs might have rejoined M. Stangerson on the way to Marseilles; but if that were so, the Professor must have stopped on the road. Why was this? He did not expect to do so. At the train, he said: ‘To-morrow at ten o’clock, I shall be at Mentone.’ Look at the hour that the dispatch was sent from Valence, and then we’ll look in the time table and find out the hour at which M. Stangerson would have passed through Valence if he had not stopped upon the journey.”